Brown Belongings: Intimacy and Community Making in Twenty-First Century Latinx Digital Media

Abstract

Through a close reading methodology, Brown Belongings: Intimacy and Community Making in Twenty-First Century Latinx Digital Media explores the relationship between forms of media spectatorship and ideas of Latinidad. Rather than assuming Latinidad to be rooted in a national identity, this dissertation argues that Latinidad is formed and performed through relational feelings and collectivity. Recent shifts in technology and media invite new forms of intimacies and identities that illuminate a vibrant understanding of Latinx spectatorship and community. This dissertation examines how digital distribution has enabled new forms of viewing, thereby developing new or revised methods of spectating that allow for the creation of dispersed communities. I argue that this recognition of each other and ourselves exposes the process of meaning-making for consumers of popular culture and digital media. Building on the work of performance studies scholars such as Frances Aparicio (1997, 2003), José Esteban Muñoz (2020), and Leticia Alvarado (2018), this dissertation understands Latinidad as a type of community formation that develops through shared experiences and feelings of being (post-)colonial subjects. I bring together scholarship from film and media studies, Latinx studies, performance studies, and affect theory to do this. Chapter 1, “One Day at a Time: Home and Nostalgia in Netflix’s Sitcom,” analyzes the 2017 Latinx remake of the 1970s sitcom One Day at a Time and the role of the popular sitcom genre in Latinx community formation, centralizing the role of nostalgia in Latinx fan responses to the show, making both Cubanidad and Latinidad. Chapter 2, “Encanto’s Afterlives: Diaspora and Remembrance on TikTok,” argues that Latinx TikTok responses to Disney’s Encanto (2021) create community through the reproduction and contention with the afterlives of colonialism and U.S. imperialism. Chapter 3, “Los Espookys: Pleasure and Horror in Heterotopia,” argues that the HBO series Los Espookys (2019) forms Latinidad through the shared feelings of the comedy-horror genre, allowing for community formation to be rooted in friendship rather than national belonging. Finally, “Brujos: A Sacred Web Series” argues that the collective Latinidad formed from the independent web series Brujos (2017) is rooted in a shared spiritual and political praxis outside traditional production and consumption modes. In sum, this work examines how digital images invoke and help create ideas of Latinidad and how digital media create dispersed yet unified communities.