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Better call Saul - portrayal of hispanics on screen in general


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I'm really enjoying 'Better Call Saul' but its just stuck me how its always the same portrayal of Hispanics in film/tv....

BTW being native bilingual in spanish and english I always enjoy when they break into Spanish so its quite bad how Mark Magolis playing Hector Salamanca is so obviously NOT a native Spanish speaker.....makes me cringe how bad his accent is.......though he looks the part though. The best I have seen is Welshman Jonathan Pryce in The Two Popes - spot on Argentinian accent!

So back to the observation......it's always the same......Hispanics = Cartel-types, gangsters, tattooed criminals juxtaposed with benign, working class hardworking family members with the ubiquitous 'abuelita' (grandmother) figure.....the characterisation of hispanics is way narrower than what black people are written into scripts as these days......they have any role any white person has now...thankfully......obviously if the film/show is about a Mexican cartel then it makes sense....anyway....just an observation......

This all comes to mind due to what Marlon Brando complained about back in the day with Native American Indians and more recently with the kind of things being said at the Oscars etc etc etc

By far the most enjoyable film I have watched recently is 'Dolemite is my name' which highlighted the 'blaxploitation' era...Eddie Murphy is back to his best and I urge everyone to watch it as they show fun filmmaking as well.....

So.......are we now in a Hispanixploitation era?

 

Edited by Stephen Perera
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I didn't do the down vote .. ! .. I read the post as I really loved all the better call Saul seasons so far .. and well I have to admit as a non Hispanic it had never crossed my mind .. guilty as charged .. I guess they are the new Mastafa Wong .. baddie of the day .. what with Narcos , and spin offs and BC Saul.. that whole Cartel thing has become the buzz..  I mean yes they do exist ,but these shows are not going to show the anti Cartel heroics of other Latinos .. Narcos a bit .. but under the guidance and impetus of the Gringo,s.. it was a criticism of Mississippi Burning .. it had to be two white guys to sort it all out .. which wasn't historically accurate .. but its the movies as they say ..stereotypes abound...  I doubt anything is going to change soon.. 

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.....that's a great comment back Robin thanks......I'm just commenting as to what I see as a European....we have 'una de cal y otra de arena' in the characterisation of hispanics within the same shows/films these days.....

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This is a very touchy topic. However one I have encountered before.

I am copying this message written by a forum member 'Wooter'. He's rather masterful with words and I do believe he sums up what I and others think on this matter. Some of the message might not be entirely relevant especially the first part as we discussed the rather touchy word 'Pretentious', further down I find it a little more relevant to this conversation.

 

‘I used to get the meaning of the word "pretentious" wrong. I thought it meant something like holding oneself in a higher regard than others. 

But that's not really the correct definition as it turns out. 

It literally means what it says: "to pretend".

In other another word: dishonesty. 

When dealing with art, truth is probably one of those words that should be at the top of the list but isn't often so. 

Of course, it's hard to point it out, especially publicly. But in a way, I think that's a shame. It shows how careful one has be these days because everyone gets offended so easily. 

If my work is pretentious, I would like people to tell me. I don't believe we're always very accurate about our own motivations, we're too close to it. So that's why it's beneficial that others tell you their truth/opinion.

I find these days almost everything has some level of pretentiousness to it. But you can't really rationally explain it.. I mean, we're talking about other people's personal experiences. And to rationally invalidate them would be kind of... wrong. It's a personal experience, not facts. 

But there's a definite feeling that some stuff just screams dishonesty. It doesn't feel quite right. I don't think it's always with dishonest intention and I do think most folks do it unconsciously. They are buying into a fake reality and unwittingly contribute to its expansion. 

People describe me as a leftist and a progressive but I think the Hollywood woke culture is getting out of hand. I watch some bits of the oscars (until Roger came on stage and then turned it off) because I felt that it was no longer worth watching this bad piece of theater. It humoured me for a while but at some point it was enough. 

Honest to God, Roger's speech (and that audio guy who won) were the only two honest, real speeches. No politics, no bullshit, no pretending, just real gratitude and team spirit. That was fresh. 

The contrast with the other speeches was so stark that it was almost comical. 

All of Hollywood is playing this role "let's give the minorities a voice". But meanwhile they just keep draping themselves in all the attention. Getting richer on selling other people fake dreams. 

That's a bunch of pretentiousness right there. And a lot of the films are made by those people. I hold nothing against them, it's a free world. But it's a little bit distasteful. And it doesn't help the world one bit. It only helps themselves. 

Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes says it all. But remember: they allowed him to say it. And that's very meaningful. Reverse psychology marketing? is. 

So if you're not sure about seeing pretentiousness, well, it's really rather hard to avoid. Especially these days. 

I have a Mubi subscription so I get to see a lot of old, mostly European films. And what strikes me the most is sheer realness of it all. Of course, I'm watching a curated selection of the best, timeless works so I'm not seeing everything. Probably in those days there was a lot of pretentiousness as well. 

In the longer run, nostalgia isn't really a healthy way to cope with the dishonesty. It's not just in these times, it's from the beginning of humanity. 

Art is a lie. And it's not ill intended. But it is a lie. It is a reflection of reality. But the medium that reflects it, can't help but to attribute some of its characteristics to the reflection. So the reflections is not longer absolutely true. 

But any sincere artist understands that art is not about dazzling the senses. No, it is about a sincere effort toward exploring the truth about who we are and what it could possibly all mean, even if it's ultimately meaningless. And the artist knows that there is no answer, and there never will be. But still, something inside is burning, thrusting the artist forward into the unknown, willingly sacrificing himself every living moment. But with a smile, nonetheless. We all die. That's a fact. But how you go about doing it, that's up to you. 

Everyone is an artist, every life a masterpiece in the making. Even the ugly ones are beautiful in their own right. 

Thank you for indulging my nonsensical blabber. ’

 

I do think what you take from this is rather up to you. However I do find it relevant. 

 

 

 

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thanks for that Gabriel.....appreciate the reply......the person wrote "art is a lie, but its not ill-intended"...mostly of course but many times used as propaganda....obviously.......e.g.films like 'Top Gun' etc etc - all countries are 'guilty' of these kinds of films....not to mention the most infamous Joseph Goebbel's Nazi films.....

anecdote.....when i started to appreciate/understand TV and films etc back in the 70s as an older child etc i thought all Americans lived in massive houses and had loads of money and everyone got on great.......Happy Days e.g.....and more recently 'Father of the bride' and the like.....mostly peddling the 'land of the opportunity' mantra...... until i started to appreciate films like the magnificent 'Midnight Cowboy'.....

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20 minutes ago, Stephen Perera said:

anecdote.....when i started to appreciate/understand TV and films etc back in the 70s as an older child etc i thought all Americans lived in massive houses and had loads of money and everyone got on great.......Happy Days e.g.....and more recently 'Father of the bride' and the like.....mostly peddling the 'land of the opportunity' mantra...... until i started to appreciate films like Midnight Cowboy.....

I've got an anecdote too: Back in the 80s when I was in my early twenties and visiting LA, a woman at a bus stop asked me where I was from. When I told her that I was from Germany, she was rather taken aback. She thought Hitler was still alive and amazed that I was allowed out of the country. I asked her what made her think that and she said she's seen it in the movies. True story.

Movies do have an effect on how some people see the world. Germans used to be the go to nation for the bad guys in those days. Alan Rickman's character Hans Gruber says in 'Die Hard': "Just another American who saw too man movies as a child."

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That's a great anecdote Uli.....must have left you open-mouthed!!!!!!

....I remember enjoying a British sitcom called 'Love Thy Neighbour' back in the 70s. I quote Wikipedia:

Since 1972, when Love Thy Neighbour was first transmitted, it has been criticised for its politically incorrect handling of issues of racism, it was made in an era when Britain was perceived to be struggling to come to terms with mass immigration which Love Thy Neighbour was said to exemplify.[2] According to Sarita Malik, this meant "comedies about race" were really about "blacks signifying trouble" so that consequentially "if the White characters did display prejudice, this was deemed funny or understandable given the 'difficulty of the situation'."[3]

Its writers stated that each episode included both anti-white and anti-black sentiment.[4] In Malik's opinion, in this "mutual racism", racist attitudes were "shown as a reciprocal, inevitable and petty process" rather than being faced with any challenge.[3] As a result, according to Nora Plesske, the premise continued without any change in attitudes or permanent resolution of the conflict.[5]

The views of the main white male character (Eddie Booth, played by Jack Smethurst) were presented so as to make him appear ignorant and bigoted and were contrasted with the more tolerant attitude of his wife. "In nearly every show, the white neighbour was shown to be wrong", Rudolph Walker wrote in 2001.[1] A contemporary reviewer in the Daily Mirror, Mary Malone, believed "the only characters who leave the screen with their dignity intact are the blacks. Now that's what I call prejudice."[6]

The main male black character (Bill Reynolds, played by Walker) was better educated, although also stubborn and capable of using insulting phrases, such as the terms "Honky", "Snowflake", "Paleface" or "Big White Chief" to describe his white neighbour (often in response to being called "nig-nog" or "Sambo"). The comedy invariably fixated on the "Blackness" of Bill and Barbie or rather, as Malik expressed it, "television's interpretation of Blackness (limbo-dancing, voodoo/Black magic)."[3] Other black stereotypes, such as regular references to cannibalism from the first episode onwards, became a running joke.[7]

 

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P.S. I don't mean to open up a discussion on racism,  just commenting on the 'characterisation' of cultures, in this case Hispanics.....throughout film/TV history.....I feel the characterisation of 'African-Americans' has evolved fully as opposed to the infancy of hispanic portrayal...as I see it....hey....just an opinion!

Another is the characterisation of Italian-Americans......The Godfather, etc made the mafia look...dare I say...elegant.....

"During the making of The Godfather, the Italian-American Civil Rights League organized protests, because it felt that the film would only reinforce the 'Italian equals mobster' stereotype.....the Italic Institute of America released a report based on FBI statistics in 2009, stating that only 0.00782 percent of Italian-Americans possessed any criminal associations. And yet, according to a national Zogby poll, 74 percent of the American public believed that Italian-Americans have ties to the mob." 

Edited by Stephen Perera
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