Y Tu Mamá También

A critical study of the musical legacy, new media afterlives, and queer significance of the 2001 hit.

Y Tu Mamá También explores the film as a touchstone for queer and sex cinema that continues to teach us how to find queer resonances across national and international film styles and to imagine queer media as complex networks of influence and rediscovery, more than two decades after its original release.

A classic of New Mexican Cinema, Y Tu Mamá También courted controversy with its explicit depictions of teenage sexuality and its forthright perspective on the country’s inequality. The cinematic sensation gained international accolades for its mixing of genres and film styles and inspired a wide body of writing from both critics and scholars. The multimedia lives of Y Tu Mamá También (especially in music, music videos, and social media) have kept the film relevant for audiences too young to have seen it when it debuted.

Juan Llamas-Rodriguez revisits Y Tu Mamá También after more than two decades of social, industrial, and technological change to show how it astutely captures a particular moment in Mexican history and film production. The film was a turning point for Mexican stardom on the world stage, and the performances and celebrity of its stars, Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal, reframed millennial Mexican masculinities. The eclectic and popular bilingual soundtrack is a focal point, read as engendering a queer listening and as an integral aspect of the film’s queering of time. Rather than being legibly classified as gay or bisexual, Y Tu Mamá También flouts sexual mores and national stereotypes and continues to spur new forms of longing and desire among audiences today.

Moving beyond heavily debated questions of identity and representation, Llamas-Rodriguez explores the waves of reception, scholarship, celebrity culture, and social media content around Y Tu Mamá También that have shaped its queer legacy, and the circuits of influence that enliven global cinema across media and national borders.