Does Television Spanglish Need A Rewrite?

*It’s difficult to write from a perspective that includes all Latinos. There are valid points in this article, but it was written from the perspective of a first generation U.S. Latino. As Hollywood includes more Latino actors, story lines and behind the camera creators there will be a language mine field. Some things, though, are logical. Garsd makes good sense. VL

By Jasmine Garsd, NPR Code Switch

I watched the season premiere of Law & Order SVU, and I was excited to see that it covered a topic I’ve reported on for the last year — sex trafficking of women in Mexico — and that a very rich cast of Latino actors were featured on the show. But man, that good feeling stopped almost as soon as I heard them speak.

The Spanish and Spanglish used in the show was embarrassing. When it comes to Latinos on the screen, Hollywood keeps missing the mark on the way we speak.

One of the SVU story lines focused on a young Mexican prostitute who has been trafficked to the U.S. a year or two ago. Somehow, she speaks fantastic English, just with an accent, to the NYPD detective during a long interrogation. After that, she spontaneously starts talking in very dramatic Spanish to a non-Latina detective she just met.

As someone who regularly speaks English, Spanish and Spanglish (that mix of English and Spanish), this made no sense. For American Latinos, there are certain unspoken rules about what language you speak, and to whom.

Click HERE to read the full story.

[Photo courtesy of AMC]

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