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The Immigrant Experience in Recent U.S. Cinema: A Discourse Analysis
Lackey, Eric
Lackey, Eric
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Abstract
This dissertation analyzes twenty-first century United States films about immigration and immigrants in order to identify and explain what I refer to as the cinematic discourse of the immigrant experience. It also examines the ways in which this cinematic discourse compares to the broader social and political discourses of immigration. The contemporary films that feature immigrants as central characters tend to represent them as complex individuals contributing meaningfully to economic and social life in the United States, while much of the news media and political discourse about immigrants more frequently represents them as an undifferentiated and threatening group. The films forward a humanizing counter-discourse to these other discourses. This study covers films whose characters have immigrated to the United States from a wide range of national origins (Mexico, Senegal, Angola, India, Korea, and more) and settled in a range of locations across the country (New York, Texas, North Carolina, Arkansas, and more).Using a discourse analysis methodology to ground the analysis of the films within their historical context, this study identifies discursive trends in news coverage and politics through the first decades of the twenty-first century and compares them to the statements that emerge from the films’ discursive contributions. The period covered in this study has been defined by significant historical developments that dramatically influence immigration discourse. The post-9/11 response to international terrorism, near-record levels of the population being foreign-born, the 2016 presidential election, and the COVID-19 pandemic all intensified the discourse on border security and xenophobia. Meanwhile, the films about immigrants consistently focused on the humanity of the characters and the racialized and politicized violence that they encounter. The film analysis focuses on three important ways in which the immigrant experience is represented in these narratives, and each focus receives its own chapter. It starts with films featuring scenes of border crossing and border security, then progresses to films showing immigrants performing essential labor, and finishes with films that explore the process of adaptation or assimilation to life in the United States. Films such as Fast Food Nation (Richard Linklater, 2006), Learning to Drive (Isabel Coixet, 2014), Frontera (Michael Berry, 2014), Farewell Amor (Ekwa Msangi, 2020), Minari (Lee Isaac Chung, 2020), The Forever Purge (Gout, 2021), and In the Heights (Jon M. Chu, 2021), among others, are considered in one or more of the chapters.
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2022-12-31
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University of Kansas
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Film studies, Essential Workers, Farewell Amor (2020), Fast Food Nation (2006), Immigration, In the Heights (2021), Minari (2020)