Latino Stardom Analysis

For the first mini essay, I will be focusing on the topic of ambivalence featured in Latino stardom. Ambivalence is defined as the state of having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone. In other words, Homi Babha defined ambivalence as “a feeling of “off-ness” towards something you don’t understand”. I will be pulling from Are All Latins from Manhattan? Hollywood, Ethnography, and Cultural Colonialism (Ana M. Lòpez, 1993). A problem that is featured with ambivalence in the rise of Latino stardom is the fact that Latinos are being portrayed as “white” in their roles in films. To some these characters may not be seen as fully “white”, but there are parts that Latinos play that are portraying a white lifestyle while trying to bring their …show more content…
She has not told him that her mother is black and she plans to keep it that way because if he found out that she was half black then he would dump her. At the end of the scene, he ends up telling her that he found out from some friends that she has a black mother so he dumps her and then hits her. Sara Jane is “the black daughter who looks white, and who, because of the contradiction between being and seeming which defines her, can fit comfortably into neither culture.” (Sandy Flitterman Lewis, 1988) The reason she is accepted before people find out about her mother is because her skin is white. She thinks that her mother ruins everything for her because her skin is black. Sara never wants to be considered a black woman because she knows people will judge her for it. This is a perfect example of the maternal melodrama because of the “agonies of separation” between the mother and daughter. (Sandy Flitterman Lewis, 1988) Her mother is proud to be a black woman and wants Sara Jane to be proud as well, but near the end of the film she realizes that Sara Jane will never accept herself as a black