Contexts ()understanding people in their social worldsHom.docx

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more oscars diversity won’t solve hollywood’s whiteness
problem
by Rachel King | February 25, 2016
(https://flic.kr/p/8NyHL6)
Photo via Craig Piersma, Flickr CC.
For the second year in a row, the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences released a
disappointing list of Oscar nominees that is, like its members,
overwhelmingly White,
heterosexual, and male. As bad as that is, the biggest problem
with #OscarsSoWhite isn’t
just that neither Ryan Coogler nor Will Smith will be taking
home a statue on February 28 .
It’s that Hollywood remains inside a bubble of privilege, and
that precious little emanating
from it reflects what’s actually happening in this country. For
many Americans, everyday

existence has taken on a greyish, dystopian cast; nearly a
decade after the collapse of the
economy, we’re still living with depressed wages and lost jobs
and homes, as well as
rampant gun violence, and more mental illness
(http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/10/why-more-
americans-suffer-from-
mental-disorders-than-anyone-else/246035/#slide3) than just
about any other country in the
world. And driven by high levels of substance abuse and
suicide, mortality is on the rise for
young (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/science/drug-
overdoses-propel-rise-in-
mortality-rates-of-young-whites.html) and middle-aged
(http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/health/death-rates-rising-
for-middle-aged-white-
americans-study-finds.html?_r=0) Whites.
th
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http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/10/why-more-
americans-suffer-from-mental-disorders-than-anyone-
else/246035/#slide3
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/science/drug-overdoses-
propel-rise-in-mortality-rates-of-young-whites.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/health/death-rates-rising-
for-middle-aged-white-americans-study-finds.html?_r=0
The Depression did call forth escapist fare, but it also elicited a
great deal of
biting social critique. Back then, Hollywood made big-budget
movies with
major stars that were designed to appeal to a nation of people
who, like
today, were both terrified and angry. But for all their rabble-
rousing, the
studios of that era weren’t brave.
And yet, of the eight Best Picture nominees, only one (the
surprise indie nominee Room) is a
contemporary domestic drama. All the rest are historical or
speculative, taking place
anywhere from a decade to a century in the past or off in some
distant future. In fact, the
most overtly socially conscious of the Best Picture nominees
may be the film about the
financial crisis of a decade ago, The Big Short. A merciless
depiction of the greed that

flourished during the Bush years, it’s the true story of a bunch
of White guys with enough
insider knowledge to exploit the system and get stinking rich.
All of which is to say that
Hollywood hasn’t ignored the criminality of the financial
services industry or failed to
castigate the malefactors, the way, say, Washington has; in
addition to The Big Short, we’ve
seen Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Margin Call, and the
Wolf of Wall Street. Still, it’s
telling that the producers bankrolling films keep returning to
the rarefied world of finance,
while the ordinary people who lost their livelihoods during the
collapse are barely
acknowledged by Hollywood.
You could say that that’s just what moviegoers in hard times
don’t want to hear about: their
own problems. It’s a truism that the role of mainstream movies
is to provide mindless
entertainment and escapism for the masses
(http://www.salon.com/2012/04/22/no_sympathy_for_the_creati
ve_class/). Recently, A.O.
Scott, in an otherwise insightful Oscar roundup

(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/movies/the-year-the-
studios-get-it-right.html)
repeated that cliché, saying, “It may be that grim times call
forth hopeful stories. That was
true in the ’30s, for sure.”
Except that wasn’t true in the ‘30s. The Depression did call
forth escapist fare but it also
elicited a great deal of biting social critique. Back then,
Hollywood made big-budget movies
with major stars that were designed to appeal to a nation of
people who, like today, were
both terrified and angry. For example, Black Fury examined the
exploitation of coal miners,
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/22/no_sympathy_for_the_creativ
e_class/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/movies/the-year-the-
studios-get-it-right.html
while I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang and Hell’s Highway
were unsparing in their critique
of prison labor. Heroes for Sale was about substance abuse and
unemployment among
veterans, Wild Boys of the Road looked at teen homelessness,
and Make Way for Tomorrow

—made right around the time Social Security was enacted—
captured the plight of elderly
people falling into poverty during the Depression. Some films
offered radical solutions to the
nation’s problems: Gabriel Over the White House attempted to
show how a wise, benevolent
dictator could solve the country’s problems (since the
ineffectual president Herbert Hoover
had failed so spectacularly), while The President Vanishes
advocated pacifism and anti-
corporatism. Cabin in the Cotton implied that Southern
sharecroppers were well within their
rights in burning down wealthy landowners’ houses. (According
to film historian Thomas
Doherty, the Soviet Communist leadership regarded Cabin,
starring Bette Davis, as such a
potent indictment of capitalism that in 1934 they made it the
first American talkie green-
lighted for screening in the U.S.S.R.)
For all their rabble-rousing, it should be noted that the studios
of that time weren’t brave.
For example, Cabin in the Cotton’s sharecroppers are all White;
the disenfranchisement of
Southern Blacks is entirely absent from the film. Showing the

full scope of Jim Crow,
however, would have alienated much of the ticket-buying public
below the Mason-Dixon
line, so Hollywood took the path of least resistance and biggest
profits. This cowardice
proves my point—the cravenness of not tackling racism in a
film about Southern poverty
shows that filmmakers weren’t being heroic when they
addressed social problems such as
poverty and labor strife—they were being populist and catering
to mass tastes.
When I look at how socially conscious 1930s Hollywood movies
were relative to today, I can’t
help but think of how the crass moguls of 1930s Hollywood
were self-made men—
immigrants even—who were capable of conceiving that ordinary
people might want
entertainment that challenged the status quo. The power brokers
of today’s Hollywood, with
their comfortable backgrounds and Ivy League degrees, seem to
have much more limited
imaginations. After all, the system has always worked just fine
for most of them.
And so they bankroll bread and circuses for the masses in the

form of sci-fi blockbusters.
But are these movies as anodyne as they might appear? Perhaps
not all of them. Mad Max:
Fury Road shows us a landscape devastated by climate change,
and a bleak world in which
the haves brutally oppress the have-nots. It’s especially a
nightmare for women as this world
In Tangerine, non-White, transgender newcomers Kiki
Rodriguez and Mya
Taylor are as spunky and sympathetic as their Depression-era
counterparts,
without the racial stereotypes of the 1930s. The film feels raw,
surprising, and
authentic.
sanctions rape and treats nubile females as baby incubators.
Women are its greatest victims
—and, at the end, the real victors. Similarly, the Hunger Games
touches on problems
plaguing poor communities: the pressure to send adolescents off
to risk their lives in
meaningless battles, the spectacle of young people killing each
other while the state refuses
to step in and help, the presence of the police as a paramilitary
force constantly at the ready

to put down the slightest sign of protest or insurrection.
Still, we’d probably be better off if American cinema explored
these issues in more than just
oblique, metaphorical ways. To their credit, American indie
films do try to offer viewers
realism, but there are reasons they tend to focus on well-
educated, professional types. After
all, these are the people (like, say, the newspaper reporters in
Spotlight) that similarly well-
educated indie filmmakers know best.
While the cost of film school isn’t going to go down any time
soon, the increasing
affordability of filmmaking technology does provide some hope.
It’s been widely reported
that director Sean Baker made his film Tangerine on the cheap
(http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/28/7925023/sundance-film-
festival-2015-tangerine-
iphone-5s) using iPhones. The casting of the film was just as
groundbreaking: While
mainstream movies rely on the box office track records of their
stars to attract investors,
Baker was able to cast two non-White transgender actresses in
their first movie roles. Both

Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor are excellent as a pair of L.A.
prostitutes, as spunky and
sympathetic as their Depression-era counterparts. (Thankfully
the racial stereotypes of the
1930s have been jettisoned.) The ability to keep filming costs
low allowed Baker to cast the
actors he wanted. The result: memorable performances by two
new performers, as well as a
film that felt very raw, surprising, and authentic. (Both Taylor
and Rodriguez, whom Baker
met at a community LGBTQ center, didn’t just star in the
movie; they consulted on the
script.)
http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/28/7925023/sundance-film-
festival-2015-tangerine-iphone-5s
To be fair to the indie scene, there have been other fine
independent dramas from the last
decade that avoid preciousness and show Americans living in
poverty or on the edge of
financial disaster: Love Is Strange, Fruitvale Station, Frozen
River, Winter’s Bone, and Wendy
and Lucy. (Not coincidentally, there’s a good deal of diversity
in these films on both sides of

the camera.) One can only hope that the cost of movie making
continues to drop so that the
playing field can be further leveled and American movies
revitalized from below. Then we
might not care so much about Hollywood—and the awards it
loves to give itself.
Rachel King is the Media Librarian at Long Island University-
Brooklyn. A former journalist,
she has written for for Salon, Newsday, Time Out New York,
and Art & Antiques.
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VIVENCIAS: Reports from the field
MOCKING MEXICANS FOR PROFIT
Bernadette Marie Calafell
Syracuse University, NY
I had arrived in Syracuse, New York, for my first academic job
by way
of Carrboro, North Carolina, although I am originally from
Phoenix, Arizona. As a Chicana living in the Southwest for the
majority
of my life in Mexican and Chicano/a communities, I had a
strong sense
of self and pride because of the rich history of the land for
Mexican
peoples. This feeling was strengthened in North Carolina by the
growing
Latino/a population and the awareness that the Latino/a
presence could
no longer be ignored in the United States. I still had hope that
Latino/a representations would be allowed more complexity
even though
Latino/as had become commodified more than ever via the Latin
explosion. Moving to Syracuse, I welcomed the possibility of
meeting other
Latina/os such as Puerto Ricans or Dominicans, and getting to
understand
life on the East coast. However, my sense of optimism for my
future in
Syracuse was shaken in April 2004 when I heard an

advertisement on a local
radio station for a company called Tuxedo Junction. In the
advertisement, a
thickly accented Mexican man slurring his speech shares how
willing he
would be to trade in his car, his tortillas, and maybe even his
Maria for a
tuxedo from Tuxedo Junction as faux Mexican music played in
the
background.
After hearing the advertisement, I was flushed, I was
embarrassed, and I
was humiliated. Here I was, a young Chicana professor, in a
new community
with students who most likely had no real frame of reference for
Mexicans
and Chicano/as other than the mediated representations they
received daily.
How would this advertisement not only affect the way they
viewed me but
all other Latino/as in Central New York? Furthermore, I was not
quite sure
what the implicit connection was between Mexicans and
tuxedos. I was
angry. All I could hear over and over again were the words of
Chicana poet
Michele Serros (1993, 30), ‘‘This is my culture, my
entertainment, nothing to
laugh over, this is me.’’
Latino Studies 2006, 4, (162–165) !c 2006 Palgrave Macmillan
Ltd 1476-3435/06 $30.00
www.palgrave-journals.com/lst

Although I was not naı̈ ve enough to believe that the
misrepresentation and
stereotyping of Latino/as in the media and advertising no longer
occurred – after
all, this was a subject I frequently taught in my classes and
conducted research
on – I could not believe it would come this close to home or
make me feel so
vulnerable. Prior to this incident, I had always been looking for
examples that
would jar my relatively complacent and privileged students in
my Rhetoric of
Ethnicity course into some understanding of the materiality of
ideology in their
everyday lives – and here it was smack dead in my face. How
ironic that this
incident would erupt on the very last day of class nicely tying
together
everything we had learned. All semester long, I had taught my
students about
the responsibility we have to talk back, as cultural critic bell
hooks (1989)
would say. We had spent a great deal of time examining the
history and politics
of representations of Latino/as in the United States and now I
was left with the
question of what to do.
I began researching Tuxedo Junction and found that they had
stores located in
Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York, with corporate
headquarters in
Buffalo. I drafted letters to the radio station as well as Tuxedo
Junction and
circulated a petition asking for the removal of the commercial. I

also sent the
information to the Latino/a listserv on my campus in order to
begin a discussion
of the issue, to find a solution, and to make our presence known
in the
community. However, I felt I could not sit on the issue much
longer because
each time the advertisement played I was horrified and
embarrassed by its
blatant racism and stereotyping. I had a nagging suspicion that
this type of
advertisement would never have seen the light of day in a city
like Phoenix with
a strong Latino/a population, yet here, in my relatively new
home of Syracuse, it
played continuously.
Frustrated, I called the corporate headquarters of the company
and
spoke with the president of the company, Cal Cleveland,
explaining my
position. Mr. Cleveland, who listened patiently and was open to
my critiques,
shared that the company had not intended to offend Latino/as
and in fact
they had test marketed the ad in other parts of the country to
find it the most
popular ad they had ever devised. Furthermore, the company
employed several
Latino/as who were not offended by the advertisement. He
explained to me that
the advertisement had been meant as a throwback to the old
Cheech and Chong
skits and specifically a Cheech Marin character. Upon hearing
this, I offered that
if that were the case, then perhaps the company might consider

that the target
audience for the radio station (a primarily Hip-Hop and R&B
station) were
males between the ages of 18 and 25, who most likely had no
idea
who Cheech Marin was other than the guy on Nash Bridges. The
thick accent
and slurred speech did not necessarily trigger memories of
Cheech and
Chong as much as it triggered an affect of foreignness or
otherness, which
served to reinforce Latino/as as outsiders. The character was
clearly coded as
Mexican because of his accent and the things he referenced.
There is not a large
Mocking Mexicans For Profit
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------
Bernadette Marie Calafell 163
Mexican population in Central New York, so those Latino/as
who do live
here are most likely Puerto Rican and Dominican. If Mr.
Cleveland’s
workers enjoyed the advertisement, it was probably because
most likely
they were not being laughed at. In addition, to ignore or deny
that tensions
exist between Latino/a groups or to encourage those tensions,
specifically between Puerto Ricans and Mexicans, is simply
irresponsible and
ignorant.

After hearing my reasons for the removal of the advertisement,
Mr. Cleveland
graciously apologized and shared his own discomfort with
shows like
The Sopranos, which vilified and stereotyped Italian Americans
of which he
was one. Rather than begin another discussion about issues of
power and
difference, I thanked him for listening to me and agreeing to
pull the
advertisement.
I share this story for several reasons. First, I believe as
educators it is our
responsibility to demonstrate these sites of the materiality of
the ideologies
of racism and white supremacy to our students, especially when
they exist in
their own backyards. Too often, our students see these concepts
as abstract
or as terms that are remnants of past problems that ‘‘negative
people choose
to dwell upon.’’ Second, if we can continue to ground these
theories in
everyday experiences, institutions, and cultures in which our
students
interact, then perhaps we can force them out of their
complacency. Third, as
academics we must make the connection between the work we
do in our
journals and classrooms and the community. Cases such as this
provide an
excellent example.
In addition, one thing that was very evident from this
experience is that a lot

of people have no idea whom we are talking about when we talk
about Latino/as.
It became very clear to me as this incident progressed that a
similar
advertisement would never be geared towards African
Americans, yet somehow
Latino/as, Native Americans, and gays and lesbians continue to
be targeted and
mocked. Is this because as Latino/as we lack voice, visibility,
or power? Or is it
that the stereotype of the subservient Latino/a continues to be
indoctrinated in
ways that authorize this behavior? Although our numbers in the
United States
are increasing, have we really gained any political clout, or are
we simply fodder
for the entertainment industry? We must not be afraid to deal
with the tensions
within our own communities. For example, other than the
tensions I have
already mentioned, when this incident was used as a case study
for a local multi-
university conference session about diversity in the classroom,
several Latin
Americans who participated noted that they were not offended
by the
advertisement. However, others who were born in the United
States shared
that they were uncomfortable with the portrayal. The point is
that we must
recognize and honor the differences in our histories both inside
and outside of
the United States and not use our own ethnocentric perspectives
to discount or
deny others, feelings and experiences.

latino studies - 4:1–2
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------
164
About the author
Bernadette Marie Calafell (Ph.D. University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill) is
Assistant Professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies
and affiliate
faculty in Latino-Latin American Studies at Syracuse
University. Her research
interests are in Performance Studies, Queer Theory, and Critical
Rhetorical
Studies.
References
hooks, bell. 1989. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking
Black. Boston, MA: South
End.
Serros, Michele. 1993. Chicana Falsa and Other Stories of
Death, Identity, and Oxnard.
New York: Riverhead.
Latino Studies (2006) 4, 162–165.
doi:10.1057/palgrave.lst.8600149
Mocking Mexicans For Profit
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

---------------------------
Bernadette Marie Calafell 165
Reproducedwithpermissionofthecopyrightowner.Furtherreproduc
tionprohibitedwithoutpermission.

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