Latinos In Media: A Critical View

        Racial stereotypes have permeated the media since the United States' early years. Hollywood’s first blockbuster hit was The Birth of a Nation, perpetrating the harmful, widely believed stereotypes about African Americans. Today, media portrayals of all racial minorities span a wide range of mediums, some of which include print media, broadcast media, and the Internet. Despite recent efforts by media outlets to be “politically correct,” these entities still produce disparaging, dehumanizing, and fetishizing portrayals of some racial minorities. Since the turn of the century, media portrayal of Latino people has stagnated. In fact, all Latinos in recent media are depicted as illegal aliens, hyper-sexual beings, or unintelligent comic relief.

The hyper-sexualization of Latino people in media occurs as a form of entertainment. The sex appeal of musicians like Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez were/are invaluable to their success as artists—their acceptance by white America was contingent on the entertainment value their perceived sexuality provided them with. Even so, this appeal did not make white audiences view Latinos as people. Rather, Latinos are granted pseudo-acceptance for the stigmatized role of sex symbol. The commodification of the Latina body, specifically, offers Latina women in media the role of a caricature as they are to embody the ‘typical’ Latina woman with voluptuous curves and a fiery attitude. This phenomenon is exemplified in Sofia Vergara’s role of Gloria in the 2010s sitcom Modern Family. Her accent and stereotypical Latina body lend her to dehumanizing sexualization. During the show’s eleven-year run time, ABC’s depiction of her character remained the same. 

In addition to their role as sexual beings in mainstream media, Latinos are also assigned the role of comic relief in shows and movies. Unlike the role of the hyper-sexualized Latino, typically set to conventionally attractive Latinos between the ages of eighteen and thirty, the comic relief Latino can come in many sizes and ages. A prime example of this trope is the character Luis, played by Michael Pena, in Ant-Man. His frequent miscommunications with and long-winded stories relayed to the main character Scott, played by Paul Rudd, provide comedic relief throughout the action and otherwise emotion-filled movie. Similarly, Sofia Vergara’s character Gloria in Modern Family is also the butt of jokes within the show. Her dehumanization as a sexual object(due to her Latinidad) and her perceived extreme womanhood/femininity posit her to be portrayed as a stupid woman and a Latina one. In the show, jokes Gloria does not understand are chalked up to her Colombian origins or lack of English-speaking skills. 

The stereotype that Latinos are illegal aliens permeates all portrayals and focuses on Latinos in popular media. Rather than being an identity-defining trope, the media focuses on another signifier or perceived stereotypical trait of Latino people in addition to this trope. For instance, Rico Rodriguez’s appearance as adolescent Manny Delgado in the abovementioned sitcom Modern Family defies the above-mentioned stereotypes. In fact, the bulk of Manny’s character focuses on his innate defiance of these stereotypes. However, he is unable to shake the illegal alien trope. His blended family mentions and typically laughs at it as the conversation surrounds his perceived versus actualized country of birth(Mexico vs Florida). Additionally, TV shows and films like Modern Family, Black-ish, and Spanglish all make throwaway allusions to Latinos being ‘illegal’ and thus not belonging in the United States, typically when discussing Latinos regarding working undignified labor. At the root of this trope is the script that all Latinos are manual laborers who will take on unwanted work. From gardeners to construction workers to maids to cooks, throwaway comments relating to these subsets of workers occur in many forms of media.

At the heart of these depictions is the dehumanization of Latinos in the media. However, the issue of dehumanization did not start there. Instead, disparaging media portrayals of Latino people reflect the views of society at large.