HOW MEXICANS WERE PORTRAYED IN MOVIES/TV

But how about all those many westerns in which they’re seen as kindly friends of the hero? 

Just one example: Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez, born to a Mexican mother and a Mexican-American father, in Rio Bravo.

Katy Jurado in High Noon is a break from the stereotype you see.

Margo and Pedro Armendáriz also might not fit.

Or Dolores del Río?

Charlton Heston is an unlikely looking Mexican but he's the hero......

High Noon


The Man from Del Rio

In Howard Hawk’s great film “Only Angels Have Wings” (1939), set in South America, Jean Arthur refers to the local language (Spanish) as “gibberish.”

Mexican born actor Alphonso Bodoya (as Gold Hat in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”) speaks one of filmdom’s most famous and widely repeated lines. I won’t insult you by quoting it. I know you know it.



BATouttaheck

Thanks for the picture of Katy Jurado in “High Noon.” This is one of my top favorite supporting performances of all time. For a while, Jurado was married to, of all people, Ernest Borgnine. While married, they appeared together as a couple in the western caper film “The Badlanders” (1958). Not only were they married off-screen, but the warmth of their love affair came through to the audience. I thought it rather progressive for the time to show a successful Mexican/Anglo relationship in a standard western release (to a certain extent - They couldn't be allowed to live happily ever after).

Well, Gabriel Iglesias would make fun of how his mother told him who his father was... she just showed him a bottle of hot sauce. as funny as it was, that is a little stereotype-honoring and encouraging.

and George Lopez [his sitcom] he is often seen as being closed minded and quick to jump to racist conclusions.



well, here's the thing about stereotypes... if you dislike the stereotype and resent it... you'd better not do it, not even behind closed doors.

as an Irishwoman, if i dislike the stereotype of the Irish wife being married to a drunk bum then my Irish husband {I'm single FYI}
had better not come home drunk most nights. and if i dislike Irish women always thought to be barefoot and pregnant when i can't afford the brood of kids i have, then i'd better not be pregnant every year. simple as that. YOU make the change in the world.

Interestingly Zorro is not a Mexican (not until perhaps the Banderas version). He was Spanish.

The thing with Treasure of the Sierra Madre is that they have Walter Huston joining the Indians. That is the multiculturalism message there. All the major studios had to have some diversity message. That particular message looks like he is the white savior but that is how the propaganda came across in those days.
Or they made blacks comical characters.

In the remake of High Sierra starring Jack Palance they change the black character to a Mexican.
Which reminds me--Jack Palance portrays a Mexican outlaw in the Professionals--that was not unsympathetic either (major studio).


The difference with the majors (those tied to communism) vs say US-founded RKO or Republic Pictures (thinking of the Adventures of Captain Marvel) is a that the latter had a "respect but separate" mantra.
In King Kong the tribe of the island couldnt be trusted--but they weren't slandered for it--the message ultimately was that they should have left the island alone.
The major studios on the other hand have a "western society is better without homogeneity."


In For a Few Dollars More the El Indio character is a child murdering Mexican rapist (although it seems to me there was a desire to make the character at least slightly sympathetic--that he was haunted by the suicide of the sister).

Then  you see a change with the Good the Bad and the Ugly because the Mexican character Tuco is a little more sympathetic--and then in Once Upon A Time in the West I think it is suggested that both the Jason Robards and Charles Bronson characters are not white--but I dont remember that ever stated in the movie so it may be Liberal revisionism...but Leone did make a central character in Duck You Sucker a Mexican (and a rapist).

As Carl Denham says in King Kong, every legend has its basis in truth-and the same goes for stereotypes. That is just generalizations.

There are Mexican bandits and rapists.
 There may also be Mexican computer programmers but that doesn't change the fact that Mexican criminals exist.
If you don't show them-or any racial stereotype ever, then you are denying Nature.
Art is supposed to reflect truth.

A generalization is never monolithic and only stupid people take them that way.