Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

film foray: COMO AGUA PARA CHOCOLATE 287
The two articles excerpted in this chapter attempt to provide an explanation
for the unprecedented success of Como agua para chocolate. Barbara
Tenenbaum, a specialist on the culture of Mexico from the Hispanic division
of the Library of Congress, sets out to prove that the fi lm captures
the essence of Mexico and thus manages to please audiences on either side
of the border, despite what she believes are their intrinsic differences in
the way they experience love, life, and death. Harmony Wu, a lecturer at
Emerson College in the Department of Visual and Media Arts, examines
the fi lm’s accolades, marketing, and profi ts for what they reveal about U.S.
perceptions regarding Mexicanness (and by extension, Latinness). She also
looks at the infl uence the fi lm has had in the United States and elsewhere
in shaping and reinforcing these perceptions as truths.
We could say that Barbara Tenenbaum is to Gerald Martin as Harmony
Wu is to Leslie Bary. In our introductions to Chapter 10, we stated that
Martin bases his interpretation of Latin America on a more essentialist
foundation and cites literary genres that he believes reveal its true identity.
We also said that Bary adopts a more semiotic approach by citing authors
whose works expose discursive constructs. In a similar way, Wu exposes
Como agua para chocolate’s discursively constituted defi nition of Mexican
essence as magical other, which is sold to and consumed by Mexicans, the
United States, and the rest of the world. Meanwhile, Tenenbaum demonstrates
that she has unconsciously consumed and been consumed by these
very constructs and advances them as truths of Mexican identity.
The fi lm is set in 1910 at the start of the Mexican Revolution. Mama
Elena, one of its key characters, has assumed control over the family ranch
upon the death of her husband. He had a heart attack when he learned
that Gertrudis, one of his three daughters, is the illegitimate offspring of
an affair between Mama Elena and a mulatto. When Nacha, the indigenous
servant who serves as the family’s cook and surrogate mother to Tita, the
youngest daughter, prophecies that the fi rst boy who sets eyes on Tita
will fall in love with her, Mama Elena decides to resurrect a family tradition
abandoned long ago. She declares that Tita will never marry since she
will be responsible for taking care of her until her death. When Nacha’s
prophecy comes true and Pedro asks Tita to marry him, Mama Elena offers
her daughter Rosaura instead. Pedro accepts the offer as a way to remain
near Tita.
From this moment, Tita, about whom it is said that she cried so much in
her mother’s womb that her dried birth water “yielded a forty-pound sack of
salt,” becomes the focus of the magical realism in the fi lm. Tita is unknowingly
able to express her desire for Pedro by magically incorporating it into