Taking stock of the U.S.-Mexico border as system of subjection, the purpose of this panel is to map the significance of cinema and visual art for representing the aesthetic power of borders alongside cultural contestations of such power. When borders continue to emerge in the national imaginary as points of “crisis,” it is necessary to consider the racialized fantasies that shape such discourse. The supposed crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border creates an image in the national imaginary that is meant to alarm, unravel, and seduce the national citizenry. Ultimately, these border images become controlling images of power. For these reasons, this panel asks: How is the U.S.-Mexico border as much a physical space as it is an imaginary and visual construction? And most importantly, how can cinema and visual art pose a challenge to the power dynamics that national borders uphold?

While calling attention to the social, historical, and political constructions of the U.S.-Mexico border, this panel does not imagine the border as fixed or immobile. Rather, each paper maps the manifold ways in which borders materialize and appear in the lives of migrants or children of migrants. The interplay between the imaginary and the real contributes to border scholarship by highlighting the psycho-social dynamics of border subjection. Each paper centrally addresses the unifying theme of “border images” through a dynamic approach to cinematic or artistic representations.

Maria R. Matz begins the analysis of border images in her paper, “Cultural Imaginaries of the Mexican Border with the U.S.” She argues that cinematic representations of the U.S.-Mexico border produce stereotypes in which people from the border are riddled with crime and poverty. Analyzing a range of films on the border, Matz suggests that when the border is utilized as a national fiction, systems of surveillance and regulation come to light as political strategies. Finally, she explores the U.S.-Mexico border as a “divided space” captured through the cinematic lens.

Building on this generative analysis of cinematic border representations, Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana offers a potent critique of the continuous deportation of U.S. childhood arrivals to their countries of birth in her paper, “The U.S. Childhood Arrivals Diaspora: The Playas de Tijuana Mural Project.” She explores the diaspora of deported childhood arrivals through the Playas de Tijuana Mural Project, a community-participatory art project located on the Mexican side of the westernmost point of the US-Mexico border. Her paper focuses on how this mural materializes the diaspora of 15 childhood arrivals who have faced deportation or remain undocumented. In doing so, her project shows how art can offer a generative space from which to argue against the deportation of childhood arrivals.

Furthering the discussion of migration and borders, Bruno N. Nowendsztern’s paper, “From the Fields to the Soccer Field: Analyzing the Representation of Immigrants and their Use of Sport in McFarland, USA (2015)” considers how the film McFarland, USA depicts the struggles and aspirational dreams of children of migrants. He emphasizes that the film does not reproduce the American Dream; rather, through the use of sport for recreational and competitive purposes, children of migrants navigate the intricacies of their subject positions and their parent’s working conditions in the fields. He also underscores that the film offers a useful site from which to glean the borders between Mexican-American/Chicano/and White social worlds.

In closing, Ruben Zecena’s paper, “Dreaming the Impossible: Exploring Queer Migrant Melancholia in I Carry You With Me (2020),” asks, to what extent do queer migrants long for the American Dream? When do such dreams feel like a nightmare? He analyzes the film, I Carry You With Me—which centers the life of a queer migrant couple from Mexico—to examine the temporal structures that simultaneously reject and maintain queer migrants in impossible living conditions after border-crossing. He argues that while the American Dream is promised as a fantasy that marches forward, in the film it is felt as an impasse: a slow-motion nightmare that takes years to wake up from, if at all. Zecena suggests that the American Dream is a cruel promise that leads queer migrants in the film to question their belonging as a form of non-belonging.

Put together, each participant will have 15 minutes to present their paper, with the remaining 15 minutes allotted towards discussion.