The supposedly more upwardly mobile

While reading Arlene Davila's book one of the things that she briefly mentions, and that I was curious to hear more about is the stereotype of the upwardly mobile Cuban. I had never heard of this stereotype before I guess I am wondering what are its origins. As we all know stereotypes are often derived from truth that represents a few individuals. So when my friend was interviewed she mentioned that she thought there were differences among Latino groups in terms of who is more upwardly mobile and more motivated to succeed. The only reason that comes to mind from such opinions is what Davila mentions when the U.S. first began to have higher amounts of immigrants from Cuba, they were mainly middle-class citizens and were used to such status. Perhaps in this sense they may not have been much different from the U.S middle-class and this facilitated their integration into U.S. society. Needless to say that the key to success here in the U.S. is assimilation. Another reason that also has to do with assimilation is that approximately 81 percent of Cubans residing withing the United States identify themselves as white. I am not arguing against this because there are certainly a large number of Latinos that identify as white and technically there are Latinos who come from white European backgrounds or something similar. But this mostly likely plays a large role in their assimilation.

M&M's Commercial

When thinking back on this commercial I do think that there are certain aspects that can be considered cultural more than they are stereotypical. Most likely this commercial would have been produced by the Mars Company in Mexico and what to them is seen as culture we may interpret as stereotypes. A part of me knew that the image of Mexico that was represented was more than just the stereotypical Mexico, but for some reason I felt compelled to view it as a representation of stereotypes. As a society we have always been lectured that stereotypes are not true and that they do not represent a true population of people, but at the same time there is also a culture that people share that makes them different from other groups and it is this living in difference and different cultures that creates distinctions among people. There are certain traits that become part of a culture and at times may be considered stereotypes. For example the pinata, the boat ride, and the serenade are all things that are part of the culture, they are actions and something that people that visit Mexico hope to experience. They want to experience a new culture and these are all aspects that form part of this culture, and therefore they are not so much stereotypes as much as they are aspects and form part of the culture. For us when we watch these videos I think that we are so conditioned to reject anything that might be seen as remotely stereotypical and immediately dismiss it as just another stereotype, but in this case it is more of an issue in representing culture.

Affect

As I was doing some interviews I spoke to many Latinos, and they recognize the fact that their way of being is indeed different from white cultures within the United States. They refer to their personalities as loud and vivacious at times, and it seems not to bother them because from their perspective white people are boring. The fact that they are able to admit there is a difference is quite something in contrast to the very popular views that we are all essentially the same. I agree with this as far as we are all human beings, but there are certainly many things that make us different and affect is one of them. Being different "together" as one of my previous reading stated is not necessary something that is bad. Why is it such a good thing to highlight people's likeness as a good sign when, but highlighting their differences something that is looked down upon. Of course the answer is evident, but I think that if we are to take a lot of the traits that makes us different that may help us more that the futile attempts to assimilate. There are many proven draw backs to this, assimilation has been proven to be a key component of may people's success and sometimes highlighting differences in this world do not turn out for the best, but maybe at some point in the future this will chance and cases were being contrary to the norm will be seen in a good light.

Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman

Yesterday, I watched the movie "Eat Drink Man Woman" by Ang Lee the film that Tortilla Soup is a remake of. After watching the film I began to wonder why they decided to make an American remake with a Mexican-American family as its main characters. There is something strange about this dynamic. A Mexican-American family who is fairly assimilated to American culture but at the same time, we see that there are certain aspects that still separate them from fully assimilation into American culture. Why is it that they decided to do a remake and specifically with a Latino family. Does this give the film and entirely different meaning from its original or is it still attempting to keep some of the messages that Ang Lee was attempting to portray in the first version of "Tortilla Soup"? In Ang Lee's version there is a concentration of images that emphasize the consumer culture of Taipei, which is where the story is set. This story appears to be more of a message of the loss taste as a symbol for the loss of cultural identity through food. Food has become one mixture that no longer taste like anything specific. This is what the dad in the first film says. Therefore, when he regains his taste, it implies that there is hope for the food and revival of taste/culture that his daughter will bring. In the American version the story and message portrayed could be read similarly, but the fact that it is a Latino family creates a lot of differences. The story becomes more about the birth of a "New Latino" fusion of food, and concentrates more on the family's racial background. This "New Latino" still falls within the Latino category and although it may attempt to assimilate more of its food style with that of American food it is still considered a separate entity.

The 70's

I was wondering more about Latinos in the entertainment industry and was upset that I could not find more. I actually had a very hard time thinking of some, but one that recently came to mind is Wilmer Valderrama. He evidently plays a Latino character on "That 70's Show," one of the ongoing mysteries in the show is Fez' lack of a background. All that is known of him is that he is of some sort of Spanish/Latin background which is alluded to in many instances and reinforced by his accent. It makes me wonder why they purposely chose to leave out his exact background. Is it perhaps because regardless of this his affect and his character is still representative of most of the Latino population, and by leaving specifics there is no real distinction between all the countries that he could have come from. I have talked to some people, and even though as Latinos we are separate in our countries of origin people think that our ways of acting and modes of affect are the same. From an outside perspective affect amongst Latinos seems to be the same. I guess its that fact that we know our own group so well we are able to distinguish it from others, but surely there must be some other factors. These could be like the ones that I have cited above, that depict Latinos as a whole when it comes to our character and our way of being.

Latino Sterotypes within Latino Comedy

I was watching a video that does a parody of three hundred the movie with Mexicans crossing the American border. It was a bit upsetting, but then my friend told me that it was produced by a Latino Comedy group and that this was probably the reason that it was not taken off youtube for racism. This video has had 4 million views already. But this begs the question of whether material such as this truly changes in the hands of people that are also part of the group that is being stereotyped. Does the fact that Latinos are the ones that produced and created this video make it any less wrong? These kinds of representations, do not take the immigration issue very seriously and they portray the wrong image. I get the fact that it is not supposed to be taken seriously, but in watching the video itself there must still be something that one sees as representative of Latinos in order to entertain. Just because something does not give the entire picture and is an exaggeration, once this representation is released to the public, the reception is different for everyone that watches it. Even though, they may know that this is an exaggeration, in seeing this there may be certain aspects that do influence them because, as we said in class, this audience reception is something that cannot be entirely controlled. In terms of the right that other Latinos have to make and spread this material I still and not sure if they should, because there is always the danger that these types of representations may only enhance false stereotypes.

Jennifer Lopez' Body

By incorporating the the Rey Chow's theories into analyzing the way that Jennifer Lopez' body was advertised we attain a view of the difficult situation she found herself in because of the image that she was trying to sell of herself, that also ended up hurting her as well. In the readings it is mentioned how her butt became the object of many jokes, but before this she was attempting to sell the image of a woman with a large butt that could use it to become successful. It worked and she gained a lot of recognition because of how open she was about talking about her curves and her body, but in the end that is all that people thought of her as. They automatically associated Jennifer Lopez with a large rear-end, and I do not think that this was the image of herself that she was trying to cultivate. All though it is true as Chow mentions that some of these association may indeed help use become visible, for Jennifer Lopez it seems that it was the wrong kind of visibility. She became like the caged animal that Chow uses as a metaphor to refer to people that are trapped by certain ethnic identities that are associated with them. In the case of Jennifer Lopez she trapped her self into an image that for the U.S. was not taken very seriously and she had to find a way to rid herself of it and become more of the American ideal in order to achieve success. She had to rid herself of this identity that she forged for herself because the associations that came with it eventually became a type of cage for her, and people could not see past her butt to the many other things, that as a person she had to offer.