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This article examines the changing dynamics of censorship and social criticism in revolutionary Cuban cinema in order to make a case for studying allegory not as a mode whose meanings analysts should (or should not) reveal but, rather, as a contested social process. From the 1960s on, Cuban filmmakers turned to allegory as a means of resisting the reduction of art to propaganda and articulating more ambivalent takes on the Cuban Revolution. Yet spectators steeped in the political binaries of the Cold War often reduced films to arguments for or against socialism. Such paranoid readings have only grown more complex in the post-Soviet era, as changing strategies of state power, a growing orientation toward the global market, and the increasing availability of digital technologies enable more open criticism of the state in art and render criticism itself suspect. Drawing on this case study, this article argues that both depth models of interpretation and debates about “paranoid” or “symptomatic readings” fail to account for the social and political dynamics of texts. To understand how allegory and paranoid readings shape public debate and representation, we must examine how artists and audiences themselves mobilize the mode. This is especially true for Global South, state socialist, and authoritarian contexts, where traditions of political engagement through art, practices of skirting censorship through aesthetic indirection, and demands for depictions of the nation imposed by international art worlds foster practices of reading between the lines for hidden meanings in ways that sometimes cooperate with and sometimes work against artists’ aesthetic and political goals.
Love happens in the street, standing in the dust.-José Martí, Love in the City Ruso took long strides down the smooth cement slope of 23rd Street toward the sea. Inhaling on his Hollywood cigarette, which he preferred over the cheaper Cuban brand, he belted out the lyrics to La Charanga's latest hit. "Soy Cubano, soy natural. Y eso nadie me lo quita. Porque yo traigo la razón y te regalo la verdad, lo que tengo ni se compra ni se vende. (I'm Cuban, I'm real. No one can take that away from me. I bring you the reason and give you truth: What I have can't be bought or sold.)"At the ocean, Ruso jumped on the Malecón, the thick cement wall that snaked around Havana. He shouted to a group of boys waiting to dive off the rocky shore, shivering despite the merciless August sun. Getting no response, Ruso focused on me. I had been tagging along with him for almost a month but had never asked him about his sexuality. I asked if he identifi ed as gay."Look, we in Cuba have something that is called bisexual," said Ruso. "A bisexual is someone who sleeps with both men and women. I like to have sex with women, but I like men more. Because I like both, I am bisexual." He paused again and instructed me to write down the term in my notebook. "It's the same word in the United States," I told him. He looked skeptical. "What is a jinetero?" I asked. The question hung in the air between us. "It's a Cuban who goes with gays. They take them to a place and have sex with them for money or clothes, and rip them off by charging too much."
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