ABSTRACT
Isela Vega’s dynamic near fi ve-decade career is defi ned by scandal. Vega herself interprets these ‘scandals’ as acts of rebellion that shake people up and push them to think critically (Díaz, 2007: 12). As Mexico’s most notorious sex symbol, Vega has had, since the early 1960s, a very diverse career, appearing in close to one hundred fi lms ranging from sexploitation (S.O.S. conspiración bikini/The Bikini Conspiracy [René Cardona Jr., 1966] and La pulquería/The Pulque Bar [Victor Manuel Castro, 1980]) to art cinema (Las apariencias engañan/Appearances Can Be Deceiving [Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, 1983]), as well as more diffi cult to categorize hybrid fi lms that combine both low-and highbrow fi lmic conventions (Puños rosas/Pink Punch [Beto Gómez, 2004]). Her fi lms exhibit the rebellious and anti-status quo attitude of the sexual revolution and the women’s liberation movement. As such, her fi lms challenge social taboos, prejudices, sexist double standards, and oppressive Catholic morals regarding women, the body, sexual expression, and freedom of speech. She is also one of the few women to direct a feature fi lm, Los amantes del señor de la noche/ Lovers of the Lord of the Night (1984), before the full-fl edged entrance of women into feature length directing in the late 1980s. A transnational fi gure, she has worked with noted fi lm auteurs, including Sam Peckinpah (Bring Me the Head of Alfredo García, 1974), and has crossed national boundaries and national cinemas, moving mostly between Mexico City and Los Angeles. In the 1970s and 1980s, at the height of her career, she acted in three other U.S. productions, two made-for-TV fi lms, and appeared in the miniseries “The Rhinemen Exchange” (Burt Kennedy, 1977) and TV shows (“The Greatest American Hero” [Robert Culp, 1983], “The Yellow Rose” [John Wilder, 1984], “Rituals” [Arlene Sanford et. al, 1984], “Stingray” [Charlie Picerni, 1986]). She works across high and low cultural categories and across media and the performing arts, alternating between fi lm, television, classic, and countercultural avant-garde theater (Zaratustra, Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970) as well as feminist postmodern performance and cabaret theater (Pedro Paramount, Jesusa Rodríguez, 2003). In the 1970s and 1980s many of her fi lms broke box-offi ce records in Mexico and in the U.S. Spanish-language cinema circuit. Her histrionic talents have
been recognized with three Arieles (the Mexican fi lm industry’s equivalent to the Oscar), including one for her comeback performance in La ley de Heródes/Herod’s Law (Luis Estrada, 1999) after a fi fteen-year absence from any signifi cant big-screen production.
