Background Echoes: Mexicanness and the Production of Race in Hollywood
(Various artists; 1923 – 1969; 35mm, digital)

Please note this program begins at 5 PM

This dynamic lecture-screening interweaves a selection of eleven 35mm trailers from the Academy Film Archive with an insightful presentation by Laura Isabel Serna, Associate Professor in the Van Hunnick History Department and the Division of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California. Serna will explore the concept of “atmosphere” to uncover how Hollywood’s production practices have perpetuated racial ideologies, often hidden behind the allure of cinematic aesthetics. In this talk, she reveals how seemingly inconsequential elements, often relegated to the background, were essential in creating the realism and racial dynamics typical of Hollywood productions.

Complementing her lecture is a curated selection of 35mm trailers that visualizes how Mexicanness has been both central to and marginalized by Hollywood’s film industry. From unidentified extras to the racial masquerade of A-list actors, from on-location filming to manufactured studio backlots, and from vague generalizations to hyper-specific historical details, Hollywood has othered Mexicanness to strengthen U.S. national identifications. Although screening these trailers today presents a challenge due to the harmful stereotypes they perpetuate about minoritized peoples, Serna’s critical analysis of filmic atmosphere allows us to examine how U.S. cinematic production has naturalized discourses of modernity, empire, and conquest for more than one century.

Background Echoes was curated by Laura Isabel Serna and Northwestern University Screen Cultures scholars Emmanuel Ramos Barajas and Tatiana Anoushian. This lecture-screening is programmed in conjunction with the 2024 Backward Glances conference and will serve as one of its keynote presentations.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Laura Isabel Serna was born in Los Angeles into a working class Mexican-American family with roots in the Mexican states of Jalisco, Coahuila, and Durango. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Van Hunnick History Department and the Division of Cinema and Media Studies in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California.

The Backward Glances Biennial Screen Cultures Graduate Student Conference is co-sponsored by the Department of Radio/Television/Film, Screen Cultures, MFA Doc Media, Art History, IPTD, and Critical Theory at Northwestern University.

Production still from The Spider and the Rose (1923), from silentfilmstillarchive.com

Film prints courtesy of the Packard Humanities Institute Collection at the Academy Film Archive

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Tags: Background Echoes: Mexicanness and the Production of Race in Hollywood, Block Museum, Emmanuel Ramos-Barajas, Evanston, Laura Isabel Serna, Northwestern University, Tatiana Anoushian