Cuarón’s Critics are Like Squatters for the “Causa”

By Victor Landa, NewsTaco

Alfonso Cuarón is Mexican. He’s also a film maker. Since winning this year’s best director Oscar for his movie “Gravity” both those things are said in the same breath: Oscar winning Mexican Director … it’s enough to make chests swell with pride. But the truth is that it’s a matter of coincidence. Alfonso Cuarón makes movies, his peers chose Gravity as the best directed film of the year, he happens to be Mexican.

There’s been a stream of criticism in social media directed toward Cuarón and the fact that Gravity is not a Latino-themed movie – as if he owed his critics, or as if his Latino cred was in dispute because he made a flick about a “chick in outer space.” I wonder if the critics would have been satisfied if the main character were a Latina? Or played by a Latina actress. But even then, I’m sure the usual critics would find something to gripe about.

The issue isn’t Cuarón’s Mexican-ness, or his Latino cred. What’s at issue are the tired assumptions that come from the predictable crowd that appropriate the slightest sliver of ethnicity and culture in order to cloak it in indignation.

Cuarón owes them nothing. You may not like the movie, you may think that other directors deserved the award, and as a ticket buying moviegoer you have a right to think as you please. But to say that Cuarón fell short because he didn’t carry your water, it borders on tyrannical. Cuarón has made many movies in Mexico, about Mexicans, if you’re a fan you know the titles, no need to show a list. This particular movie, like all his others, is Cuarón’s movie, his critics can’t act like squatters and measure it against their “causa.”

There have been some criticisms of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the folks who decide who gets the little golden-bald statue. That’s fair, or rather, the Academy is a big enough target. You can call them on the fact that they encourage mainstream movies about mainstream topics. But then “12 years a Slave” shoots that idea.

The soon to be released Cesar Chávez biopic is ripe for “causa” appropriation. I’ll be more concerned if the movie soft-covers the politics and the grit of Chávez’s life – the kind of film that serves only to perpetuate the myth. And I’m sure that the fact that the director of the Chávez film, Diego Luna, is Mexican won’t be lost in the debate that is sure to follow the premiere. To that I’ll say what I said about Cuarón, mere coincidence.

I liked Gravity, I thought it was well directed. And I’ll watch the Chavez film and measure Luna on an equal standard: it’s his film – was it well directed?

[Photo by Pixel y Dixel]

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