The fluidity of culture, and cultural expression, is a clue to its appeal at the very outset. It is particularly attractive to be able to maintain an identity that is constantly shifting, where there are always possibilities of negotiations for new forms of self, and all of their individual components. It would seem as though this is even more valuable in extreme circumstances, where the limits of identity are severe, and heavily policed by the culture police. That is to say, it seems more apparent in oppressive situations, where the available roles are limited and limiting.
Students of culture can find subjects in all parts of the world, but some places are more deeply layered than others. Florida, with its luxury hotels on the one hand, and pockets of far more difficult living conditions, on the other, is a place that seems enormously ripe for study. To be sure, there are many prominent scholars working in the field here, and doing very interesting research in the area. Jillian Hernandez is doing some highly evocative work in the formation of young Latina identity here.
She is among the first to seriously consider the image of the “Chonga girl“ as a subject worthy of examination. Before now, it was only seen as a subject of ridicule in popular culture. Although, to be fair, the drama students who made the youtube video that went viral opened the way toward a more serious look at this icon of Latina identity. The image is simple at a first glance, but it immediately moves into complexity when branding, quotation, and iteration start to come into play, and suddenly there is a very sophisticated use of symbols at play. The objects are simultaneously subjects, signaling through the flames that there is a search for self somewhere beneath all the weight of history.
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Tags: Chonga girl, Florida with its luxury hotels, Jillian Hernandez