La Raza Heritage Month: Stereotyping

Lone Star was a good movie, but there was a really awkward sex scene. 

I think there was a good reason it was so awkward, but that's a major spoiler so I will put it down at the bottom of the post. The possibility of it making sense came much later though, so while I was watching it, it was just "That's not sexy."

I would have remembered that anyway, but what drove it home was reading a reference to a review of the movie referring to the "sultry" Elisabeth Peña, noting that there is nothing sultry about Peña's performance.

(I believe this refers to a review from Janet Maslin referenced in De Colores Means All of Us.)

If I had not recently viewed the movie, I would have read the reference and agreed that sounded kind of racist. Having just seen the movie, what were they thinking?

It's a great performance. Pilar is a relatively young widow with two children (with one whose grief is turning into rebellion), a difficult mother, and heavy job responsibilities in the school system where white parents push back on the representation that makes sense for the many students of color. It is her time in a meeting that may give the best idea of life on the border.

She navigates all of this responsibility with dignity, a wry humor, and the needed diplomacy, and you never lose sight of how tiring it must be, even as you admire that she keeps going.

Add to that the awkward sex scene, and the only way we are getting "sultry" out of that is if you assume it should be there because she is Latina.

Let me add to this a quote I saved out of Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies:

… from traditional Mexican views such as those espoused by Octavio Paz, who claims in The Labyrinth of Solitude that pachucos were inauthentic Mexicans. (p. 59)

Also add to that reading about disagreements about who could be Chicano or be allowed in MeCha and conflicts between pro-union and pro-environment activists... we shouldn't be fighting and gatekeeping each other.

I'm sure there are places where it makes sense to draw boundaries. If those boundaries are based on how someone in a certain class should be, or a way of looking down at others, then that seems bound to cause harm.

To avoid straying too far out of my lane, let me give personal examples. I am white, but I am also a woman, fat, and kind of poor (though there are different levels and in some ways I am very fortunate).

Of course it would be very easy for me to feel a sense of superiority to women of color and try and exert authority over them, perhaps by playing a victim whom men of color feel bound to defend; white women are notorious for that.

What I am referring to, though, is something perhaps less obvious, 

It could be very easy for me to look down on other women, judging their choices and assuming mine are better. This frequently comes up as "not like other girls" or disputes between "crunchy" versus "silky" moms, or "boy moms" against any other woman who might take her son or give birth to a daughter who takes her son.

(Sounds like she would be happier if her son were gay, but somehow, no.)

It could be very easy for me to believe that my economic status is simply bad luck, but that other people messed up, and I am not really one of those people. I do see how the system has worked against me, but it is abundantly clear that I am not unique in that way.

I could easily do the same thing with my weight, virtuously working to limit caloric intake and maximize activity, and judging anyone I happen to catch eating or resting. 

This type of attitude requires that the judgment on my marginalized group is just, but that I am the exception. I might even find people in the dominant group who would agree that I am not like the others, and possibly handsomely compensate me for assisting with their oppression.

Whatever satisfaction might come with that, I would be degrading myself. I would have this growing frustration as my exceptionalness did not pay off enough. I would be making the world a worse place.

I promise there would not be reliable loyalty from those I assisted.

We should be who we are in our own way. Ideally that will involve kindness, integrity, and self-examination. We might find excellent ways of inhabiting those identities, but they will still not justify trying to coerce others to follow our model.

There are enough people doing that.

And now... SPOILER ALERT!

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It makes more sense that the love scene was so awkward when we find out that the reason their parents separated teenage Pilar and Sam was not mere racism or classism or being overly controlling, but because those parents knew that Pilar and Sam were half siblings, thus explaining that deep sense of connection they felt.

Disturbingly, once they both know they decide to keep dating, but not have children together.

It did strike me as weird, but I believe it was supposed to act as an allegory for this Texas-Mexico border relationship with a common parentage, that it is weird but it exists and is not going away, so a way needs to be found to deal with it.