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FASCINATING MACHISMO: TOWARD AN UNMASKING OF HETEROSEXUAL MASCULINITY

IN ARTURO RIPSTEIN'S EL LUGAR SIN LMITES


Author(s): SERGIO DE LA MORA
Source: Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 44, No. 3/4, Latin American Cinema: Gender
Perspectives (Fall 1992 and Winter 1993), pp. 83-104
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the University Film & Video
Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20687985
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FASCINATING MACHISMO: TOWARD AN
UNMASKING OF HETEROSEXUAL MASCULINITY
IN ARTURO RIPSTEIN'S EL LUGAR SIN LIMITES
SERGIO DE LA MORA

This essay attempts to bridge my interests examine the construction of male hetero
in Mexican cinema with an effort to locate sexuality and homosexuality in a modern
my spectator position as a homosexual Mexican-Latin American sexual signify
Mexican male in relation to the predomi ing system. A predominant concern of this
nant image of male homosexuality pro essay is to raise the problem of maintain
duced by that film industry. Part film his ing gender(ed) categories of homosexual
tory, part film analysis, part gender/ ity and heterosexuality, femininity and
sexuality study, this essay first provides a masculinity, when, both in lived reality
genealogy of the fichera (cabaret dancer/ and in cultural texts, these categories are
prostitute) genre, moving from the figure being undermined and made ambiguous
of the female prostitute to that of the and inadequate through constant slippage.
queen homosexual type.1 It then proceeds Once conventionally defined as static and
to a discussion of the ideological function self-contained, these categories are in
of homosexual stereotyping and to the creasingly being shown to be unstable,
way the queen homosexual stereotype is fluid, and changing.
deployed to very different ends in Arturo
Ripstein's El lugar sin Umites (Hell Has Throughout the history of Mexican cin
No Limits, Mexico, 1977), in which a ema, the brothel-cabaret has been the
transvestite (a variant of the queen) scan privileged space for articulating gender/
dalously displaces a female prostitute sexual identities.2 In the brothel-cabaret,
from the narrative center, supplanting her one of course finds the prostitute, a figure
as the leading heterosexual male charac both revered and denigrated in Mexican
ter's obscure object of desire. cultural texts. In her, the idealized image
of woman as saintly wife is mythically
My goal is to define, through a semiotic transformed into the sexually desired
reading, the function of the figure of the other. This good/bad dichotomy confirms
queen in contemporary commercial Mex the virgin/whore binarism imposed on
ican cinema as an element that helps reg women in Mexican society and upheld in
ulate and stabilize male heterosexuality. its cultural texts. More often than not,
This longer project, of which this essay woman as prostitute, cabaretera, or
forms a part, will examine a corpus of fichera (depending on the genre, as I will
films as cultural texts through which to shortly explain) is also reconfirmed in her
socially constructed role as passive object
Sergio de la Mora is a doctoral student at the
for male erotic pleasure.
University of California, Santa Cruz. His work
focuses on Mexican and Chicano/a literature,
film, and critical theory. He is currently re The brothel-cabaret allows the free play of
searching representations of masculinity in re dominant cultural images that associate
lation to the ideologies of the Mexican national masculinity with an overwhelming sexual
state.
drive. A veritable altar erected to virility,
Copyright ? 1993 by S. de la Mora the brothel-cabaret provides a stage where

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the myth that man's sexual prowess con interdependent opposition of two of the
fers power over women can be enacted most venerated figures in Mexican society
again and again. The extremely lucrative and culture?the mother and the whore?
fichera genre is the latest variation in a the latter being the sexual escape valve
continuing effort by Mexican cinema to that patriarchy finds necessary to maintain
legitimate male heterosexual hegemony, the "virginal purity" of the desired famil
as well as to preserve hypocritically the ial woman. These early filmic representa
institution of the patriarchal family and tions of prostitution uphold a rigid moral
bourgeois morality. The genre continues a ism through which any transgressions to
national cinematic tradition that obses established sexual conventions must be
sively fixates on and investigates "prob paid for by the woman, since she is made
lems" concerning women's sexuality and to symbolize moral ideals. Such represen
the tireless male desire to know her mys tational strategies work to contain female
teries. Though this problematization of sexuality within a repressive patriarchal
sexual identity does, indeed, ensure male order.
identity remains intact by displacing the
problem onto woman, the fichera genre's The fichera genre also borrows from cab
consistent inclusion of the figure of the aretera films from the late 1940s in the
queen is, I think, symptomatic of a further exploration of urban nightlife and the use
questioning of sexual and gender identity of musical numbers. This time the rum
in Mexican society. Before elaborating on beras (also a cabaret dancer and a direct
this point, I would like to locate the descendant of the prostitute) are no longer
fichera genre in Mexican film history. victims but defiant heroines. As Carlos
Monsiv?is notes, although the rumbera is
Fichera films dominated Mexican cinema still victimized, her power resides in her
from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. sexual and social affirmation. Her rise to
Fichera refers to a female cabaret dancer/ fame in the cabaret allows her to be eco
prostitute who gets a commision in the nomically independent and permits her to
form of aficha, or token, for every drink "project a virulent form of desire onto the
her customer consumes. The genre has its screen" (Lopez 43). Carlos Monsiv?is
origin in the mythification of the prostitute says that the rumbera held subversive
and can be traced back to the silent era to power because her self-conscious sensual
Luis G. Peredo's 1918 film version of ity undermined moral conventions (Pelayo
Mexican writer Federico Gamboa's novel Rangel).
Santa (published in 1903). Gamboa's
melodrama is the story of a young girl, No traces of subversion can be detected in
"seduced" and abandoned, then forced to the hybrid fichera genre, which draws
leave her home, who inevitably ends up as from prostitution melodrama, vaudeville
a prostitute. Only death, ultimately, re like sketches, and soft-core pornography,
deems her from sin.3 Another classic pros although its immediate antecedents are the
titution melodrama is Arcady Boytler's La cabaretera films. The film that anticipates
mujer del Puerto (1933), an expressionist the fichera genre is Tivoli (Alberto Isaac,
film filled with taboo subjects such as 1974). One of the principal elements this
incest and suicide, not to mention virtual film contributed to what would become a
nudity. This time the victimized prostitute new genre was the nostalgic remembrance
commits suicide by throwing herself off a of irreverent, vaudevillelike popular the
pier in Veracruz after discovering that her ater (genero chico or teatro frivolo),
sailor client is in fact her brother. which, as noted by Ana M. Lopez, devel
oped in working-class neighborhoods and
These foundational texts of Mexican pros in tents around the periphery of cities.
titution melodrama mythically set up the Before cinema became the principal visual

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medium to foreground representations of The Brothel as the Closet:
the popular classes, the genero chico was Visualizing Homosexuality
the first to take up this function. It is
necessary to pause on Lopez's description The fichera genre serves as a cultural
of the subversive elements in the genero index for various sexological transforma
chico to note their recuperation by the tions in modern Mexican society. Among
fichera genre. "The genero chico was these changes are public recognition of
carnivalesque in the Bakhtinian sense, in homosexuals; the growth of the sex indus
cluding in its repertory taboo words and try; the commodification of the body,
gestures (sex, genitalia, vulgarity, obscen which is now increasingly displayed in
ities, forms of popular speech, the exalta various stages of undress and is strictly
tion of the grotesque . . . ). Benefiting regimented to make it more "beautiful";
from the brief lapse of traditional morals and an increased tolerance for the open
that followed the revolution [1910-20], the use of "bad words."4
genero chico made the sexual body (be
low-the-waist) verbally visible for the first What is at stake in the fichera genre?
time" (Lopez 50). Fichera films provide an occasion to stage
five potentially contradictory phenomena:
(1) the narrative agency of the hypermas
Wherein the nondominant genero chico culine leading man; (2) the phallic vigor of
representations of sexuality and popular the heterosexual male characters in gen
culture (momentarily) invert established eral; (3) the frenzied visual display of the
hierarchies, in the fichera genre the same sexual availability of the female charac
elements (although now more audacious) ters; (4) the sanctity of the heterosexual
give no cause for celebration. The genre is couple; and, finally, (5) the norm for the
largely void of any critical edge. Fichera parameters masculine sexuality and be
films exploited to the hilt the lifting of havior can take. This norm is signified in
cinematic censorship over "bad words," the interplay and tension between the het
female nudity, and sex scenes. Producers erosexual male characters and the figure
lured an audience lost to the amenities of of the queen.
television back to the cinema through the
spectacle of silicone breasts and a barrage What brings me to a genre that offers me
of vulgar language posing as the authentic little visual or narrative pleasure is the
voice of the popular classes. Critic Jorge urge to demystify an enigma?not why the
Ayala Blanco comments that the fichera genre was so commercially successful
genre's supposed representation of popu (since the sexual titillation and the picar
lar Mexican culture involves a reductive esque humor alone can account for the
focus on the most salient picaresque ele high revenues) but rather why every
ments from an urban working-class milieu. fichera film features a queen homosexual.
He sees the sexuality in the genre, which Considering the general historical invisi
abounds with female stripteasing num bility of the male homosexual in Mexican
bers, as "the simple reproduction of spec cinema, it is curious that a genre that is so
tacles which exploit sexual frustration" clearly marketed to a working-class male
(119). As of the mid-1980s, the production, heterosexual audience would consistently
distribution, and exhibition of hard-core include a homosexual in its cast of char
pornography was still prohibited in Mex acters. This inclusion is double-edged. On
ico. This prohibition helps explain the the one hand, it makes male homosexual
proliferation of proto-pornographic fichera ity visible. On the other, this visibility is
films. In 1981 alone, some 30 such films possible only at the cost of stereotyping
were made out of a total production of 97 him with the most misogynist characteris
(Garcia Riera 1986, 325). tics heterosexual males attribute to "fern

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ininity," including weakness, frivolity, that reveals the notion that "true mascu
and narcissism. linity and femininity are in large measure
defined in heterosexual" terms (Dyer
To begin to address this issue, it is neces 1983, 8). In-betweenism was used by En
sary to shift to an exploration of some glish homosexuals ("invert" is the histor
issues concerning representations of ho ically specific nomenclature) during the
mosexuality. Richard Dyer, in a piece turn of the century, however, as a medical
entitled "Seen to Be Believed: Some category for the purpose of establishing "a
Problems in the Representation of Gay third or intermediate sex" (Dyer 1983, 5).
People as Typical" (1983), argues that gay By not performing according to their cul
typification is important because, unlike turally ascribed "biological" gender, the
the biological markers of sex and race, queen and the dyke resemble much more
sexual identity is not visible in the physi the opposite gender. In gay and lesbian
ognomy of homosexuals. There are signs culture, these types embody the refusal to
(behavior, clothing, environment) that play the neat, unambiguous gender roles
serve as markers for gayness, but these constructed by the heterosexual libidinal
are cultural productions. He argues that economy.
one way to make the invisible visible is to
produce signs to facilitate recognition. The meanings these types have in domi
nant culture, however, is very different.
Gay typification is bound up with the By not being a "real" man or woman, as
construction of sexual identities, espe defined in heterosexual terms (rigid gen
cially ideas regarding gender and the nat der-role playing, opposite sex object
uralization of gendered psychosexual pre choice, for example), the queen and the
dispositions (i.e., active male/passive dyke represent both failed masculinity and
female). There is a correlation in the ef failed femininity (Dyer 12). For example,
forts to differentiate culturally between the queen is a biological male, but al
male and female and the drive to identify though s/he acts like a woman s/he is
the homosexual through a fixed represen (generally) not "feminine" enough to pass
tational system that links him with femi as a "real" woman. This failed realness is
ninity. For Dyer, gay types cannot be what prompts film narratives to represent
understood outside the cultural context in queens and dykes in extreme terms?from
which they are produced (1983, 6). tragic to comic.

Dyer identifies four homosexual types: the For Dyer, in-between gay typology repre
In-between, the Macho, the Sad Young sents both regressive trappings and a po
Man, and Lesbian Feminism. All repre tentially radical statement. He writes:
sentations of male homosexuality in
fichera films fall into the first category. In its tragic and violent modes, it
The In-between type refers both to the reinforces negative views of gay sex
queen and the dyke, both classic represen uality; in its representation of the
tations of homosexuality that, because nastiness or ridiculousness of not be
their behavior and dress do not corre ing really one sex or the other, it
spond to their anatomy, subvert the idea serves to maintain the notion of rigid
that gender proceeds from biological sex. gender role differentiation. Yet it may
The queen is effeminate, and the dyke is also, through a paradoxical inversion,
mannish. They stand on the border be embody a rejection of these roles. (13)
tween genders.
Although the inclusion of the figure of the
A negative use deploys this type to desig homosexual (reified as the queen) in the
nate gender inauthenticity, an assumption fichera genre does, in a way, acknowledge

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the impact of the 1960s gay liberation without stereotypes. Stereotypes, he
movement in the United States on Mexi writes, are concrete images of the world
can society, as well as the development of that we must create and label in order to
incipient gay and lesbian rights organiza differentiate others from ourselves. Ste
tions in Mexico, by openly acknowledging reotypes function as a psychic process by
the existence of Mexican homosexuals, which we reject and project onto the Other
the recourse to flat, one-dimensional rep (the different) all that doesn't contribute to
resentations speaks of an increasing anxi maintaining the illusion of independence.
ety over heterosexual male identity. This Gilman links this need to feel powerful, in
pervasive inclusion of the queen homosex control, and unified in subject-object, self
ual type is indicative of a cultural obses other relations to the infant's entrance into
sion with distinguishing (making visible) the Symbolic (into language and the Law)
and fixing the look and behavior?and and to the rupture of the infant-mother
thus the sexual identity?of the heterosex dyad during the "Mirror stage." The en
ual and homosexual male. The fichera trance into the Symbolic introduces an
genre never admits representations of the increasing distinction between self and
other extreme of the homosexual type, the world. This split is experienced as anxiety
macho homosexual, for this image in this over a perceived loss of control over the
system of representation would collapse world, which, in turn, triggers the need to
the binarism that permits homosexual and split the self into "bad" and "good"
heterosexual categories to operate as po camps?respectively denoting control and
larized, readily identifiable visual differ lack of control. As "mental representa
ences. Through a discussion of stereotyp tions of the world," stereotypes maintain
ing as a sign system, I will attempt to the imaginary difference necessary to dis
demonstrate that the terms homosexual tinguish self from other (Gilman 17). This
and heterosexual are interdependent. need to maintain distinctions and sepa
rateness is essential in patriarchal con
structions of distinct genders and sexual
Stereotyping and the Production of desires.
Sexual Deviancy
Stereotypes share the bipolar structure of
As other cultural critics have observed,5 it other sign systems. As a system of repre
is very difficult to discuss homosexuality sentation, stereotypes respond both to our
in film without referring to theories of psychological needs and to cultural and
stereotyping, since most conventional historically specific ideologies. Thus, ste
(dominant) cinema organizes representa reotypes, linked to the etymological use of
tions of homosexuality around stereo the term as the production of texts, are
types. Sander L. Gilman and Richard images produced and circulated to re
Dyer have written on the ideological spond to the perceived needs of specific
and/or psychoanalytic function of stereo groups in society. Stereotypes reflect the
types. While Dyer emphasizes the nega values of a specific group and its basic
tive ideological function of stereotypes, attitude toward another group (Gilman
Gilman analyzes stereotypes as both an 28).
ideological and a specifically psychic
mechanism that helps us structure our Richard Dyer foregrounds the ideological
modes of perception. Both, however, function of stereotypes as a specifically
characterize stereotyping as a system of medical discursive construction. He ob
control. serves that stereotypes operate by estab
lishing a fixed concept of "normalcy"
From a psychoanalytic perspective, Gil through a process whereby those who do
man states that we could not function not ascribe to the ideology of the ruling

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groups are excluded. Because stereotypes strates the dependent relation between
serve to legitimate the hegemonic social two terms that are supposed to be oppo
structure, the political consequences of sites and independent of one another. In
stereotyping are extremely important in the context of my argument regarding the
structuring perception. function of the homosexual stereotype in
the fichera genre, on one level the hetero
Stereotyping is a mechanism by which to sexual male could not fix his identity with
set up boundaries and fix differences. out the inclusion of the scandalous differ
Dyer cites the work of Paul Rock regard ence of the queen, the sign of an in
ing the production of deviancy in medical between gender, neither man nor woman
discourse, in which it is used as an ideo but a "failure" to be either. Nonetheless,
logical function to maintain control. Rock the queen is still seen as more "man" than
writes: "woman" because anatomically he is still
male. Queens are men who have betrayed
It is plausible that much of the expen their masculinity by "acting like women."
sive drama and ritual which surround
the apprehension and denunciation of
the deviant are directed at maintain The Queen: The Macho's Sexual Other
ing the daemonic and isolated charac
ter of deviancy. Without these dem Before proceeding with a discussion of
onstrations, typifications would be stereotypes as they relate to my explora
weakened and social control would tion of how homophobia is deployed in El
suffer correspondingly, (quoted in lugar sin Umites to structure heterosexual
Dyer 1984, 30) masculinity and male homosexuality, I
will outline briefly the different ways the
Rock suggests that deviant behavior is fichera genre in general and Ripstein's film
incited to proliferate so as to maintain the in particular (which works within the
clear-cut distinction between deviancy fichera milieu) deploy stereotypes of male
and normalcy. Stereotypes establish im homosexuality. In fichera films, homosex
ages of normalcy and are therefore de uals are seldom narrative agents. (The
signed to nurture and produce more "de single exception I have found is Las del
viancy," for without the deviant there can talon [The Street-walkers, Alejandro Ga
be no normal. Accordingly (and following lindo, 1977]). They ostensibly rarely move
in part Gilman's conception of stereotypes the plot forward or control events and thus
as a signifying system), stereotyping func are not constituted as active historical
tions as a binary sign system that names subjects. Rather, they are represented as
things by their relational position to other eccentric "freaks," present in the diegesis
signs. As the "different" category (func as mere sources of comic relief.61 propose
tioning as a unit) necessary for definition, a different function: the figure of the queen
stereotypes maintain our signifying prac is indispensable for the genre because his
tices and their concomitant ideology. This aberrant difference is essential for defining
ideology sustains the terms by which the the overdetermined "stability," "normal
parameters of "the normal" are agreed cy," and supposed "superiority" of het
upon and defined to the detriment of those erosexual male identity.
who fall outside them.
In Ripstein's film, the figure of the queen,
Stereotypes have a more complicated re La Manuela, works not only to critique
lationship to "the normal" than merely homophobia as a tool used to regulate
being self-contained oppositions, as a male relations, but also to challenge the
structuralist analysis would have it. A confining construction of existing gender
deconstructive methodology demon roles. The plot focuses on the sadomas

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ochistic relationship between the aging part as the cabaret's obligatory flaming
queen La Manuela (Roberto Cobo) and queer?all the homosexual characters in
the hypermasculine Pancho (Gonzalo fichera films are made to hype up the
Vega). The narrative takes place in a mod artifice of their faggotry. They are exces
ern (1970s) Mexican rural town controlled sively concerned with their appearance, as
by an aging large-scale landowner, Don their highly stylized clothing, mannerisms,
Alejo (Fernando Soler), who owns all the and voice connote; they are bitchy and
town's property except for the brothel. wisecracking, weak and cowardly. Like
The brothel is run by La Manuela and her Vito Russo's sissy, they are perfect
daughter, La Japonesita (Ana Martin), the "yardsticks for measuring the virility of
product of the former's seduction by the the real men around them" (Russo 16).
brothel's original madame, La Japonesa
Yet, on another level, some fichera films
Grande (Lucha Villa). In a long flashback
flirt with acknowledging that a heterosex
sequence, Don Alejo makes a bet with La
ual masculine identity can be maintained
Japonesa Grande that if she can make La
only by repressing feminine or homosex
Manuela take the "man's" role (inserter)
ual impulses already present in the "bio
during a planned seduction, both "wom
en" will be owners of the brothel. At the logical" male. Noches de cabaret (Caba
ret Nights, Rafael Portillo, 1977) is a
beginning of the film, with Pancho's reen
comedy of errors in which the space of the
try into town after a year's absence, La
Manuela refers to her last violent encoun cabaret elicits a chain of confusion regard
ing the gender and sexual identities of a
ter with Pancho, when in a fit of homopho handful of heterosexual men who enter it.
bic/sadomasochistic desire, he attempted
For example, actor Jorge Rivero (an ideal
to rape her/him. At the film's conclusion,
embodiment of conventional masculine
Pancho's reunification with La Manuela
leads to her/his eventual murder when good looks, including a massively muscu
lar body and hard angular facial features)
Pancho's brother-in-law, Octavio (Julian
plays a character who falls in love with a
Pastor), forces Pancho to reassert his het
false transvestite (really a woman) who
erosexual identity after the "spectacle" of
performs at the cabaret as a member of the
seeing Pancho kissing La Manuela.
Unisex troupe. The Rivero character im
La Manuela mobilizes a series of tensions mediately goes into a state of crisis and
and contradictions that unmask the con
sees a doctor because he fears he is a
homosexual. In the end, his heterosexual
ventionally understood-as-monolithic con
ity is firmly retrenched (minutes before
cept of masculinity. To my knowledge,
attempting suicide) when the "male"
this is the first (and still to date the only)
instance in Mexican cinema in which a transvestite reveals her true gender iden
tity. Noches de cabaret deploys a homo
homosexual is invested with such a degree
phobic contamination theory of homosex
of subversive power.
uality whereby the mere presence of
queens and transvestites destabilizes the
From Bellas de noche {Night Beauties,
rigid boundaries of gender and sexual
Miguel M. Delgado, 1974), which inaugu identities. The film thus oscillates between
rates the fichera genre, to Zona roja (Red
viewing homosexuality as an inherent sex
Light District, Emilio Fernandez, 1975),
ual tendency just waiting to surface upon
which rearticulates the mythic victimized
contact with a homosexual and viewing
prostitute narrative?as in Fernandez's
classic cabaretera film, Salon Mexico homosexuality as a danger coming from
the homosexual out there who threatens
(1948)?but now Qmploying fichera tropes;
the heterosexual's sanctified identity.
to El dia del compadre (Buddies Day,
Carlos Vasallo, 1981) with Roberto Cobo The following year, director Rafael Porti
(La Manuela in El lugar sin Umites) in a bit llo in Munecas de media noche (Midnight

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Dolls, 1978) again deploys male transves negative and seemingly opposite and ex
tism and homosexuality, at first momen cluded categories of femininity and homo
tarily to put at risk (for comedy's sake) the sexuality.
monolithic construction of heterosexual
masculinity, which admits no slippage in By always reducing the homosexual char
object choice or "feminine" behavior in acter to narrative marginality and/or one
men, and then to reconfirm and privilege dimensional comedian, such films make
the "normalcy" and "superiority" of het clear that homosexuality is something to
erosexual masculinity. This is achieved by be laughed at, that the homosexual is not
narrative framing devices in which homo worthy of being taken seriously, of being
sexuality and transvestism are treated as considered a complete individual. The
ridiculous and comic elements; in con price of homosexual visibility is segrega
trast, heterosexual romance is clearly tion into the "sexual ghetto" of the broth
coded as serious drama. Jorge Rivero (the el-cabaret. Only in this socially sanctioned
perennial stud in fichera films) and his space where moral codes are allowed to be
buddy, Rafael Incl?n, must dress in drag broken will nonheterosexuality be permit
to hide from the mafia, who are out to kill ted to be seen. Confining the figure of the
Rivero. Both begin to work at a cabaret: homosexual to the sexual ghetto of the
Rivero as the personal assistant to the brothel-cabaret reduces the multilayered
female star performer (Sasha Montenegro, life of the individual to the realm of the
likewise an ideal embodiment of conven exclusively sexual, as if the entire exis
tional feminine beauty). His buddy, how tence of the homosexual revolved around
ever, is mistaken for a fichera by the questions of sexuality. The homosexual
queen manager of the cabaret and is character is never shown to have a life
forced to fichar. While Rivero immedi outside the space of the brothel-caba
ately falls in love with the Montenegro ret?he is virtually closeted and contained
character and both reestablishes his there?whereas the male heterosexual
"real" gender identity and his unwavering characters participate in a more multifac
heterosexuality in the obligatory sex eted life. The homosexual is made into a
scene, Rivero's buddy takes a liking to his spectacle: all emotional histrionics and
feminine masquerade?to the extravagant primping.
dresses and jewels, the emotional histrion
ics, and the attention of male customers?
and refuses to perform his "real" gender. Kissing the Queen, or the Politics of
Sexuality Between Men
Although Noches de cabaret and Mun
ecas de media noche in the end narratively Ripstein's El lugar sin limites is the first
evacuate any "homosexual tendencies" Mexican film to take homosexuality seri
that surface after the male characters' het ously. It places homosexual/homoerotic
erosexual identity has been established at desire, and specifically homophobia, at
the films' opening, it takes a woman or a the center of its narrative. Transvestism as
feminine-identified homosexual to recon employed in the fichera genre operates by
firm their "original" identity. However reconfirming binarized genders?women
hesitant and retrograde, both films point to are women and men are men. In contrast,
the interdependency of the categories of throughout Ripstein's film, transvestism is
masculinity and femininity, heterosexual deployed as a destabilizing element. My
ity and homosexuality. The coded-as exploration of transvestism in El lugar sin
positive categories of masculinity and het limites, represented as a homosexual ste
erosexuality could not take on the reotype explicitly participating in a na
meanings and hierarchical positions they tional film culture that depicts homosexu
hold in isolation from the coded-as als as effeminate, illustrates how this

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stereotype operates as an ideological bat specificity of the construction of hetero
tleground for a contestatory redefinition of sexual and homosexual masculine identi
restrictive gender/sexual identities. Hence, ties. Although the Chilean origin of the
my reading of El lugar sin limites focuses narrative and its Mexican cinematic reart
on the problematization of Mexican het iculation, combined with the shared Latin
erosexual masculinity. The theoretical American cultural norms, especially a
framework on which I base the construc similar system of assigning meaning to
tion of the sexual identity of Mexican sexuality, calls for a pan-Latin American
males is grounded in Tomas Almaguer's theorization of sexual identities, the ma
cross-disciplinary essay "Chicano Men: jority of the research that informs Al
A Cartography of Homosexual Identity maguer's essay comes from studies con
and Behavior," as well as in the tradi ducted in Mexico, and the texts from
tional sociological and psychological work which I draw additional "evidence" at
of Samuel Ramos and Rogelio Diaz tempt to delineate the Mexican national
Guerrero. character.

Locating the specific national cultural con Not until the films of Jaime Humberto
text of Ripstein's film is somewhat prob Hermosillo (1971-present)?and to date
lematic. The difficulty arises from translat only in his films?did Mexican cinema
ing Jose Donoso's eponymous novella break with its tradition, most notable and
(1966), set in Chile, to Ripstein's filmic sustained in the fichera genre, of coding
Mexican landscape. The geographic loca male sexual identities with the corporeal
tion in which Donoso's narrative unfolds accoutrements of butch and femme polar
is Estaci?n El Olivo, a fictitious small ities.8 The difference is always consistent:
town spatially placed near the city of the body of the heterosexual is marked as
Talca in central Chile. Ripstein's film masculine, while the body of the homo
keeps the town name but effaces any ref sexual is effeminized. The male body has
erences to Talca from the script. The come to signify power to control women,
novella's rural setting easily allows for a other men, nature, technology, and his
geographic relocation to almost anywhere own body. It also constitutes an object of
in Latin America. A major theme in Dono desire and often a site of identification for
so's text is the modern survival of neofeu the spectator. The male body type that is
dal latifundismo (large-scale landowner the repository of these signifiers is the
ship). Concomitant with this economic athletic build, the ideal most closely asso
system is the problem of caciquismo (the ciated with activity and strength. In El
abusive power of the local authority, usu lugar sin Umites, Gonzalo Vega, the actor
ally the latifundista). Latifundismo and who plays Pancho, has the kind of sculp
caciquismo are socioeconomic and politi tural, hunky body that exemplifies hetero
cal problems that persist throughout Latin sexual masculinity as imaged in most con
America, even in countries such as Mex temporary Mexican cinema. This follows
ico, where major social upheavals have an acute recent shift in Western visual arts
brought significant changes in these areas. (from photography to television, film, and
Despite socioeconomic and political prob video) toward an eroticization of male
lems common to most of Latin America power, symbolized in physique culture.
and the indeterminate national setting of The principal attribute used to character
the film, linguistic and musical elements ize masculinity is muscularity. This mus
clearly serve to index the Mexican speci cularity resides mainly in the torso: bulg
ficity of Ripstein's film.7 ing biceps and pectorals, broad chest, flat
stomach. Vega's body is accentuated by
This clarification is necessary to account his always being in tight clothing, t-shirts,
for the national/cultural and historical and blue jeans, as in an early sequence in

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which Pancho arrives at his brother-in nify opening up his body for objectifica
law's gasoline station. Concealment of the tion and thus signal a collapse of the
body through clothing works to highlight conventional gendered hierarchy of look
the round, firm contours of the muscles. ing, which Laura Mulvey identified in her
Pancho's red t-shirt fits so tightly over his now-classic essay "Visual Pleasure and
excessively muscular torso that it lends an Narrative Cinema," as active male look
almost tactile quality to the image. ing/passive female "to-be-looked-at-ness."

Richard Dyer in his analysis of the male Concealing the penis works to mystify it
pin-up argues that the ideology that can be further, keeping us guessing at just how
read in male muscularity is one that natu much potential power it signifies. With
ralizes male physical strength and domina holding the penis from the spectator's
tion, given that until recent developments gaze only increases the desire to see it.
in female body building and sports, visibly The phallic abstraction of power would
developed muscles were principally un probably be shattered were the penis
derstood as characteristically male. Dyer shown. The mythic power of the phallus
notes that although muscles are a biologi would be exposed and demystified by con
cal reality, and are hence considered "nat cretizing it in the corporeal referent that
ural," visibly developed muscles are not. the phallus symbolically represents: an
They are in fact developed either through all-too-human appendage of flesh. Whether
hard labor or rigorous body building. The represented erect or flaccid, it is debatable
potential achievement of a muscle-bound whether the penis can ever be an effective
body articulates and corroborates the le symbol of phallic power. Dyer doesn't
gitimation of male power (1982, 71). think so. He argues that "the penis can
never live up to the mystique implied by
Gonzalo Vega's body is an ideal of exces the phallus. Hence the excessive, even
sive virility. The more muscular the body, hysterical quality of so much male imag
the more masculine the man, since mus ery. The clenched fists, the bulging mus
cularity multiplies the signs of strength cles, the hardened jaws, the proliferation
and power. Though the film features a of phallic symbols?they are all straining
sustained close-up shot of the actor's after what can hardly ever be achieved,
crotch (which I will comment on later), the embodiment of phallic mystique"
unprecedented for its day in Mexican cin (1982, 71).
ema, Vega's hard, distended body func
tions in El lugar sin limites almost as a Pornography (especially "straight" por
metonym for the penis that the spectator is nography) is one very popular cultural
not allowed to see. product in which the penis is often (crude
ly) made to embody phallic power. It is a
If the sexual dominance of males over form of representation belonging to what
females is founded on his having a penis Jean Laplanche and J. B. Pontalais call the
and her lacking one, and thus the power phantasmatic, a realm of fantasy that con
relation is founded on the visibility of the stitutes a "psychic reality." Whether fan
penis, then why aren't we allowed to see tasy is more real than the real depends on
it? The obvious reason is the double stan who you're talking to.9 Even though the
dard practiced in most world cinemas slippery discourse of the phallus walks a
whereby the nude female body is dis fine line in distinguishing between repre
played for the fetishistic visual pleasure of sentation and its referent, it is still widely
the male spectator. This renders the fe believed, at some level, that male genitals,
male body passive material awaiting the to some extent, have been made to signify
active, controlling gaze of the male spec authority over females. The male hetero
tator. To display a nude male would sig sexual reproductive economy is instru

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mental in reducing "male sexuality" to a boy, Don Alejo would force him to play
cock and balls, since other erotic plea with his daughter Moniquita, who was
sures, such as oral and anal sex, would not always sickly. The games consisted of
corroborate in building the traditional tri Pancho pulling her cart as she rode in it,
angulated family (Daddy-Mommy-Me) "as if he were a horse." Don Alejo still
and would constitute, according to Freud regrets that Pancho did not follow his
ian psychoanalysis, a perversion. plans for him. Instead of studying to be
come a doctor, Pancho ran away but later
Numerous studies of Mexican machismo returned and asked Don Alejo to lend him
have concluded that sexual potency is the money to buy the red cargo truck with
qualifying/quantifying category with which which he has just arrived back in town.
a Mexican male constructs his gender
identity. Psychologist Rogelio Diaz These background details illuminate a
Guerrero notes that "virility is measured number of important issues. Because Pan
by sexual potency, and only secondarily in cho is the son of a peon, he is immediately
terms of physical strength, courage or placed toward the bottom of the economic
audacity" (70). Charles Ramirez Berg, in hierarchy, with Don Alejo on top. That he
his discussion of Diaz-Guerrero's work, is under Don Alejo's "benevolent" tute
writes that "these secondary characteris lage in an extremely unequal power rela
tics are believed to originate in the male's tion only serves to foster Pancho's resent
sexual potency" (70). This sexual potency ment, not only for being controlled by the
resides in the genitals, the mythic source cacique but also for having to depend on
of physical strength. him to move up the economic ladder. That
Pancho had to play with the infirm Moni
There are two sequences in El lugar sin quita is relevant not only for the humilia
limites that explicitly associate male geni tion the "sensitive" boy must have felt at
talia with power, a power that in the film is having to play the beast of burden in their
structured around economic indepen games (confirming his class-based subor
dence. Only when there is a lack of eco dination), but also for the problematiza
nomic stability (as in Pancho's case) does tion of his male identity being made to
physical strength, bravado, an excessive play with a girl must have created. His
sexual drive, and the blatant need to sub implicit effeminization is characterized as
jugate/humiliate women surface as a form both negative and "unnatural" by the
of compensation. The characters of Don revelation that Moniquita, always sick, is
Alejo and Octavio, two older males, are now dead. This background is loosely
clearly employed as powerful economic framed around the myth of the prodigal
models whom Pancho must (futilely) em son: Pancho, after avoiding Estaci?n El
ulate. Don Alejo is the aging local cacique, Olivo for some time, is returning to Don
a patriarchal figure who is attempting to Alejo because he needs his intervention to
buy all the property in Estaci?n El Olivo secure clients for his incipient transport
in order to sell it to a financial consortium. business.

In a conversation with La Manuela, Lu Octavio, Pancho's brother-in-law, al


dovina, an old woman who used to work though not as important for Pancho's psy
for Don Alejo, provides background infor chological development, is nonetheless
mation crucial to understanding the psy the economic model toward which he is
chological power struggle between Don supposed to aspire. They apparently share
Alejo and Pancho. We are informed that similar class origins, though Octavio did
Pancho is the son of Don Alejo's oldest not have the economic privilege (or the
peon but that the cacique loves Pancho as psychological handicap) of being pam
if he were his own son. When Pancho was pered by a wealthy cacique. Despite this

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important difference, Octavio has made period is clearly postrevolutionary Mexico
good: he is now owner of two gasoline (most likely the early 1970s from the cloth
stations and does not hesitate to set him ing worn and the cars shown), that Don
self up as a model of economic success. Alejo equates Pancho's social status with
that of a peon, even going to the extreme
Octavio also functions as the male hetero of stating, in a confrontation between both
sexual regulatory figure. That is, he is men early in the film, that he "gave him
instrumental in drawing the boundaries for his liberty," signifies the survival of pre
what is to constitute Pancho's masculine revolutionary neofeudal structures. And
heterosexual identity. He tests Pancho's although Pancho is self-employed, he still
strength, questions his economic indepen owes Don Alejo a substantial amount on
dence, and defines what differentiates a his cargo truck. Pancho's ongoing eco
maric?n (derogatory term for homosex nomic peonage is the cause of the nasty
ual) from a "real" man, un macho (agres confrontation I discuss below.
sive, dominant form of masculinity): cour
age (not being afraid of Don Alejo), being In the absence of economic power, all
able to inflict violence on another (the Pancho really possesses is his body, his
punishment and eventual murder of La physical strength, his incessant sexual
Manuela), and limiting sexual desire to drive, his bravado. Like Samuel Ramos's
women. In the realm of male bonding, now mythic pelado (literally meaning
Octavio is the first to articulate a stream of "one whose skin has been flayed"), that
its ritualized language: cabron, chingar, primitive and animallike lumpen-proletar
maric?n.10 He is an accomplice to Pan ian, Pancho hides his intense feelings of
cho's extramarital infidelities. Octavio is socioeconomic inferiority and an unset
also the one to suggest that they go to the tling (for him) sense of sexual ambiguity
brothel run by La Manuela and his daugh behind a mask of virility. The pelado's
ter, La Japonesita, enabling the extended devalued, "femininelike" social vulnera
sequence that constitutes the film's cli bility drives him to employ signs of mas
max. He encourages Pancho to drink; and culinity (culturally valued gender charac
at the brothel, he attempts (unsuccessful teristics) to conceal his lack of social
ly) to convince his buddy that they should status. For the pelado, virility as signifier
go with their respective partners from the of masculine power is located in and
dance floor to the bedrooms. As an older surges from his genitals. His phallic obses
man, Octavio is clearly coded as the men sion manifests itself, as Ramos notes, in
tor figure who both guides and controls the the following expressions: "tengo muchos
neophyte. huevos" ("I have a lot of balls"), meant to
signify his bravery; and "Yo soy tu padre"
Pancho's brand of masculinity can be read ("I am your father"), meant to assign to
as what Lynne Segal terms "working class himself a powerful patriarchal authority
aggressive masculinity," a stylized per (55). Both expressions have strong conno
sona cultivated and performed as a result tations of an active and aggressive sexual
of class oppression. It is a manual labor stance. The pelado's phallic obsession re
produced masculinity that emphasizes veals a belief?both fictitious and real?
"physical toughness, endurance and male that male genitals confer both sexual po
bonding" (94). Working-class aggressive tency and social power: real in the sense
masculinity takes on a compensatory that his gender provides him with some
function for men who are subordinated to (minimal) privilege over the socially infe
other men, helps to build self-respect, and rior position of women; fictitious because
acts as a form of resistance to the lack of his lumpen-proletarian status makes him
economic power. Recall that Pancho was economically expendable, and, on a met
born to a peon. Although the narrative aphoric level, physically weak. Ramos

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suggests that without economic power, that he also has now had the company
physical strength and bravery cannot be cancel it. Don Alejo characterizes Pancho
made real, have no valid currency, and as a sin verg?enza, un bruto de nacimiento
thus cannot be socially recognized be ("shameless brute"), likens him to an
cause the pelado's phallic masculinity is a animal, and calls him a bestia ("beast")?
mask (a fictitious persona) that attempts to all adjectives used earlier by all the other
conceal his socioeconomic impotence. main characters to describe Pancho. Don
Machismo is not an ontological essence Alejo also gives himself paternal authority
but a construction that rests on external over Pancho by stating that he knows him
appearance. as if he were his own father (como si te
hubiera engendrado). The next remark is
The idea of the male genitals as a source of indicative of the devastatingly vicious
masculine power is strategically indexed tone and intent of Don Alejo's verbal
in El lugar sin limites at narrative points assault: "Si te di la libertad fue para ver
that highlight Pancho's unstable economic c?mo reaccionabas. Pero contigo es in
status, his slippage into behavior consid util?eres una bestia. Ypensar que un dia
ered unmanly, or both. In the first se supuse que pude hacer de ? un senor,
quence, at his gas station, Octavio ver mandarte a estudiar. Pero si verg?enza
bally castigates Pancho for still being in an debias dar." ("If I gave you liberty, it was
"inferior" economic position, that is, a to see how you would react. But with you
truck driver. He then challenges him to it's useless?you are a beast. And to think
move some heavy barrels. After comply I imagined I could make a gentleman out
ing, Pancho squeezes his crotch as if to of you by sending you to school. You are
acknowledge his genitals as the source of a source of shame.") Don Alejo not only
his manly physical strength and to recon locates himself as the source of Pancho's
firm his masculinity in an instance in freedom and attacks his intelligence, he
which it is being both questioned and also reduces him to an animallike condi
measured. This crotch-squeezing gesture, tion. Adding insult to injury, Don Alejo
which can go by almost unperceived, is also suggests that Pancho is something
important because it anticipates and ech less than a man for letting himself be
oes another similar instance that will be addressed in such derogatory terms:
crucial for the film's denouement. "lAdem?s de ingrato eres cobarde? Tu
padre no hubiera aguantado que yo le
The second visual reference to Pancho's hablara asL Era un hombre de veras. Y
genitalia follows his virtual emasculation mira el hijo que le va a salir." ("In addi
by Don Alejo. Their confrontation, which tion to being ungrateful, you're also a
revolves around Pancho's delinquent pay coward? Your father was a real man. And
ments on money he owes Don Alejo, look what you've turned out to be.")
warrants close textual scrutiny. The se Throughout the confrontation Pancho
quence takes place in the public space of a barely utters a word, finding himself so
train station warehouse. The elderly ca overpowered by Big Daddy.
cique humiliates Pancho in front of Oc
tavio, Lila (the secretary at the train sta Their unequal power positions are visually
tion, with whom Pancho had been flirting), registered in the final scene of this se
Reinaldo (Don Alejo's right-hand man), quence through the dynamics of the act of
and La Japonesita, who, hidden from the looking and the use of light and framing.
others' view, is also watching the leveling Pancho's eyes are alternately lowered or
of el macho 's hypermasculinity. looking fearfully up at Don Alejo from a
clearly subordinate position since he
Don Alejo not only boasts that he ar keeps his head bowed. In contrast, Don
ranged the alfalfa contract for Pancho but Alejo, with his prominent patriarchal hat,

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does all the looking in a sustained, con and again begins to whimper. At this point
trolling, fearless manner. He is shot in there is a cut from a medium shot of the
high contrast (half of his face lit, half in the couple to a close-up of Pancho's blue
dark), giving him a weird aura. Don Alejo jean-clad crotch. La Japonesita's hand
is also shot with more of his torso in the enters the frame. She cups his crotch and
frame so that he looks more imposing, firmly squeezes. Her ego-stroking could
though his aged figure is slight, almost not be less subtle: she goes directly to the
bowed. Their vocal timbre is also polar mythic source of phallic power. With this
ized. Don Alejo's voice is loud, firm, and gesture, she seemingly reaffirms his previ
reprimanding, signifying authority, while ously decentered macho identity. This
Pancho's is low, meek, and pleading, sig gesture is also significant because it sug
nifying disempowerment. In sum, the con gests the complicit role women sometimes
frontation is coded in familial/socioeco play in upholding male domination, similar
nomic terms: the threatening, all-powerful to her characterization of crying as a fem
xydXx'mxchlcacique figure castigating a fear inine act.11 From this moment on, some
ful, subordinate son/peon whose needs are aspects of Pancho's "masculinity" do in
dependent on the other's favors. deed seem to be greatly recuperated:
namely, his physical strength and his phal
It is at this narrative point, when Pancho's lic sexuality. As she masturbates him in
hypermasculine persona has been almost off-screen space, his facial expressions
obliterated, that his genitalia are again change in a series of quick reverse shots
enlisted to serve as a visual reference to from weepy insecurity to self-assured de
phallic power, or lack of it. A close anal termination.
ysis of this sequence indicates how this
discourse of the phallus links male sexu By the time Pancho's orgasm is cut short
ality to power. Pancho, alone in the ware by Octavio's off-screen voice calling him,
house, lies face down on a pile of sacks, his macho bravado seems renewed, as his
crying. La Japonesita, witness/voyeur to comments to La Japonesita imply: "[Don
his humiliation, approaches him and tells Alejo] Se va arrepentir. Eso no se dice en
him he is not to bug her or her father, as frente de la gente. Da mucha verg?enza
Don Alejo has already warned him. He que le digan 'bestia' a uno. Te mato si le
then turns around, uncovering his face. dices a alguien que me viste chillando."
"iEst?s llorando como una mujerV ("He's going to regret it. You shouldn't
("You're crying like a woman?"), she say things like that in front of people. It's
queries. With this remark she reveals her embarrassing to be called a beast. I'll kill
machista belief in a gender-polarized emo you if you tell anyone you saw me cry
tional spectrum: "Real men don't cry" is ing.") She, apparently unperplexed by his
the ideology she invokes here. Pancho, warning, retaliates with "Y tu acuerdate
infuriated by her remark, and at finding lo que te dijo el viejo. Que a La Manuela
himself exposed and vulnerable?"like a y a mi no nos andes molestando" ("And
woman"?lunges at her, throwing her you remember what the old man said.
back against the sacks, pressing at her That you shouldn't harass La Manuela or
neck as if to choke her, and pushing his me.") This exchange sets up a tension and
weight against her body. 66C?mo te an oscillation of power between them that
atreves a hablarmeV ("How dare you will play itself out in the culminating se
talk to me!"), he shouts. A short but fierce quence of the film, in which he attempts to
struggle ensues before he lets her go. rape her, before turning his attention to
her father, La Manuela.
The verbal exchange then switches to Pan
cho cursing Don Alejo and her reprimand A crisis of masculinity, however, has
ing him for his ungratefulness. He denies it clearly surfaced. Pancho obviously lacks

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the economic power to command respect tive unfolds, as well as to the heterosexual
and to be independent, his emotional state regimentation of gender/sex roles that are
wavers close to unmanly femininity ac simultaneously reinforced and interro
cording to machista ideology, and even his gated in the film. Starkly contrasted
sexuality has been put into question to against the rigidity of the camera is the
some degree since it is a woman who has animated movement of the actors, for it is
taken on the active role. The coded as their body language that works toward an
"mannish"12 Japonesita?moved by dis unmasking of heterosexual masculinity. I
dain, erotic desire, and pity at seeing this employ the metaphor of unmasking to
"virile" man weep?corroborates in the refer both to Samuel Ramos's concept of
recuperation of Pancho's phallic power by the pelado's mask of virility, used as a
conflating it with his genitals. She achieves compensatory mechanism to conceal his
this, however, by inverting conventional socioeconomic impotence, and to con
gender roles. sider hypermasculinity as masking traces
of sexual ambiguity that work directly
The crotch shot sets up a transgressive against the monolithic heterosexual regi
precedent in Mexican cinema. As far as I mentation of desire.
know, this is the first time male anatomy is
so blatantly fetishized and visually frag It is the figure of the transvestite, La
mented. Not until the films of "gay" film Manuela, who effects this unmasking.
maker Jaime Humberto Hermosillo (be Pancho's already unstable image of a uni
ginning with Naufragio [Shipwreck], 1977) fied hypermasculine heterosexuality is
would an audience be permitted to look so shown once and for all to be a heteroge
willfully at a man's crotch. This shot neous surface of conflicting desires. The
marks the man as object, not subject, of narrative point at which this takes place
erotic investment. Woman is given sexual has Pancho and Octavio at La Japonesi
agency (albeit around the phallus), a pre ta's and La Manuela's brothel in defiance
rogative conventionally reserved for the of Don Alejo's dictates, celebrating Pan
man. La Japonesita, however, does not cho's belated economic independence
act on a masculine visual economy but from Don Alejo. (His brother-in-law has
rather on a nondominant economy of lent him the money to save the family
touch and sound. She listens to Pancho's honor.) Pancho is set on either seeing La
"confession" and grabs his crotch in a Manuela and/or avenging his manhood
symbolic gesture, a mixture of disdain, since La Japonesita had earlier seen his
pity, and erotic desire. After their mutual weak, "feminine" side when she saw him
masturbation has been cut short by Octav cry. La Manuela, who has been hiding out
io's call off-screen, La Japonesita then in the patio with the chickens (while the
smells herself after touching between her men cavort inside with the prostitutes) to
legs. La Japonesita is specifically empow avoid the recurrence of a violent confron
ered in this sequence because Pancho is at tation with Pancho, has just reentered the
a moment of crisis and hence has been house to prevent Pancho from raping La
weakened.13 Japonesita.

Visually, the static formal quality of the La Manuela makes her reappearance in
entire film doubles the narrative content. the red flamenco dress Pancho damaged
Director Arturo Ripstein's use of a static the last time he was in the brothel. She
camera works as a metaphor for the "stag dances and narrates for him "La leyenda
nant world" the film depicts (Garcia Riera del beso" ("The legend of the kiss"), a
1988, 188). This stagnation refers both to variation on the Sleeping Beauty theme. It
the neofeudal caciquismo still operating in is the story of a divinely beautiful woman
the geographic space in which the narra who is walking through a forest when she

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spots "the most vigorous man in the Mexican culture a homosexual identity is
world," asleep. Her kisses awaken him only taken on by the penetrated partner.
from his state of enchantment, bringing
him back to life. This story mirrors and Significantly, the only nudity in the film is
elicits the awakening and release of Pan of buttock shots of La Manuela before and
cho's homoerotic desire for La Manuela after she explains that her penis is only
and the fascinating dissolution of Pancho's good for urinating, and subsequent to be
macho posturing. ing seduced (in a flashback sequence) by
La Japonesa Grande. Here, in another
With La Manuela's reappearance, he be gender inversion, La Manuela is asked
comes like a euphoric, giggling little boy, (during the copulation) to imagine herself
utterly enchanted by the aging transves as the biological female (hembra) and to
tite's magical aura, appropriately hyped imagine La Japonesa Grande as the bio
up for their long-awaited reunion. Played logical male (macho). In this context, the
out in this sequence is the inversion of the buttocks can only signify her passive, to
active macho/passive homosexual dichot be-penetrated-ness, hence her subordinate
omy, giving way to La Manuela's control sexual role.
and authority over Pancho. Although La
Manuela14 will dance for him because that After La Manuela's flamenco perfor
is what he wants to see, her dance does mance, the pair dance joyously, both
not become the traditional visual spectacle thrilled at again being together and in each
of woman's subordination to man's con other's arms.16 Pancho even ends up call
trolling gaze (nor for that matter is she ing her mi reina ("my queen").17 But the
made a mere spectacle as the queen figure most dramatic moment occurs when La
customarily is in the fichera genre). She Manuela gives him a quick kiss on the
directs Pancho to where she wants him to mouth. Pancho's face first registers bewil
be seated. She also controls him at the dered surprise but then gives way to a
discursive level, that is, she commands smile. He says, "Un hombre tiene que ser
the narrative and gets him to respond capaz de todo, ino creel" ("A man must
(though not at the first try) to her requests be capable of everything, don't you
to kiss his eyes and kiss his knees. Even think?"). Then follows the passionate
tually, he responds affectionately, almost kiss, which makes the machista and mor
pleading, "besame la rodilla, Manuelita" alistic Mexican film history stop and stare.
("Kiss my knee, Manuelita.").15
This unprecedented man-to-man kiss sig
One might object that the shift in power nifies the release and full expression of
from the one looking to the one looked at Pancho's homoerotic desire?a desire per
can be explained because they are both haps bordering on love. Richard Dyer
men. In other words, La Manuela can contrasts the different connotations be
effect power over Pancho because she is a tween "the kiss" (expressive/feminine)
biological male (to the point of having and "the fuck/blow job" (instrumental/
fathered La Japonesita), even though she masculine) in gay male subjectivity in a
takes on the identity of a woman. In (rural) way I believe speaks to the radical state
Mexico, however a homosexual, much ment that the image of the kiss makes in El
less a transvestite, would have even less lugar sin Umites.
social status than a woman for having
betrayed his masculinity and having In much gay culture, kisses signify
aligned himself with women by taking on feeling and emotional response, but
their culturally inscribed sexual role. Re the penis and anus are mere instru
cently, some researchers, among them ments of pleasure: the hustler does
Tomas Almaguer, have argued that in not feel his masculinity is compro

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mised, a partner in a gay couple does the spectator experience the event indi
not feel he is being unfaithful, as long rectly through the mediated recounting of
as feelings?kisses, embraces?do it.18) At this point, Pancho's sadistic ho
not enter into casual or paid encoun mophobia is expressed as a thinly veiled
ters. (1984, 94-95) attempted rape. "Yo le vi la cara de
quererme hacer quien sabe que" ("I saw
According to Dyer's schema, a kiss is in his face a desire to do who knows what
definitely not just a kiss. A kiss denotes to me") is how La Manuela describes it
affection, invested personal emotions, during an early sequence. From the hind
and, hence, reveals a vulnerability that the sight of the unraveling of events in the
macho is not supposed to have?much final portion of the film, one can interpret
less expose. Their kiss is not just expres this first instance of Pancho's homophobia
sive of reciprocal feelings but also is an as a clear manifestation of repressed ho
explicit affirmation of the potential and moeroticism.
legitimacy of same-gender love. It is im
portant, however, to note that Pancho's Another significant instance of homoerot
desire for La Manuela is mobilized by icism translated into sadistic impulses oc
difference, best articulated in her drag curs in the second part (long flashback) of
performance. It is not the "masculine" the film. La Manuela, decked out in her
man who excites Pancho but the "effemi fabulous flamenco dress, does a flamenco
nate" man (wo+man), the convergence of song and dance performance of "La Reli
gender traits traditionally kept separate caria" for a large group gathered at the
but here reconfigured in a single polysig brothel to celebrate Don Alejo's senatorial
nifying body. victory. The initial reactions from the men
are the expected degrading sexual epi
The entire performance sequence, culmi thets: joto, maric?n, and degenerate.
nating with the kiss, does, effectively, These insults halt the performance, since
represent a seduction. But this is a seduc La Manuela complains that her audience
tion that in the subversive spirit of the cannot appreciate her art. Don Alejo begs
entire sequence again inverts the active her to continue and she obliges. This time
macho/passive homosexual dichotomy. the reactions could not be more opposite:
I'm suggesting that at a metaphoric level the men literally line up to dance with La
the performance/kiss can be read as an Manuela, fight over her, nibble at her
inversion/subversion of the sexual role shoulder. La Manuela squeals with plea
and hence the sexual identity accorded to sure, thrilled with her success at convert
Mexican males, as discussed further be ing her audience into participants. But
low. soon the entire group exits from the
brothel to an open field, ostensibly to
La Manuela, in this sequence, is clearly "refresh" La Manuela because she is
the active partner who elicits once and for "hot" (as if their own behavior didn't also
all Pancho's homoerotic longings. He sits express desire). In this strange sadomas
while she performs, discursively and ochistic sequence, the men, still in a cele
physically, for him, on him, slowly draw bratory spirit, dump her into a shallow
ing out the tender manifestations of love/ body of water and tear off her dress. The
desire that had previously been subli urge is to get at the body behind La
mated and expressed through violence. Manuela's enactment of the feminine mas
That is, during Pancho's previous visit to querade,19 a masquerade that, in this in
the brothel, he attacked La Manuela, vi stance, hides a biological male body?
ciously beat her, and tore her red flamenco exterior anatomical signs that have
dress. (This takes place outside the film's nothing to do with the woman she feels
narrative frame so that La Manuela and she is inside, mixed signs that question

JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 44.3^ (Fall-Winter 1992-93) 99

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and destabilize cultural constructions of ally, La Manuela's constant efforts at af
gender, constructions that regulate desire firming her chosen female identity, reject
into compulsory reproductive heterosexu ing a gender identity based on anatomy,
ality. far outweigh any traces of masochism.

I describe this "dumping" sequence as Had Octavio, the brother-in-law, not in


strangely sadomasochistic because La tervened as the narrative agent who po
Manuela seems to take such pleasure in lices desire and reinstates the rigid codes
getting humiliated by the men, who are no of compulsory heterosexuality and its ac
longer participants but now are clearly companying homophobic ideology
positioned as spectators of her naked ("Orale cunado, no sea maricon usted
body. La Manuela's behavior in this se tambien" ["Come on, brother-in-law,
quence can be characterized as oscillating don't be a fag also."]), La Manuela's
between submitting to the men's sadistic seduction of Pancho presumably would
pleasures and rebelling against them. One have been completely successful. Never
can argue that her pleasure is in part theless, the seduction is successful to the
derived from her own masochism. Such an degree that it manages momentarily to
overdetermined interpretation would be in unblock the free flow of desire and thereby
line with the ideological circumstances destabilize and contest the social codes
depicted in the film. That is, one can read that construct gender and sexuality as
La Manuela's masochism as partly accept discrete and uniform identities.
ing the culturally scripted behavior of os
tensibly heterosexual men living in a pa But even if one tones down the subversion
triarchal regime that circumscribes the in this seduction sequence and argues,
forms desire can take. Hence, she appar correctly, that the inversion of passive/
ently takes great delight in getting dumped receptive homosexual and active/penetrat
into a body of water and having her dress ing heterosexual does not take place be
torn off, to the point that she even displays cause La Manuela doesn't fuck Pancho
her buttocks. She realizes that, under the (which would have left no doubt as to the
circumstances, the predominant form ho radical contestation of the discursive sys
moerotic desire takes in "heterosexual" tem, which, as Almaguer maintains, con
men is sadism. fers sexual identity by the role men per
form during sexual intercourse), how can
La Manuela later acknowledges that the we then account for Octavio labeling Pan
violent response of men is a heterosexist cho as a homosexual for merely kissing La
sign of their fear of getting sexually Manuela?
aroused by watching her dance. She also
acknowledges that their response is al At this point it is appropriate to reap
ways the same: "Todas las noches me proach Almaguer's assessment of the dif
hacen lo mismo. Es como si me tuvieran ferent criteria used to assign a homosexual
miedo" ("Every night they do the same identity to males in the United States and
thing to me. It's as if they were afraid.") in Mexico in order to gauge how it might
La Japonesa Grande spells out what La speak to the problem of masculinity as
Manuela is suggesting, "Les da miedo presented in Ripstein's film. He writes:
calentarse" ("They're afraid of getting
sexually aroused.") The problem with In the U.S., even one adult homosex
reading masochism into La Manuela's be ual act or acknowledgement of homo
havior is that it both legitimates the out sexual desire may threaten a man's
sider status of transvestites (and homosex gender identity and throw open to
uals) and works to perpetuate the hostility/ question his sexual identity as well. In
violence directed against them. Addition sharp contrast, a Mexican man's mas

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culine gender, and heterosexual iden homosexuality as embodied in the figure
tity are not threatened by a homosex of the queen is allowed visibility only as a
ual act as long as he plays the spectacle that defines what the heterosex
inserter's role. Only the male who ual is not, thereby reinforcing the sepa
plays the passive sexual role and ex rateness between the two perceived as
hibits feminine gender characteristics self-contained sexualities, which do not
is considered truly homosexual. (81) cross into each other. As I argued above,
in a number of fichera and (post-fichera)
In light of the different conclusions Al films, homosexuality is represented as a
maguer's text and Donoso/Ripstein's text constitutive element instrumental in rees
posit, El lugar sin limites boldly drama tablishing a heterosexual masculine iden
tizes (under a very precise set of social tity and in structuring desire between
and interpersonal dynamics) how prob men.
lematic and tenuous Mexican masculine
heterosexual identity is, how rigidly
drawn the levels of intimacy permitted
between men. Pancho might (hypotheti Ripstein's film foregrounds the danger
cally) very well fuck La Manuela in pri posed by any public transgression of mas
vate without compromising his heterosex
culine codes of behavior by an ostensibly
ual identity, but he cannot kiss her in the heterosexual man. La Manuela's ultimate
regulatory presence of a representative of victimization can therefore be read not as
the patriarchal family without causing
a product of Pancho's homoerotic and
alarm and repression. Contrary to Al
homophobic desire for her but, rather, as a
maguer's findings (but without dismissing
result of heterosexist oppression that con
them), a single homoerotic expression is,
tains and structures sexual desire. A gay
as represented in this Mexican cultural liberationist take on Pancho and La Man
text, enough to destabilize a Mexican uela's sadomasochistic relation would
man's heterosexual identity. Although
read it as a metaphor for heterosexist
Ripstein's film is based on novelistic fic
oppression. That La Manuela elicits such
tion and Almaguer's essay is based on
strong homoerotic feelings from Pancho is
sociological research, both share a com
mon ground. Both organize their represen
a radical critique of heterosexual mascu
tations of masculinity from the same ideo linity as constructed in confining polarized
logical system (a specific Latin American gender/sexual categories. That Pancho
Mexican sexual context) but present it and Octavio kill La Manuela for exposing,
under different fields of discursive knowl and thus problematizing, the contradic
edge. tions and mutability of a seemingly fixed
concept of masculinity does not legitimate
El lugar sin limites illustrates the extent to a victimization all too frequently experi
which sexual practices between men in enced by homosexuals. Instead, it func
Mexican society are closeted into the most tions as a stunning critique of machismo
invisible and private spaces of the brothel. and homophobia. In El lugar sin limites,
The tensions between the Pancho-La the idea of stereotyping as a production of
Manuela-Octavio triangle represent how representations of others, as an effort to
"homosexual" practices carried out by an regulate and contain differences and con
ostensibly heterosexual male become a tradictions in the self, fails to function as
threat to patriarchal divisions of sex and such since the homosexual and the femi
gender when they become public knowl nine are shown to be not separate and
edge for the community. "Homosexual" outside the heterosexual but are revealed,
practices are accepted so long as they are instead, to form an integral part of his
not explicitly seen. In El lugar sin limites, desires.

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Mayates are "masculine" males who take
Acknowledgments part in homosexual practices, without socially
acknowledging it, often playing the "active"
I would like to thank Julianne Burton role.
Carvajal for her invaluable assistance on a A buga in homosexual slang is synonymous
number of drafts of this paper. I would also like with straight male.
to express my gratitude to Tomas Almaguer and 2 See Ayala Blanco 1985,115-39,257-61, for
Stephen Heath for their suggestions and sup a discussion of the prostitute in Mexican cin
port. ema.
3 This film has been "obsessively" remade
throughout Mexican film history in 1931 (Anto
nio Moreno), in 1968 (Emilio Gomez Muriel),
and in numerous other prostitution melodramas
Notes
of tragic and victimized women.
4 See Gonzalez Rodriguez 1990, 76-77.
1 Loca (meaning literally "mad and/or wild 5 See Russo 1987 and Watney 1982, 107-21.
woman") is the equivalent Mexican homosex 6 With the exception of Ramirez Berg 1992,
ual term for queen. A loca self-consciously 125-30, no film critic, either in a Mexican or a
hypes up signs of femininity, often in a direct U.S. context, has significantly analyzed the
contestatory position to the patriarchal "het figure of the queen in fichera films. Ayala
erosexual matrix of intelligibility" (Butler 151). Blanco in La condition del cine mexicano (115?
Unlike the loca, the vestidas are, according 39) provides no more than a cursory mention of
to Ian Lumsden (35), "typically young homo the homosexual characters in fichera films.
sexuals who have accepted the popular equa 7 The scripting of the film, based on the
tion of homosexuality with passivity and femi novella of the same title by Chilean Jose
ninity. Though their dress and mannerisms are Donoso, has a particularly interesting history.
consciously feminine, their behavior owes more Arturo Ripstein, in conversation with film his
to social pressures than to psychic needs as torian Emilio Garcia Riera, describes the nu
may be the case with transvestites." (35). merous authorial hands through which the
Mexico has an entire taxonomy of (homo) script passed. A first draft was written by
sexual terminology indicative of its culturally Argentine novelist Manuel Puig, who then re
specific sexual signifying system. Sexual prac signed from the project and reportedly asked
tices between men are often marked by the not to be credited for the script because he did
nonexchangability of roles during sexual inter not want to be associated with a work that dealt
course. An activo is the category conferred to so explicitly with homosexuality. Ripstein sug
the man who takes the "active" role during the gests that Puig probably withdrew from the
sexual act, while thepasivo signifies the partner project because he felt that the director would
who is penetrated. An internacional is a mod represent yet another caricature of the homo
ern gay identity, born of the gay and lesbian sexual so frequent in fichera films (Garcia Riera
rights movements in Mexico in the early 1970s, 184).
who plays both roles (fucker, fuckee). The dialogue in Puig's initial script was full of
Exclusively taking on the active (inserter) Argentine dialect, which in turn was "translat
role during intercourse, the macho "heterosex ed" into Mexican dialect by an unnamed close
ual" (mayate [see below] or activo) can keep friend of Puig. The final script was written by
his socially privileged heterosexual masculine Ripstein in collaboration with the Mexican writ
identity intact since he is not betraying his ers Carlos Castan?n, Jose Emilio Pacheco, and
masculinity by allowing himself to be pene Cristina Pacheco. The dialogue in El lugar sin
trated "like a woman." Closure, according to Umites thus undergoes a triple transformation:
Octavio Paz, is very important for forms of from chilenismos to argentinismos to mexican
Mexican masculinity because it gives the im ismos. The dialogue includes archetypal Mexi
pression of inviolability. The violence involved can words (or a Mexican usage of them) such as
in the European invasion of the Americas alone orale, chingar, and buey (alright, fuck, asshole I
is a possible explanation for the, at times, idiot).
"pathological" forms of Latin American ex In addition to linguistic devices, the use of
pressions of masculinity, including the misog music helps locate the film in a Mexican cultural
yny often involved in machismo. context. Ripstein uses classic modern Mexican
Maric?n, joto, and puto are all derogatory music for the soundtrack: "Falsaria" by the
homophobic terms for homosexual. The latter Hermanos Martinez Gil, for the opening cred
is a particularly vicious noun/adjective since it its; "Perfume de gardenia," by the Puerto
is linked to the sexual stigma of female prosti Rican composer Rafael Hernandez but per
tution (puta). Ian Lumsden notes that puto also formed by the Sonora Santanera, a contempo
signifies "easy lay" (21). rary Mexican cultural icon when it comes to

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tropical music. This song, along with D?maso 131 would like to thank Michael Doylen for
Perez Prado's mambo "N?mero 5" are both thinking through this sequence with me.
used in the brothel sequences with Pancho and 141 will refer to La Manuela using feminine
La Japonesita. Then there is the live musical morphology because s/he takes on a female
number of "El sauce y la palma," a classic gender identity.
norteha (from northern Mexico) performed by 15 Needless to say, the knee functions as a
the Hermanas Gomez during the flashback seg corporeal site of displacement for the buttocks
ment of the film. and the crotch, which, at this moment in the
8 Hermosillo is one of several auteur film sequence, are still off limits for La Manuela.
makers internationally promoted under Luis 16 This is the first time we see them together
on screen. This moment thus constitutes their
Echeverria's presidency (1970-76), when the
(at the time) heavily subsidized film industry reunification since their prior encounter was
created what was called el nuevo cine mexicano referred to but not represented visually.
17 "Queen" here has no relation to the homo
(the new Mexican cinema). See Costa 1988.
Hermosillo is the first Mexican director to not sexual figure in Anglo-Saxon gay culture.
18 See Burton 1993 for a discussion of repre
treat homosexuality as a problem. Both Las
sentations of rape in Latin American cinemas
apariencias engahan {Appearances Can Be De
and questions of spectatorship.
ceiving, 1977) and Dona Herlinda y su hijo
19 This is an idea I've adopted from Stephen
(Doha Herlinda and Her Son, 1984) bring ho
Heath's lectures on the masquerade, winter
mosexuality in Mexico out of the closet by 1992.
articulating a counterhegemonic representation
of homosexual/gay desire. Dona Herlinda, in
particular, attempts to rearticulate the patriar
chal family by integrating the homosexual char
acter into the family structure, while Aparien Works Cited
cias is a veritable plethora of different levels of
gender and sexual reconfigurations, including Almaguer, Tomas. "Chicano Men: A Car
hermaphrodites, homosexuals, and bugas who
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take on the pasivo's role.
Although Doha Herlinda was made within Behavior." Differences 3.2 (Summer
the film industry (CLASA Films, Manuel Bar 1991):75-100.
bachano Ponce producer), Apariencias was in Ayala Blanco, Jorge. La condici?n del
dependently produced. Neither film has been cine mexicano. Mexico: Editorial
widely seen in Mexico, and both films were held Posada, 1985.
up for years because of censorship.
Hermosillo is also the first Mexican director Burton, Julianne. "Regarding Rape."
to equalize male and female nudity. Full-frontal King et al.
shots of Pedro Armend?riz, Jr., for example, Butler, Judith. "The Force of Fantasy:
grace La pasion segun Berenice (The Passion Feminism, Mapplethorpe, and Discur
According to Berenice, 1975). See Wood 1986 sive Excess." Differences 3.2 (Summer
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11 Director Valeria Sarmiento makes a similar
t?noma de Puebla, 1988.
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es hombre (A Man When He Is a Man, 1983). Dyer, Richard. "Stereotyping." Dyer
12 La Japonesita takes on the traditional 1984. 27-39.
man's role of being in control of business mat -. "Seen to Be Believed: Some
ters: she manages the brothel. Her business
Problems in the Representation of Gay
personality is cold and curt. In one sequence in
particular, Lucy (Carmen Salinas, who has of People as Typical." Studies in Visual
ten played a lush lumpen fichera, "La Cor Culture 9.2 (Spring 1983):2-19.
cholata"), mentions to a co-worker, Nelly (So -. "Don't Look Now?The Male
corro de la Campa), that La Japonesita acts Pin-up." Screen 23.3-4 (Sept.-Oct.
bitchy because she doesn't enjoy sex with men
("Esa nogoza con los viejos, por eso nos tiene 1982):61-73.
ojerizas")?which codes her as either a frigid Dyer, Richard, ed. Gays and Film. New
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