Latinos, Politics, and American Cinema Essay

“D.W. Griffith was the first American director to be as well-known as the films he directed, and he was among the very first to insist that filmmaking was an art form” (Lewis 53). This statement is very true. However, the inherent discriminating content in some of his movies also made him one of the hardest to appreciate. One of the most famous examples was The Birth of a Nation (1915), which was in favor of the Ku Klux Klan. After a few more controversial movies, he finally tried to redeem his reputation with Broken Blossoms (1919). Broken Blossoms is Griffith’s attempt at an apology in the portrayal of minorities and the idea of miscegenation within The Birth of a Nation in the midst of a troubling society heading towards the anti-miscegenation law.

Society has focus on stereotyping every group based on myths, Ramirez explains how stereotyping can lead to a reality “A primary function of stereotypes, says Richard Dyers, is “to make fast, firm and separate what is in reality fluid” (Ramirez p.16), people tend to just judge the book by its cover before they even read the tile of it. Latinos are being portrayed as the bad, ugly, and the ones who can’t speak the language on the U.S films as Ramirez proves “Yes, there indeed were and are Mexican badits, lazy African Americans and Italian American gangsters. But banditry, laziness and criminality are not culture specific, nor do those qualities represent the group’s complete experience” (Ramirez p.16). It gives a better understanding of the different stereotypes of just not Latinos but other races too. In the film “The Bronze Screen” it elaborates about Latino until this day, they use them as the bad ones

The 4th Episode of the documentary Latino Americans: The New Latinos, claimed that many latinos groups, such as Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Domicans, that migrated to the United States had made a huge impact in America's culture and Society. One of the evidence that lead to the the main claim of the video was the story of Rita Moreno. Rita Moreno and her family moved to New York City to have a better life than in their home country, which was Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico was greatly affected by The Great Depression in the U.S, so many Puerto Ricans migrated to the U.S, which included Rita’s family. The young girl wanted to became an actress in Hollywood because that was every young teenage dream during The Depression. Eventually, she made it into Hollywood, but in her movies, she was portrayed as a typical woman from

When I entered the Dynamic of Racism and Oppression class I was the individual who had blinders on. I did not have a full understanding of what racism was, which in itself is shocking to me as I thought I had. What made me really stop and think was this class opened my eyes to the fact that I did not know my own identity. I have heard individual say “I’m black”, “I am of African decent”, “I’m Latino”, “I’m Canadian”, and “I’m white”. These are common statements of how individuals view their race and identity. I have even placed my identity in one of those categories, I’m white. I was unaware and unsure of what it meant to have a culture, which many individuals claim everyday. Some individuals know their identity, others do not, I was one

The history of African Americans in early Hollywood films originated with blacks representing preconceived stereotypes. D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film, Birth of a Nation, stirred many controversial issues within the black community. The fact that Griffith used white actors in blackface to portray black people showed how little he knew about African Americans. Bosley Crowther’s article “The Birth of Birth of a Nation” emphasizes that the film was a “highly pro-South drama of the American Civil War and the Period of Reconstruction, and it glorified the role of the Ku Klux Klan” (76). While viewing this film, one would assert that the Ku Klux Klan members are heroic forces that rescue white women from sexually abusive black men. Griffith

From there on movies shifted from their portrayals of Latino males as "Latin lovers" to "urban banditos". Films changed from problems involving women, sex, and love to delinquency, drugs, and gang fights. Movies such as West Side Story, Scarface, and Fort Apache, the Bronx, all use Latinos as "scapegoats" to focus the problems of society to the immigration of Puerto Ricans to the U.S.

The main difference was that LULAC relied on a strategy of “passing,” as white or European, because with lighter complexions and Americanization came better access to jobs and mainstream social acceptance (Ruiz 667). By 1939, activists like Blanca Rosa Rodriguez de Leon better known as Luisa Moreno (instead of Blanca Rosa, which means white rose, she changed her name to Luisa, perhaps in honor of Luisa Capetillo and “Moreno,” which is a term in Spanish used to refer to darker skin complexions), along with other activists like Josefina Fierro, Eduardo Quevedo and Bert Corona helped establish the first national Latino civil rights conference, El Congreso de Pueblos de Hablan Española who worked to end segregation in public facilities, housing, education, and employment (Ruiz 667). They also worked with universities to create Latino studies departments in order to advocate the preservation of Latino cultures, rather than assimilation (Ruiz 668). These organizations helped some of the nearly five hundred thousand Latino-American veterans that returned from World War II. Later they worked to end segregation in various facets of life for Latino-Americans’ like in court cases Mendez v. Westminster (1947) and Perez v. Sharp (1948), which ended

In a diverse society, America is home to many types of people, whose beliefs and experiences may arise conflict among the races. To diminish discrimination and show that there is a connection that unites each and every individual, films offer a different perspective of the lives of whom may be misunderstood and enable audiences to discover that others live under similar circumstances as themselves. How might the depiction of 21st century Latino immigrants be compared to that of 19th century southern slaves in feature films? Time nor race is a boundary that can stop two groups from relating to each other, such is the case with African-American slaves and today’s immigrants in the U.S. Like slaves, most immigrants work for a low wage in plantations, both these two group’s motives are also similar: the struggle for freedom. One

Using the language of the moving image, which includes cinematography, editing, sound, music and mise-en-scene, this essay will investigate the ideology of Racism in film. OxfordDictionaries.com describes racism as “Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.” When we, the audience think of racism in film, we traditionally think of movies for adults and often overlook the sinister aspect of racism in children’s films. I have chosen to contrast a recent R-rated film with a G-rated Disney movie from the 1990s. Disney films, even up until the 1990s have persistently reinforced the image of blacks or latino and asian races as being below whites. The

Looking at the socially or culturally history of the United States, many historians use Hollywood films as a primary source. I also used many films such as Easy Rider (1969) or Dance, Girl, Dance (1941) to support my historical thesis paper and to make the topic more vivid by using the images of the film. Even though, some people think that films are accurate and authentic in its depiction, it is important to mention that films are still fictional. Directors and actors are responsible to make us believe their story, but this story does not have to be necessarily true. In that way, fictional films cannot be used as historical evidence in terms of how things looked like during that specific

Films have the power to both influence and reflect society. The stereotypes prevalent throughout American culture are reflected in most films. While the United States is becoming an increasingly diverse country, this diversity is not portrayed within American cinema. Minority figures often occupy

We see their cultural values, how they change or remain the same from generation to generation, and how they deal with varying stereotypes, discrimination, and violence over the years (Nava). This movie does a great job of showing how certain parts of their lives have improved over the years, but also how they still face certain barriers. However, even as we can see the improvement in different areas of Latino perception and life in the U.S., stereotypes and barriers still

Given the film’s early accomplishments, one is left to wonder why it was named after something that is so controversial and still debated to this day. Almost more than a century ago, D.W. Griffith’s film forever changed the industry of filmmaking with not only its groundbreaking innovative applications of the camera such as close-ups, zooming, crosscutting, all of which heightened the power, the impact, and the emotion of the drama, but also lit up the screen with racist images that will always embarrass and provoke the people of America today (I hope). Hence, the foundation of white supremacy in films was born.

However, according to African American film scholar Thomas Cripps, these early films were not truly Black because their function, more or less, were to enlighten and mollify White people’s curiosity concerning Black culture. The argument presented by Cripps creates an opportunity for speculation on how to categorize a well-known group of films about Black people that in most cases included the participation of White filmmakers. How do we define the term “race film”? Moreover, can these films be considered a “genre” or are they imitations of similar narratives produced by White filmmakers such as comedies,

This photo is a representation of the various stereotypes surrounding Latinos, and the way Hollywood exploits them for entertainment. The various Latinos in the spotlight all have different labels on them, all a representation of the ways people judge Latinos, based upon false stereotypes. The gunman or cop, the woman with an attractive accent, even the illegal immigrant, Hollywood has used these stereotypes to their advantage, thus influencing the way Latinos are seen in America. The people in the crowd symbolize all of America; every person who sees, and believes, the lies Hollywood tells them, and the idea that all Latinos can be sorted into a couple of categories, that they are simply people. Americans trust in the media, in what they