(In)visibles

the homosexual presence in Mexican classical melodrama

Abstract

Mexican melodrama has been considered the national film genre by excellence. It is through their images and their representations that an identity, both individual and social, has been consolidated. Within their filmic discourses, norms are established and reproduced that dictate the duty of men and women, attributing to them a way of acting, living together and even loving.

It is in this cinematographic genre, one that is governed by hegemony, that the first representations of homosexual men appear in Mexican cinema. In what way are the sexual dissidences that turned their eyes on the street visible? What is the way to represent what, in heteronormative eyes, should not exist? How can sexual dissidence coexist in the same space in which morality and good customs are the norm to live?

Through the analysis of key representations of the homosexual in the classic Mexican melodrama, it is intended to account for the structures used, firstly, so that homosexuality is visible and secondly, to begin to forge an identity. In the same way, the mechanisms used by the cinema to build these representations will be analyzed.