-
Title
-
Driving Toward Heterotopias: Taxis and Taxistas in Contemporary Chilean Cinema
-
Creator
-
Blair, Laura Senio
-
Date
-
2018-02-21
-
Date Available
-
2018-02-21
-
Date Issued
-
2012
-
Identifier
-
Laura Senio Blair. (March 01, 2012). Driving Toward Heterotopias: Taxis and Taxistas in Contemporary Chilean Cinema. Letr@s Hispanas, 8, 1, 21-31.
-
uri
-
https://collections.southwestern.edu/s/suscholar/item/123
-
Abstract
-
Throughout the history of representing the vehicle in Hollywood Cinema, the taxi
and its driver stand as some of film’s most enigmatic symbols of America’s urban landscape
and working-class characters. Within Chilean cinema specifically, experiencing during the
first decade of the 21st century a revitalization called by some as el nuevo cine chileno, a
study of the representations of taxis and taxistas, evidenced in Taxi para tres/ Taxi for Three
(2001) by Orlando Lübbert and El rey de los huevones/ The King of Idiots (2006) by Boris
Quercia offers opportunities to comment upon the vehicles by which city space is negotiated
and to examine the socio-economic contradictions present in contemporary Chile. In
this way, the presentation of the taxi and its driver in Chilean film appropriates the Taxi
Driver (Scorsese 1976) formula related to the failure of a capitalist system that places the
driver in opposition to those who have already been disenfranchised, working as heterotopic
metaphors for the growing urban consciousness of middle-class Chileans that futilely
navigate the economic and social identities presented by a failed neoliberal system.
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
letr@s hispanas
-
Subject
-
Contemporary Chilean cinema
-
Taxis and taxistas
-
Neoliberal
-
Heterotopia
-
Type
-
Article
