Distance from valuable archives can be frustrating when studying stars whose primary output is at a considerable geographic remove, and where there is little distribution, sharing or coverage of materials beyond a specific location. Lacking the resources to travel annually to Mexico, I frequently find myself unable to source material that is physically stored in libraries and archives or, sometimes, readily available on corner street stalls in Mexico City, but impossible to access where I am. Early twenty-first- century technology has brought about some changes to this in ways that go beyond the conventional means of research and allow for a new and, at times, dialogic understanding of the star text. YouTube has become an unexpected resource and functions as an informal and chaotic digital archive and (re)creator of star texts in ways that deserve more sustained attention.

Heretofore, the study of digital archives has largely focused on how institutions catalogue and share material in a sustainable fashion. For example, in the Fall 2014 issue of the Cinema Journal Rielle Navitski details some of the online resources made available by Latin American institutions and the many complicating factors surrounding access, the dissemination of materials, selectivity of the process, and uneven approaches to digital archiving (122–3). Researching YouTube content shares some of the ‘tensions inherent to archiving [that] are foregrounded by digital obsolescence and the imperative of access’ (Navitski 2014: 122). Where there are limitations to institutional management of archives, the apparently ad hoc manner of material uploaded, the evolving regulatory framework, and the amateur nature of much star-related content makes YouTube a dynamic, sometimes frustrating, yet invaluable resource for researchers that is often overlooked in these surveys. Through an analysis of three Mexican stars, Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete and Emilio Fernandez, this chapter will focus on their YouTube star texts, and draw out what these mean for the nascent field of online remeditated star studies. It will also consider the ways in which a star's gender determines how fans produce an online star text and how YouTube can be understood to function as a precarious archive.