No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
“The Most Notorious Sucker-Trap in the Western Hemisphere”: The Tijuana Story (Leslie Kardos, 1957) and Mythologies of Tijuana in American Cinema
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2014
Abstract
The histories of Tijuana and Hollywood have long been deeply intertwined, leading critics to argue that American cinema was instrumental in constructing the city's reputation as a dark, seedy and amoral space. However, the 1957 film The Tijuana Story presents a clear contradiction between the way in which it is marketed to evoke the “black legend” of Tijuana and its socially conscious content, tracing the real life story of a Tijuanan journalist who was murdered for taking a stand against crime and corruption. Close analysis of The Tijuana Story's paradoxical representation of the city provides a more detailed understanding of Hollywood's relationship with Tijuana and offers a way of discussing the city without reducing it to any one singular mythology. As part of a larger body of films that use images of Mexico to explore left-wing and liberal politics, The Tijuana Story provides further evidence of the persistent connection between Mexico and social revolution in American cinema.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2014
Footnotes
I would like to thank the Journal of American Studies' anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and feedback. This article is based on research undertaken for my PhD thesis, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, studentship award reference AH/I009582/1.
References
1 Price, John A., Tijuana: Urbanization in a Border Culture (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973), 49Google Scholar.
2 Vanderwood, Paul, Satan's Playground: Mobsters and Movie Stars at America's Greatest Gaming Resort (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010) 72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Ibid.
4 Girven, Tim, “Hollywood's Heterotopia: U. S. Cinema, the Mexican Border and the Making of Tijuana,” Travesia: Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 3, 1–2 (1994), 93–113, 120CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Kun, Josh and Montezemolo, Fiamma, “Introduction: The Factory of Dreams,” in Kun, and Montezemolo, , eds., Tijuana Dreaming: Life and Art at the Global Border (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2012), 1–19, 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Humberto Félix Berumen, “Snapshots from and about a City Named Tijuana,” in Kun and Montezemolo, 25–46, 30.
7 Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez, “Postcards from the Border: In Tijuana, Revolución is an Avenue,” in Kun and Montezemolo, 117–35, 131.
8 Berumen, 28.
9 Ibid., 29.
10 Ibid., 31.
11 Bruno, Giuliana, Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture and Film (New York and London: Verso, 2002), 16Google Scholar.
12 Quoted in Girven, 93.
13 Ibid., 116.
14 Films about Tijuana from this period include Riders Up (Irving Cummings, 1924), Sunset Derby (Albert Rogell, 1927), True to the Navy (Frank Tuttle, 1930) and In Caliente (Lloyd Bacon, 1935). See also Girven, 120.
15 Girven, 115.
16 Ibid., 114.
17 Anger, Kenneth, Hollywood Babylon, Volume I (London: Arrow, 1986), 65Google Scholar.
18 See reproductions of advertisements for Agua Caliente featuring Hollywood stars, top political figures and businessmen in Vanderwood, Satan's Playground, 31–32.
19 Price, Tijuana, 44.
20 Ibid., 41.
21 Insley, Jennifer, “Redefining Sodom: A Latter-Day Vision of Tijuana,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, 20, 1 (2004), 99–122, 102CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
22 Palaversich, Diana, “La Ciudad Que Recorro: Un flâneur en Tijuana,” Literatura Mexicana, 13, 2 (2002), 215–27, 215Google Scholar.
23 Greer, Margaret M., Mignolo, Walter D. and Quilligan, Maureen, “Introduction,” in Greer, Mignolo, and Quilligan, , eds., Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), 1–24, 1Google Scholar.
24 Castro, Rafaela, Chicano Folklore: A Guide to the Folktales, Traditions, Rituals and Religious Practices of Mexican-Americans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 138Google Scholar.
25 Berumen, “Snapshots,” 32.
26 Jacobs, Jane, Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City (London: Routledge, 1996), 3Google Scholar.
27 Ibid., 4.
28 Greer, Mignolo and Quilligan, 16.
29 Tzioumakis, Yannis, American Independent Cinema: An Introduction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 146CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 Dixon, Wheeler Winston, Lost in the Fifties: Recovering Phantom Hollywood (Carbondale and London: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005), 56Google Scholar.
31 Ibid., 46.
32 “Meet Jungle Sam,” Life, 23 March 1953, 79; Winston Dixon, 46. As a comparison, Fox spent an average of between 1.4 and 2 million dollars on films in the 1950s. Finler, Joel Waldo, The Hollywood Story (London: Wallflower Press, 2003), 49Google Scholar.
33 “Meet Jungle Sam,” 82.
34 Winston Dixon, 46.
35 Ibid., 65.
36 Will Straw, “Urban Confidential: The Lurid City of the 1950s,” in Clarke, David B., ed., The Cinematic City (London: Routledge, 1997), 110–28, 110Google Scholar.
37 Ibid., 111.
38 Review of The Houston Story, Monthly Film Bulletin, 23, 264 (1956), 91.
39 Kun, “The Kidnapped City,” in Kun and Montezemolo, 355–69, 367.
40 Paul Coates, “Tijuana's Vigilantes Swing into Action,” Los Angeles Mirror, 13 April 1960, cited by Larry Harnisch in “Larry Harnisch Reflects on Los Angeles History,” LA Times Blogs, 13 April 2010, at http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2010/04/paul-v-coates-confidential-file-april-13-1960.html, accessed 22 May 2013.
41 Review of The Tijuana Story, Monthly Film Bulletin, 24, 276 (1957), 153.
42 “Katzman–Kardos Pic Documented Expose,” review of The Tijuana Story, Hollywood Reporter, 9 Oct. 1957, 3.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid.
45 Review of The Tijuana Story, Variety, 9 Oct. 1957, 6.
46 “Mexican Editor Is Slain by Unidentified Gunmen,” New York Times, 28 July 1956.
47 Straw, Will, “Documentary Realism and the Postwar Left,” in Krutnik, Frank, Neale, Steve, Neve, Brian and Stanfield, Peter, eds.,“Un-American” Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 130–41, 139, 135Google Scholar.
48 Ruoff, Jeffrey, “Introduction: The Filmic Fourth Dimension: Cinema as Audiovisual Vehicle,” in Ruoff, , ed., Virtual Voyages: Cinema and Travel (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2006), 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
49 Bruno, Atlas of Emotion, 16.
50 Conley, Tom, Cartographic Cinema (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 1Google Scholar.
51 Ibid., 2.
52 Bruno, 178.
53 Sáinz, Eloy Méndez and Banister, Jeff, “Transitional Architecture or Espacios de Paso y Simulacro,” Journal of the Southwest, 45, 1–2 (2003), 165–201, 167Google Scholar.
54 Dear, Michael and Leclerc, Gustavo, “Tijuana Desenmarcada,” Wide Angle, 20, 3 (1998), 210–21, 211CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
55 Review of The Tijuana Story, Kinematograph Weekly, 7 Nov. 1957, 20.
56 Review of The Tijuana Story, Hollywood Reporter, 3; review of The Tijuana Story, Variety, 6.
57 Review of The Tijuana Story, Variety, 6.
58 Harley, J. B., “Maps, Knowledge, and Power,” in Laxton, Paul, ed., The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography, with an introduction by Andrews, J. H. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 52–81Google Scholar.
59 Steinbeck, John, The Grapes of Wrath (London: Penguin, 1992; first published 1939), 439Google Scholar. The 1940 John Ford film plays with the radical sentiments of the novel in interesting ways in relation to the New Deal. See, for example, Vivian Sobchack, “The Grapes of Wrath (1940): Thematic Emphasis through Visual Style,” American Quarterly, 31, 5 (1979), 596–615.
60 Denning, Michael, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (London and New York: Verso, 2010; first published 1997), 12–13Google Scholar.
61 Schreiber, Rebecca M., Cold War Exiles in Mexico: U.S. Dissidents and the Culture of Resistance (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), ix–xiiGoogle Scholar.
62 Human Rights Watch, “Mexico,” World Report 2014, at www.hrw.org/world-report/2014/country-chapters/mexico?page=2, accessed 12 July 2014.
63 Committee to Protect Journalists, “30 Journalists Killed in Mexico since 1992/Motive Confirmed,” at www.cpj.org/killed/americas/mexico, accessed 12 July 2014.
64 See http://zetatijuana.com, accessed 12 July 2014.