Hollywood Fails to Understand Latino Culture

Terry Pristin’s article “A Matter of ‘Honor’ ” (Calendar, May 21), offers a gloomy assessment of Hollywood’s interest in and ability to deal with Latino subjects. But there is every reason to believe that the situation is even worse than the author indicates.

As a scholar of Latino literature, I am occasionally contacted by producers and writers interested in learning about Latino literary works that might be adaptable to film or television. Because I am personally and professionally concerned about presenting authentic images of Latino experience to the American public and beyond, I almost always take time to offer suggestions to the callers; in many cases, I agree to read either treatments or scripts and to otherwise help a promising project along.

I’ve had dozens of phone calls and meetings on Latino projects over the years and only two efforts ever came to much: I worked on the planning of “The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez” and helped to call attention to John Nichols’ marvelous novel about Mexican-American life in New Mexico, “The Milagro Beanfield War.” Typically, after the first enthusiastic, even exuberant telephone call, I never heard from the ostensible producers and writers again. When matters developed beyond the initial phase--three or four calls, an actual meeting or two--inevitably, suddenly, priorities shifted, financing collapsed, studio or network interest waned.

Admittedly, I know little about the film and television industries but I certainly understand that most projects of whatever nature seldom get beyond the talking stage. What has been much more frustrating is the lack of understanding regarding Latino culture that seems all but pervasive in Hollywood. As recent movies such as “Bound by Honor” demonstrate, Hollywood regards Latino culture very narrowly, mostly in terms of urban violence, cultural exoticism and heavy accents. Hollywood has so far failed to recognize the significance of Latino experience and culture and the potential public receptivity. Hollywood makes the mistake of assuming that ignorance of and indifference to Latino issues in the general public matches its own.

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A few examples from my personal experience illustrate this point. I was approached once by representatives from a production company interested in doing a Latino “Roots” miniseries. It was clear from the beginning that the potential producers intended, simplistically and inaccurately, to treat all Latino groups--Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, etc.--homogeneously, to suppress differences of racial composition, of cultural and political circumstances. When I insisted that this was unacceptable, the project collapsed. Another potential Latino project ran aground when I objected to a script that presented Chicanos in tediously stereotypical fashion: nothing but lowriders shouting challenging words in a gang-infested East Los Angeles barrio. In dealing with Hollywood representatives, I’ve only rarely felt that their interest in Latino projects rose above the cheapest variety of exploitation. It is of some significance, I believe, that the two projects on which I have worked that actually made it to the television screen and neighborhood theater had significant Latino participation from beginning to end. It’s also worth noting that both “Cortez” and “Milagro” sought, whatever their ultimate failings, to depict Latino experience authentically. As the Pristin article suggests, the dearth of Latino projects in Hollywood--and the generally poor quality of the few that are completed--is related to the virtual absence of Latinos in decision-making positions both at the studios and networks.

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Recently, Hollywood has shown some belated interest in serious presentations of the African-American experience. It is time to do as much for Latino culture and history.

Walking out of a showing of Spike Lee’s powerful “Malcolm X” not long ago, I began to think of comparable episodes from Latino experience that would make exciting, significant films. I thought, for example, of Jose Marti, the great Cuban patriot who spent a considerable portion of his brief life in New York City before he returned to Cuba to fight--and die--for his homeland in one of the battles that culminated in the Spanish American War. I thought also of Oscar Zeta Acosta, a remarkable lawyer and political activist whose autobiographical “The Revolt of the Cockroach People” brilliantly chronicles the 1960s Chicano civil rights movement in Los Angeles. Such figures and events are replete in Latino experience and together constitute one of the richest segments of American history. Hollywood’s failure to portray such events is everybody’s loss.

Of course, no one would expect Hollywood to take up Latino projects without the likelihood of a healthy profit. Has anyone there learned that there are more than 20 million Latinos in the United States, most of prime movie-going age? Has anyone there thought about the much vaster potential market in Latin America where curiosity about Latinos in the United States runs high? On a more immediate level, has anyone in Hollywood considered the implications of the fact that the most popular radio station in Los Angeles is now one that broadcasts in Spanish?