Hispanic culture in America

Hispanic Culture in America

The Bronze Screen" (2002), "Mi Familia" (1995), and "Real Women Have Curves" all look at Hispanic culture in America. How do these films address culture, identity and assimilation? How important are images in the media in portraying not only minorities but also gender images?

The Bronze Screen" (2002) is a documentary that depicts the often frustrating attempts of Latinos to show 'their' culture to supposedly mainstream America. Despite the fact that America's Latino population is growing, the representation of Latinos in film has been dominated until recently by white stereotypes, from early images of "Zorro" to contemporary urban gang movies. The documentary uses archival footage to examine stereotypes such as the lazy Mexican, the 'Greaser,' the Latin Lover and the Dark Lady, and shows how they came to define Latino identity in the media as hyper-sexualized. Latinos embodied the physical pleasures of the body and romance rather than hard work and other, more 'American' values. Latinos were portrayed as being motivated by violence and lust, not intelligence and drive. Latino culture was seen as anathema to American identity, thus to become a respected American, a Latino must assimilate and cast off his or her Hispanic heritage, or remain forever an outsider.

Only in the last fifteen years or so have films like "Mi Familia" (1995) treated the Hispanic experience with respect and dignity. The strength of a film like "Mi Familia" is that because of its sweeping breadth, it shows that Latinos can have many identities, not just one, and also pays respect and dignity to the uniqueness of the Hispanic-American experience. The film shows horrific scenes, like the historical attempt during the 1930s by the American government to drive Mexican-American citizens out of the nation by rounding them up and sending them across the border, as well as images of hope, as families realize their dreams of gaining an inroad into the American middle class.

In the film, there are scenes of violence, such as when the first generation of Jose and Maria have their wedding disrupted by gangs, but these scenes do not seem stereotypical, because they are also paired with scenes like when one of their daughters, Toni, becomes a nun and urges her brother to marry a woman who is about to be deported back to El Salvador. This shows the sense of unity and connection that has developed amongst Latinos all over, because of the prejudices that Latinos have overcome within America, as people from El Salvador and Mexico have been grouped under the same identity category of 'Latino.' The film suggests that assimilation does come at some cost, though, like to the lawyer Memo, who marries an Anglo woman and must play down his Mexican heritage to fit in with his in-laws. But overall the movie suggests that Latino participation in the American dream is both comparable to that of other ethnic groups. Living as a Mexican-American is possible, and the second generation does not have to entirely sacrifice family and heritage to become a part of the American mosaic, contrary to what was suggested in earlier Hollywood images, chronicled in "The Bronze Screen."