The attitude of people within the U.S. toward Argentina can also be seen in the way Argentina, its people, and its culture, are portrayed in films. Movie producers used Latin America in general to provide a flattering foil for U.S. culture and society. In the film Down Argentine Way, Betty Grable’s character assumes the central position, as she performs in ‘Latin’ dress and even appropriates the song performed earlier by the Brazilian singer Carmen Miranda. This occurs as a result of North America displacing South America as the emotional, ideological, figurative, and even literal center of the movie. Additionally, most of the Latin American characters remain incurably ‘other’. They are racialized principally as comic characters: the scruffy,
