Abstract
In this article, I highlight Frances Negrón-Muntaner's career as an independent filmmaker, and also examine the ongoing pressures that she has endured because of her membership in various marginalized groups. I propose that instead of labeling Negrón-Muntaner under the rubric of some of her identities, we situate her and her films as part of what film scholar Hamid Naficy categorizes as accented cinema. By describing Negrón-Muntaner as an accented filmmaker, I am interpreting her films not as essential depictions of a particular community or of herself, but as personal journeys that operate through and “play” with her multiple identity positionings.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
I am alluding to Peter Feng's (2000) definition of “dirty laundry” as “the process of justifying suppression within a minority community as a protective stance toward outsiders” (p. 2).
I am borrowing this from Straayer's (1996) analysis on gay and lesbian independent films and videos that problematize issues of race, gender, class and culture.
For instance, after the release of her documentary AIDS in the Barrio some critics denounced the film for its absence of gay voices, the unequal power relations between participants and media producers, and the seeming proliferation of stereotypical representations. From 1989 to 1993, and probably as a response to these critiques, Negrón-Muntaner experimented with a participatory approach to documentary filmmaking.
In using the term “unworthy,” I am influenced by Eve Oishi's (2000) conceptualization of “bad Asians,” which she defines as Asian American Queer filmmakers who through their films/videos confront the US hegemonic construction of Asians as a passive, asexual, silent and content “model minority.”
References
Anzaldúa, G . 1987. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Spinsters/Aunt Lute.
Blasini, G . 1996. Exiled Desire as a Desired Exile: Puerto Rican Identities in Frances Negrón-Muntaner's Brincando el Charco. Paper presented at the American Studies Association Conference, Kansas City, Missouri.
Feng, P.X . 2000. Working on the Railroad: Richard Fung's “Dirty Laundry” and the Projection of Queer Chinese Canadian History. Paper presented at the Association for Asian American Studies Conference, Scottsdale, Arizona.
Freire, P . 1999. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. M.B. Ramos. New York: Continuum.
Frye, M . 1998. Lesbian Sex. Sinister Wisdom 35: 46–54.
Hall, S . 2000. Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation. In Film and Theory: An Anthology, eds. R. Stam and T. Miller, 704–714. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Jiménez, L . 1996. Moving from the Margin to the Center: Puerto Rican Cinema in New York. In The Ethnic Eye: Latino Media Arts, eds. C. Noriega and A. López, 22–37. Minneapolis, MN: The University of Minnesota Press.
La Fountain-Stokes, L . 1999. 1898 and the History of a Queer Puerto Rican Century: Gay Lives, Island Debates, and Diasporic Experience. Centro Journal XI (1): 91–109.
Naficy, H . 2001. An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Negrón-Muntaner, F. (dir), 1994. Brincando el charco: Portrait of a Puerto Rican, Women Make Movies.
Negrón-Muntaner, F. (dir), 1995. Puerto Rican ID, Public Broadcasting Service.
Negrón-Muntaner, F. (dir), 1996a. Homeless Diaries, Public Broadcasting Service.
Negrón-Muntaner, F . 1996b. Drama Queens: Latino Gay and Lesbian Independent Film/Video. In The Ethnic Eye: Latino Media Arts, eds. C. Noriega and A. López, 59–78. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Negrón-Muntaner, F . 1999a. When I Was a Puerto Rican Lesbian: Meditations on Brincando El Charco: Portrait of a Puerto Rican. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 5 (4): 511–526.
Negrón-Muntaner, F . 1999b. Beyond the Cinema of the Other or toward Another Cinema. Aztlan 24 (2): 149–154.
Noriega, C . 2000. Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Noriega, C . and A. López . 1996. Introduction. In The Ethnic Eye: Latino Media Arts, eds. C. Noriega and A. López, IX–XXII. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Oboler, S . 1995. Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives: Identity and the Politics of (Re)presentation in the United States. Minneapolis, MN: The University of Minnesota Press.
Oishi, E . 2000. Bad Asians: New Film and Video by Queer Asian American Artists. In Countervisions: Asian American Film Criticism, eds. D.Y. Hamamoto and S. Liu, 221–241. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Omi, M . and H. Winant . 1994. Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge.
Ortner, S.B . 1995. Resistance and the Problem of Ethnography. Comparative Studies in Society and History 37 (1): 173–194.
Pratt, M.L . 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge.
Quiroga, J . 2000. Tropics of Desire: Interventions from Queer Latino America. New York: New York University Press.
Sandoval-Sánchez, A . 2007. Imagining Puerto Rican Queer Citizenship: Frances Negrón's Brincando El Charco. In None of the Above: Contemporary Puerto Rican Culture and Politics, ed. F. Negrón-Muntaner, 147–164. New York: Palgrave Macmillan Press.
Silén, J.A . 1980. Historia de la nación puertorriqueña. Río Piedras, Puerto Rico: Editorial Edil.
Straayer, C . 1996. Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies: Sexual Re-orientation in Film and Video. New York: Columbia University Press.
Torres, L . 2007. Boricua Lesbians: Sexuality, Nationality, and the Politics of Passing. Centro Journal 19 (1): 230–249.
Trouillot, M.-R . 1995. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rivero, Y. Diasporic and marginal crossroads: The films of Frances Negrón-Muntaner. Lat Stud 7, 336–356 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/lst.2009.26
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/lst.2009.26