• RESEARCH
  • #USSOBOOKHOUR
  • REVIEWS
  • EYES ON EVENTS
  • SPECIAL SERIES
  • EVENTS
  • #WRITEAMSTUDIES
  • USSOCAST

British Association for American Studies

×

Anna Marta Marini

Anna Marta Marini is a PhD fellow at Instituto FranklinÐUAH, where her main research project (in collaboration with CISANÐUNAM) delves into the representations of border-crossing and the Òother sideÓ in US popular culture. Her research interests are: CDA related to violence (either direct, structural, or cultural); the representation of borderlands and Mexican American heritage; the re/construction of identity and otherness in film and comics, particularly in SF, horror, and (weird) western genres. She is currently the president of the PopMeC Association for US Popular Culture Studies.

Culture Shock: Representing border discourses and practices in the Trump era

On July 4, 2019, Hulu launched the tenth installment of its ‘Into the Dark’ horror anthology, titled Culture Shock and directed by Mexican Canadian Gigi Saul Guerrero. Culture Shock’s narrative development focuses on the crossing of the US–Mexico border by a group of migrants who are imprisoned in a border facility, where they are used as test subjects in an experimental program for brainwashing and assimilating Latinx migrants. Guerrero’s production was filmed in Santa Clarita, CA, and its script was partially rewritten by the director to make a statement against extrajudicial enforcement practices and the violent conundrum they represent. The US–Mexico border has been object of a progressive militarization through the years, in particular since the mid-80s when restrictive immigration measures began to be implemented; a further escalation was represented by the apparatus created as a consequence of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and by the Trump administration. For three decades, […]