Latin Looks: Images of Latinas and Latinos in the U.S. Media.

Given the dearth of critical and sustained attention to the representation, and lack thereof, of Latino/as in the United States, the publication of Clara E. Rodriguez's Latin Looks: Images of Latinas and Latinos in the U.S. Media is a significant event. Finally, someone is paying attention to the diverse and growing group of Latinos who make up 10% of the nation's population (with approximately 26 million Americans of Latin descent, the U.S. is now the fifth-largest Latin American country in the world). Although critical work about Latinos and Latinas exists, academia has a perplexing tendency to use one writer's work, specifically, Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/Fronteras (1987), as the comprehensive, emblematic reference point. Once a scholar mentions Anzaldua's work, no further attention to the other ways Latinos live, look, write, speak or work in the world is often necessary. By using a quote from Borderlands, the Latino/a problem is addressed and one can move on to matters more important - sometimes just mentioning the title or Anzaldua's name is enough.

Latin Looks proposes to take on one of film producer Paul Espinosa's "modest" suggestions for educators: "help . . . students - and, really, all of us - to analyze the nature of the problem. What, exactly, are the impacts on the Hispanic community of being ignored or misrepresented? And why are Hispanics so poorly represented?" Rodriguez's collection of eclectic and interdisciplinary essays does indeed serve us well in attending to these and other important questions about Latino/a invisibility in popular culture. Her emphasis is on English-language television and films produced in the U.S. between 1900 and 1994, and she focuses on five major points: 1) Hispanics are underrepresented and misrepresented in the media; 2) Latino images in Hollywood films have become more negative with time; 3) the similarities in the portrayals of Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and other groups and how these have changed over time - far outweigh the differences; 4) the quality of Hollywood's presentation of Latinos has fluctuated with the larger political and economic relationships that the U.S. has had with Latin America; and 5) fighting the currents, alternative filmmakers have sought to deconstruct media images of Latinos and construct new images and spaces that are by, for, and about the Latino community.

The 18 chapters are written by a variety of media and cultural studies scholars and social scientists. Rodriguez contributed a formal introduction to the volume, a preface to each of the four sections, brief biographies of significant male and female Latino and Latin American Hollywood film stars, and reviews of select popular films with or about Latinos from the 1980s to the 1990s. Rodriguez also authored the entire last section, "Strategies for Change," which provides a pedagogic guide for not only teaching about the issues raised in the book, but also for using this book to reform and transform the industry itself. Included as well are sample study sheets, exercises and lists of tasks for students to consider in viewing and reviewing films and shows. By offering this teaching section of the book, Rodriguez's provides readers with the "concrete, practicable steps that can be taken to change the current situation."

To her credit, each section has noteworthy contributions and the whole first section is quite compelling. Indeed, for anyone who attaches value to news reporting in a democratic society, Jorge Quiroga's "Hispanic Voices: Is the Press Listening?" is a must read. Quiroga's examination of two news events, the Los Angeles riots of 1991-92 and the Mt. Pleasant/Washington, D.C. riot of 1991, serves as an alarming example of how "clueless" the news media is in reporting stories that involve or revolve around Latinos. Quiroga states that "Hispanics experienced a symmetry of exclusion from beginning to end in the press coverage [of the L.A. riots]. They were excluded as perpetrators, victims and as a community affected by the melee." By excluding Latinos, the media can maintain the national debate on racism as facile and historically inadequate as it has been - " it's just a black/white thing." Quiroga points out that "Hispanics accounted for half of the 8700 people arrested city-wide during and after the riots; in fact, the L.A.P.D. arrested more Hispanics (4307) than blacks (3083)," "L.A. mobs ravaged about as many Hispanic businesses as Korean-owned ones," and "the areas most decimated by the riots were heavily populated by Hispanics: Koreatown (80%), Pico Union (70%) and South Central Los Angeles (45%)." Quiroga argues cogently that this media exclusion was a predominating factor in the "disproportionate attention and post-riot aid" to African Americans. The other illuminating example of media ineptitude is the manner in which The Washington Post "covered" the Mt. Pleasant/D.C. neighborhood disturbance. Quiroga notes that the newspaper's reputation for national and international reporting was met with a challenge in how to cover a disturbance in "its own backyard" with no Spanish speaking reporter in the city room; their solution was sending a "borrowed" Spanish-speaking International Desk correspondent "down there."

The second section, "The Silver Screen: Stories and Stereotypes," contains focused essays on how Chicanos, Chicanas and Puerto Ricans have been represented in film from the early days of Hollywood (yes, even in silent films) and goes right up through to box office blockbusters and busts of the last 10-15 years, like Scarface (1983, by Brian DePalma), Carlito's Way (1993, by Brian DePalma) and The Specialist (1994, by Luis Llosa). Richie Perez's article maintains that because of the rapid and sophisticated development of technology in mass media, "today negative stereotypes are given 'eternal life' and are distributed internationally. This takes on added significance when we consider that many studies argue that when people have no direct contact, most of their learning about ethnic groups comes from the mass media." He argues that films are important to the success of civil and human rights movements, and, referring to the 1968 Kerner Commission report by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, notes that "the fight against media racism is part of the overall struggle to change our conditions."

Readers interested in learning more about alternative filmmakers' efforts will appreciate the third section. Lillian Jimenez's piece addresses Puerto Rican cinema in New York, while Liz Kotz's chapter surveys various documentaries by Latinas and Latin American women and the politics surrounding the poor distribution and lack of support these filmmakers cope with. This section features a most illuminating joint-authored essay entitled "Hispanic-Oriented Media," which suggests that one of the main reasons Latinos have not protested Hollywood more vigorously is because "we" didn't need them; "we" have our own stations and shows on Spanish-language television. My earliest memories of television are of "Popa," a Latino actor in drag whose weekly show came into our Northeastern New Jersey living room via channel 45. Spanish-language television is finally being recognized by the advertising industry too and so commercials are no longer English-versions dubbed with Spanish as they were in the past, but fairly culturally sensitive or prototypical creations with no English-version equivalents. The essay by Frederico Subervi-Velez and five other scholars points out that first print, and later electronic media, have been part of Latino culture in the U.S. from the beginning: "From the border newspapers of the early 1800s through today's advanced telecommunications, Latinos have had a broad range of media that both informed and entertained in their own language and cultures" and that these "tended to be more favorable to Latinos than other media have been. Whether the Hispanic-oriented media are print or broadcast, they continue to present the life and times of Latinos in the U.S. more thoroughly, appropriately, and positively." The concluding statement raises a significant question that is echoed in other pieces in the anthology: "What remains to be seen and assessed is whether or not Hispanics in the United States will be at the forefront of developing and producing the new content and media affecting their lives." After this, I would have expected Rodriguez to include a piece on how the mainstream's negative images of Latinos were contrasted and combated by "our" visibility in Hispanic-oriented media, but perhaps that is scholarship that is only now being produced.

Reading this book brought home the realization that even though Latinos are the majority minority group in cities such as Los Angeles and New York, most sitcoms set in these places do not show that reality. It is still always a surprise to see any Latino in/on mainstream media. And although it has been gratifying to see Jimmy Smits, Hector Elizondo and Edward James Olmos on a variety of shows over the years, I have longed for my sisters' talents. This year, however, there are more Latinas on prime time television than ever before: the sexy secretary on The Tony Danza Show, the sexy underemployed actress on Union square and the sexy though overweight maid on Veronica's Closet. This random and somewhat facetious survey illustrates Latino Looks's point that we have not really made any great strides.

CECILIA RODRIGUEZ MILANES is a professor of Emergent American Literature and Women's Studies at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.