Type and Stereotype: Chicano Images in Film

Abstract

The following essay grows out of my participation in and viewing of the television program Chicano Images in Film. It is intended to raise issues that were too complex for discussion within the program itself but which I consider important to my own understanding of the general prob lem of stereotypes in the media. As an Anglo I freely admit to speaking as an outsider about issues that do not directly affect me. But as a woman who teaches and makes films within the dominant culture of patriarchy I am acutely aware of the many ways this culture's representa tion of women in film and the other arts operates to flatten out, stereotype, or otherwise obliterate the truth of my existence. I share with Ch?canos, and any stereotyped minority, an abhorrence of a representational system that sees my reality as "other," my truth as grotesque caricature. It is obvious that women's bodies reduced to the status of sex objects for the delight of male subjects are no less stereotyped than the "lazy Mexicans" who serve as foils in countless Westerns to flatter the intelligence and energy of the Anglo cowboy. But at the same time I sus pect that the simple avoidance of racial or sexual stereotype in the name of more "real" presen tation of individuals may lead to a valorization of individualism that raises more problems than it solves. In the course of the panel discussion this problem occurred to me in the following form: it is all very well and good to criticize the media's use of grotesquely stereotyped villains, but doesn't much humor, certainly caricatures which take certain social types as the butt of the joke, depend on stereotype? Are we, for example, to censure Woody Allen's Bananas because it derives its humor from the caricature of Latin American "banana republics"? Although it may be possible to make a special case for the use of stereotype in so unrealistic a form as humor, this initial question led me to offer the following thoughts on the nature and function of media stereotyping in general and the more specific question of the search for a means of representation that will more truly reflect the realities of the Chicano experience.