The Stars Down Below: Sex, Labor, and the Fantasy of Hollywood

This talk will examine the politics of fantasy in relation to representations of Latino male sexuality in contemporary independent and queer cinema. Primarily focusing on Miguel Arteta’s 1997 film Star Maps, the talk reads the film as a critique of Hollywood’s racially exclusive practices while illustrating how fantasy helps make sense of protagonist Carlos’s American dream of becoming an esteemed film and television star who also finds himself ruled by the sexual desires and labor demands of others.

Richard T. Rodríguez is associate professor of Media & Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside. He specializes in Latina/o literary and cultural studies, film and visual culture, and queer studies with additional interests in transnational cultural studies, popular music studies, and comparative ethnic studies. The author of Next of Kin: The Family in Chicano/a Cultural Politics (Duke University Press, 2009), he is completing two book projects: “Fantasies of Latino Male Sexuality” and “Latino/U.K.: Transatlantic Intimacies in Post-Punk Cultures.”

This event is sponsored by the Critical Contemporary Studies Workshop and the Lesbian-Gay-Queer Research Initiative (LGQRI)