"Despicable" Film Portrayals of Latinos

Last Friday my family and I went to see Despicable Me 2 on its opening weekend. We were not alone and the theater was pretty full on a late Friday afternoon. Impressively, the film earned $82.5 million that weekend, more than any other film currently out. Having a 4-year-old and a 6-year-old has allowed me to enjoy animated films again without guilt. Savvy film producers of kids’ films have always included inside jokes for adults, making the films even more enjoyable. It’s too bad, though, that those filmmakers are still not savvy about Latinos and how to tap into that rapidly growing market. Rather than offering a pleasant escape as Monsters University had done for me the week before (and being a college professor I really loved that film’s attention to the details of university life), I came away feeling annoyed.

*******SPOILER ALERT*******

A few people have already written about the representation of Latinos in this film (here, here, and here). To summarize briefly, the main character, Gru, is enlisted to find a super-villain with plans to take over the world with a serum that makes individuals indestructible. Gru goes undercover as a mall shop-owner, as the agency that employs him has intelligence that the villain is operating from there. There are a number of suspects, but Gru singles out a Mexican restaurant owner, Eduardo, who is Mexican himself. Eduardo fulfills many stereotypes with an overwrought Spanish accent (voiced by Peruvian-American Benjamin Bratt; a second choice when Al Pacino pulled out after already voicing the character), a tattoo of the Mexican flag on his chest (which did illicit a giggle from me when he revealed it), and a pet rooster that guards his business. These tropes alone are not the worst of it.

Gru remembers from his own days as a villain that Eduardo resembles El Macho, whose claim to fame was riding sharks and wearing a lucha libre mask as he wreaked havoc. While in stealth pursuit of Eduardo, Gru’s adopted tween daughter Margo develops a crush on Eduardo’s son Antonio who hangs out at the mall. Strangely, he has an accent thicker than his father’s that only vaguely sounds Spanish, and he seems to have a precocious sexuality as he woos Margo. Gru and his daughters end up attending an after-hours party where they dance salsa, don a chip sombrero holding guacamole, and find out that Eduardo is in fact El Macho and that his son is a lout as he dumps Margo for another girl.

Taken together, this seems like a laundry list of stereotypes that were poorly thought out, creating thin characters. Granted that this is a kids film, but the filmmakers already made the quick turn toward making the Latino characters the bad guys. The least they could have done was make them interesting and non-offensive bad guys (in terms of cultural stereotypes).

I was already primed for this negative reaction as there were three more animated films in the previews that all had Latino characters and all relied on similar simplistic representations, which could easily be seen in the few minute clips from each. “Planes,” the companion trilogy to “Cars,” which has its first installment this summer, has a plane named Chupacabra, who much like Antonio in Despicable Me 2, delivers his laughs because of his hyper-sexual Latin lover character. In “Turbo,” a snail who develops the ability to race at Indy car speeds, gets connected with a Latino boy, whose father owns a taco truck (sigh). Finally, "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2," revives its Latino character, Manny, a short,  mustachioed, sidekick, who serves only as comic relief (and is also voiced by Benjamin Bratt-sell out much?), and whose big line in the sequel is to notice an (evil) taco supreme that attempts to eat the main characters.

The opinion research firm Latino Decisions recently found that across many categories and types of media, a majority of those polled believes that Latinos are portrayed negatively in the media. They found that 71% of people see Latinos portrayed as criminals sometimes or very often in media and film. So, it is not so surprising that Despicable Me 2 would resort to that stereotype. In my opinion, it would be better to not be portrayed at all than to be portrayed with tired, negative characterizations.

As a small post-script, I still have hope for Latino portrayals in the media. I have not seen this show on Hulu yet, but NPR gave a very positive review for “East Los High.” It follows the drama of teen life in the overwhelming Latino East Los Angeles. NPR gave it really high marks not only on its quality, but also on its cultural sensitivity. One of the co-creators, Carlos Portugal stated he had some pretty simple guidelines for his writers: “no gardeners, no gang members and no maids.” He continued, "my hope is that people from East L.A. get to see themselves in the show portrayed as diverse human beings and not the typical Latino stereotypes we see in TV and films."  Thank goodness. I look forward to watching and will be writing about it soon.

Authentic Latinos: Oscars Edition

This has been a less than inspiring year for Hispanics in film and their presence at the Academy Awards, or lack thereof, is indicative of that. Voxxi has given a rundown of Latinos who were up for awards. The list it mustered includes those in some of the less high profile categories, like cinematography and short documentary (not to undercut the two winners of the short and feature length documentary awards, “Inocente” and “Searching for Sugarman,” respectively).  In order to fill out the lack of a Hispanic presence, the article reaches to the foreign film category, namely the Chilean film “No,” starring Mexican actor Gael García Bernal; this although most would agree that Latin Americans living in their home countries are not Latino at all as Hispanic and Latino are categories that only have meaning in the United States. The Academy could not even muster a brief acknowledgment for Lupe Ontiveros, the Latina character actress, who passed away this year.

The one possibility for a Latino presence in a major award category was the acclaimed film Argo, which is based on the life of former CIA agent Antonio “Tony” Mendez. Rather than having a Latino actor play the Mexican-descent Mendez, Ben Affleck chose to cast himself in the lead role. This was to the chagrin of journalist and polemicist Ruben Navarrette, who argued a few weeks ago that Affleck rewarded himself at the expense of many qualified Latino actors. Navarrette offered a compelling opinion that it is time for Hollywood to place Latinos in lead roles, especially when the characters are Latinos.

There was an interesting twist to Navarrette’s appeal, however; Jack Rico, a writer with NBC Latino, sat down with the real Tony Mendez to see if he had taken umbrage with Affleck, an Irish-American, playing him in the film. Mendez said he had no problem at all with Affleck portraying him. It wasn’t because Affleck speaks Spanish and could pass as an authentic Latino, it was because Mendez doesn’t identify as Hispanic. As he stated in the interview, “I think of myself as a person who grew up in the desert. If I had been in a different family circumstance, I might have felt that way.” He reveals again that lumping a really diverse group of people into one category is a difficult thing to do, and given the artifice that is involved, many people may just opt out. Many “Hispanics” and “Latinos” do just that, as they typically prefer to be categorized by their countries of origin. Mendez takes it a step further, as probably a significant number of Hispanics have done, by simply melting into the American pot and giving up the minority ethnic identity. Richard Alba, a sociologist has argued this very point and has numbers to back up the idea that Latinos are assimilating into the mainstream, just as generations of immigrant descendants have before.

Even though there was not large Latino presence in terms of films and actors this year, perhaps Hispanics can take solace in the fact that in one way they have always been present at the award ceremony and always will be. After all, the Oscar statue was modeled after Emilio Fernández, a Mexican-born screenwriter, actor, and director who worked on both American and Mexican films.