Both the popular play and film “Zoot Suit” was written and directed by Luis Valdez. Luis Valdez regarded as the father of Chicano theater in the United States. He directed this film based on a story involving the real-life events of the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial and the Zoot Suit Riots, and it was debuted in 1981. Besides that, the movie could not be successful without the actors’ acting, such as Daniel Valdez, Edward James Olmos, and Tyne Daly. Through the film, I clearly feel the discrimination between Whites and Mexican Americans. Moreover, this discrimination brought about unwanted struggles in the society at the time. The film began with Henry Reyna (Daniel Valdez) and his 38th Street Gang members headed to a local dance. After that, he heard the noises coming from the Williams’ Ranch, so he and his friends decided to go there without knowing that ranch was just harassed by the Downey Gang. Henry and the 38th Street Gang members were mistaken that they killed Jose Williams, an occupant of the Williams’ ranch. After that, they were soon arrested and charged with the murder of Jose Williams. While the boys sat in San Quentin Prison, Zoot Suit …show more content…
He intermixed Henry’s incident and the Zoot Suit Riots together because these incidents are almost similar. Both of them talk about the racism between Whites and Mexican Americans. Only Mexicans, who wore zoot suits were attached by the sailors even though Mexicans were not the only people wearing zoot suits. The images of Mexican Americans youth were forced to take off their zoot suits to burn made the film more realistic and dramatic. Besides that, the image, music, and the sound also contributed to the success of the film. The sound of the door was shut in the dark, the sound of people yelling, and the image of the fire all made up the conflict of the film. We can say that Daniel Valdez and Lalo Guerrero are successful in featuring music for the
David Román creates excellent perspective into the haven and necessity of theatrical arts for homosexual Latino 's in Chapter 6 of Intervention entitled "Teatro Viva!" Román reveals that progressing as a community requires gay Latino men and women to use the theatre as a tool to break the socio-silence surrounding the idea of homosexuality and the AIDS virus. In this case, the region of Los Angeles, California is accounted for as having an enormous amount of input having to do with the de-marginalization of homosexual Hispanics in the world. "Teatro VIVA!" is the name of a Los Angeles county short-skit theatrical outreach program that provided a bilingual education of the gay Latino community confronted with AIDS during the early nineties. This chapter helps by providing the reader with a detailed record of many such performance acts in the Los Angeles around that time.
The Zoot Suit Riots reveal that the American society in Los Angeles during the WWII Era was racially discriminated against Mexicans/Mexican Descents because Mexicans/Mexican Descents were known to wear Zoot Suits while zoot suitors were perceived as criminals. During this time, the Zoot Suit Riots occurred causing the “Spanish-speaking community” to be in a hard situation of being excluded from society and their surroundings. Mexicans/Mexican Descents wore Zoot Suits as a trend with the thought that this would help them “fit in” with the American style. Instead, Zoot Suitors end up being viewed as a “bad” image. The sailors would go into the Mexican neighborhoods and harm any Mexican (and Zoot Suit wearers) in sight.
In the play, Zoot Suit by Luis Valdez is a play of real-life events that occurred in the 1940s. The play Zoot Suit is the history of the Mexican-Americans living in Los Angeles. Mexican-American men would wear zoot suits that are flashy, stylish, and that identified each other as a Pachuco. Mexican-Americans had been living in the world of discrimination and how Mexican-American suffered injustice in the 1940s. Discrimination is harming someone because of their race, sex, national origin, age, etc.
Clashes between Mexican-Americans and military personnel continued in the days and weeks to come. The play Zoot Suit by Luis Valdez, underscores the Zoot Suit Riots that occurred historically in Los Angeles during the 1940’s following the infamous trial “The Sleepy Lagoon”. The play follows Henry Reyna, leader of the 38th Street Gang, along with with the gang’s members and Henry’s family, while seeking to combat the racial prejudice of the era. The play dramatizes injustice in order to educate and awaken responses towards acts of injustice that occur in today’s society such as racial profiling, bias judicial system, and bias media (yellow journalism) that are still present in society
Numerous screenwriters and directors have often dealt in their films with the theme of borders, whether literal and officially recognised, like military ranks or state frontiers, or abstract and metaphorical, like those of morality, justice, race, and gender, along with several others. As a consequence, as John Gibbs points out, one could assemble these movies, especially those taking place on the confines between Mexico and United States, under the label of ‘border films’ (2002: 27); thus contextualising them in a very specific tradition, which includes pictures such as Touch of Evil (Orson Welles 1958) or The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Tommy Lee Jones 2005). Accordingly, another notable movie belonging to the ‘border film tradition’ is Lone Star: an acclaimed 1996 hybrid of western and mystery film conventions, directed and written by independent filmmaker John Sayles. The picture recounts the story of a murder investigation, which leads the main character, Sheriff Sam
The stories of Junot Diaz feature various elements of social and personal issues that are highly prevalent in young Latinx men, primarily the compulsion and adverse effect of machismo, the poignancy of being an outcast in one’s community, and the lack of a father figure in a boy’s life. The first set of short stories prominently feature Ysrael, a Dominican boy whose face was disfigured by a pig when he was an infant. In “Ysrael”, he is the object of Yunior’s fascination, and the victim or Rafa’s (Yunior’s brother) torment.
The Bronze Screen introduced both positive and negative portrayals of Latinas and Latinos in film. While there are plenty of positive Latino roles in films, Latinos and Latinas should be included in more positive roles because the negative roles Latinos have in films cause negative stereotypes. Positive and negative representations of Latinos in films has always fluctuated throughout history, however the more negative ones seem to always overpower the good ones. The film, “The Bronze Screen”, gave many examples of the negative roles Latinos played in films throughout film history. Early films included Latino actors, however they did not always have a lead role or even a positive one.
The opening scene portrays the violence between whites and Mexicans. This was a fairly common happening. There was a lot of racial animosity still in America. Another example of this is Sheriff Behan saying he was the president of the Non-Partisan Anti-Chinese League. These were fairly common during the 1880s, when the Chinese would come through Angel Island and work in the railroads and in the mines.
The immigrants entering the United States throughout its history have always had a profound effect on American culture. However, the identity of immigrant groups has been fundamentally challenged and shaped as they attempt to integrate into U.S. society. The influx of Mexicans into the United States has become a controversial political issue that necessitates a comprehensive understanding of their cultural themes and sense of identity. The film Mi Familia (or My Family) covers the journey and experiences of one Mexican-American (or “Chicano”) family from Mexico as they start a new life in the United States. Throughout the course of the film, the same essential conflicts and themes that epitomize Chicano identity in other works of literature
Selena Quintanilla’s father once said, “We have to be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans.” In today’s society, many have encountered the challenge of not being able to be who they really are because they fear not being accepted by others, more specifically their culture. But, what happens when an individual is part of two worlds that have just as many rules? Gloria E. Anzaldúa was a Mexican-American writer and poet who made a major contribution to the fields of cultural, feminist, and queer theory. Anzaldúa identifies as a Chicana and speaks different variations of Spanish, some of which she exhibits in her works.
In the wildly popular Mexican film, Los olvidados (1950), Spanish director Luis Buñuel exposes the harsh realities of life in Mexico during the 1950’s. Luis Buñuel’s work on Los olvidados portrays a societal loss for all hope due to crime and violence as an infinitely vicious cycle, coupled with addressing the lack of reform for dilapidated living conditions throughout Mexico. In Los olvidados, Buñuel follows Pedro (Alfonso Mejía) a neglected bastard, and El Jaibo (Roberto Cobo) the leader of a gang of homeless children loitering in vacant lots. For Pedro, and the rest of the cast, a series of unfortunate outcomes have been strung together though common ignorance and a lack of self-control. Luis Buñuel’s use of focal length, editing, and dialogue
OJ became the prime suspect of their murders. This case is well known to this day for many reasons, including the LAPD’s tampering with evidence. One way the LAPD ignored the law is when they entered OJ’s home without talking to OJ, and without a search warrant. This resulted in an illegal search where the evidence that was found would not be admissible in court.
I chose this film because it showed how hard the union workers and families worked in fighting racial injustices, and because it inspired myself to move forward with strong ideologies and pride. 2. Stereotyping in mass media was an important concern of Chicana/o media activists because it imprinted a demeaning label by only casting Chicana/o actors with "minor roles: villains, sidekicks, temptresses, where their main function is to provide the protagonists, typically a handsome white
There are white thugs just as commonly as there are black. Even as it unfolds with a terrible sense of inevitability, “Fruitvale Station” is rarely predictable. The climatic encounter with BART police officers erupts in a mood of vertiginous uncertainty, defusing facile or inflammatory judgments and bending the audience’s emotional horror and moral outrage toward a both necessary and difficult ethical inquiry. How did this happen? How did we – meaning any one of us who might see faces of our own depicted on that screen – allow
Repressed Homosexuality in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof In the play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, American play writer and author, Tennessee Williams, creates a piece that brings attention to a very dysfunctional, Southern family due to dishonesty, greed and concealed emotions. This story takes place around the 1950s and is centered on a broken, alcohol-loving man named Brick, his vivacious wife named Maggie, and their extremely… unusual family, but this isn’t the typical 1950s type of play. Most of the story and its conflict centers around one main topic: repressed homosexuality. This play was eventually cut down, altered and turned in to a film created by director, Richard Brooks.