Does Any Media Truly Represent Latinos?

There is a lot of buzz about George Lucas’ recent statement on “The Daily Show” that he had trouble getting his new Tuskegee Airmen film, “Red Tails,” produced simply because the cast was all black. Some people were surprised, while others applauded Lucas for mentioning a sad reality of Hollywood: it tends to ignore the existence of anyone not white.

It’s no surprise that there is a huge difference between the racial identity in Hollywood and that of America. Hollywood is remarkably different from America already. Eating disorders, lavish parties celebrating its own culture, and little care for the law, along with the occasional production of far-reaching, globally influential films and music mark Hollywood as different from the life that you or I lead. Hollywood has never accurately reflected the reality of the world — despite it’s massive sway on the individual and collective Americans.

Millions of school children learn the hard reality of this every year when they find out that World War II actually didn’t begin with Pearl Harbor, or that dinosaurs don’t live in Costa Rica, then forget about this immediately after the test. But we all know the media skews reality in important ways when it comes to minorities.

We Latinos have at the very least one alternative to the fantasyland of Hollywood. Networks like Univision bring in that strange, un-American sport that people call fútbol, the overly dramatic telenovelas, and of course news, where female newscasters are in a world which is always in short supply of clothes that don’t accentuate the body. That said, even an alternative to a Hollywood doesn’t necessarily represent reality for many of us.

Media in general, though, tends to be fake compared to reality, presenting a skewed image. Hollywood presents a bizarrely different world from our own. Hispanic media, and other minority media does this as well.

Where do you get your media? Do you watch “All My Children” or “La Reina Del Sur” usually? What celebrities do you gossip about, if any? Do you watch a mixed bag of media, or favor one more than the other? Why?

[Photo By Antonio Esponda]

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