Hollywood’s Latino exclusion snobbery set the stage for Trumpism

By Victor Landa NewsTaco (2 minute read) 

I’m starting a collection of Latino paradoxes.

So far I’ve collected two:

  • The Latino health paradox – where U.S. Latino’s live longer than other folk despite poverty and bad eating habits.
  • The Latino political paradox – where U.S.Latinos have a significant number of eligible voters, but little political power to show for it.

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I’m adding a third: the U.S. Latino movie paradox. That’s where U.S. Latinos, despite being roughly 18 percent of the U.S. population, are 23 percent of frequent moviegoers yet only 1.4 percent of movie actors.

That’s according to The Motion Picture Association of America’s recently released numbers:

8.3 million – The U.S. Latino movie attendance in 2016.

7.9 million – The U.S. Latino movie attendance in 2015.

23 – The percentage of Latinos among all U.S. frequent movie-goers.

18 – The percentage of Latinos in the U.S. population.

2.8 – The percentage of appearances by Latinos in the 10 films with the highest domestic growth in the decade of the 2000’s.

1.4 – The percentage of appearances by Latinos in the 10 films with the highest domestic growth in the decade of the 2010’s.

I can draw only a few plausible conclusions from this – either Latinos are standing in Hollywood’s blind side, Hollywood execs are petulant snobs, or they just don’t give a sh*t.

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Felix Sanchez, writing for CNN, makes a good point:

“Not only should the film industry be responsive to a key demographic that helps it achieve financial success but, more importantly, it should recognize that the way Latinos are shown figures heavily in how the nation and the world picture this important demographic group.

“It’s easy to understand why Latinos have been caught up in Donald Trump’s litany of narrative deception, begun early in his campaign, in which he has repeatedly slandered an entire ethnicity. After all, the American public has almost no reaction when a “well-dressed” white man travels to New York to kill a black man; in contrast, when two unauthorized Latino teens are accused of rape, White House press secretary Sean Spicer and US Attorney General.”

Can I get an Amen!?



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