Zorro's Black Whip

Directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet and Wallace Grissell, Zorro's Black Whip (1944) recounts the adventures of a hero similar to the original McCulley's Zorro. As many of the Republic Pictures's Zorro films, this is a twelve short episode serial, but this time a new version of our Californian hero rides his horse in the 1889 pre-statehood Idaho, in the United States. Bennet and Grissell move us from the original colonial land of Caballeros to a post-colonial land of Westerns cowboys.

Though the name of the serial is Zorro's Black Whip, the word Zorro (and the character as we know it from previous films that incarnate it) is not mentioned even once throughout any of the twelve episodes. On the contrary, the Black Whip seems to be a totally different hero, fighting in the pursuit of goals that fit new scenarios and circumstances, without church or Indians to defend like in other Zorro movies. The changes introduced to this film, even though it acknowledges being inspired by McCulley's story, they break in many aspects the tradition of El Zorro, from gender to the geographical areas where the story unfolds, while keeping other elements present like the dual-personality dichotomy or the whip and horse complementing Zorro's and Back Whip's outfit.

Undoubtedly, what stands out in this release is what has changed. Unlike the old Zorro, Black Whip is apparently in a more advanced and homogenous society (by 1889 the post-colonial Mexico had already lost California, and territories that were once part of Spanish America went through a period of Americanization allowing settlements of Northen migrants that modified their demography and state affiliation). In pre-statehood Idaho, neither Indians nor priests are part of the plot. Everyone looks American with no Hispanic names, words, or accent. The characteristic romance and grace of the "Latino" Zorro are replaced by pure action and risky adventure. There are guns instead of swords, citizens committee instead of imperial control, and a woman behind the male Black Whip's mask.

The dual-identity character remains as part of the plot, however, making one of the identities a woman is an interesting variation that is simultaneously affecting the second personification as the Black Whip. Linda Stirling acts as both Barbara Meredith and the Black Whip. After the previous Black Whip dies (her brother Randolf that is only seen in the first chapter), she decides to continue with legend her brother had created. The identity of the Black Whip is gendered, it is a male. But Barbara does not use the second identity to reflect something hidden from her own. As Barbara, she is equally good at riding horses and using guns as the Black Whip is, but despite the fact that she freely shows her abilities (not like Zorro that pretends to be slow or not interested in fights), Barbara is not a suspect because she is a she. In the ninth chapter of this serial, Barbara is about to be discovered, but her gender does not fit in the description. "She couldn't be! The Black Whip's got to be a man. He's outshot us, outrode us, and outfought us. Stopped us at every turn!".

Additionally, Black Whip has a partner, Vic Gordon (George J. Lewis) different than the usual servant from the Zorro movies. This partner helps Rebecca in action, but he also helps the Black Whip when discovers the real identity behind it. Performativity, essential aspect of Zorro's duality is questioned once more. Don Diego is Zorro, and apparently, Zorro is the real Don Diego, but the Black Whip is not the real Barbara. Black Whip is not a character by itself, but it carries an identity by itself. Vic Gordon wears Black Whip's clothes and immediately becomes the Black Whip, no matter who is behind, man or woman, a son or a sister. Pretending to be some else can help a person to show its nerve like a hero, but also can protect a villain's identity as it works for Dan Hammond (Francis McDonald) who pretends to be a supporter of statehood while sabotaging it.

What is left of Zorro, other than the name in the title, is a visual template to fill in with new stories, places, and times, and implicit narratives of justice, power, heroism, politics. The word Zorro in the title is not another thing than an inconclusive acknowledgement of a character which extreme flexibility and many sons have created heroes. Zorro's horse, whip, sword, and mask are detached from their historical and geographical context. Those elements as well, together or separate are as flexible and important for a new plot as the character to whom they were once attached.

A Million to Juan

A Million to Juan (1994) is a rags-to-riches Chicano comedy which overtly illustrates the disparity between rich, white Americans and broke, struggling Chicanos. Ten-year-old Alejandro Lopez (Jonathan Hernandez) introduces a collection of characters, starting with his father Juan (Paul Rodriguez), who has an affinity for being penniless even though he is the master of odd jobs. Alejandro gets babysat regularly by the neighbours, Mrs. Gonzales and her daughter Patricia, and he lives with his father (his mother died 3 years earlier) and two uncles: Jorge and Alvaro, who cry during their beloved Spanish soap-operas. Their place of residence is a run-down apartment in East L.A. owned by Mr. Jenkins, a crabby landlord who lets only Mexican immigrants live in the building so that he can report them to immigration services if they complain. One afternoon, Mrs. Gonzalez performs a small spiritual ritual on Juan, complete with candles and air freshener, which is specifically designed to ask the saints to bestow wealth upon Juan. That night, Juan discusses job opportunities with his brothers and he realizes that he will have to work for Hector Delgado by selling oranges on street corners; a job which he swore he’d never do.

After Juan’s trampy girlfriend Anita starts to date Hector and Juan doesn’t think his life can get any worse, a white limo pulls up to the street corner where he’s selling oranges. The back window cracks open a few inches and an anonymous hand presents Juan with an envelope. In the envelope is a cheque for one million dollars addressed to Juan Lopez and a note that states the terms of the ‘experiment’: If Juan returns the cheque in 30 days to the same limo, he will receive a gift. Everyone is dubious of the cheque’s authenticity, but Olivia (Polly Draper), Juan’s kind and beautiful immigration officer, suggests that Juan verify the cheque at the bank, just to be sure; especially when Juan has been rejected for a green card and may be deported to Mexico within the week. The cheque turns out to be authentic and Juan is immediately treated with respect wherever goes. He and his brothers head out on a shopping spree in Beverly Hills, buy a Mercedes, and Juan even gets invited to the bank manager’s cocktail party. He gets credit at stores which had refused him earlier and restaurants bring him drinks which he hasn’t ordered; all he has to do is flash the cheque. While out with his son at a Mexican restaurant, Juan bumps into Olivia, who can’t believe that the cheque was real. They make a dinner date in order to discuss plans of Juan opening a small business; while Olivia’s boyfriend Jeff grumpily leaves the restaurant due to his great dislike of everything Mexican.

Although Juan is now able to live a rich lifestyle, he doesn’t ever forget his responsibilities or lose his kind demeanor. At the dinner date, Olivia advises Juan to open a restaurant on account of his excellent cooking skills. They both become more interested in one another as the night progresses and then, seeing as Olivia has already been invited to the bank manager’s cocktail party through Jeff, they decide to meet one another there to act as moral support against the snobbery of the other guests. Juan arrives at the party only to be immediately labeled as a valet by those who don’t know him (due to his Hispanic descent), or complimented profusely by those who know about his new-found wealth. He soon escapes to the balcony where a man in a white suit approaches him and asks him questions about his employment. Juan lies at first, but then, as if forced by the man’s gaze, he admits that although he almost completely broke (apart from the cheque), he still yearns to start his own business. The bank manager suddenly appears and when Juan asks for a loan, the man in the white suit vouches for Juan as a man of integrity and vision, allowing Juan to obtain the loan. Later on that night, Jeff storms out of the party when Olivia and Juan begin to ‘fraternize with the help’, allowing Juan and Olivia to leave the party and go celebrate Juan’s loan on the rooftop of his apartment building, where they begin to slow dance and finally progress to kissing.

The next day, Juan is ready to propose to Olivia, but before he is able to, she announces that they should keep their relationship strictly professional. To add to the grim situation, Patricia Gonzalez dies of pneumonia due to a broken heater and faulty window in the apartment. Mrs. Gonzalez takes all her religious knick-knacks down as she loses her faith and Mr. Jenkins attempts to evict her from the apartment. When Juan tries to stop the eviction and set the record straight: that the defective building had caused Patricia’s death; Jenkins frames Juan to make it look like he was going to attack him with a knife. Juan is taken to jail, but Olivia is able to get him out; only to tell him that everything he had gotten on credit was repossessed and that she has quit her job and is moving to Seattle with Jeff. Juan is dumbfounded and exclaims that he loves her now more than Jeff will ever be able to love her. Olivia knows that Juan is right, but is caught between the two men as Juan goes back to selling oranges. Suddenly, the white limo appears again. Juan passes the cheque back through the window and a hand, along with the voice of the man in the white suit, gives Juan an address to go to in order to receive his gift. Juan becomes angry at how this man is playing with his life and throws away the address as the limo departs. Just then Olivia drives up and proclaims her love for him. Alejandro, in the back seat, then notices a billboard bizarrely graffitied with a note to Juan containing the address on the piece of paper he had thrown away. The three of them drive to the location, a run-down and abandoned building, and find a certificate naming Juan as the proprietor. Juan immediately sets to work and everyone in his life chips-in to help restore the building into The Angel Café. Juan and Olivia marry and move into a beautiful mansion, living with all their loved ones and preparing for the arrival of a new family member, Esperanza. The tale of Juan’s amazing good luck ends with the man in the white suit gazing through a window to check-up on the family before slowly walking away and disappearing into a flash of white light.

There is constant banter about the Chicano’s living situation in L.A., particularly in comparison to Mexico. Jorge comments that a job is difficult to find in the US; especially when so many other immigrants can exploit their struggles and beg for money. He then continues to say that he should have never left beautiful Mexico. Even though his brother, Alvaro, mentions that the increased cost of living in America is well-worth not having to carry cement bags for a wage of $3 an hour in Mexico; Jorge still insists that Mexico is heaven on Earth compared to the hell of the US. Caucasians are constantly depicted as ignorant, such as the woman who hands a pop can to Juan, instead of money, saying, “You people recycle these, don’t you?” As she drives away, Juan crossly crushes the can into the ground with the heel of his boot. Many Mexicans have learnt how to work the system with sob stories and lies; but Juan, who is the most sincere and reliable Chicano in the film, cannot find it in himself to stoop to that level, even if it means that him and Alejandro might be sent back to Mexico (even though Juan has lived in the US for almost his entire life). Yet, however dire this situation may be for Chicanos, A Million to Juan still sheds hope on their social condition and encourages honesty and responsibility among Chicanos in order to attain their dreams while in America. While many, such as Jorge, may wish to return to Mexico, the film stresses that happiness can still be found in a foreign land.

Real Women Have Curves

Real Women Have Curves (2002) challenges the cultural stereotypes which are thrust upon a generation of young Chicanos growing up in America but still living in the shadow of Mexican tradition. It is clear from the first scene that Ana García (America Ferrera), a graduating high school student, does not get along well with her mother, Carmen (Lupe Ontiveros), who appears to be constantly complaining about some bodily ailment so that she can persuade Ana, out of guilt, to listen to her woes and care for her. This time Ana steadfastly refuses to play her mom’s warped game, and instead leaves to catch a series of buses to head out of her Mexican neighbourhood and into Beverly Hills where she attends high school. In class, the students excitedly talk about what they will do to continue their education. At Ana’s turn, she exclaims that she’s looking forward to backpacking in Europe. This prompts her teacher Mr. Guzman (George Lopez) to approach her after class and inquire as to why she hasn’t handed in any college applications. Ana quickly replies that her family can’t afford it, and then ironically heads to a greasy fast food place to quit her job. Upon returning home that evening, her family surprises her with an intimate graduation celebration. Here her mother’s character begins the first of many jokes throughout the film regarding Ana’s weight. Ana simply rolls her eyes, as if she’s heard it a thousand times before. Carmen then interrogates Ana about quitting her job before finally deciding for her that she will work at her sister, Estela’s, clothing factory to earn money. Ana is clearly an intelligent girl and is reluctant to work at such a mindless job. Suddenly, as if in answer to Ana’s aversion to the factory, Mr. Guzman appears at her party to talk to Ana’s parents about Ana attending university; but is quickly informed that they need Ana to contribute to the family’s income.

The following day, Ana begins her employment of ironing the dresses that are produced at her sister’s factory. Here she is introduced to her co-workers, a handful of Mexican-American women, who are also barraged by Carmen with unappreciated insults about being overweight. Ana insists to her mother, a seamstress in the factory, that she’s only going to work there until she can find another job. Meanwhile, as she questions her sister about the cost and profit of the beautiful dresses she irons, Ana realizes that Bloomingdales sells the dresses for $600 while the factory is only paid $18 per dress; thus giving the factory the status of ‘sweatshop’, a term which Estela refuses to acknowledge. The seamstresses enjoy their gossip, but when the focus of the conversation drifts, on account of Carmen, to Ana’s weight, Ana intentionally burns a dress with the iron and storms off down the street, only to be coaxed back after another round of guilt from her influential mother.

Ana then secretly hands in university applications to Mr. Guzman, and as she leaves his office she runs into her classmate Jimmy (Brian Sites) who gives her his number, causing the introverted Ana to become embarrassed and hastily flee. Ana finally gathers the courage to plan a date with Jimmy, of which her understanding Grandpa keeps a secret in order to not alarm Carmen. When the young couple is finally unaccompanied in a Mexican restaurant, Jimmy can’t stop staring at Ana’s large breasts, and it is apparent that, due to his teenage hormones, he finds them to be two of Ana’s more stunning features. The two have an awkward yet enjoyable date which ends with a first kiss and a shower of self-esteem and optimism for Ana. On a following date, Ana confides to Jimmy that she is always at odds with her mother, especially concerning her physical appearance, to which Jimmy replies with sincere complements as well as the upsetting news that he will be leaving to go to college in 2 weeks. Back at the factory, Estela is in a panic because she has lost half of her employees (who all belong to the same family) as one of them is getting married and so they have all decided to move back to Mexico. At this news, the remaining workers must work twice as hard, with no immediate pay, in order to finish the dresses before the deadline. Ana manages to gain a loan for Estela through their father after the dress manufacturing corporation refuses their request for a cash advance. A few days later, Mr. Guzman appears at Ana’s house once again, but this time with the news that she has been accepted to the prestigious Columbia University in New York City on a full scholarship. Ana is elated and holds her ground in order to see her educational dreams through when her parents express that they are disinclined to have their family break apart by having her move to New York.

This new bout of audacity motivates Ana to buy condoms and reveal to Jimmy that she is ready to have sex, which is extremely against the family tradition of waiting until marriage to have sexual intercourse. Before they begin, Ana turns on the light and stands in front of a mirror so that they can both see what she really looks like. This act gives her a sense of worth which leads to the most memorable scene in the movie when, back at the factory, the summer’s heat is so intense in the work room that Ana removes her t-shirt to work instead in her bra. Her mother is appalled but Ana quickly recruits an entourage of Chicana workers to remove their clothes as she exclaims that they are all women with the same bodies. Then, much to Carmen’s disgust, the women begin to lightheartedly compare their bodies’ imperfections and Ana announces that her weight says, “Fuck you!” to anyone obsessed with appearances because she would rather be respected for what she thinks, rather than how she looks. Carmen leaves in disgust and Ana flicks on some Spanish music as the women contentedly finish working on the order in their underpants. Ana has gracefully allowed her relationship with Jimmy to be seen for what it is as they both head off to different schools and are forced to keep only the memory of their experiences together. All of Ana’s family has given her their blessing to chase her dreams in the big city; all except her mother who is so distraught at Ana’s departure that she doesn’t even swallow her pride enough to say good-bye. And so Ana leaves her family life behind and enters into an exhilarating life change. The last scene shows her walking the busy streets of New York with an air of confidence and a sense of self which permeates every part of her being.

The film highlights the differences between Mexican and American culture and how Chicanos, in particular, deal with this daily disparity. The neighbourhood around the factory is teeming with Mexican customs, from the busy outdoor markets to mariachi bands for-hire, which is in direct contrast to the Beverly Hills community, representing the successful American dream which Ana aspires to be a part of. However, the movie places these dreams in direct correlation to the confidence in one’s appearance. North America has long been known for its obsession with the ‘perfect female figure’, generally represented by a body as thin as a plank of wood, which is difficult to attain for someone like Ana who was born with a curvy, Latin body type. Ana’s appearance is accepted by the male figures in her life, but is seen by her own gender as being undesirable. This contrast in turn portrays an upside-down perspective on the normally joyous family life of Latinos, which has now been poisoned by Carmen’s longing for Ana to be thin in order to obtain a husband. The divergence between mother and daughter becomes clear when Carmen reveals to her husband that she finds it unfair for Ana to be able to go off to university while Carmen has had to work hard labour for close to forty years; thus illustrating the difference in traditions of the older Mexican generations and the younger Chicano generations.

The dresses from the factory offer a different insight into the Chicana mentality when Ana notes that she only irons the beautiful dresses but will never wear them. Such a statement corresponds to the Chicano community as the foundation of an economy which many Chicanos can’t truly enjoy due to financial struggles. This issue of cheap foreign labour is emphasized in the ‘sweatshop-like’ environment of the factory. The dresses also symbolize the transformation of Ana’s self-confidence. Upon first arriving at the factory, Ana wistfully studies a size 7 dress on a mannequin, until her mother comments that she will never be able to fit into it and that she is too big for her own good. After Ana’s self-esteem increases over the course of the movie, her sister gives her a sexy red dress as a present. At first, Ana refuses saying it will never fit her, but Estela insists that she made it exclusively for Ana so that it would fit her body perfectly. The message here to Chicanas is clear: Do not try to fit someone else’s expectations, whether they are the expectations of your country or of your family, because there is always a way to fit into your own unique persona without any adjustments; just as when Ana proudly declares to her mother, “This is who we are. Real women.” With curves.

Dance With Me

Dance With Me (1998) begins with shots of the sun-splashed streets of Santiago de Cuba, with smiles and Caribbean beats dancing on the air. The scene then shifts to a local cemetery where Rafael Infante (played by the successful Puerto Rican singer, Chayenne) is laying flowers on his mother’s grave in memory of her birthday. Later, when he returns to his home, an excited mailman bounds up the stairs to announce that ‘He’ has written back. The letter is from a man in Houston named John Burnett (Kris Kristofferson) who has legalized the details to get Rafael a job in the US. It is later revealed at Rafael’s going away party, when he divulges to his friend that he only told John that he needed a job, that there may be more to this journey than what’s on the surface. Rafael then arrives in Texas at the bus station and is picked up by the beautiful Ruby (Vanessa L. Williams), who attempts awkward Spanish until Rafael smiles and asks in English if she can speak English. She takes him to John’s dance studio where she works. All the employees are friendly, except for John who is abrupt and unceremonious when he first meets Rafael as he quickly introduces him to his handyman duties around the studio as well as his new living quarters at John’s house. It is clear that Rafael did not expect this kind of greeting from John but he nonetheless is grateful for all the help. Years ago, John had worked with Rafael’s mother on a cruise ship. It is clear that he still has strong feelings for her, which is why he agreed to help Rafael come to America. When questioned about his father, Rafael quickly replies that he is “long gone”.

The next day, Rafael begins his new job at the studio, but is transfixed by Ruby who is practicing with her incompetent partner for the upcoming dance competition in Las Vegas. When she is alone and practicing her technique without any music, he comments that perhaps she should play something in the background so that she is not quite so stiff. Ruby is instantly insulted and retorts that he should stick to things he knows about. Later she is in John’s office and sees a couple dancing on the TV. It is apparent that she has had relations in the past with the male dancer. When John mentions that the couple on the screen have recently split up, she becomes visibly anxious and comments that she wants to get back into professional dancing, after a six year hiatus. Rafael soon proves his worth as a worker when he does a fantastic job decorating the studio for the weekly party, and then shows his gentlemanly morals when he is the only man to tell Ruby just in the nick of time that the zipper on her dress has slowly undone while she had been dancing, much to the disappointment of the on-looking males. As a return favour, he asks Ruby to go out dancing with him. Ruby is visibly uncomfortable at the bouncing Cuban club and she attempts to teach Rafael how to dance with technique: ball changes, counting, stiff arms, etc. When this fails, she retreats to the washroom and then returns to see Rafael heating up the dance floor like had been a professional his whole life. Ruby quickly leaves the club without saying good-bye. The next day Rafael explains that he really doesn’t know how to dance like her because his type of dancing does not use traditional techniques.

Rafael finally hits it off with John when he asks if he can fix up the old beater truck in the garage. To start the repairs, he enlists Ruby to drive him to a parts shop where the two enjoy each other’s company over some Cuban music and food while they wait for the shop to open. Upon seeing people entering the shop, they go in to find it’s owned by Cubans who immediately invite them to join in on an engagement party in the backyard. Ruby enjoys the family culture and she and Rafael even get to have a slow dance of their own. Then, when Ruby returns to the Cuban club to show Rafael that she isn’t afraid of his style, she becomes pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to let herself go into the rhythm and use the entire dance floor, being passed from partner to partner in a fast-paced dance scene. The night is a success and afterwards Rafael walks her to her door, only to be soaked by the sprinklers in the yard. Needing to dry off, he is invited inside and meets Ruby’s son, Peter, whose father is Ruby’s ex-dance partner. Later, as Rafael stands before her, wrapped in a towel and expressing sympathy for her situation as a single mother, their passion is released, but then, just as quickly, it’s repressed as Ruby realizes it’s not a good idea.

The next day, John’s dance partner, Patricia, comes to him pleading to change partners because John has been spending more time fishing than practicing for the Vegas competition. She opts to dance with Rafael instead, who has been showcasing random knowledge of dance while in the studio. John agrees and Rafael quickly masters the moves and he and Patricia enter the competition. Much to Rafael’s disappointment, Ruby has chosen to dance with her ex-partner Julian in the competition. Before leaving for Vegas, Rafael confronts John about him being his father, but John insists that he doesn’t have a son, causing Rafael to regret ever coming to America to look for such a callous man. At the competition, Rafael runs into Ruby backstage, but the two barely get a chance to talk as Julian rushes her away. At rehearsals, Ruby adds her own Cuban flair to the dance moves, but is quickly cut down by Julian who demands that she follow the routine. Rafael and Patricia then give an immaculate performance in their division and win first place; but Rafael is more pleased about the fact that John came to Vegas to watch him dance and confess that he is in fact Rafael’s father. The two quickly bond and Rafael decides to stay in America instead of returning to Cuba. The next scene is the professional division with Julian and Ruby easily making it to the finals. In the last dance, Ruby spots Rafael and visibly falters in her step as she yearns to dance with him again. Her emotions improve her performance and she and Julian win the grand prize in the professional division. At the after-party, Ruby arrives with a large trophy, but a sad face, as Julian wanders off to dance with other women. She is offered a lucrative contract, but simply walks away when Rafael appears at her side and silently offers her a dance. They then dominate the dance floor in an unscripted, Latin dance which shows their passion for one another. The film ends with a group lesson, involving all the movie’s characters, in the dance studio, with Rafael and Ruby as the instructors of the Latin moves.

Dance With Me emphasizes the disparity between immigrants and Americans by casting Rafael as an outsider. The dance studio employees make excuses for him, such as “Oh, he’s from a different country”, and oftentimes Rafael will even highlight the differences himself, by making comments such as “I’m Latin, but I’ve never seen a Latin dance like that” (commenting on Ruby’s stiff technique), or “I’m a Cuban, of course I can dance”. The film bares resemblance to Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights where, once again, the lead Latin male teaches the technique-driven American girl how to get lost in the Cuban beats and let the music lead her. The fact that there is no instance of reverse-gender in these roles begs the concept of male machismo and control, which dominates Latin society; but what more, how Latin society in general has to actually teach Americans how to enjoy life. Perhaps a notable difference between these two films is the fact that in Dance with Me the lead couple is able to start a new life in America, while in Havana Nights the young love must be separated as it can not bloom in the revolutionary streets of Havana; which lends a certain amount of fantasy to the ‘dreams of America’ and a sentiment of hopelessness to the situation in Cuba. The bouncing rhythms and the romantic storylines of these movies may attempt to conceal it, but this divergence of cultures is still readily apparent.

Heartbreaker

Heartbreaker was released in 1983, but focuses on the 1970s as it examines the culture of automobile fanatics, low-riders in particular. It is soon realized after the first scene that the flashy cars are the real stars of the show: they sparkle, they roar, they even bounce; and everything is in the meticulous detail. In this society, appearances mean everything.

Beto (Fernando Allende) is Latin American and his popularity is obvious as he enters a local nightclub. He suddenly spots Kim (Dawn Dunlap), a petite blonde bombshell on the dance floor, whom he immediately begins to make eyes with. She is receptive to his flirtations, but her dance partner, Hector (Peter Gonzales Falcon) is not quite so pleased and immediately leads her off the floor. Beto, who ends up chatting at their table with mutual friends, reluctantly leaves after sensing Hector’s discomfort, but not before he confirms his shampoo appointment on Tuesday with Kim, who just happens to be a local hairdresser. Hector warns Kim that Beto is a player, but Kim dares not trust Hector either when, as he drops her off at her parents’ house, he becomes angry and calls her a little girl when she refuses to move out and live with him.

The next day, the low-rider enthusiast club, The Golden Knights, are introduced, complete with matching gold windbreakers. Beto is the president of the club which is known for its high standards and attention to detail. As the guys joke around and examine each others’ cars, Angel (Miguel Ferrer) teases that he’s going to race Beto for the presidency. Surprisingly, Beto responds by saying that after the next car show he will turn the club over to Angel because he wants to focus on other things now. As a token of contract, Beto gives the club’s beloved golden knight statue to Angel to hold on to for a few days. Beto then goes to get a hair cut from Kim who, despite Beto’s forward advances, insists she is not available. In the next scene, Hector proposes a car show to the Golden Knights where the grand prize is $10,000. Beto refuses because he thinks Hector is under-handed in how he raised the prize money; and due to this refusal, an arsonist sneaks into Angel’s garage at night, steals the knight statue, and torches Angel’s beloved car, which, come morning, is nothing but a hunk of burnt metal. A tip-off from a neighbourhood kid causes the group to suspect Wings, a dishonest character from The Vikings car club, as the arsonist; but before Angel can do anything drastic, Beto asks him to stick with the club and address this problem correctly. Beto then enlists his African-American friend, and fellow car enthusiast, Hopper (Michael D. Roberts), to collect information about the arson. Hector warns Wings that he is being suspected of the crime and sends him out of town for a while to collect an old car; the same car that Hector offers to Angel to restore as a sponsorship to enter his car show. Despite Angel’s reluctance to betray Beto and the Golden Knights, he desperately yearns to work on a car again and accepts the offer.

Meanwhile, Beto tries his hardest to spend time with Kim, but she won’t give in, explaining that things just seem to move so fast when Beto is around. Finally, in a local diner, Beto yells out, in front of Kim and all the customers that he’s in love with her. He is met with cheers from the on-lookers and an embarrassed, but flattered, expression from Kim, and the two begin spending more time together. Kim’s parents are aghast that she is friends with such a “greaseball” and wants to move out into that “part of town”, but their opinions do a complete turn-around when they are immediately charmed by Beto as he arrives to help move Kim’s things. After everything is moved, Kim finally accepts Beto’s offer of a date and the two primp and preen themselves in anticipation. Just as Beto leaves his house, he finds a note on his car giving him directions on where to go to get information about the arson. Against his better judgment, he races to the location, an arcade, to find Hopper playing games and knowing absolutely nothing about the note. Unbeknownst to Beto, as he tries to get a hold of Kim by telephone, Hector had heard about their date and tried to get Beto out of the way so that he could go to Kim’s and, due to his intoxication, try to rape her. Kim chases Hector away with a knife, but is so distraught that she can not even open the door when Beto finally arrives. Beto becomes depressed as Kim cuts off all communication to him. He tries everything to get her attention, but finally, after what seems like several weeks, it is Kim that seeks him out and the two begin a tender relationship full of love and admiration for eachother.

Then, at Hector’s anticipated car show, Hopper tells Beto that someone is selling the golden knight statue for $100. He plans to mark a hundred dollar bill and then follow the vendor to see who was behind the arson. This plan would have worked if he hadn’t been distracted by the wet t-shirt contest on stage and lost the vendor in the crowd. Later, while chatting with Beto, Hopper spots the vendor again, this time standing with Wings. Beto confronts Wings and challenges him to a private fist fight in Hopper’s car-trailer. Beto wins the fight and Wings confesses that it was Hector that set fire to Angel’s car. Meanwhile, Angel had just won the best-in-show $10,000 prize, but becomes enraged when he hears who was behind the arson, resulting in an all-out car chase as the Golden Knights track down Hector. Angel finally corners him and gives the dishonest crook’s car a few bashes with a metal rod before Beto arrives and reminds Angel that whatever he plans to do, the whole club will be watching him. Angel understands the warning and grudgingly lets Hector go, throwing the best-in-show trophy at him in disgust. Beto gives the recently retrieved golden statue back to a gracious Angel. With that, Beto declines the invitation to go to the car show’s after-party and instead begins his new life with Kim as they head home.

Despite more than half of the cast being Latino, their country of origin is never specified. The only clue to this puzzle is when Beto tries to teach Kim the Mexican phrase “órale”, meaning “let’s do it”. It is significant that both clubs, the dishonest Vikings and the honorable Golden Knights, have Latino members; thus not stereotyping any one race as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. The main prejudice in the plot is one of social classes which then lends itself to race. Kim’s mom asks her why she wants to live in the “other part of town”, connotatively the bad part, as her father adds in racial slurs, such as “wetbacks”. But Heartbreaker maintains its ideal of equality when Beto ends up mesmerizing Kim’s parents with his polite manner and magnetic personality; apparently not the qualities that they were expecting from someone of Latin descent living in the ‘other part of town’. At first, when Beto tries to court Kim, she displays this same bigotry, saying, “We are different people, with different attitudes towards life.” Beto doesn’t stand for this kind of statement and quizzes her on how they are different: Because their colour of hair is different? Or is it their skin, one looking like mashed potatoes, the other like refried beans (lending significance to their separate cultures)? It is at this point that Beto announces to the diner that he is in love with Kim and this melts away any barriers of background which may have stood in their way. The majority of Latinos in the film are constantly beating away the stereotypes of separate cultures as they allow their love of cars to open up doorways into a common ground, upon which one of any heritage can present their hard work. The reward for Beto’s attempts to combine both the American and the Latino worlds comes in the last scene when Kim smiles at Beto and says, “Órale”, thus permitting both cultures to co-exist in harmony.

La Bamba

La Bamba (1987) tells the life story of 1950s rock-and-roll phenom, Ritchie Valens, from his underprivileged beginnings to his tragic end. The movie begins with Richie (Lou Diamond Phillips), born Ricardo Valenzuela, and his mother, Connie (Rosana DeSoto) working as fruit pickers in an orange grove in Paicoma, California. Their pay depends on their labour, but everyone in the camp works hard hours and enjoys the family-like atmosphere of Mexican tradition. One day, out of the blue, a motorcycle roars into the camp carrying tough guy Bob Valenzuela (Esai Morales), Richie’s older brother. The two embrace in a brotherly hug and then excitedly find their mother and Rosie, Richie’s love interest. Bob has just gotten out of jail and is eager to bring his family back to a city in southern California; but his mother refuses as she is suspicious that the money that he shows her has been cultivated in dishonest ways. Finally she is convinced, and they leave the next day, but not before Bob, with no concern for Richie’s feelings, takes Rosie’s virginity and brings her with them on his motorcycle. The family moves into a run-down shack while Rosie and Bob reside in the RV beside it. Bob continues his lifestyle of drinking and drugs, while Richie proves to be a clean-cut 16-year-old: going to school and staying out of trouble. The distance between the two brothers widens when Rosie announces she’s pregnant (with a baby that Bob does not care to have), whereas Ritchie joins the rock-and-roll band “The Silhouettes” and starts dating a blonde girl from high school named Donna.

After a few low-key garage gigs, Connie pumps up the band’s exposure and gets them a show at the local Legion Hall. When the lead singer becomes upset about Connie getting gigs for them, the rest of the band sides with Richie and allows him to sing an amazing set at the Legion. Later on that same night, Bob turns up drunk at the show and causes a huge brawl which ruins the evening. Connie yells at him, but Bob shows no remorse as he bellows that the world doesn’t revolve around Richie (albeit Richie joined in on the brawl to protect his drunk brother). However, all is not lost as a music scout named Bob Keene (Joe Pantoliano) had been among the young people in the crowded legion hall and he immediately signs Richie to his modest record label, Del-Fi Records. His rise to fame progresses quickly after that as the new ‘Ritchie Valens’ becomes a household name; but such fame brings a price to his personal life as his relationship with Donna slowly deteriorates on account of her father’s racism. During this time he also divulges that he has dreams of the memory of two planes crashing, falling to the earth, and killing his best friend, which has caused Richie’s fear of flying.

Recording the songs just as Keene envisions them proves to warrant much time and effort, but Richie is whole-heartedly committed to the cause of his music. Then, when brother Bob sees that Richie has written the song ‘For Donna’ in hopes of winning her over again, he takes action by forcing his reluctant brother across the border to Tijuana to get drunk and lose his virginity. Although Richie is distracted by the band onstage playing the folk song “La Bamba”, he still wakes up the next morning in an old Mexican man’s shack, with a hangover, a tattoo, and a talisman to protect him from his dreams of flying; but his virginity is still intact. Not long after, Keen gets Richie to agree to fly to New York in order to be on the popular teenage live-music show “American Bandstand”. This gig sends Richie straight to stardom and allows him to buy his mom the house he’s always wanted to give her, not to mention a flashy new car for himself which helps him to persuade Donna to come back to him. Again, at the sight of Richie’s fame, Bob flounders into drunkenness and Rosie does not even permit him to see his own daughter. Richie then asks Keene if he can try a rock-and-roll version of “La Bamba”. Keene is hesitant at first, but the new version becomes an instant success. Richie returns home from touring to a house full of smiling family and friends, except for Bob who still can’t take his brother’s fame. When Bob and Richie are alone together they begin yelling their true feelings at one another and Bob reveals that he never got over that fact that his father left when he was born and Richie’s father, Steve, was always the father that he had wanted but could never truly belong to. A fist fight ensues, and Bob yells, “I’m gonna kill you!” before accidentally ripping the talisman from Richie’s neck. The two stop and feel the gravity of what has been done. Richie is shaken by the experience, but still leaves his family and loving girlfriend behind to do a tour with several other big name rock-and-roll artists. When their tour bus breaks down and they instead have to fly to Fargo, Richie is hesitant but he is encouraged by the support of his friends as they all fly off into the snowy night.

The plane crashes and kills all the passengers. Ricardo Valenzuela: the affectionate son, the devoted boyfriend, and the phenomenal performer, was only seventeen years old when he died. His family and friends hear the news at the same time as the rest of the country on a national news radio bulletin: Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, and JB Richardson: all dead due to a tragic plane crash. The film’s heartbreaking ending leaves the audience with visions of those who were closest to Richie in absolute despair over the absence of this light in their life, their star of fame. Then, during the credits, the video of Richie performing La Bamba reminds us that through his beloved music he will live forever.

La Bamba is apparently a biography of Ritchie Valens’ life, but it could be argued that it is as much about his older brother Bob as it is about the star himself. The stark contrasts between the brothers can be seen in more than just their lifestyles, as Bob has held on to his Mexican roots and Richie hasn’t even really been introduced to them. Bob takes Richie to Tijuana and Richie is overwhelmed by the revelry and promiscuity at every turn. While Bob is able to chat-up the different prostitutes around the room, Richie can barely speak, let alone in Spanish. This lack of native culture is especially evident when he is confronted the next morning by the old Mexican man, to whom he says, “Yo no speako español.” What's more, when Richie continues to alter his lyrics while recording, Keen tries to be understanding, saying that he realizes Mexico has a tradition of changing song lyrics but this isn’t Mexico, when Richie interrupts him by saying, “Look man, I haven’t even been to Mexico. My music is my music.” The rich Latin American culture in the film is constantly mixed with the American purpose and resolve to attain that elusive American dream. But Ritchie Valens actually did make it to the top and wrote three #1 hits in his short recording career of eight months; even through an unsettling experience of having his name changed from Richie Valenzuela to Ritchie Valens in order to decrease his Mexican appearance. This is a Latinized, rags-to-riches, American story which analyzes Richie’s sense of self, asserting that although someone may be of Mexican heritage, his background certainly doesn’t dictate his identity, especially when the American dream is at stake.

"Pluto and the Armadillo"

"Pluto and the Armadillo" was, apparently, intended as a sequence within Saludos Amigos, but ended up as a stand-alone short. And indeed it follows the same pattern as the feature-length movie, with its educational pretext (we're told how to pronounce "armadillo," for instance), but above all in that it shows a Disney regular interacting with a Disneyfied representative of Latin America's native fauna.

Mickey and Pluto are on a fifteen-minute stopover in Belén, Brazil, and playing on the airport tarmac with a ball that they've brought along. Mickey throws the ball long, and Pluto has to follow it into the nearby jungle, where he comes across an armadillo who, rolled up to protect herself, looks exactly like the imported rubber plaything. Hilarity ensues as first Pluto cannot believe his eyes in the face of this moving double of his own toy, then is gradually seduced by the cute face that emerges, before losing his rag and bursting the ball with his teeth. Disconsolate at the thought that he has killed his new Latin playmate, he reconciles with the creature when he realizes his mistake, and then both Pluto and the armadillo are dragged into the departing plane by Mickey.

So Pluto exchanges a bouncy ball for a live-wire, Samba-dancing armadillo. What's interesting here is the play of similarity and difference. From one aspect, when the armadillo is rolled up in defense, the toy and the animal are indistinguishable. But on closer inspection, and given a little bit of patience on the "turista americano"'s part, the armadillo reveals its distinctive rhythms, winning grin, and playful desire to be an active part of the game rather than mere plaything. And as Mickey scoops his charge up at the film's end, the same mistake and the same transformation are repeated: indistinguishable plaything becomes player with a mind of her own, albeit not exactly on her own terms. After all, the armadillo had never asked to be whisked away from Belén by air.

As always, there's little in the way of ideology at play: in a whistlestop pause on the South American continent, the Mouse machine grabs a Latin playmate, livelier and more fun than the mass-produced plaything he leaves in tatters on the jungle floor, and the onward voyage is sure to be full of incident as a result.

Bonus link: the entire cartoon is available at ManiaTV!

Grand Slam

There are a number of mysteries left unresolved at the end of Grand Slam (Ad ogni costo), an enjoyable 1967 heist movie set largely in Rio de Janeiro.

First, and no doubt most important, following a number of twists it’s not immediately obvious who finally takes possession of the diamonds that the top team of international experts have stolen from a Brazilian diamond exchange. Inevitably enough, the gang-members themselves don’t get to profit (and each suffers a rather sticky end). But perhaps I’m just being obtuse when I say that I’m not sure whether the final scene presents us with yet another double cross, or simply a rather unfortunate accident. And in the final shot one of the central characters, played a Janet Leigh, has a look on her face as though she can’t quite work it out, either. The moral of a heist movie is often that crime doesn’t pay. (Think for instance of the famous ending to The Italian Job.) It’s not clear whether Grand Slam break with this pattern or not.

But second, and still more mysteriously, there’s the strange case of the unfortunate woman who goes by the name of Stetuaka and is played by one “Jussara” in what the IMDB tells us is her sole cinematic credit. And as a commenter at the IMDB puts it, “believe me, I have been born, raised and lived a good part of my life in Rio and have never, ever known anyone by the name of Stetuaka.”

Stetuaka is unfortunate in that it emerges that she is absolutely destitute of clothing. She lives on a yacht (the “Sea Wolf”) in the Rio marina, unable to go ashore because all she owns is underwear, and just a single pair of knickers and bra at that. So when she washes the bra and it is drying in the sun, the poor creature is forced to go topless.

It’s at one of these awkward moments that Stetuaka first catches the eye of Agostino, an Italian electrician and handyman whose job is (literally) to grease the wheels of the operation to open up the safe containing the diamonds. Despite the fact that Agostino and Stetuaka have no language in common, our man takes a shine to her and seems determined to save her from her life of unclothed isolation and indecency. He buys her a dress. And while it’s true that the lacy number he’s picked up still hardly leaves much to the imagination (it’s more a translucent nightgown than anything else), at least presumably she’s now able to pop on shore and buy a pint of milk from time to time. Sadly, in the film’s closing minutes Agostino is shot down before Stetuaka’s eyes as he tries to make a run from the law. But she gets to keep the dress.

So what fate has brought this charming creature to such a pretty pass? Has she been imprisoned on her yacht by some gangland boss or criminal mastermind? Is she doing penance for some scandal or some heinous family secret? Or is it the curse of her unusual name? The movie never resolves the mystery of Stetuaka. Rather, we have to assume that such oddities are what make Rio what it is.

For every world city, it seems, has an iconic building plus some strange idiosyncrasy. The movie opens with a retired teacher flying into New York, looking pensively out of a helicopter window. He sees the Statue of Liberty, so confirming for his benefit and ours that this is really New York. Later, he turns up at a mansion in which there’s a secret striptease club. Only in America! Similarly, then, as he travels the world to assemble his criminal gang, when in London we see first the Houses of Parliament and then a butler adding a delicate cream topping to a cake for his aristocratic master. It helps for the plot that the butler is also a master safe-cracker, but again the main point seems to be that this odd way of life is somehow typically English.

Similarly, then, Italy has the Coliseum as well as a matronly scold who runs a toyshop, and though in France we’re strangely deprived of a view of the Eiffel Tower, we have a jealous and dependent French mistress (perhaps wife). And in Rio? Rio has the Sugarloaf mountain with its statue of Christ the Redeemer, it has its characteristic undulating mosaic on the sidewalks, it has Copacabana (viewed from the balcony of the same penthouse hotel room rented by every visitor to the city, if the movies are to be believed), it has Carnaval. And it has Stetuaka.

Strangely enough, then, this character’s oddity and unbelievability functions as a mark of realism and particularity. An unclothed, bizarrely named beauty confined to the marina? Only in Rio!

YouTube link: the film's trailer.

Bird of Paradise

King Vidor's Bird of Paradise is not a film about Latin America, though it presents an exoticizing narrative that is familiar from films set in the Caribbean or the Amazon.

Here, we are somewhere in the South Seas, on an island paradise visited by a US yacht that, in the opening scene, only barely scrapes across the coral reef that guards its shores. This physical barrier is also, of course, a cultural barrier, and soon enough eager natives are paddling and swimming up to greet the interloping vessel, and they prove themselves only too eager to be pleased by the trinkets that the crew have to offer them.

Suddenly, danger appears, in the form of a shark that appears to threaten the peaceful islanders. But in the end it is an American who gets into trouble: Johnny, who falls overboard trapped in the fishing line that the shark is rapidly dragging out to sea; but help is at hand as an indigenous maiden cuts the line and saves his life.

Soon enough, Johnny falls in love with this enchanting creature, who turns out to be a princess by the name of Luana. He teaches her how to kiss and be kissed, but for his pains the tribe turns on the two of them, who have to exile themselves on a neighbouring island, where they enjoy domestic bliss and discuss the merits or otherwise of civilization.

This tropical reverie cannot last, however, and the tribe come looking for Luana in order to throw her into the local volcano so as to appease a disgruntled deity. Johnny finds himself at risk too, but is rescued along with Luana by his returning crewmates. But in the end, facing the choice between savagery or civilization, extinction in a smoking crater or everyday life in California, Luana chooses to sacrifice herself but save her tribe. Loyalty among indigenes trumps cultural rescue, so avoiding the inconvenience of permanent inter-racial coupling.

Bird of Paradise is mostly notable for a bit of pre-Hayes code titillation: it features a poetic underwater courtship scene in which are treated to the sight of Joel McCrea (who plays Johnny) in a rather figure-hugging pair of underpants, and in which we may be seeing Dolores del Rio nude.


For del Rio plays Luana, and this reveals what I think is a revealing tension within Hollywood portrayals of race. On the one hand, as with the narrative that this film presents, what’s emphasized are the barriers between races and cultures: “they” are fundamentally different from “us,” and although this difference can generate desire, in the end cross-cultural liaisons are doomed. But on the other hand, in the casting process, cinematic conceptions of race are quite labile, especially around latinidad. Whites can play Latinos (say, Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil, Latinos can play whites (Rita Hayworth), Greeks can play Latinos (West Side Story), and as here, Latinos can also play South Sea islanders.

It’s true that some racial barriers prove more impermeable than others to casting agents, above all the separation between black and white. But the pragmatics of Latino casting, even of major stars, is often in tension with the exoticising narrative strategies of the films in which they are playing. And precisely because these are stars, the contradiction is palpable. The racial ambiguity exacerbates the characteristic tension between star and character. Latino stars can not only play out of character; they can also play out of race.

Indeed some, notably Antonio Rudolfo Oaxaca Quinn, made a career out of it.

Zorro, the Gay Blade

Zorro's back... and now he is two.

In Zorro, the Gay Blade, when Zorro dies his two sons are called upon to take on his mantle of swashbuckling for justice, and challenging the corrupt alcalde. One, Don Diego, is the cheeky womanizer of yore; his brother Ramón, however, has changed his name to Bunny Wigglesworth and joined the English navy in line with his rather camper sensibility and alternative sexuality.

So whereas Diego takes up the black suit and hat, Bunny chooses a rather more colorful set of outfits, from plum to lime-green to avocado. He prefers the whip to the sword. And he tells the downtrodden "Remember, my people: there is no shame in being poor, only in dressing poorly!" He is, after all, the gay blade.


Zorro, the Gay Blade is a spoof, but a very affectionate one. It opens with footage from the classic 1940 Mark of Zorro, and a dedication to that film's director, Rouben Mamoulian. We are definitely encouraged to laugh with the Zorro franchise, rather than at it.

For Zorro has always been part-clown as well as part-superhero, even in his very first screen incarnation, in Douglas Fairbanks's The Mark of Zorro. And, as I have noted before, the films derive their comedy from the antics of Don Diego as fop, whose bumbling ridiculousness is counterpointed with Zorro's debonair and effortless agility.

It is just that in this movie, these two aspects have been both separated out and collapsed: the two characters, Bunny and Diego, are distinguished; but Zorro becomes an amalgam of both. Zorro here is the fop, or the fop is Zorro.

Oddly enough, though, this is one of the most overtly politicized Zorros. Perhaps it's only by exaggerrating the theme's cartoonish elements to their most ludicrous extent that some small space is won for something like political commentary. For Diego's love interest here, in one of the movie's few material departures from the standard script, is not the young daughter of an oppressed but noble California family, but rather a Yankee interloper, an apostle for the political freedoms won by the thirteen colonies over on the US East Coast.

(It goes almost without saying, unfortunately, that Bunny has no love interest: his sexuality is all a matter of fashion and innuendo, rather than desire or sex itself.)

So Zorro, the Gay Blade outlines multiple axes of difference: between rich and poor, gay and straight, but also significantly between Latino and Anglo, or what would today be framed as chicano and "white."

In his perceptive essay "The Face of Zorro", Luis Valdez (La Bamba's director) points out that the Zorro legend has always to be set in that brief and now mythical time of late Spanish or Mexican rule in California:

The fictitious Zorro cannot comfortably survive beyond an 1848-50 story time line without provoking embarrassing questions. By the time California is part of the United States, his foppish usefulness as a critic and foe of corrupt Mexican and Spanish ways is irrevocably gone. There is no place for a Hispanic masked avenger in the new American context.

But The Gay Blade flirts with contemporaneity, and perhaps that is indeed what makes it the most embarrassing of the Zorro series. Not because it is funny. Not because it is a spoof. Nor even, really, because of its caricatured presentation of homosexuality. No: these elements were always, at least implicitly, in place. Rather, what's most uncomfortable about this movie compared to its predecessors is the way in which it invokes contemporary Anglo-Hispanic race relations.

George Hamilton, playing Diego/Zorro, throughout adopts a thick Hispanic accent. He declares himself, for instance, champion of the "peepuls" and early on Don Diego and his love interest, the WASPy Charlotte Taylor Wilson (played by Lauren Hutton) have a long exchange that revolves around the mispronunciation of "sheep." "Forgive me, but you have a very pronounced accent," she says.

Meanwhile, playing Bunny/Zorro, Hamilton (for it is again he) acts out a fable of Anglo assimilation, whereby racial distinction is blurred, as young Ramón de la Vega adopts an over the top English accent (and as Diego comments to him, "you have a very pronounced accent"), but the mark of difference is preserved, now translated into camp homosexuality.

In short, Zorro "the gay blade" is the first manifestly chicano incarnation of this character: but now, and no doubt as a consequence, no longer as suave superhero, but as laughing stock.

insularity?

It's an oft-heard reproach that Americans (that is, people from the United States) don't know or don't care enough about the rest of the world. Frequently, indeed, this is a self-reproach, as with Morgan Meis's "Monday Musing" over at the fine blog 3 Quarks Daily.

But surely the very frequency and ease of this (self-)critique should induce some second thoughts.

Hollywood particularly is lambasted for its role in a "cultural imperialism" that Americanizes the world without reciprocally taking sufficient notice of otherness. But this critique of the film industry ignores the vast number of movies that place otherness, and the problem of otherness, squarely centre-screen.

It also passes over the way in which cinema itself has been dedicated, since its inception, to the exploration and inhabitation of difference--albeit, it is true, from the safety of our more or less plush movie house seats, and nowadays our more or less plush armchairs and sofas from which we watch our DVD rentals.

There's no need to turn to "independent" or non-mainstream cinema to search for images of Latin America, for instance. As this blog is dedicated to showing, Latin America has figured at the heart of the movie industry since, well, at least since Edison sent his cameras to Cuba and Puerto Rico to document the 1898 war against Spain.

And from 1898 to the present, there's hardly a major director (from D W Griffith to Orson Welles to Hitchcock to Peckinpah to Soderbergh) who hasn't shot at least one film, often many more, in or about Latin America.

One might object that this isn't the "real" Latin America, but it's worth saying once again that to lament the distance between stereotype and reality is to miss the point entirely.

We are left then with the rather interesting observation that Hollywood's obsession with Latin America functions in such a way that it can leave its audience with the impression that still, somehow, they have learned nothing about what is presented to them. Which is a much stranger and more intriguing fact to be explained than the (counter-factual) assumption that somehow difference was never there in the first place.

Does Latin America on Screen then function somewhat like Poe's famous purloined letter? So clearly before our eyes that we cannot really see it at all.

"10"

At the heart (such as it is) of Blake Edwards's "10" is the mismatch between Bo Derek's effortless beauty on the one hand and Dudley Moore's comic pratfalls on the other.

Bo Derek plays Jenny Hanley, a young bride with a flawless body and ridiculous hair, who is called upon to do little in this film except lie smoulderingly on the beach, run up and down said beach with boobs perkily bouncing, flash us these same boobs back in her hotel room, and extol the virtues of fucking to Ravel's Bolero.

Moore plays George Webber, a composer of "elevator music" who has somehow made it to 42 and a life of Beverley Hills mansions and Rolls Royce convertibles despite his incompetence in almost every area of life's practicalities. Now, entering some kind of midlife crisis, he falls for the image of perfection that the sight of Jenny offers.

But George is comically unsuited to charming seduction. Distracted upon first catching sight of Jenny, he crashes the Rolls into a police car; shortly thereafter he falls into his mansion's swimming pool while ripping his phone from its socket having hit himself with his own telescope and already fallen through the garden hedge. His appearance is disfigured by a bee sting on his nose and by the bloated effects of having six cavities filled by Jenny's dentist father. Much is made of his stature (unprepossessing) and his character ("unnaturally belligerent and exhaustingly childish").

Julie Andrews's character, George's off-again, on-again girlfriend Samantha Taylor, remarks that she and he are "the original odd couple." But it's George and Jenny who are more obviously unsuited.

And it's to compound Dudley Moore's ability to play embarrassment and awkwardness, as well as to remove Bo Derek from too much demanding everyday interaction (or acting), that the film takes them and us to Mexico for the bulk of the movie's central section.

Webber arrives at his beachside resort drunk, sweaty, and exhausted after a harrowing plane trip and wild taxi ride. He proves even more unsuited to life in the tropics than he is to surviving Los Angeles. The hotel goes to every effort to put him at his ease, with a pineapple drink at reception and even a helping lift down to the sea so he doesn't burn his feet on the hot sand. But these very luxuries are simply further indignities.


In other words, it's as much because of as despite the fact that George is so carefully insulated from any Mexico other than the resort's simulacrum (and even then he's not insulated enough, as when he's woken by a Mariachi band outside his window) that he's so glaringly out of place.

Jenny seems instinctively, naturally to belong. Her bathing costume, tanned skin, and the sand all blur one into another, and wrapped up in her corn-row braids are beads and feathers as though she's incorporated some part of the physical environment. Perhaps it's for that reason that she's so featureless and characterless: the few lines she's given provide only the barest caricature of a free-loving hippy chick.

But in the end "10" validates as well as mocks George's sense of displacement and discomfort. He finally refuses Jenny's seduction not just because he can't coolly sleep with someone else's honeymoon bride, but also because he won't.

And with that, George is back to the US, to reconcile with Samantha, but also to reconcile himself to his failure to be reconciled.

Road to Rio

Rio has to be one of Hollywood's favourite destinations. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if it were its most favoured Latin American destination, and perhaps even its number one location for Third World exotica as a whole.

By 1947, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Dolores del Rio, and Gene Raymond had already flown down to Rio, Basil Rathbone had escaped and gone on the rampage in Rio, even Charlie Chan had made it to Rio, while Jane Powell and Ann Southern would soon be on their way, Carmen Miranda in tow, though she'd already been there for at least a night with Don Ameche. Meanwhile, coming the other way, we'd had both a girl and a kid emerge from the Brazilian metropolis.

So by the time that Bing Crosby and Bob Hope get on the Road to Rio, it's more a well-travelled expressway than a winding path.

Thanks to this slew of 1930s and 1940s movies, Rio de Janeiro was by now almost familiar to US cinema-goers. And it became familiar, as Latin America so often has, via its music, or a version of its music. Most of the films I've just mentioned are musicals, or contain musical interludes, often set in the city's opulent nightclubs, as Hollywood imagined them. Road to Rio is no exception, and can even afford to be self-reflexive about its trading in Latin musical exotica, as in the climactic wedding scene where Bob Hope hams up a parody version of Carmen Miranda.

But for all its familiarity, Rio maintains its distance. There's a dark side to Latin America in these films, though this touch of danger (touch of evil as Welles will soon suggest) is also part of its allure. Here that dangerous enticement is figured as hypnosis: the evil aunt, from whom Bing and Bob have to wrest the beautiful niece, keeps her charge in check by dangling her ever-present pendant in front of the girl's eyes and telling her that she's feeling sleepy... She pulls the same trick on our hapless heroes, almost (but not quite) inveigling them into shooting each other in a duel in the middle of what is, not insignificantly, the only bit of untamed nature we get to see.

It's interesting, however, that Crosby and Hope's characters pick up on hypnosis as a technique to outwit the aunt's henchmen. Moreover, the movie ends with a scene in which Bob has himself subjected the girl to a marriage against her will by means of the same pendant once owned by the aunt. This mirroring or imitation is found throughout the film (and not just this one, it's worth adding). Indeed, Bing and Bob have already used a technique very similar to hypnosis in order to trick breakfast from a seasick liner passenger.

The imitation goes every which way: Hope parodies Miranda's (almost) self-parodic Americanized Brazilianism, while a trio of Brazilian musicians are passed off as part of a Dixie band by being taught the limited "hep cat" vocabulary of "You're telling me," "You're in the groove, Jackson," and "This is Murder."

And the film's best and catchiest number, the one instance of Crosby performing with the Andrews sisters on screen, is "You Don't Even Have to Know the Language", a celebration of affective tourism, the possibilities of immediate contact beneath discourse:

You stop at the Copacabana
With the Sugar Loaf mountain in view
So the words on the menu mean nothing
You can't ask a soul what to do
But, you don't have to know the language
With the moon in the sky
And the girl in your arms
And a look in her eyes.

(Meanwhile, how about this for a song of good neighborliness?)

Despite all this, there remain inextricable obstacles to getting under the Latin skin. Some hard kernel of unknowable difference. Here, this is figured through the mysterious "papers" that drive the film's plot. We never figure out what they are. The film disappoints our expectations, self-reflectively denying us our full enjoyment of latinidad. The cavalry don't turn up in the end. And the papers? We don't get to read them, because fundamentally they must be illegible, an instance or trace some unbridgeable Latin American difference.

And so there's a strange, subterranean resonance here, between this lightest of comedic representations of Latin America, and that most traumatic and anguished view, Herzog's Aguirre, in which Ruy Guerra's Don Pedro de Ursúa dies still clutching some intractable, illegible fragment of the Latin American real...