Carmen Miranda – The Digital Story
Carmen Miranda: The Digital Story from gnovis on Vimeo.
Abstract
Specifically through images and narratives of Carmen Miranda, singer and actress, this digital story attempts to examine and question gender, sex, and the body through the performance of the “celebrity” and its recuperations in a nationalist discourse and culture. As both a departure and expansion of the icon of Carmen Miranda, the viewer, assumed to have minimal knowledge of the actress, demonstrates a variety of recycled threads of Miranda’s narratives in perspective, media, and culture throughout disparate generations. For example, Carmen Miranda’s popularized “Tutti-Frutti Hat” attire, which opens the story, demonstrates the more direct correlation between the actress in performance and generations of the Chiquita banana brand which will be explored throughout the film, as well as its “affects” as explained by Jasbir Puar.