The Tourism of Titillation in Tijuana and Niagara Falls: Cross-Border Tourism and Hollywood Films between 1896 and 1960

In the popular imaginary, Tijuana, Mexico is notorious for its liberal laws concerning prostitution, gambling, and narcotics. Conversely, Niagara Falls, Canada apparently offers visitors only wholesome attractions. Yet this sweeping generalization belies the historic parallels that exist between these iconic border towns. In Hollywood films, both Tijuana and Niagara Falls figure as liminal locations of crossing and collision, as well as permissive zones defined by sex, tourism, and consumption. This essay explores the intertwined cultural arenas of film and tourism by analyzing cinematic representations of Tijuana and Niagara Falls as cross-border tourist destinations. By examining how cinematic representations of these urbanized border regions have changed over time, I demonstrate how Hollywood, as a hegemonic culture industry, responded to the United States’ evolving relationships with its northern and southern neighbors. This study offers a hemispheric and comparative approach to the study of urban borders, tourism, and visual culture.Dans l’imaginaire populaire, la ville de Tijuana au Mexique est célèbre pour ses lois libérales sur la prostitution, le jeu et les stupéfiants. À l’opposé, Niagara Falls au Canada n’offre apparemment à ses visiteurs que des divertissements sains. Pourtant, cette généralisation hâtive occulte les parallèles historiques qui existent entre ces villes iconiques frontalières. Dans les films hollywoodiens, Tijuana et Niagara Falls sont présentées comme des régions limitrophes de dispute et d’affrontement, et comme des endroits permissifs caractérisés par le sexe, le tourisme et la consommation. Cet essai explore les arènes culturelles entrelacées du film et du tourisme par le biais de l’analyse des représentations cinématographiques de Tijuana et de Niagara Falls comme destinations touristiques transfrontalières. En examinant comment les représentations cinématographiques de ces régions frontalières urbanisées ont changé au fil du temps, je démontre comment Hollywood, à titre d’industrie culturelle hégémonique, a réagi à l’évolution des relations entre les États-Unis et ses voisins du Nord et du Sud. Cette analyse propose une approche hémisphérique et comparative de l’étude des frontières urbaines, du tourisme et de la culture visuelle

Borderland Films

The concept of North American borderlands in the cultural imagination fluctuated greatly during the Progressive Era as it was affected by similarly changing concepts of identity and geopolitical issues influenced by the Mexican Revolution and the First World War. Such shifts became especially evident in films set along the Mexican and Canadian borders as filmmakers explored how these changes simultaneously represented and influenced views of society at large. Borderland Films examines the intersection of North American borderlands and culture as portrayed through early twentieth-century cinema. Drawing on hundreds of films, Dominique Brégent-Heald investigates the significance of national borders; the ever-changing concepts of race, gender, and enforced boundaries; the racialized ideas of criminality that painted the borderlands as unsafe and in need of control; and the wars that showed how international conflict significantly influenced the United States’ relations with its immediate neighbors. Borderland Films provides a fresh perspective on American cinematic, cultural, and political history and on how cinema contributed to the establishment of societal narratives in the early twentieth century

Bridging Worlds: Producing and Imagining the Transnational through TV Narratives.

Globalization has transformed economic, political and social structures, but it also reshaped our perceptions of the world. These transformations influenced media narrative not only as products of big multinational corporates, but also, as stories. This paper, motivated by the success of the Nordic Noir police drama, Bron/ Broen and its adaptation by the US. channel Fox, explores how transnationalism permeates TV narratives generating new narrative worlds. Moreover, the work goes a step further examining how these narratives reimagine the transnational lifestyle and how this contributes to their success internationally. What happens when TV stories cross borders? And in what ways does transnationalism become an internal element of these narrative mobilities? But also, how is transnationalism narrative-generated, too