Border Media and New Spaces of Latinidad

Abstract

The recent upsurge in violence associated with the northbound flow of contraband and cross-national efforts to quell this violence has led to increasing media images of a bloody US-Mexican border accompanied by storylines filled with violence and mayhem. Hollywood has exploited drug-trafficking-related violence at the border as a lucrative context for spectacular stories full of action, drama, and intrigue. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger, eager to reignite his career after his stint as California governor and his personal scandals, is getting in on the action with yet another story of border violence and drug trade in The Last Stand (2013). This film, about a narcotrafficker up against a sheriff, played by Schwarzenegger, recalls that of the Western No Country for Old Men (2007) while it is a symptom of a larger transmedia context of violent border stories. Border media are no longer couched in the language of the Western, but have become a cross-genre phenomena ranging across reality television, action, drama, and comedy. The diversity of genres of border media widens the range of perspectives informing the symbolic meaning of the frontier.