La Mission Movie Analysis

La Mission is about a single-parent, ex-con and recovering alcoholic, Che, who struggles with his own personal values and beliefs when he discovers his son, Jes, is gay. He becomes violent beating his son up on the sidewalk and throwing him out of the house. Later in the movie as Jes and his boyfriend, Jordan, were walking in the Latino neighborhood a car with a few gang members pull up and begin to insult them. Jordan states that people who are homophobic are actually gay themselves. The gang members feel insulted and they shoot Jes. In the hospital Che threatens Jordan to leave his son alone, but Jes won’t let his dad push him to be someone he isn’t. After some time Jes accepts who he is and if his father can’t accept him, then he doesn’t …show more content…
Throughout the whole movie Jes tries to hide who he really his from everyone except his boyfriend. There is a lot of pressure of having to be macho, especially since his father is the toughest Chicano in the community. If men are homosexual in that kind of Latino community then they are considered to not be a real man and are weak. Everyone in the community accepted him and liked him a lot when he was hiding the fact that he was gay, then when they all found out everyone started to shun him, seeing as less of a man, and this made it harder to accept himself because everyone he knows has turned on him, even the one person he thought he could always trust, his father. In the movie Che states, “ I'm trying, but if you think that talking about it or processing it or however you want to call it is gonna somehow make it all right or acceptable, or that maybe one day I'm gonna, like, give you my blessing, then you're wasting your time, 'cause that's never gonna happen.” (La Mission) After hearing this from his father it really makes Jes question who he is anymore, because he feels like he isn’t a son anymore because he dad won’t accept him for who he is. He doesn’t accept his identity because the impressions given in the community is that everyone is tough and macho and there is no homosexuality. This gives Jes the impression that he can’t tell anyone who he really is, because it’s not acceptable in the community. In the community there are role identities in the movie. Che is the tough Chicano on the block that uses intimidation and violence to get what he wants, he has the similar identity to every American man. The culture and history in that part of the community has always been violence in the heart of every man. The women that Che starts to fall in love with, Lena, also has the role of being the women. It is obvious that she has issues with men, especially violent and aggressive men like Che. She starts to