Cinematic Sites of Contention: (Re)framing Visions of Gender, Sexuality and Translocational Identities Through the Lens of Mexican Migrants in Sydney

Abstract

This thesis examines the narratives articulated by 36 Mexican migrants living in the Anglo-dominant and ‘global city’ of Sydney, Australia (Lewis and Peñaloza 2019). While the more novel case of middle-class migrants in Australia has been acknowledged (Vázquez Maggio 2017; Barba Ponce 2017; Mejía and Vázquez Maggio 2022); it is argued that a more focused approach on systems of gender, sexuality, and race reveals pervasive systemic issues as well as the desires and negotiated positionalities of this sample.

Filmic stimuli are used as a precursor to focus group discussions, and the narratives shared by Mexican migrants were analysed inductively by drawing on De Fina’s (2003) discourse-based approach to identity, positionings and positionalities (Sánchez 2006) and Dialogical Self Theory (DST) (Hermans 2011; Raggatt 2011, 2014), Ahmed’s (2007) ‘phenomenology of whiteness’, Lugones’s (2010) decolonial feminist approach, and ‘privileged positionality’ (Adler 2019 via Anthias 2002).

This sample demonstrates how Mexican film provides a site to (re)frame visions of gender and sexuality and an espejo (Monsiváis and Bonfil 1994) for processes of (dis)identification (Muñoz 1999). The narratives shared by participants (whether or not about themselves) are considered as ‘a form of self-presentation’ (Vila 2000) whereby social constructions and stereotypes around class, race, machismo, heteronormativity, gender, sexuality, and others are constantly renewed and challenged (De Fina 2003; Lugones 2010). Audience-centered methodologies evaluate how spectators interpret and make space for themselves by using filmic text in one-on-one interviews and five focus groups. The selection of films include participant suggestions: Cuatro lunas (2014) directed by Sergio Tovar Velarde, Arráncame la vida (2008) by Roberto Sneider, Demasiado amor (2001) by Ernesto Rimoch, Amores Perros (2000) by Alejandro González Iñárritu and Los días más oscuros de nosotras (2017) by Astrid Rondero.