Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T09:23:10.353Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Thinking Voice: When Listening Trumps Celebrity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Licia Fiol-Matta
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the brief span of 1952–68, Puerto Rico sped through its industrialization process. Middle-class residential construction dotted the city of San Juan. Hotels replaced the mansions along its Condado waterfront. The spanking new Medical Center promised health for the sickly, undernourished population, a health that the developmentalist program of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico—Operation Bootstrap—desperately needed, as it endeavored to offer a cheap, obedient, and presumably bilingual labor force to American capital. The “Golden Mile,” the financial district established in the area of the sometime royal hacienda, Hato Rey, emerged as the centerpiece of a new downtown. The mythic mall of Plaza Las Américas (formerly a cattle ranch that bred cows for the milk industry) became the social hub of a polis that increasingly turned to consumerism for its exercise of citizenship. Newspapers and magazines were filled with consumer fantasies of every variety. Along with everything else that was dazzling and new, Puerto Rico consumed a new object for sale, the celebrity pop star.

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 126 , Issue 4: Special Topic: Celebrity, Fame, Notoriety , October 2011 , pp. 1092 - 1101
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Benítez, Lucecita. “Con Lucecita.” Interview by Manuel Ramos Otero and Rosario Ferré. Zona de carga y descarga 1.6 (1973): 22–23. Print.Google Scholar
Benítez, perf. “Fruta verde.” By Rafael Pérez Botija. Éxitos callejeros. Lobo, 1984. LP.Google Scholar
Benítez, perf. “Génesis.” By Guillermo Venegas Lloveras. Génesis. Hit Parade, 1969. LP.Google Scholar
Benítez, perf. “Lucecita en el Coliseo: ‘A mí no me controla nadie.‘” Interview by Luz Raquel Ávila. Avance 11 Nov. 1974: 54–57. Print.Google Scholar
Benítez, perf. “Soy de una raza pura.” By David Ortiz and Tony Croatto. Lucecita. Hit Parade, 1973. LP.Google Scholar
Benítez, perf. “La transformación de Lucecita.” Interview by Magali García Ramis. Avance 6 Aug. 1973: 20–25. Print.Google Scholar
Cavarero, Adriana. For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Colón Zayas, Eliseo. “Imagen discográfica e identidades: El caso de Lucecita Benítez.” ANIMUS: Revista Interamericana de Comunicaçao Mediática 2.2 (2003): 88–103. Print.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987. Print.Google Scholar
Dolar, Mladen. A Voice and Nothing More. Cambridge: MIT P, 2006. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heidegger, Martin. What Is Called Thinking? Trans. J. Glenn Gray. New York: Perennial-Harper, 1976. Print.Google Scholar
Inclán, Ramón. “‘Génesis,‘ canción de Puerto Rico, arriba en el Festival.” El heraldo de México 11 May 1969. Print.Google Scholar
Nancy, Jean-Luc. Listening. New York: Fordham UP, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Party, Daniel. “Placer Culpable: Shame and Nostalgia in the Chilean 1990s Balada Revival.” Latin American Music Review 30.1 (2009): 69–98. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rivero, Yeidy. Tuning Out Blackness: Race and Nation in the History of Puerto Rican Television. Durham: Duke UP, 2005. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar