Why Latinos Should Depict Latino Experience

As reported recently in Calendar, an unprecedented degree of Latino film and TV content is emerging, and two critical questions emerge with it: Who should have creative control of such content? And, how do Latinos want to see themselves represented in film and TV?

The first question invites an easy and logical answer: Latinos should have creative control over content reflecting the Latino experience. However, Hollywood practices have shown that ultimate creative control rests with those having economic control (“Is Deal ‘Another Slap Against Community’?” Nov. 1).

In response to last month’s development deal between Silverlight Entertainment--a company whose principals are non-Latinos--and Warner Bros. TV, a spokesperson for the National Hispanic Media Coalition justifiably asks, “Why should [Silverlight President Stephen Drimmer] be doing programming for us? Why should he be talking for us?”

While Warners withheld comment, Drimmer countered that he has represented Latino talent for nearly nine years and is the right man for the job, assuring that Latinos will hold key creative producing, writing, directing and acting positions. He further cited a mandate from Warner Bros. “to be a conduit for all Latino talent. . . . We’re going to be opening opportunities for Latinos at the networks.”

On the surface, Silverlight’s declarations certainly sound noble and worthy. However, the Latino creative community has been trying to break down studio doors a lot longer than nine years. (A fortunate few have produced respectable product during that time and are arguably the most qualified to continue.) Additionally, everyone knows Latino content will ultimately have to conform to preconceived notions of acceptability; notions held by non-Latinos, where effective creative decision-making lies and the buck stops.

Where will the standoff end? Time will tell, of course. Key creative Latinos withholding their participation and an activist’s threat to create a “public relations nightmare” for Warner Bros. remain possibilities with unforeseeable results. Nonetheless, Silverlight’s posturing in the face of well-orchestrated Latino resistance reflects a familiar and patronizing message: We know best how to do this. Trust us.

Not that all entertainment industry Latinos are on the same wavelength to start with. As opportunities for Latinos in Hollywood gradually increase, the heterogeneity of the Latino creative community has also become more evident. Nowhere is this more apparent than when addressing the question: How do Latinos want to see themselves portrayed in film and TV?

A Spanish-language film by filmmaker David Riker, “La Ciudad,” has become the latest work to reveal that Latinos don’t necessarily agree on what are acceptable or desirable representations (“Spanish Word-of-Mouth Sells ‘Ciudad’ Tickets,” Nov. 16). Whereas the film’s view of the immigrant experience is finding acceptance with some Latino audiences, a Latina in the industry laments that the film perpetuates stereotypes and presents “an image of Latinos being only that way.” Riker’s defense of his film’s universality of the immigrant experience, however valid, only serves to remind Latino talent of the lack of opportunity to dramatize lives they’re much more intimately familiar with than Riker is.

In the early ‘70s, Chicano media activists and other Latinos began quantifying and formally objecting to stereotypical portrayals in film and TV. Identifying the range and documenting the history of objectionable, negative portrayals, while evaluating and voicing the meaning and effects of racist depictions was relatively easy. However, providing a framework for creating acceptable portrayals has been another matter.

Nonetheless, Chicano media scholars have emerged in the ‘90s to help lay a foundation upon which to construct representations of the Chicano and U.S. Latino experience in film and TV. No doubt few media professionals have taken time to adequately digest the published works of media professors Rosalinda Fregoso (“The Bronze Screen: Chicana and Chicano Film Culture”) and Chon Noriega (“Chicanos and Film: Essays on Chicano Representation and Resistance”). These seminal texts can provide Latino and white Hollywood valuable insight into the issue of Latino portrayals and an understanding of the range of possibilities in telling Latino stories.

As production of Latino content in U.S. film and TV increases, we’ll ultimately see the full range of possibilities: from lowbrow sitcoms, to historical and contemporary dramas and literary adaptations.

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The Latino experience is diverse, rich and multidimensional, as is the range of all human experience.

Regardless, the differences are not irreconcilable, nor the obstacles insurmountable, but not vesting Latinos with power at the highest possible levels only delays the inevitable blossoming of the genre. White Hollywood can’t ignore indefinitely the fact that despite a preponderance of undercapitalized, marginal Latin American fare, Mexicans, Cubans and Argentines also have a solid history of memorable, enduring, marketable and quality production. Neither can Hollywood continually ask U.S. Latinos to prove themselves and then ignore the proof: “Selena,” “Mi Familia,” “Born in East L.A.” and “La Bamba.” It may be a short list, but Hollywood hasn’t made it easy. Such successes exist despite Hollywood, hardly because of it.

High Latino production standards in the U.S. can be met not only when doors open more fully, but when purse strings are loosened more willingly and creative power rests with those most capable of effectively exercising it. Latinos simply want an end to the barriers of bias and ol’ boy networks that prevent them from utilizing the analytical, creative and executive skills they’ve spent the last 30 years developing.

In the context of enduring 90 years of objectionable, racist motion picture depictions, almost three decades of false promises and hopes of rectification with negligible results, the WB/Silverlight deal is probably not the last indignity the Latino community will suffer. As the spokesperson for the National Hispanic Media Coalition lamented, “[Industry executives] get all this criticism, but they still don’t learn.”

Though Hollywood repeatedly fails humanities, it usually passes math. Hopefully, the numbers in Latino demographics and behind the dollar sign of the market value will help them learn sooner, rather than later.

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