AMERICAN JANE?: JANE THE VIRGIN’S POLITICAL IMAGINATION OF GENDERED AND TRANSNATIONAL LATINA/O CITIZENSHIP
Open Access
- Author:
- Galarza, Litzy
- Graduate Program:
- Mass Communications
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 03, 2020
- Committee Members:
- Matthew Paul Mcallister, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Matthew Paul Mcallister, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Anthony Olorunnisola, Committee Member
Michelle Lyn Rodino, Committee Member
Judith Sierra-Rivera, Outside Member
Matthew Paul Mcallister, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- citizenship
Latinidad
television
representation
Latina/o studies
gender - Abstract:
- The CW’s Jane The Virgin (2014-2019; JTV) was a critically acclaimed, 100-episode US broadcast network television program that featured Latina characters and actors. The show is a loose adaptation of a Venezuelan telenovela Juana la Virgen (2002) and tells the story of the accidental artificial insemination of title-character Jane Villanueva and how it alters the course of the lives of the Villanueva women, including Jane’s mother Xiomara and her undocumented grandmother Alba. In Jane’s world, there are telenovela stars, criminal masterminds, characters with amnesia, shifting romances, and plot twists that complicate the lives of the characters. This dissertation addresses JTV’s ideology regarding its representation of various types of citizenship through a transdisciplinary textual analysis of the series’ five seasons by expanding on Hector Amaya’s (2013) theory of citizenship excess. Amaya’s political and media theory suggests that citizenship functions as a technology of power that generates state-sanctioned legalized inequality within and beyond national boundaries. Citizenship excess illustrates how ethno-racial minorities’ cultural and political capital is systematically diminished through racialized laws and practices that benefit an ethno-racial majority’s excess political capital accumulation. Centering this analysis on citizenship illustrates how citizenship excess in popular media is generally weaponized against Latina/os but also how citizenship is specifically gendered through, what I term, reproductive citizenship excess and deficit. JTV’s ideological legacy is complicated by its occasional rupture of discourses that position Latina/os as eternally foreign and a threat to the nation (Chavez, 2013) in contextualizing Obama’s “deporter-in-chief" and Trump’s “build-the-wall" eras. The series is most memorable for depicting the Villanueva household as a hybrid where English and Spanish coexist, illustrating the family’s journey from a mixed-status household with an undocumented grandmother who becomes a naturalized citizen, and representing Latina/os as part of the U.S. national imaginary and a transnational diasporic nation. Different characters in JTV represent different kinds of citizenship deficit and excess. For example, the Latina lead, Jane Villanueva – complex, intelligent, beautiful, sexy, and agentic – can be read as a metaphor for an assimilationist model of political, economic and cultural citizenship excess, although her citizenship is still constrained when compared to white characters. JTV is most progressive in representing an undocumented non-citizen's journey toward naturalized citizenship, thereby serving as a form of “public pedagogy” by illustrating the acquisition of political citizenship excess and calling for “#IMMIGRATIONREFORM.” JTV is less progressive on matters of reproductive citizenship and sexual agency for Latina/os, but especially Latinas. The show depicts Latina/o families as non-normative and disruptive to the individualized pursuit of political citizenship. JTV conforms to existing discourses that suggest Latina/os are inherently hypersexual, hyperfertile, and a reproductive threat to the nation. Conversely, the “hot” Latina mother, Xiomara, takes ownership of her reproductive citizenship by having an abortion and overcoming societal shame regarding sexual agency and becoming a teenage mom. In JTV, telenovelas allow Latina/os to generate cultural citizenship in the public and private sphere. The narrative is counter-hegemonic in signaling that Latina/os not only consume media but also produce cultural content. The show’s “homage” to telenovelas might reflect a depoliticized hemispheric Latinidad that overemphasizes a specific “Latin” look. The series’ reliance on a Latin lover narrator and international telenovela star Rogelio De La Vega to educate audiences on telenovelas makes JTV public pedagogy on a cultural form that globally circulates portrayals of the Latina/o trans-nation.