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Old Hollywood Movies Research Paper

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Actors in Film rarely have control over what they were acting in many Hollywood movies, because actors have the least amount of creative input. Most actors play the role they are assigned, which the mostly white studio executives choose these assignments, and this makes it difficult to know whether or not actors have subverted their stereotypes. This is not just the case for Old Hollywood actor, since many actors today face the same obstacle. According to Latino Images in film, there is a “disappearing act” involved with the perception of actors. This “disappearing act” is how the actors’ decisions on their roles affect how they are seen, for example the actor disappears into the charter and the other way around. In Latino Images in Film, the …show more content…

Though she started acting in silent melodrama, she eventually switched to comedies. Velez was considered an early 1930s sex goddess, much like Mae West, and push sexual boundaries for women of color. Her comic roles are different from the female clown stereotype, because she steals the show for her comic abilities and is dressed fashionably instead of stereotypical. Even Though jokes came from the stereotypical elements, but she is corrected for language mistakes instead of ridiculed and in the Mexican Spitfire movies all the characters do silly things. Also, in the movie Mexican Spitfire’s Blessed Event her character slices the problem, which makes her the heroine of the story.
Gilbert Roland was a well-respected actor starting out as a matinee idol during the late 1920s to the 1930s. Roland fought stereotypes by standing out on screen. He did this with his graceful poster and outfits. Roland’s clothes were not stereotypical and his trademark outfits always stood out on camera. The closest stereotype he played was a Latin Lover, but his what separates his character in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) the stereotype is that the character wasn’t “a love them and leave them

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In the altar’s center is “a plaster image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, quarter-life size, its brown Indian face staring down on the woman” (Paredes 23). The implication of the stare is of criticism as the Virgin, symbolic of an ideal Mexican womanhood, looks down on Marcela, whose Anglo features starkly contrast with the Virgin’s, and whose actions are in opposition to the values that she represents. This carefully constructed scene is meaningful. Marcela’s lifeless body lies between the bed and the altar, and opposite to the altar is Marcela’s shrine dedicated to Hollywood movie stars. These are the visual images of the opposing forces that characterize the Mexican-American struggle for resistance against American cultural hegemony.

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Numerous screenwriters and directors have often dealt in their films with the theme of borders, whether literal and officially recognised, like military ranks or state frontiers, or abstract and metaphorical, like those of morality, justice, race, and gender, along with several others. As a consequence, as John Gibbs points out, one could assemble these movies, especially those taking place on the confines between Mexico and United States, under the label of ‘border films’ (2002: 27); thus contextualising them in a very specific tradition, which includes pictures such as Touch of Evil (Orson Welles 1958) or The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Tommy Lee Jones 2005). Accordingly, another notable movie belonging to the ‘border film tradition’ is Lone Star: an acclaimed 1996 hybrid of western and mystery film conventions, directed and written by independent filmmaker John Sayles. The picture recounts the story of a murder investigation, which leads the main character, Sheriff Sam

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The Bronze Screen introduced both positive and negative portrayals of Latinas and Latinos in film. While there are plenty of positive Latino roles in films, Latinos and Latinas should be included in more positive roles because the negative roles Latinos have in films cause negative stereotypes. Positive and negative representations of Latinos in films has always fluctuated throughout history, however the more negative ones seem to always overpower the good ones. The film, “The Bronze Screen”, gave many examples of the negative roles Latinos played in films throughout film history. Early films included Latino actors, however they did not always have a lead role or even a positive one.

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The exotification of Dolores del Rio is evident in an article published by a Photoplay issue in 1934, as she is described as possessing “golden skin, smooth as mellowed ivory and her dark, flashing eyes bespoke the lue of those maidenly ‘senoritas’ who peep at life from behind cloistered shutters… When the young man comes to call on a senorita in Mexico… he brings his guitar” (38). Through the exotification of Dolores del Rio, Hollywood found great success in the United States and in Latin America, one of the most profitable film markets in the cinematic industry. As a white-passing Latinx woman, del Rio was “more easily able to move in and out of ethnic roles” (33). Because Dolores del Rio was a Latinx woman that held “upper-class roles” and a Eurocentric standard of beauty while nonetheless, identifying with her Mexican heritage, she not only appealed to the white American public, but to Latin American audiences as well (Hershfield

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From our previous film showing, High Noon, we got a taste of how the Western genre portrayed Chicano/a characters. The late 1970’s saw a decline of the western, and “with the decline of the filmic western came the rise of the urban violence film” (Cortés 134). The 1980’s and 90’s saw film after film released portraying gang violence, and the Latino gang film was a “natural crossroads for sex, violence, and ethnicity” (Cortés 135). Some see these Latino gang members “as updated, modern variants of the Mexican bandit type” (Treviño). 1993 brought us the film Mi Vida Loca, which shows us the life of teenage Chicano/a gang members living in Echo Park, focused on the character known as Sad Girl.

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Similarly, in the movie El Norte one of the Chicano waiters who works in the restaurant with Enrique undergoes discrimination from the other Latino works due to what they consider his over-assimilation into U.S. culture (El

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I chose this film because it showed how hard the union workers and families worked in fighting racial injustices, and because it inspired myself to move forward with strong ideologies and pride. 2. Stereotyping in mass media was an important concern of Chicana/o media activists because it imprinted a demeaning label by only casting Chicana/o actors with "minor roles: villains, sidekicks, temptresses, where their main function is to provide the protagonists, typically a handsome white

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Throughout the story, she is confronted by men who act like she is the “Hot Tamale” (Cofer 105) hispanic woman, which she describes as “a one-dimensional view that the media have found easy to promote” (Cofer, 105), and according to Looking in the Popular Culture Mirror’s “Sexy, Sassy, Spicy: The Portrayal of Latina Women in American Television” by April Hernandez, it has been a trope going back to the 1920s. She describes how latina women in early films were stereotyped as “sexual bombshells” and it persisted into the 21st Century media. The stereotype profoundly affected Cofer by making non-hispanic men a little too eager to talk to her: the man on the British bus sang to her without being asked. Her date to her first formal dance kisses her extremely hard and says “I thought you Latin girls were supposed to mature early.” (Cofer, 106)

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Dolores del Rio was considered the perfect candidate for Hollywood films incorporating the preferred aesthetic appearance of Latinx actors during the period. Because popular culture in the United States did not fully accept all aspects of Latinx communities and were often anti-black, Latinx actors--such as Dolores del Rio--were made successful because of the racism in Hollywood studios. The dissociation of Latinx actors from blackness, indigeneity, and the working class allowed Latinx actors to become successful amongst Hollywood and its

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Throughout “The Mexican in Fact, Fiction, and Folkore” examines the term “Mexican” as it is applied in Southwest literature and argues the Anglo society has made a conscious effort to misrepresent Mexicans (Rios 60). He states the people of Mexican descent are viewed as un-American because they are perceived as filthy, lazy, and dumb. Ricatelli adds to the conversation of Mexican stereotypes by examining the literary expressions of Chicanas and Mexicanas in the literature of both the United States and Mexico. In “The Sexual Stereotypes of The Chicana in Literature” Ricatelli explains how in Yankee literature, the Chicana is referred to as the “fat breeder, who is a baby factory” meanwhile the Mexican is described as an “amoral, lusty hot tamale” (Ricatelli 51). He makes note of these stereotypes in order to highlight the ethnocentric and nativist points of view that dominated Anglo literature.

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Latino characters made up “3% of the television population” in the 1950s, 1% in the 1980s, between 1.1% and 1.6% in the early 1990s and eventually 3% in the late 1990s. Historically, Latinos have been underrepresented and often portrayed in a stereotypical, damaging

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Consequently, people would think about the next generation and believe in equality for every races and skin colors. In Hollywood, movie directors and writers should remove stereotypes, ensure justify for the minority, and teach the younger about equality. 
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The very act of cross-dressing itself was subversive, especially in Spain where costume was hugely important, not just on stage but in real life. Literary critic William Egginton notes in An Epistemology of the Stage, that when it came to costume the "Spanish public was extremely sensitive to such signifiers of class and could not, for example, tolerate or comprehend a scene in which the signs of social status presented by costume and speech would conflict". (402) With the audience so sensitive to costume details, what must they have thought about Rosaura 's male attire? Women dressing as men was a common device used by playwrights in the Golden Age (mujer vestida de hombre ) and one wonders was it merely because it was practical?

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When we think about the villains Disney cinema produces, the first image that comes to mind is the powerful women who use their magic to cast spells, summon forces greater than life, and enhance their agency. Often, identifying the villain in Disney films is easy, since they differ considerably from gender conforming characters due to their physical features, abilities, and style of dress. When examining the villain, one of the characteristics that stand out, is the villains’ dehumanization and non-heteronormativity. As a result, the villains’ stories may not adhere to idealistic social norms, but it’s their own just the same.

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