Film: Alison Anders' "Mi Vida Loca"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains, in detail, the gender and sexuality themes in Alison Anders' "Mi Vida Loca" ("My Crazy Life"), which realistically describes the lives of young Mexican-American women in Los Angeles who are involved in gangs, drugs and sexual activities. The writer believes that, Anders' own feminist agenda and ideology, such as non-normative gender roles, which challenge the traditional confinement of women to domesticity, seem to standout more than her stated goal to humanize people who don't get represented in film. The paper cites many feminist critics and relates their ideas to the film and concludes that Anders' feminism is not adequate. The paper uses MLA style footnotes rather than a works cited page.

From the Paper:

"Anders' film fails to break from this patriarchal, phallocentric logic. Only by adopting masculinized gender roles and possessing the phallus (carrying guns) can the Locas construct their agency. Anders doesn't allow for alternate sources of female strength, only for women to act as male substitutes. After Giggles leaves Sleepy's place, the night she affirms her independence and strength, her style of dress does a one-eighty. While previously she tended to wear skirts and dresses, when she organizes the Locas she is wearing pants and a wife-beater."

Sample of Sources Used:

• http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/exmirhom.html.
• Rosa Linda Fregoso, MeXicana Encounters (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
• Luce Irigaray, Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).
• Laura Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989).
• Fregoso, MeXicana Encounters.

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