From Border “Reality” to Narrative Possibilities in Latinx TV and FX’s The Bridge

This paper argues that the US-Mexico borderlands often takes shape as mediated setting culled together from fiction and non-fiction representations to create a narrative framework that directs how the ‘reality’ of the borderlands is perceived. Representations, in other words, not only hold up a mirror to the real world but reveal the frameworks that shape perceptions of this world as they play out in the stories we are told; or, more often today, the stories we watch. This paper follows the “representational frameworks” formed through depictions of the border on television to examine how these mediations reinforce the perception that this region is a lawless zone, stoke fear, and imply the necessity for a militarized response to (im)migration and drug trafficking.