Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, & Resistance
by Charles Ramírez Berg University of Texas Press, 328 pp., $24.95 What a pleasure it is to encounter UT Radio-Television-Film professor Charles Ramírez Berg’s affable, down-to-earth demeanor, this time in his well-crafted book Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, & Resistance, culled from previously published work and the subject of one of his most popular courses.Ramírez Berg, who is also the president of the Austin Film Society, corrals his book into three sections. In part one, the author patiently describes how and why stereotypes work (borrowing from sociology and psychology), then outlines how stereotypes appear semiotically and through the poetics of Hollywood filmmaking. Ramírez Berg’s former students will recognize his discussion of the six Latino stereotypes as they appear in early 20th-century movies to the present, along with the actors and actresses who brought dignity and nuance to the stereotypical roles handed them. In part two, this discussion is expanded, particularly in two key chapters — one on director John Ford’s Westerns and the second on the “Golden Age” of Fifties sci-fi movies and the sci-fi renaissance of the late Seventies. Finally, the author provides a great service with his last section, which examines how contemporary Latino filmmakers are creating work outside the Hollywood system, or subversively from within the system. A Q&A with Robert Rodriguez (a former student) ends the book on a forward-looking note.
Though the academic focus of Latino Images in Film is clear, Ramírez Berg has written an enormously readable and instructive volume that reminds filmgoers that films are much more than pretty moving pictures.
This article appears in November 22 • 2002.