Latinos Beyond Reel: Challenging a Media Stereotype
The directors of “Latinos Beyond Reel: Challenging a Media Stereotype”, Miguel Picker and Chyng Sun, showcased the prejudice and racist history of the Latino population in film and television. As to highlight the documentary, Picker and Chyng displayed the typical stereotypes of Latinos in the film industry as well as how these stereotypes still take form today. The directors explains how these stereotypes contribute to the insensitive treatment in society that Latinos face in the world.
“A lot of unconscious racism exists because these types of images, these types of perceptions, these types of values have existed so long, they are the norm.” is what Mike Sargent had to say about how Latinos are portrayed in television and film. The Latino population is underrepresented and misrepresented by just having 1% of representation in the industry despite being the second largest minority race in the country at 16%. People may ask: “what have Latinos done to make the media not want to include them in prime time television or, if included, portray them in such a negative and dehumanizing light?” The answer is nothing. Yes, the Latino community has criminals but so does every other race community in the country. The stereotypes and images of Latinos started in silent films and old westerns with the Mexican bandit or just the lazy and drunk, or the violent criminal whose weapon of choice was the knife. Gradually overtime, the images of Latinos started to include the spitfire, the male buffoon/female clown, the Domestic, and the Dark Lady. The stereotypes in films, even the ones today, show Latinas as loud and spitfire-like and outrageously colorful. These images and stereotypes continue to show in television programs and films after over 100 years. When it comes to the news, the studies conducted have all shown that the story selection viewed by is not what creates the negative impression of Latinos. It is the way they are told. According to Otto Santa Ana of UCLA, “we don’t understand the world in terms of logic or mathematics. We understand the world in terms of images.” With that being said, with the images and stereotypes of Latinos displaying negatively, it is what we are accustom to and what we just assume is the way of the Latino community.
Another question may come about from the film is: What can the Latino community do in order to challenge the media stereotypes? What they can do is take control of how they are portrayed by fighting back with their own films and their own media and news pages. Support themselves and the independent films that they want to create. However, the issue is that they are denied the opportunities to tell their stories. Of all of the Hollywood screenwriters, only 2% of them are Latinos. According to the Directors Guild of America, white men directed 77% of the 2,600 prime time television episodes during the 2010–2011 season. There are some Latino produced films and television programs that portray the Latino community with dignity but that doesn’t mean that the television and film industry has changed. Dennis E. Leoni gave an example where he states that Latinos have a 1 in 100 chance for a new television show. “Every year, the networks makes 100 pilots out there. We have a 1 in 100 shot. The truth of it is, most of the pilots are going to fail. But because what happens is that one Latino show fails and then they say, ‘Oh, see, it doesn’t work.’ So then we are back to square one and we fight to get another lottery ticket, but we only get one lottery ticket when they get 99 lottery tickets.”
One conclusion of the documentary is, even with great accomplishments that benefited the U.S., Latinos still were either not mentioned or was mentioned for short periods of time. For example, Historian Ken Burns’ two documentaries. One of the documentaries was based on information about the U.S. achievements and sacrificing in World War II. Despite 500,000 Latinos serving in the military and earning more medal of honors than any other group, Burns completely failed to recognize them. The other documentary was an 18-hour long programming about American baseball. With one-third of all professional baseball players being Latino, only four to five minutes of the program was devoted to them according to Juan Gonzalez of the Daily News. The Latino population has had numerous achievements and accomplishments just like any other ethnic group in the U.S. in different professions. They are astronauts, professional athletes, artists, Justices of the Supreme Court, and more. You won’t see these portrayals on television or in film much due to them not fitting the lazy or violent stereotypes that we have grown accustom to. Another conclusion in the documentary is how the roles that Latinos and Latinas are given may be different, but they share a common issue. The roles that are given to them put them in a position of as foreign, “other”, or even inferior. While Latinos are portrayed as overly violent, they cast Latinas as hyper-sexual and emotionally volatile. When we watch television or watch movies, we see Latinas as the exotic Latina. They are portrayed as sexually promiscuous, as prostitutes, and spitfires. For example, Sofia Vergara in her role in the television show Modern Family. The final conclusion from the film is the network news coverage of Latinos, rather, the lack of. The National Association of Hispanic Journalists conducted a study from 1996 to 2006 that analyzed the nature of television coverage of Latinos. During that 10-year time period, the Latino population from 11% to 15% of the total U.S. population, yet, the news coverage remained the same at 1%. Federico Subervi from Texas State University at San Marcos counted all stories aired by the four networks. The total number of stories totaled to over 16,000. Within the 16,000, no more than 100 stories per year were about Latinos. In a study by the Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) on the topic of who gets interviewed on any story, it was that less than 1% (0.6%) of the on-air interviews were Latinos. Even the number of Latinos in the newsroom has been declining over time. The percentage now is only 3–4%. The lack of Latino journalists and producers results in the misrepresentation in the stories about only a small fraction of the population.
What I find personally significant is the lack of, not just Latinos, but all of people of color in the film and television industry and in network news. We each have our own battles and suffering that we all face individually, but we all have similar things in common: we want to be treated and respected as human beings. We want the equal opportunities to succeed in any and every field and profession we are a part of, and to be able to tell the truth about our stories, history, and greatness in our way.
