Cosmopolitanism, modernity and youth in the 1960s: the transnational wanderings of teen idols from Argentina, Mexico and Spain

ABSTRACT

This essay traces the tri-continental flows of youth films and music between South America (Argentina), North America (Mexico and the United States) and Europe (Spain and Italy) in the mid-late 1960s. Focusing on co-productions starring youth idols Palito Ortega, Enrique Guzmán, and Rocío Dúrcal, the essay examines both the industrial imperatives behind those currents and the socio-cultural promise of the films’ representational conventions. The article recognizes the emergence of tighter synergies between culture industries around the world during this period (from film and music to television), and examines the films within larger horizons of reception. Ultimately, the article suggests that such youth films enacted a form of vernacular cosmopolitanism through the aegis of their young, middle-class protagonists who manage to navigate successfully between the ‘old world’ and the ‘new’ and between the traditional and the modern; and who provide a spatio-temporal bridge bringing audiences up-to-date and into the world beyond national borders.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth films
• cosmopolitanism
• modernity
• 1960s
• Argentina
• Mexico

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Matthew Karush and other colleagues who provided feedback on an earlier version of this essay at the 2019 Latin American Studies Association conference in Barcelona; as well as Glen Close, Rubén Medina and Sarah Ann Wells, who offered constructive critiques to another version presented at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (2019).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. As a cultural historian, Karush notes that stories of ‘“South-South” musical exchanges … are generally segregated from the history of rock and roll. And yet from early on, the diffusion of rock and roll was more broadly transnational than the standard narrative suggest’ (2017, 109–110). His argument aligns with Paulo Antonio Paranaguá’s admonition to film scholars to always understand Latin American cinemas in terms of a triangulated relationship with Europe and the US (2003, 89–96).

2. Film has long served as a vehicle for arm-chair traveling, but the filmmaking practices that emerged in this period lent a greater sense of immediacy to that experience through the increased use of on-location shooting and colour stock and (on occasion) wider aspect ratios – at least in Argentina and Spain where filmmakers showcased spectacular landscapes (Podalsky 2004, 84–85).

3. The changing film laws in the mid-1990s (Argentina, Brazil) and 2000s (Mexico) accelerated or deepened these dynamics by providing added incentives for such companies to invest in films.

4. It is interesting to note that the album Nacidos para cantar features Argentine artist Juan Ramón, rather than Mexican Enrique Guzmán, who had been Violeta Rivas’s romantic partner in the film. This may have been the result of conflicting contracts as the album was produced by RCA Victor and Guzmán was under contract to Columbia/CBS. If this is correct, the case exemplifies the limitations of the cross-media synergies that emerged in this period, at a moment when the global record business was entering an era of ‘dramatic expansion’ and the dominant US record companies attempted to broaden their market share in Latin America (Karush 2017, 112–116; Zolov 1999, 70–71). See López 2014; Nagib and Jerslev 2014 for approaches to such dynamics in terms of the concept of intermediality.

5. ‘Youth films’ refer here to fiction films with narratives centered around the lives and experiences of adolescents and young adults, often featuring young(ish) actors and actresses, that are aimed primarily (but not exclusively) at younger audiences, as demonstrated through the narrative, mode of address, and references and/or tie-ins to other aspects of youth culture (from music and fashion, to dance forms and other leisure practices).

6. Both document the public scandals that erupted in Buenos Aires and Mexico City around the screenings of youth rock and roll films and the embodied responses of young audience members. See Manzano 2014, 70–73, about teens dancing in the streets of the Argentine capital in 1957; Zolov 1999, 47–51 on the so-called King Creole riot in May 1959 in the Mexican capital.

7. As noted by Zolov, the term refrito (re-fried) was used to refer to Spanish-language covers of US rock n’roll songs (1999, 72).

8. CanalTV 11 January 1962: np. See Zolov 1999, 74 for a similar visual scenario that appeared in the form of a caricature on the cover of Jueves de Excelsior in 1962.

9. Acompáname is currently accessible here (https://www.facebook.com/RocioDurcalmasbonitaqueninguna/videos/1647862488562466/?__so__=serp_videos_tab), whereas Amor en el aire is currently available only via DVD.

10. This aspect of Ortega’s star-text had already been established the prior year in his film El rey en Londres (Argentina-UK, Aníbal Uset, 1966), a film with documentary-like aspects showcasing Ortega’s tour around London, highlighting various city sites and culminating in a concert scene where The Beatles (seem to) serve as an opening act for Ortega himself.

11. The commercial airline industry in several Latin American countries – most notably, Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina – underwent a rapid expansion in the post-WWII period and was exalted as a sign of national progress Davies 1984; Hagedorn 2008. Within this context, films like Amor en el aire can be seen as attempts to advertise the ‘new technologies’ to a wide public and, more specifically, to tout their accessibility to middle-class people with an interest in traveling to other parts of Latin America or to Europe.

12. Ian Woodward and Zlatko Skribis similarly caution against characterizing cosmopolitanism as ‘progressive.’ For them, being cosmopolitan is not so much a matter of being susceptible to transformation by opening oneself to the other as being adept at using a set of outlooks and practices ‘for the purpose of dealing with cultural diversity, hybridity and otherness’ (Woodward and Skrbiš 2012, 132, 133, as cited in Deleyto, 97). These dealings may be varied and do not necessarily lead to reflexive transformation, solidarity or the defense of human rights.

13. As suggested by Karen Pinkus in her preface to Francesco Adinolfi’s Mondo Exotica …, the festival was an attempt to create productive synergies with old and new Italian media – both radio and [incipient] television (x).

14. See Pavlovic 2011; Del Rey 2012; Afinoguénova 2012 for more on the ties between the rise of the tourism industry and Spanish filmmaking.

15. I thank Mónica García Blizzard for this translation.

16. For more on Dúrcal as a ‘complex model of femininity during the late Francoist era,’ see Jorge Pérez who argues that her ‘image of decent, modern femininity [sat] atop contradictory pillars; it promise[d] social mobility for aspirational young women as long as they accept a certain stasis of values’ (2011, 83).

17. Youth films do not appear as one of the genres identified by Celli and Cotino-Jones 2007; Brizio-Skov 2011; or Bonadella 2014. The latter does include an article on the representation of children in Italian cinema from the 1940 s to the present.

18. As noted by numerous scholars, youth have long served as representative figures of a given, future-oriented temporal mindset and, in this sense, as an ideal figure and agent of the modern.

Additional information

Funding

This work was not supported by any grant.

Notes on contributors

Laura Podalsky

Laura Podalsky is a Professor of Latin American Cultural Studies and Film at The Ohio State University. She is the author of Specular City: Transforming Culture, Consumption, and Space in Buenos Aires, 1955-1973 (Temple UP, 2004), The Politics of Affect and Emotion in the Contemporary Latin American Cinema: Argentina, Brazil, Cuba and Mexico (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), as well as the co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Latin America Cinema (2017), along with Marvin D’Lugo and Ana López. She has published essays on a wide variety of topics, including landscapes of masculinity in contemporary Mexican cinema, contemporary Mexican youth films, the work of Brazilian director Ana Carolina, telenovelas and globalization, cosmopolitanism in tango films, and pre-revolutionary Cuban cinema. Her current research interests include youth, film, and youth cultures in Argentina and Mexico in the 1960s.