Comedia ranchera: A Reactionary Genre of Mexican Cinema
Comedia ranchera: A Reactionary Genre of Mexican Cinema

Summary/Abstract: The paper focuses on the comedia ranchera genre of Mexican cinema, and especially two important films: On the Big Ranch and Two Types of Care. The genre is analyzed in view of its cultural, political and aesthetic significance in the post-revolutionary Mexico of the 1930s and 1950s, and through its reactionary and subversive features regarding the prevailing indigenismo art and culture of Mexico. Analysis of shot by shot sequences and the iconography of frames reveals that comedia ranchera is a distinctive genre of Mexican cinema, which can be seen as a reactionary ideological apparatus that echoes porfirismo and the old pre-revolutionary regime. The subversive potential of comedia ranchera is hidden cleverly beneath its stereotypical plots and stock characters, and particularly beneath the omnipresent theme of the love triangle. Comparing comedia ranchera to the Western showcases the main difference between heroes of the Western frontier and the rural, reactionary protagonists of comedia ranchera. Although aesthetically different in their visual representation, both On the Big Ranch and Two Types of Care emanate the reactionary paradigm: a class-based society marked by paternalism and Catholic conservatism.

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