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Relationships My friends and I love going to the movies. There is nothing like the taste of buttery, warm popcorn, an ice-cold soda and a great movie. We enter the movie theatre and find the perfect seat, not too close and not too far, but perfectly in the middle. As the pre-views finish and the lights begin to dim, our anticipation and excitement builds for the movie we having waiting to watch.
When the movie starts and the credits begin we are sometimes presented with Latino names, such as, Lopez, Garcia, Hayek, Banderas, Perez, Rodriguez, Gonzalez, and many others. When I am with my friends we can't help but cheer and feel a sense of pride. However, this feeling is quickly disrupted when we realize that the roles of our Latino stars are that of servants or drug addicts. As I witness these images, my pride slowly disappears and I feel embarrassed. I ask myself why they are speaking that way.
Why do they act that way? The answers that I found were more profound than I imagined. In this paper, I will explore the various representations, depictions and portrayals of Latin American women in American Hollywood. Specifically, I will identify the dark shadow of negative images that has followed Latin American women from the emergence of film through today.
Finally, I will identify the ways in which these issues are beginning to change from the former negative representations to the emergence of a more positive, celebrated representation of Latin Americans. The New Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines power as a position of ascendancy over others: authority, the ability to act or produce an effect, one that has control (Merriam Webster 569). There is an underlying issue of power in American cinema. From the time that motion pictures emerged in 1895, the power in cinema was mostly defined and held in the hands of one elite group: the dominant white race. As Stuart Hall states in his Concept of Race, communication equals power.
This implicates that who ever is in the position to circulate meaning is the strongest force. With respect to the approach of racial and ethnic representation, American cinema came to generate the depictions of Latin Americans as Latin lovers, bandits, greasers, cantina's, spitfires, and other derogatory portrayals. Racial offensive names and stereotypes became so common in the American industry that they are not only embedded into plots of films, but were actually used in film titles as well. For example, while examining Alfred Charles Richards Hispanic film-graph index, we confront stereotypical terms, such as, Latin Lover and The Temptress (524 - 527). As a result the meaning that Anglo's circulated about Latin Americans was that they are people who are irrational, prone to violence, lacking intellectual sophistication, oversexed, morally lax, and dirty (Ramirez 116).
In order to preserve power, the Anglo film industry made overt efforts to cater to the middle-class and American born patrons, and in fact to avoid immigrant or working-class values and behaviors (Keller 6). Films did not cater to the outcast groups; Blacks, Asians, and Latinos were effectively excluded from American film production. The American film industry intent was on engaging the upscale segment of the audience and embracing the values of the dominant culture. As a result, American cinema is a reflection of the Anglo-American value system or race.
white Americans believed in the superiority of the white race and depicted this superiority on the silver screen. Every other race [therefore] was evaluated in relationship to the attainments of the white race and with respect to the approximation to the white race which provided the standard for emulation (Keller 32). This preconceived notion of white supremacy in cinema is evident in one of the early films we viewed during the course The Birth of a Nation. The Birth of a Nation is a controversial film directed and produced by D. W. Griffith on the 1915.
As stated by Hall, Griffiths work is a well thought out piece of propaganda for his clearly white supremacist and segregationist ideologies (Hadley-Garcia 52). The central theme of this film is an African- American/Caucasian battle between the black southerners and the white northerners during Reconstruction. Through Griffiths views, a sense of how whites perceived blacks at the time is evident. Interestingly however, the film is situated from a white southerner's standpoint, as opposed to the typical northern side. This technique leads the viewer to understand the origin and sympathize with the motivation of the Ku Klux Klan. According to Griffith, whites were overwhelmed with black uprising and enfranchisement after emancipation, and [therefore] a force was needed to suppress and uphold societal standards (Road 52).
When the black southerners were given equality during the radical Reconstruction it was deemed extreme and dangerous by Griffith, which generated a sense of pity for the white northerners. This film makes it extremely clear that Griffith is an avid proponent of racism and used film as a medium to justify the KKK while causing hysteria among the easing racial tension of America in the mid 1910 s. By manipulating viewers using slues of the subliminal messages and stretches and distortions of the truth, Griffith attempts to instill his racist mentality and notion of white supremacy in the viewer (Hadley-Garcia 54). At issue is not just whether Latin Americans and Latina women are present on the screen, for the first portion of this paper demonstrates that Latin Americans can get into Hollywood. The present issue is recognizing Latin Americans as an important, significant, and influential population within the United States. As the nations Latino population continues to grow, the entertainment industry is starting to open its arms and embrace an audience that has rarely seen it reflected in Hollywood films.
The reason for the change: Latino buying power more than doubled in the past decade to an estimated $ 450 billion (San Francisco Chronicle). With the Latino population now at 35. 5 million and growing faster than any other ethnic group, their box office clout will only increase (Chronicle). Were buying houses and clothes and cars and movie tickets, said Angelo Figueroa, managing editor of People an Espanola, the Spanish version of People magazine. According to the Motion Picture Association of America, Latinos bought 11 percent of the movie tickets sold nationally in 1998. Latinos have been going to movies for years, but in the last 15 - 20 years there have been very few films specific to that culture, said Mark Gill of Miramax L. A. , the West Coast branch of the Disney-owned studio.
Cheech Marin, the San Francisco-based actor who began his career satirizing cultural stereotypes has been part of the change (Chronicle). Marin appeared in the last years hit film Spy Kids, which he and others site as a breakthrough movie: It had a Latino director (Robert Rodriquez) and cast that portrayed a Latin American family with out having to say so (Chronicle). They just were, Marin said. Latinos, he adds, have been the invisible giants in our midst.
Miramax's Gill comments on the success of Spy Kids, which was put out by his studios Dimensions imprint, is helping set in motion what he calls a new wave of Latino films (Chronicle). It will take a couple of these films becoming big hits, then the greed and envy take over, and everybody will jump on the band wagon, Gill said. You can see it coming. Its a couple of years away before it really explodes. This winter, Miramax will release two English-language films featuring well-known Latino actors: Pinero, about the outlaw New York Puerto Rican playwright and poet Miguel Pinero, played by Benjamin Bratt, and Frida, starring Salma Hayek as the famed Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (Chronicle). These films are part of our effort to reach out to an underserved audience, said Gill, who thinks these movies also should appeal to a general audience (Chronicle).
Were making more movies that reflect the Latino experience, with Latino actors and Latino themes. Throughout American film history Anglo's have abused the negative and dehumanizing representations, stereotypes, depictions and portrayals of Latin Americans and ethnic minorities as a corrupting weapon to reinforce power. White Hollywood has wrongly represented and defined Latin American history, culture and people. In doing so, they have embedded an inferiority complex of not only Latin Americans, but also every other ethnic minority. As Latin Americans become involved with production, behind and in front of the camera, this power is slowly eroding. As Latin American influence is revealed to the public each work will breakthrough the walls of the dominant culture and be replaced with positive, pro-Latino mentality.
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Research essay sample on Birth Of A Nation Latin Americans
