Racism in American Me and Mi Vida Loca - Movie Review Example

Racist Cul-de-Sacs and Carnivalesque Interpretations in American Me and Mi Vida Loca As the term "callejon sin salida" indicates, ethnic marginalization and race-related tensions have created figurative 'blind alleys' from which it is impossible to progress without the recognition that racist perspectives are insidious and dangerous. American Me and Mi Vida Loca are both cinematic representations of situations in which individuals find themselves enclosed in spaces where the normative rules of secular societies do not apply, and in which new rules and asocial positions are created for people struggling to define themselves and to come to terms with situations that are essentially unnatural and go against the 'accepted' norms of society. This paper examines the cinematic representation of racist cul-de-sacs in terms of carnivalesque actualization, which explores the creation of new, hybrid spaces in contemporary culture by means of undermining conventional forms of representation. Both films represent a deliberate incomprehension of social and political conventions, and of "the habitual ways of conceiving the world" (Bauer 678). As Bauer suggests, it is perhaps because race-related episodes of violence have become a habit that people who are caught within them are unable to move beyond them. Violence, then, may be seen as a symptom of a larger plague of non-comprehension that is afflicting society, in which people are unable to "resist someone else's pathos-charged lie, that has appropriated the world and aspires to conceptualize it" (Bauer 678-9). This 'lie' is represented in Anders' Mi Vida Loca in terms of the thematic representation of how violence affects women's lives. Relevant in particular is the way in which the cinematography employs magic realism to depict the ways in which lives are fragmented and claustrophobic. Close-ups of tire rims and the fact that the car has a Love Bug-like "life" of its own depict non-realistic forms of representation that challenge conventional views on Hispanic women's views, and of gang violence in particular. Mi Vida Loca is filmed "in a style Anders calls "romantic realism, " with camera movement following characters' emotions" (Fregoso, p. 99): The film's cinematographer, Rodrigo Garca (son of writer Gabriel Garca Mrquez) effectively mixes low-angle close-ups with opalescent and luminous shots. Structurally, the film disrupts conventional narrative coherence. Rather than presenting a single unifying thread, Mi Vida Loca features three interlocking stories, giving the film its episodic quality. One of the most effective representative techniques in the film is the self-reflexive stance of the voiceover narrative, which almost gives the film an "ethnographic-documentary character" (Fregoso, p. 99). By using six narrators, the film alternates among several points of view and shifting perspectives: The use of multiple narrators, framed by shifting points of view, effectively disrupts spectator identification with a single cinematic position [] Thus in contrast to the single narration, point of view, and/or character identification typical of most mainstream films, Mi Vida Loca constructs multiple positions from which viewers can identify with its narrative reality, positing a collective subjectivity that destabilizes and challenges the individualism usually seen in Chicano gang films. (Fregoso, p. 99) Dale Bauer has observed that the carnivalesque narrative's deliberate incomprehension of dominant ideologies may be linked to Umberto Eco's idea that when a character plays the role of a fool, it may not be the character that is "at fault. May be the frame is wrong" (Bauer 678). Anders' characters may be identified as such literary 'fools' who question the cultural frame in which they exist. Similarly, the grotesque realism in American Me (a prisoner is sodomized with a knife) is analogous to the cultural unconscious in culture; both films are representations of new and hybrid subcultures that seek to subvert hierarchies. The term "callejon sin salida" represents stagnation, because the situations depicted in the two films are essentially no-exit contexts in which the characters are trapped. Mi Vida Loca explores gendered contexts in which women in particular are driven to isolation and entrapment because of stereotypical roles enforced upon them. Even the names of the central characters are representative of their struggle for identity; 'Mousie' and 'Sad Girl' are both revealing epithets because they negativize the roles of these women, since they imply that one is weak and the other is unhappy. The film depicts how "women are involved in many of the same acts of aggression and violence as men" (Hien and Hien, 419). Echo Park represents a closed community in which one has to play by the rules or be excommunicated. As one character observes: "Women don't use weapons to prove a point; women use weapons for love." The distinct differences between the way men and women approach reality and violence are examined; in fact one might even surmise that this film encourages polarized views of the two genders by depicting how women identify with each other on the basis of biological similarity (Mousie and Sad Girl feel connected to each other because they have their period together); it also examines how biological sameness can also drive women further apart (the two have children by the same man, Ernesto, which forces their friendship to fall apart). The films may be examined in terms of a common objective: to examine and define sexuality in the context of closed settings. Anders explores the nature of forced heterosexuality and how women labour under the burdens of unwanted pregnancies and motherhood: Anders' ability to preserve a strong feminist commitment to women's stories alongside the desire for emotional intimacy and heterosexual love has been one strong mark of her work. Indeed she has defended herself against a perception of indulgence in relation to male characters-her romanticism understood as a potential failing. (Tasker, p. 14) Romanticism is carnivalized in the film, as women's lives are explored in the context of setting where they struggle in conventional roles of lovers and mothers without the conventional benefits of support from men in well-defined societal roles. As Sad Girl observes in the film, most eligible men are in prison or otherwise unavailable, forcing women to form their communities bereft of male companionship. When it does exist, as in Ernesto's case, it only serves to introduce differences in female bonds. As Anders points out, "men change nothing for these women, they change absolutely nothing" (Tasker, p. 14) American Me also explores sexuality, but in the context of how 'deviant' homosexuality develops in such spaces as prisons. If the women in Anders' film are deprived of men, the men in Olmos' film experience forced homoeroticism because of the absence of women. As McLaren points out, the societal code is reinforced by offering what are almost bribes to people in exchange for remaining 'normal.' "Notions of sexual identity, even when imposed by the powerful seeking to marginalize and exclude the deviant, could spark a sense of community" (McLaren 1999, p. 4). The societal structure uses its authority to reward those who conform, and punish those who don't. In addition, it also manages to create a 'sense of community' by encouraging those who are normative to come together against those who are not. Olmos also explores how the idea of deviant behavior, in most sociological discourse, clubs the non-conformist together with the criminal, as evidenced by Barbaree, et al, who define "deviant sexual behavior" as "differentiating sex offenders by criminal and personal history, psychometric measures, and sexual response" (p. 19). Both criminal tendencies and harmless intercourse between consulting adults are classified under the same umbrella of 'deviance,' making it as terrible to be a homosexual as it is to be a rapist or a murderer. The scene in which Santana is making love to his girlfriend is interspersed with flashbacks to homosexual rape in prison, which determine how he is still entrapped by visions of what he has witnessed and experienced. The cinematic juxtaposing of lovemaking versus homoseuxal rape reflects the idea that prison rape and gang violence are not issues to be examined in isolation, but in conjunction with the seemingly 'normal' events of everyday life in conventional society. In American Me, the personal space of Julie's bedroom is a foil to the public space of the prison in which Santana is raped and becomes a murderer. Significantly, Julie has formerly been a member of an all-female gang, and the only empirical remnant of her experience is in the form of her tattoo, which ironically depicts a cross: [N]ot until the final montage sequence in the film is her earlier pachuca identity made known to viewers. The film's containment of pachuca subjectivity through the act of hiding the inscribed symbol of pachuca identity on Julie's body betrays the filmmaker's anxieties and fears around the performance of pachuca social identity in the public sphere as well as the extent to which this alternative femininity threatens patriarchal norms. (Fregoso, p. 97) The close-up of the cross tattooed on Julie's hand represents a communal history of violence, and it is cinematically well-juxtaposed with the weathered, defeated look in her eyes, which reveals that she, too, like Santana, is a survivor of violence and personal struggle: Who is this new subject, this Chicana whom Edward James Olmos claims is the heroine of American Me, the hope in our barrios His story ends before hers can begin [] I often wonder why the story of Julie's oppression and resistance, why the pain of her rape is not up there, on the Hollywood screen, looking at me. (Fregoso, p. 97) The fragmented look at Julie's virtually untold story reminds us that there are very many untold stories, and that cinematic representation can only hope to create a cross-section of such lives destroyed by violence, ethnic margnalization and stereotyping. Both American Me and Mi Vida Loca, therefore, represent spaces that have been created because of norms that uphold violence and race/gender stereotyping. Both represent life in such closed communities in terms of individual responses to events that may be considered traumatic and life-changing. By examining harsh realities with unflinching dtermination, Anders and Olmos have both created cinematic representations of ethnic and gendered subcultures that represent hybrid identities created by strife and violence. Bibliography Anders, A. 1994, Mi Vida Loca, Fineline Productions, New York. Barbaree, H. E., Marshall W. L. and Hudson S. M. 1993,The Juvenile Sex Offender, The Guilford Press, New York. Bauer, D. 1991, 'Gender in Bakhtin's Carnival', in Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism, ed. Warhol, R. R. and Price, D, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, pp. 671-83. Fregoso, R. L. 2003, Mexicana Encounters: The Making of Social Identities on the Borderlands, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. Hien, N, and Hien, D. M. 1998, 'Women, Violence with Intimates, and Substance Abuse: Relevant Theory, Empirical Findings, and Recommendations for Future Research', American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, vol 24, no. 3, pp. 419-438. Olmos, E. J. 1992, American Me, Universal Pictures, New York. Tasker, Y. 2002, Fifty Contemporary Filmmakers, Routledge, London. Read More