"You've Got an Awesome Look": On Negation and Fetishization in Fernando Frías's Ya No Estoy Aquí
doi.org/10.31641/SRQC4796
Kevin M. Anzzolin
Christopher Newport UniversityPublication
Abstract
This article examines the film Ya no estoy aquí, written and directed by Fernando Frías de la Parra, vis-à-vis recent attempts to interrogate the emotional and political response to migrant suffering (Moraña, Žižek, Tobar). Specifically, this article looks at how while the protagonist’s infatuation with cumbias rebajadas represents an attempt to reject the institutions, values, and economics in neoliberal society. Ultimately, it is argued, the film interrogates whether this refusal constitutes little more than a revolutionary fix, a regressive force that fails to provide liberation. More precisely, the film explicitly engages concerns similar to those of Héctor Tobar (2023), who worries that images of “helpless brown people” are little more than “static, one-dimensional images of immigration porn.” The article thus corrects incomplete assessments of Frías’s film and suggests a new direction in youth culture cinema for neoliberal times.
Keywords
Film, Mexico, Fetishization, Neoliberalism, Migration, Fernando Frías
