In this way, La India María is heavily indebted to the pioneering anthologies on Latspoitation by Dolores Tierney and Victoria Ruétalo and Latin American horror film by Rosana Díaz-Zambrana and Patricia Tomé, as well as case studies by Andrew Syder, Hugo Benavides, Misha MacLaird, and Norma Iglesias. The film historical interventions of the project are the book's strength, but Rohrer's project of recovery also discusses the narratives of Velasco's films in relation to Mexploitation tropes and genres in order to identify the different symbolic functions of her India María character.Īfter her synoptic chapter on Velasco's career, Rohrer provides an accessible and comprehensive survey of recent scholarship on Mexploitation, a recently-coined term for popular cinema primarily produced during the 1970s and 1980s. Rohrer polemicizes the marginalization of these films: "film critics viewed these mass-market films as devoid of artistic value, judged them to be merely commercial, and accused them of recycling stories that had proven to be successful at the box office" (4). In addition, Rohrer argues against film histories that characterize this period as "la crisis," instead situating Velasco's filmography in the context of a resourceful Mexploitation film industry that produced a thousand films for both domestic and foreign audiences. Velasco was a triple threat-star, producer, and director-and Rohrer makes a case for Velasco as a neglected woman pioneer in Mexican film history. Rohrer charts the rise of Velasco from vaudeville performer to comedic icon, a career trajectory that found Velasco exercising increasing control over her persona, founding a production company with her children, and later directing five of her own films.
#LA INDIA MARIA TV#
Velasco's India María character starred in sixteen films, as well as numerous TV shows and theater sketches, mostly between the late 1960s and the late 1980s. Seraina Rohrer's La India María: Mexploitation and the Films of María Elena Velasco is the first English-language monograph on one of the most beloved comedians of Mexico.
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