[NYTr] "Barrio Cuba” and “Brokeback Mountain”: Double Standards in Coverage of Cuba

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

CubaNow - Aug 6, 2007
http://www.cubanow.net/global/loader.php?&secc=8&item=3081&cont=show.php


Barrio Cuba” and “Brokeback Mountain”:

An example of the double standard when reporting on Cuba 

By José Manzaneda
Translated by Joseph Mutti for Cubanow

Cubanow.- The manipulator’s toolbox is replete with clichés and
regurgitated lies on Cuba that are again and again used with impunity
without any debate or defense. There is no news section of the written
press, radio or television that is free of these stereotypical
reiterations that are converted into media “truths”.

A classic example is the politicized interpretation of contemporary
Cuban cinema.

On July 13 journalist Oscar L. Belategui published in all of the
dailies controlled by the Spanish media group Vocento, a brief critique
of the Cuban film “Barrio Cuba”. The film was made by veteran producer
and current director of the Cuban “Festival Internacional de Cine
Pobre” (International Low Budget Film Festival), Humberto Solás. The
critique once again reproduced one of the major themes used in the
systematic demonization of the Cuban Revolution, when it affirmed that
in the film “the director does not avoid uncomfortable aspects for the
Castro regime such as discrimination against homosexuals”.

In the 1960s and 1970s – a time in which gays and lesbians suffered
discrimination throughout the world – the things that occurred in Cuba
are still constantly replayed in campaigns against the Cuban
Revolution. If we take into consideration the island’s geographical
location, in the last few years Cuba has made important social advances
in the field of sexual diversity. These are advances that have been
strengthened into laws, institutional attitudes, educational campaigns
and a visible transformation of Cuban society. But none of this exists
for the mainstream media that is only interested in bringing us a
frozen image of Cuba in the 1970s.

What is curious is that one year before the very same journalist, in
his critique of the U.S. film “Brokeback Mountain” that dealt with
homophobia in U.S society, celebrated the movie by saying that “there
are no signs of grandiosity in this serene, subtle love story between
two men that is closer to ‘The Bridges of Madison County’ than any
truculent drama about a repressive society”. Belategui does not refer
to any U.S. president, nor associates any intolerance of sexual
diversity in the country under its current regime. However, in his
review on “Barrio Cuba” he is quick to remind his readers of the social
prejudices that once existed in Cuba relating to gays and lesbians that
are “uncomfortable aspects for the Castro regime”.

And, of course, for film critics on the payroll of the mainstream media
as is Oscar L. Belategui, it is irrelevant to talk of the social and
critical character of movies like “Barrio Cuba” in Cuban cinema that,
in the words of Humberto Solas himself, “is a film that makes a social
contribution. It applauds that which should be applauded, and
repudiates and questions that which needs to be repudiated and
questioned, regardless”.

(José Manzaneda is Coordinator for Cubainformación TV)