Tamesis an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Chapter Title: The Latino Film Experience in History: A Dialogue Among Texts and Collaborators Chapter Author(s): DARIÉN J. DAVIS Book Title: A Companion to US Latino Literatures Book Editor(s): Carlota Caulfield and Darién J. Davis Published by: Boydell & Brewer; Tamesis an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt9qdmx2.17 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Boydell & Brewer and Tamesis an imprint of Boydell & Brewer are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to A Companion to US Latino Literatures This content downloaded from 150.210.226.99 on Sun, 27 Dec 2020 18:34:58 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 12 The Latino Film Experience in History: A Dialogue Among Texts and Collaborators DARIÉN J. DAVIS The Latino Film Experience in History: A Dialogue The complexity of the Latino experience has yet to be adequately explored in film. As in Latino literary texts, most themes and characters in Latino films have emerged from the sensibilities of a community’s insertion into the North American reality. From these national experiences, filmmakers have been able to explore issues relevant to the broadly constructed ‘Latino’ community. As film production relies on a collaborative series of complex and symbiotic rela- tionships between scriptwriters, editors, and directors, the cultural and ethnic backgrounds of those who have contributed to the Latino image in film in the United States have shifted over time. Film’s dual nature as ‘mass media’ and ‘cultural text’, which emerges out of what Theodor Adorno has called the culture industries, underscores its political and social relevance in the construc- tion of Latino realities.1 Introduction At the beginning of the twentieth century, US films quickly emerged as one of the most important cultural products in influencing the way that North Ameri- cans viewed themselves and how they viewed others.2 Hollywood, the undis- puted center of North American film production since the post-World War I era and for most of the twentieth century, not only controlled what films were produced but where and how they were distributed and exhibited. As the pre- eminent actor in the film culture industry, Hollywood films often reflected North American social values and also played a role in shaping them. Moreover, over the last century, Hollywood production has evolved as it engages with new and emerging social realities, changing ethics, and shifting aesthetic values. In its representation and construction of minority communities, Hollywood followed and perpetuated widely practiced social conventions from segregation 1 Theodor Adorno, The Culture Industry (London: Routledge, 1991). 2 Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Social History of American Film (New York: Random House, 1975). This content downloaded from 150.210.226.99 on Sun, 27 Dec 2020 18:34:58 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms THE LATINO FILM EXPERIENCE IN HISTORY: A DIALOGUE 209 to stereotyping and exploitation of gender roles, violence, and sexuality. But Hollywood also documented early attitudes towards Jews, working classes, and the social change from the 1950s’ civil rights movement, the emergence of Chicano consciousness in the 1960s, and immigrant rights in the 1970s and 1980s. These social movements, which called for individual rights and represen- tation, also influenced the emergence of an independent film industry beyond the traditional Hollywood nucleus. Advances in technology since the 1970s and the wider distribution of international films have also influenced the ethical and aesthetic forms of representation in the US. Many of the early stereotypes remain etched in North American collective consciousness despite the height- ened awareness of the importance of Latinos to the North American mainstream culture. Images that cast Latinos as ‘outsiders’ also divide Latinos between ‘those who see themselves as part of the American mainstream’ and ‘those who live on the margins’. Thus, cinematic stereotypes of Latinos, like symbols and labels elsewhere, often provide the dominant mainstream white culture in the US with a sense of security of itself and perpetuate a static vision of American- ness. Ironically, contemporary Latino filmmakers often feel obliged to dialogue with (and in some instances claim), utilize or manipulate these early images as they create new narratives, impressions, and images. ‘Latino films’, which emerge from the Latino community in the US, are a relatively new phenomenon, and a result of Latino empowerment and shifting paradigms of representation in the American cultural industry. The Latino pres- ence in North American films, on the other hand, dates back to the early twen- tieth century. This representation, like that of other ethnic films, must be understood in its proper historical context. Although non-Latino directors and producers often constructed their Latino mise en scène based on stereotypical and one-dimensional representations of Latinidad, the talent of early Latino actors within the industry, nonetheless, paved the way for more nuanced repre- sentations later on. This chapter explores the changes and development of filmic representation of the Latino experience from the 1910s to the present day by focusing on three major themes: the early construction of Latinidad, 1910– 1950; civil rights and social dramas, 1950–1990; and the celebration of Latino literature, culture and icons, 1980s–present. Latino feature films, like film production in general, fall under a variety of genres including fictional dramas, historical epics, shorts, comedies, biopics, and docudramas made for Hollywood studios, for film festivals and for inde- pendent companies or television. Documentaries have played a critical role in bringing knowledge and insight of Latino communities despite the fact that distribution of documentaries lags far behind mainstream feature films and thus they are not as widely seen outside university circles and other educational forums. Given the variety and number of films, it is useful to examine the devel- opment of Latino films historically. This content downloaded from 150.210.226.99 on Sun, 27 Dec 2020 18:34:58 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 210 DARIÉN J. DAVIS The early construction of Latinidad in the United States, 1910–1950 In the early years, Hollywood barred many minorities from depicting them- selves, even if the roles were not complimentary. Those films that featured Latin American actors and actresses tended to oversimplify and stereotype people from Latin America and the region as a whole. Ironically, many national Latin American film industries and many Latin American producers and directors followed similar practices in their homelands when it came to their indigenous and black populations.3 The film industry wants to make a profit and thus produces feature films starring a given actor or actress who will help bolster its returns. In many cases, even when foreign peoples are present, they serve as an exotic backdrop to the central plot, as Ella Shohat has so ably illustrated in her essay on feminism and empire.4 When Hollywood turned its camera towards the Latino population in the US, its creations were no less stereotypical, although Hollywood did not recognize a Latino community in the US per se but rather used terms such as ‘Latin’ and ‘Latin American’ interchangeably. This strategy located Latin-ness in a foreign geographical territory despite the fact that by the 1920s many Americans of Mexican descent had lived in the US for generations. Mexico’s loss of its south- western territories in the Mexican-American war of 1846–1848 and the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo meant that thousands of individuals who claimed Mexican identities would be given the option of becoming American citizens and creating the first major populations of Latin American background. Other Latin Americans, particularly Cubans and Puerto Ricans displaced by the 1898 Cuban-Spanish-American war, joined them.5 One cannot forget the anti- Hispanic and anti-Catholic sentiments against the Spaniards that swept the US at the end of the nineteenth century. These attitudes surely influenced the images of the charming but inept or anachronistic Latins. Hollywood filmmakers relied first on actors and images from Mediterranean Europe and then from white Latin Americans, mostly from Mexico and Brazil, to construct non-threatening one-dimensional images of Latins who were distinct from ‘Americans’ but who would, nonetheless, be easily recognized. From the 1920s to the 1950s, US filmmakers forged on-screen Latin identities based on the political and economic relationships of the US to its backyard, a term that reflected how many white North Americans viewed the entire region 3 Emilo Fernández, María Candelaría. Mexico, 1942. Consider the Hollywood feature films in which top actors and entertainers played exotic roles (Elvis Presley in Harum Scarum or the many films on Cleopatra played by white American stars). A good article on this phenomenon is Ella Sohat’s ‘Gender and Culture of Empire: Towards a Feminist Ethnography of the Cinema’, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 13:1–3 (1999), 45–85. 4 See any of the Indiana Jones films: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), or Romancing the Stone (1984), for example. Shohat, ‘Gender and the Culture of Empire. 5 Today there are more people who identify themselves as Puerto Ricans living on the mainland than on the island of Puerto Rico.