Latinx and Chicanx Film and Television

The impact of the cinema for either maintaining or overcoming Chicano stereotypes is analyzed. The process of a dominant culture's sensitization to racial/national stereotypes is described as a function of declining "need" for them (eg, in the absence of imperialist or historical imperatives); strategies in alternative representations are discussed, noting the "pitfall" options of subject-object reversal, overt individualization, & straightforward adaptation of Anglo film & narrative conventions.

With all the categories, not one addresses questions of purpose. What is, after all, the function of Chicano film? Possibly, the function and purpose of Chicano film lies in the roots, origins, and determinants of the genre's development.

Willie Varela

In the decade of the 1960s and 1970s, a trascendental social movement –which was known as the Chicano Movement for Civil Rights– took place in the United States. One of its major achievements was a cultural flowering that encompassed all the art forms and practices. Among them, one of single importance is the documentary film. This article presents an overview of the origins, first steps and current developments of the Chicana/o documentary cinema. Such films address a multitude of topics and combine highly artistic value with a definite political message. In addition, the Chicana/o documentary is an outstanding and highly informative mirror into Chicano experience. Since its inception to the present, over 100 documentaries have been produced and exhibited in the US, yet they have not been well-distributed in the Spanish-speaking world.

At first sight, we may think that the first film of the Spy Kids franchise is going to be set in a Hispanic US ethnic enclave, such as Spanish Harlem in Manhattan or East LA or perhaps Lincoln Heights in Los Angeles. Similarly, from our first impression, we could easily jump to the conclusion that Spy Kids will perpetuate the Hollywood cliche of showing a helpless Latino who must be guided by an Anglo character in order to leave the wilderness and enter "real" civilization, as happens for instance in Flying Down to Rio (1933) or Weekend in Havana (1941). Yet, the two Rodriguez films that I will analyze here challenge the viewer's expectations by "changing the rules of the spatial game." That is, they place their stories in an Anglo, urban environment. Thus, these films inventively test traditional boundaries by emphasizing the possibility of place within an Anglo urban setting as the backdrop for a traditional Latino narrative.

Yet we may question what these films did, in fact, represent: "authentic" portrayals of the Chicano experience, or Hollywood success stories featuring, incidentally, Chicano characters? Upon considering the films' diverse audiences within the United States, several answers or "readings" are revealed. In an attempt to move Chicano film criticism toward a theory of reception as integral to the production of meanings, I will examine the aesthetic discourse of film reviews, interviews and feature articles in the mainstream, alternative and Hispanic press. It is here that each film first reveals itself as a multiple text, since each publication offers a different interpretation, one that either reflects, anticipates or attempts to influence the expectations of its readership.