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Narcos and the Promotion of an U.S. (Informal) Cultural Empire Based on Processes of Stereotyping and Comparison

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Narcos and the Promotion of an U.S. (Informal) Cultural Empire Based on Processes of Stereotyping and Comparison FORUM FOR INTER-AMERICAN RESEARCH (FIAR) VOL. 12.1 (JUN. 2019) 43-55 ISSN: 1867-1519 © forum for inter-american research Narcos and the Promotion of an U.S. (Informal) Cultural Empire Based on Processes of Stereotyping and Comparison CLAUDIA HACHENBERGER (FAU ERLANGEN-NÜRNBERG) Abstract According to postcolonial critic Edward Said, European imperialism was not only based on arms; it was also based on forms of knowledge affiliated with domination and on a vocabulary that constructed and promoted the inferior Other. Contemporary practices of imperialism may be more subtle but are no less powerful. After the end of traditional and formal European colonization, the United States is still exerting influence on other countries, particularly Latin American countries, either in a formal, political, and interventional way, or, as I propose, in an informal way that privileges cultural ideological strategies and knowledge production. By reformulating and readapting Said’s concept of Orientalism, my paper suggests that the concept of Latinism illuminates the workings of an imperialist gaze in representations of Latinos in the media. By its promotion, the U.S. informal cultural empire introduces and installs negative portrayals of Latinos as the perceived ethnic Other. This presentation of stereotypes can influence the audience’s view on Latinos and thus poses an undesirable factor obstructing constructive tendencies in a globalized world, an argument I elaborate on by focusing on the first two seasons of the Netflix exclusive series Narcos. The series’ presentation of stereotypes is accomplished by different practices of comparing on the visual, verbal, and structural/ productional levels. By exploring the construction of Latino Otherness on these three levels, I assert that cinematic stereotypes are used to depict the Latino Other in an inferior way in the majority of the cases, simultaneously representing the U.S.-American characters and culture as superior. Keywords: US Informal Imperialism, Latino Otherness, Latinism, Stereotyping, Narcos (Netflix) 1. Introduction I take evaluative stereotyping as unfavorable comparisons in which one group always fares In his well-known publication Orientalism, better than the other. In a colonial or imperialist postcolonial critic Edward Said describes the context, the practices of comparing performed various disciplines, institutions, mentalities, and by European agents were characterized by discourses by which Europeans experienced the implicit claims of dominance and power over Near and Middle East, referred to as ‘the Orient,’ the perceived ethnic Other. They predominantly in the course of the consolidation of European focused on differences between cultural groups. colonies in the 19th century. By shifting the study Relying on Edward Said’s definition of of colonialism “towards its discursive operations, imperialism as “the practice, the theory, and the showing the intimate connection between attitudes of a dominating metropolitan centre language and forms of knowledge developed for ruling a distant territory” (Culture & Imperialism the study of cultures and the history of colonialism 8), my article will investigate how contemporary and imperialism” (Young, Colonial Desire 159), practices of imperialism that are still put into [1] Said’s study established that European practice after the end of traditional and formal imperialism was not only based on arms, but also colonization by several European nations on forms of knowledge affiliated with domination may be more subtle but are no less powerful. and on the vocabulary with which the Oriental Today it is the United States that is exerting Other was described in contrast to the European influence on other countries, particularly Latin citizen (Culture & Imperialism 8). In this essay, American countries, [2] either in a political, 44 C. HACHENBERGER: NARCOS AND THE PROMOTION OF AN U.S. interventionalist, and thus more formal way, or in is depicted from a U.S. perspective. The series’ a cultural, ideological, and hence more informal presentation of stereotypes is accomplished by way. As Michael Doyle (qtd. in Said, Culture & different practices of comparing on the visual, Imperialism 8) specifies, verbal, and structural/productional levels. [e]mpire is a relationship, informal or formal, in which one state controls the 2. From Orientalism to Latinism and on the effective political sovereignty of another U.S. Cultural Informal Empire political society. It can be achieved by force, by political collaboration, by Introducing his concept of Orientalism, economic, social, or cultural dependence. Edward Said radically questions the systems of Imperialism is simply the process or policy values supported by former colonizing nations of establishing or maintaining an empire. and offers a crucial critique of Eurocentrism (Lenz 317) by examining dominating European Postcolonial and hemispheric studies strive discourses of knowledge concerned with the to move beyond the inflexible black and white construction of the Oriental Other (Culler 145). portrayals of the history of colonization by The Orient is seen from a twofold perspective. focusing on dynamic shifts, the richness of the On the one hand, it is constructed as a European coexistence between, and the hybridity of the utopia and invention which, since antiquity, has various cultures on the American continent. provoked a certain fascination as a “place of However, entrenched stereotyping processes romance, exotic beings, haunting memories in cultural relations are still put into practice and landscapes, [and] remarkable experiences” regularly, also through practices of comparing. (Said, Orientalism 1). On the other hand, in The hegemonic dominance and cultural spite of its great history and its lure of exoticism, leadership of one social group or nation over the Orient (considered from a European another, as well as the silent consent and perspective) has remained static and did not acceptance of that superiority and influence by develop, in contrast to European culture, which the inferior group is no longer established by has maintained a certain dynamism and has governmental institutions but by the mass media. progressed as part of its historical development In order to account for the imperialist gaze on work (Prashad 174). in representations of Latinos [3] in the media, I The construction of alterity is easily propose to reformulate and readapt Edward accomplished by the attribution of certain values Said’s abovementioned concept of Orientalism to both the Orient and the Occident (Prashad in terms of ‘Latinism’. [4] By promoting certain 175). The relationship between the East and the television and Netflix series, the U.S. informal West is a relationship of power establishing a cultural empire introduces and installs the pattern of hierarchy in which the West adopts a Latinos portrayed as the perceived ethnic Other. dominant position (Said, Orientalism 5; Prashad My article analyzes constructions of Otherness 175). The conceived difference between the particularly in the Netflix series Narcos. Other familiar, productive, and dynamic compared publications on Narcos either focus primarily on and contrasted to the strange, lazy, and static the opening sequence of the series, discovering was used as justification for imperialism and principles of its creation and providing a colonialism because if “the Orient was primitive microanalysis of the ‘collage technique’ from and barbaric, then it was up to the enlightened a productional point of view, or investigate West to civilize and tame it, and at the same visualities of Latin America and historical events time rescue and preserve the ancient knowledge in Colombia in the series, trying to understand the and wisdom held by the great traditions of complex relationships between crime, economy, the East” (Wise 23). As applied ideology, politics, and corruption by viewing Narcos from Orientalism powerfully reinforces the dichotomy a visual studies perspective. In contrast, I will and is supported by institutions, scholarship, focus on Latino Otherness and illustrate how it and different styles of representation (Said, FORUM FOR INTER-AMERICAN RESEARCH VOL. 12.1 (JUN. 2019) 43-55 45 Orientalism 2). uncovered (Ashcroft et al. 21). However, as there As Stuart Hall (234ff.) explains, difference is are various categories of difference, including fundamental for the production of meaning, the race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, and establishment of symbolic order, the construction class, an intersection of categories of difference of individual and collective identities, and, may lead to the collective marginalization of a especially important in this context, social people. inclusion and exclusion. The perceived The representational practice of comparison difference between two cultures is shown by the employed to construct and reinforce notions installation of binary oppositions, which do not of difference is called stereotyping. Ramírez only construct an unjust hierarchy “swallowing Berg (13) comments on the difficulty of finding up all distinctions in their rather rigid two-part a single definition of the concept ‘stereotype.’ structure” (Hall 235), but also exist to confirm Still, most scholars would define it as such: “A the dominance of one group. According to Said widely held but fixed and oversimplified image (Orientalism 227), the generalizations which or idea of a particular type of person or thing” are produced by dichotomizing processes
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