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Start Date
23-6-2022 12:00 AM
End Date
23-6-2022 12:00 AM
Abstract
The process of gente-fication, or Latinx-led urban revitalization in working class barrios has gained widespread attention in recent years and is at the heart of U.S. popular television shows like Vida (2018-2020) and Gentefied (2020-). Both shows serve as windows into contemporary Latinx struggles over belonging and identity against the backdrop of multicultural neoliberalism and multicultural whiteness in the U.S. The shows express a common social and cultural anxiety around “home,” which has long been viewed as a central tenant of maintaining cultural identity and power. Gloria Anzaldua describes the love-hate relationship of home: “It’s not a comfortable territory to live in, this place of contradictions…No, not comfortable but home” (1987). Love it or hate it, home is directly threatened by gentrification with extinction in both shows. We examine the promise and pitfalls of gente-fication in a fictional Los Angeles Latinx neighborhood, Vida and Gentefied illustrate how belonging and sites of “home” for Latinxs in the U.S. remain precarious despite rises in Latinx representation across social life. Contrasting popular conceptualization of gente-fication as racial and economic uplift, we argue Vida and Gentefied utilize gente-fication as a narrative tool elides historic, contemporary social movements in ways that rest Latinx belonging on tenets of assimilation attainable to a select few.
Home in Vida and Gentefied: The Politics of Representation in Gente-fication Narratives
The process of gente-fication, or Latinx-led urban revitalization in working class barrios has gained widespread attention in recent years and is at the heart of U.S. popular television shows like Vida (2018-2020) and Gentefied (2020-). Both shows serve as windows into contemporary Latinx struggles over belonging and identity against the backdrop of multicultural neoliberalism and multicultural whiteness in the U.S. The shows express a common social and cultural anxiety around “home,” which has long been viewed as a central tenant of maintaining cultural identity and power. Gloria Anzaldua describes the love-hate relationship of home: “It’s not a comfortable territory to live in, this place of contradictions…No, not comfortable but home” (1987). Love it or hate it, home is directly threatened by gentrification with extinction in both shows. We examine the promise and pitfalls of gente-fication in a fictional Los Angeles Latinx neighborhood, Vida and Gentefied illustrate how belonging and sites of “home” for Latinxs in the U.S. remain precarious despite rises in Latinx representation across social life. Contrasting popular conceptualization of gente-fication as racial and economic uplift, we argue Vida and Gentefied utilize gente-fication as a narrative tool elides historic, contemporary social movements in ways that rest Latinx belonging on tenets of assimilation attainable to a select few.
Bio
Dr. Carlos Jimenez is assistant professor in the Department of Media, Film, and Journalism at the University of Denver. His research broadly examines the role of media (mobile phones, social media, community radio, and automation) in the everyday lives of low-wage immigrant workers. In California he helped farmworkers build a community radio station. You can tune in to Radio Indígena www.mixteco.org/radio. His research in Denver currently focuses on the role of media technology in the everyday lives of day laborers.
Dr. Alfredo Huante is a 2020-2021 UC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. In his first book manuscript, Alfredo examines how racial formation is central to gentrification discussion and debates. In majority minority places experiencing gentrification, like barrios, race and racism are often overlooked or minimized as part of these processes. This book argues that conceptualizing gentrification as a racial project is necessary to understand how policies and practices advancing gentrification maintain and advance racism. Drawing on archival, ethnographic, and interview data collected in and about the Boyle Heights neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, Alfredo reveals how race and racism adapt to maintain racial inequality even as neighborhoods- and cities- become more racially diverse.