Hybridity and Its Discontents: Considering Visual Culture in Colonial Spanish America

From the Closet to the Loft and Hybridity and Its Discontents: Considering Visual Culture in Colonial Spanish America share a common element: hybridity. Although From the Closest to the Loft does not explore Spanglish or Spanglish as does the other article, it establishes a platform for the discussion of cultural blending and offers an ideological critique of how marginalization occurs between a heteronormative domgroup and homosexual subgroup.
With this in mind, I’ve selected both articles because hybridity as a theoretical tool can be used to examine other phenomena in a similar way to how I have used hybridity theory to examine Spanglish and Spanglish as linguistic and cultural phenomenon. Take for example the following quotation “the Loft serves to contain queers, and especially queer sexuality, in order to protect the social mainstream from the supposed danger posed by queer “contamination”. In the case of the Queer Eye, this containment is accomplished through a ritual formula that inverts the traditional sequence characteristic of rites of passage. This inversion grants the show’s protagonists permission to enter temporarily the heterosexual mainstream only to be relegated to the Loft’s cultural, geographical, and sexual exile by each episodes end” (Foss, 2009, p. 247).
In Spanglish (2004) a similar code for production is followed but the framing is different. In Spanglish, Flor and Cristina Moreno are two undocumented Mexican immigrants who have moved to California to live the dream. Once Flor leaves the barrio and looks for work in White America and is hired by Deborah Clasky –the first instance of cultural blending evident in the film – the audience is witness to the same phenomena that is portrayed in Queer Eye, i.e. now that Flor is out of the barrio and in white territory as an “other” she is quickly picked from the street and put into a white home to be normalized and this is the same function which the loft serves. For the men who star in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy once they interact with straight America they are placed into a “loft” which serves as a categorical safe place which reinforces Heteronormativity; the Clasky’s home and the fact that Flor get hired normalizes her in terms of whiteness and makes her “safe” just as the loft does to these gay men, it makes them safe.
Further, Spanglish, Spanglish, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and hybridity have another point in common which is that after each subgroup –gay men and Latina immigrants- are marginalized and put into their proper “safe” box, each group is removed from center stage and exiled to their loft after temporarily interacted with heterosexual and white America. An interesting parallel to draw between the two artifacts to further demonstrate what is common between the two productions is that in the Queer Eye by the end of the show the men are removed and watch the success of their work on a screen removed from the hetero context as voyeurs. In Spanglish by the end of the film a similar phenomenon occurs: Flor quits her job and takes Cristina out of private school to move from Beverly Hills back to the Barrio while Cristina narrates the final scenes of the movie. What this brings attention to is that both subgroups are marginalized and reduced to voyeurs, only witness to what occurs on center stage while they watch from the fringes.
Likewise, because both subgroups are depicted in a limited and temporary sense attention should be given to such roles as critiques From the Closet to the Loft; although the normalization of these groups requires they enter the spotlight these roles do not integrate them rather quite the opposite bringing attention to my last point. That is, Hollywood and the producers of such shows follow a narrow code of production which is obviously heteronormative and white which leaves little room for anyone else yet that is a whole different discussion which I do not care to elaborate upon at this point.

Dean, C., & Leibsohn, D. (2003). Hybridity and Its Discontents: Considering Visual Culture in Colonial Spanish America*. Colonial Latin American Review, 12(1), 5. Retrieved from EBSCOhost