EVENT DETAILS

The Latin Dragon Going Global: Yellow or Brown Peril, and Remasculinization in Marko Zaror's Films, by Moises Park

Moises Park, Assistant Professor of Spanish
Department of Modern Languages and Cultures
Baylor University

Marko Zaror is a Palestinian-Chilean actor who emerged as a martial arts superstar in the feature film Kiltro (Ernesto Díaz Espinoza, 2006), the first Chilean martial arts film, portraying a new Chile in which caricatures of Palestinian and Korean immigrants and descendants are part of Chilean society. Prof. Park’s talk deals with Zaror’s images of global masculinity in his entire filmography between 2006 and 2018, beginning with an analysis of Kiltro and then tracing the racial malleability of Zaror’s characters as Palestinian, Colombian, Chilean, Mexican, ChineseMexican, Asian Indian, Samoan, and Latino. Zaror’s martial arts films also traffic heavily in meta-references, which include but are not limited to B movies, Hong Kong and Hollywood cinemas, and mixed martial arts culture. The duality of Zaror’s oriental/Latin American masculinity demonstrates what Park calls “second order orientalism”––a paradox between market-driven self-exotization and the meta-referencing nature of the genre.

Co-sponsored by the Departments of Film & Media Studies, Spanish & Portuguese, and Asian American Studies; the Ph.D. Program in Visual Studies; and the Latin American Studies Center. For more information, please contact Glen Mimura . This talk is also part of a two-day program, “Female Senseis and Latin Dragons: Performing Martial Arts in the 21st Century,” in partnership with the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA). For information on the program, please contact Mariángeles Soto-Diaz .