Designing National Identities: United States Filmic Narratives and Their Influence on Latin American Identitary Typecasting
Designing National Identities: United States Filmic Narratives and Their Influence on Latin American Identitary Typecasting

Summary/Abstract: Nietzsche (Genealogy of Morals) and Castoriadis (The Imaginary Institution of Society) agree that identitary logic enables society to generate the positive, imaginary structures and principles that allow it to function. Since its inception and because of its comprehensive reach, film has been a relevant medium for the establishment of national identitary logic. But identity syllogism affects those groups that are protected by its ideological design as well as those who are left exposed and deemed superfluous to the national project. In its early development of the medium, the United States was producing and exporting film narratives (Birth of a Nation, the Broncho Billy sagas) that reflected its particular identitary logic; this was imitated, ignored or expressly rejected in Latin American countries in a variety of ways and for a variety of reasons that divulge and describe those nations’ distinct identitary strategies. In this conversation I aim to illustrate how the core rationale for these strategies has been formulated by local dominant groups and is grounded on their ideological agenda. I do so by studying how the “business” of film has been conducted in the USA and in several Latin American nations, how each created images of archetypal individuals and negotiated the moral, ethical and even physical characteristics of such individuals through distinct, uncomplicated stereotypes and predictable denouements.

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