The construction of the female characters in the Mexican Classic Cinema

A reading of the representation of the woman in Enamorada (Índio Fernandez) and Susana (Buñuel)

Abstract

This article intends to analyze the construction of the female characters in the Mexican Classic Cinema, more specifically in the films “Enamorada” (1946), by Índio Fernandez and “Susana” (1951), by Luis Buñuel. Through the female prototypes categorized by Silvia Oroz, and Metz and Baudry's optics about the persuasive effects produced by the cinema as a discursive "apparatus" and narrative, we try to show how these films serve as vehicles for a manipulative message for maintenance of a machism and patriarchal ideology, inherited from the Mexican pre-revolution age.