Zorro-Disney Series (Season 1)

Zorro (1958) is a series created by the Walt Disney Company based on the stories of Johnson McCulley. Disney decides to continue the Zorro tradition that by the time has been going on for more than 30 years. Most of its direction is credited to Norman Foster, however, the series is a collaboration with other directors such as Lewis. R. Foster, Robert Stevenson, John Meredith Lucas, Charles Barton and Charles Lamont, who put together two seasons of about fifteen to twenty hours each, making this series the longest Zorro storyline in the tradition, and also the most popular one (at least before Bandera's interpretation of Zorro in 1998). Though of its popularity, this series continued to be cataloged among commercial B-movies, together with previous serial versions such as Republic Pictures' series. Though this series length requires creating more stories and additional characters which differ from the first Zorro movie, this incarnation of Zorro might be one of the most traditional ones and the closest to the original version since Johnston McCulley himself was involved in the development of the serial.

Norman Foster take us to the traditional time and location of McCulley's "The Curse of Capistrano". It is 1820 in the old Spanish California and Don Diego de la Vega (Guy Williams) has just arrived from his temporary stay in Spain to Los Angeles. Even before the ship gets to the pier, he and his mute assistant Bernardo (Gene Sheldon) are informed about the tyrannical government that Capitan Monastario has imposed to oppress the poor, the Indians, and the just blue-blooded aristocrats of the region. Don Diego believes that his duty as a loyal subject is to defeat all of the Crown's enemies, and to do so he will hide his intentions behind the mask of Zorro, while pretending to be a coward man interested only in literature and music in front of everyone else, even in front of his father Alejandro de la Vega (George J. Lewis). But he is not fighting alone. Bernardo who is also highly skilled at sword and whip fighting adopts a second identity to help his master (Bernardo pretends to be a silly deaf-mute instead of only mute but smart) and his fast and well-trained horse called Tornado will make of Zorro an invincible legend.

California is presented as a beautiful place to live in and to take advantage of for people around the world. Its location, resources, but also its instability as a colony of the Spanish empire after the Mexican emancipatory revolutions have attracted the most ambitious men who will try to use their influence to destroy anyone who steps on their way. Spanish occupying positions in the highest power hierarchies because of their names and appearance reflecting aristocratic or even royal ancestry become Don Diego/Zorro's nemeses. Don Diego, however, does not condemn the special privileges of being aristocrat or Spanish, neither he critiques colonialism. The problem arises when those are corrupted or lead to unacceptable treatment. What is acceptable or what is not is obviously determined by the elites, thus things like increasing taxes for the poor and the rich is considered unjust, but making indigenous work without any pay for the church's missions or as servants in the aristocrat's houses are seen as not only as just, but they are the necessary means to guide the Indians towards civilization.

A plot in support of European elitism is a characteristic of the traditional Zorro movies because of the period in which it takes place when Spain had legitimate control over California. However, in this series, the underlining "good" social constructions imposed on Californians by the Crown are challenged as the storyline goes on, and the elites (like the De la Vega family) will use their powerful influence to protect and differentiate their Californian from Spain.

Don Diego opposes the enemies of the Crown, but on top of it, as Zorro, he fights in the name of California, even if this means breaking the conventions of his aristocratic class and of his Spanish roots. During the first quarter of season one, Zorro fights the corrupted Captain Monasterio, but after defeating him, new threats appear to destroy the beauty and wealth of California, and the tranquillity of its people. These new enemies are each time people closer in the hierarchy to the Crown and those conflicting loyalties develop in Zorro and in all people of the village a stronger feeling of patriotism but not towards Spain, but towards California. The Californio identity rises as Zorro also become part of California's cultures through legends and songs. While children dress up like Zorro fighting with swords made out of wood, Zorro, the De la Vega family and many other Californian aristocrats get ready to go on a civil war against those trying to destabilize the peace of Los Angeles and the rest of California. Soon they will realize that the enemy is the appointees of the Crown themselves.

The last part of the first season tells us a lot about the construction of the Californio identity which becomes more visible because of the tensions of a possible civil war. The Californio identity and patriotism appear as the civil war creates a sense of "otherness" towards the foreigner. Interestingly, the dual identity of Don Diego/Zorro seems to fade away under these circumstances making Don Diego act as Zorro without the need of wearing the mask to cover his face. He starts to get more involved in the matters of California's governance, he tricks and fights his enemies, and he opposes injustice, whether this comes from criminals or if this part of the Spanish law. The Californio identity is also defined in relation to other identities. Though that in many aspects such as in culture and traditions California is a mix of Spain and Mexico, Californians consider themselves totally different from both. This is especially true after we start hearing about the Mexican independence war. From here Disney made clear that California is not part of those newly independent Mexican states mentioned in the series. And despite the fact that people know they are subjects of the Spanish King, the attempts to control and exploit the people and resources by every Spanish that arrives in Los Angeles will soon make all Californians remove the "Spanish" from Spanish Californio when referring to themselves. One thing can be clear, California might separate itself from the Mexicanidad, but it cannot escape its own Latin American essence.

One of the additions Norman Foster made to the original Zorro storyline is introducing the character of "The Eagle". Like Zorro, the Eagle has a second identity. During the day he is Jose Sebastian Varga, the new California's Magistrado, but at night he becomes the Eagle, a far-right wing Galindo that wants to re-built Spain's lost grandeur. For that, the Eagle will try to take control of California and sell it to other countries such as England, France, and Russia. England and France retire their offers when they realize that Varga lied about the state of California, but the Russian count retires only after he knows the people cannot be contained even with force.

This first part of the Disney Zorro portrays California in interesting ways. For the language and the culture, it perfectly fits under the Latin American umbrella, but at the same time, Californians have developed a totally different identity. Zorro is the personification of that identity and its evolution. We see that as the threats against California become sounder with the civil war, the courage and mobility characteristic of Zorro (performance of Latino personality) show up not only in the unmasked Don Diego but in all the patriotic people trying to defend California, from the richest to the poorest. California/Latin America is as well the scenario in which different countries expose their weaknesses and strengths. We see a Europe in decay trying to take control of California because of its gold, its haciendas, its wine, and everything that makes it seem like a paradise. We are also exposed to the idea of a growing Mexico approaching with its revolutionary ideas, the fear of the little left from Spain in California.

Like other Zorro incarnations, the plot of Disney Zorro implicitly projects events in history and its effect on Hollywood. Douglas Fairbanks' Zorro provided Latin America and California with a hero right after the Great War. This renewed Zorro appears after the Second World War after which European countries became dependant on The U.S wealth, just like it happens in this series, though California is not considered part of the United States yet.

Captain Ron

The light-hearted comedy Captain Ron (1992) begins with introducing the Harvey family who live in the fast-paced, crowded, and bustling city of Chicago. Martin Harvey, played by Martin Short, and Katherine Harvey (Mary Kay Place) are the preoccupied and stressed-out parents of the 16-year-old, wild child Caroline (Meadow Sisto) and the oft-forgotten, 11-year-old Benjamin (Benjamin Salisbury). This family is depicted as the typical American household of modern age: distant from one another and constantly anxious, and yet astoundingly unable to see their own detachment. This attitude is illustrated perfectly when Martin discovers that he has inherited a sailboat from his late Uncle William, and when he proposes to his wife that the family spontaneously travel to the Caribbean to collect it and sail it up to Miami, she responds with, “We’ll be spontaneous when we have the time.” Perhaps this outlook would have stuck if it wasn’t for Caroline who bursts into the house to giddily announce her engagement to a deadbeat teenage boyfriend. Needless to say the Harvey family jets off to the Caribbean island of San Pomme de Terre as soon as possible.

They have hopes of living in the grand boat which they had seen in pictures, but arrive to the sight of a disheveled, long-forgotten sailboat, littered with funky beachcomber belongings and aptly named “Wanderer”. Not long after, they meet the unorthodox, one-eyed, bohemian Captain Ron, whom they had hired to guide them in their sail to Miami. After Ron accentuates his first impression with plenty of mishaps and humourous one-liners (which leave the family guessing if he is, in fact, truly insane), they all set-off for their first stop of many, St. Haag. Ron proves his skills on several occasions as a boat captain, but leaves much to be desired in terms of a guide. On account of his non-existent navigational skills, the family ends up lost on deserted islands or twenty miles off course. Little by little, the family begins to relax as they admire Captain Ron’s attitude of nonchalance, but this only causes Martin to feel less like the hero he had hoped to be on this adventure. This lack of respect for Captain Ron only leads Martin into trouble, such as thinking that ‘guerrillas’ means ‘gorillas’ and laughing at Ron’s stupidity that such an animal could be found in the Caribbean, only to later be captured by a group of revolutionaries. Captain Ron always manages to get them out of the sticky situations (which he himself actually brought about), until one night when he’s in charge of the kids in San Juan and Caroline ends up with a tattoo while Benjamin is caught betting on monopoly and drinking beer. This is the last straw for Martin and he fires Ron, boards the boat, and sails out into the night, unawares that Ron owes money to a dangerous man named Rosco after losing at monopoly.

Rosco and his buddies end up chasing after the Harveys and thus become the family’s idea of the notorious Pirates of the Caribbean. After being captured, thrown into a lifeboat, and then floating in the ocean for 16 hours, they arrive in Cuba to find their boat docked and Captain Ron miraculously appearing to help them get it back. During their escape plan, Captain Ron realizes that the kids look up to him more than their dad. Feeling slightly troubled at this news, he fakes a broken leg at a crucial point in their get-away, leaving Martin to save the day. After the family escapes from Cuba through their own skill as sailors, the Pirates, still in pursuit of the Wanderer, begin to open fire. Ron desperately maydays for help and the US Coast Guard arrives at the same time that Martin realizes Ron had been faking his injury. At that moment, the Coast Guard requests to speak to the Captain on the radio and Ron hands Martin the receiver, which instantly absolves any qualm the two may have had. The journey is finished in Miami, where the family finally says good-bye to Ron and then goes to hand-over the boat to a yacht-distributing company. But suddenly, all four have a change of heart as they turn the boat around only metres from the dock and sail back out to sea with the spontaneity inspired by the one-and-only Captain Ron, who has shown them what it means to be a family.

It is interesting that during their one, brief stop in Cuba, Martin exclaims frantically to his family that this communist island isn’t all about Ricky Ricardo and I Love Lucy re-runs, whereas previously he had gotten caught-up in the Caribbean vibe while on the boat and cried out to his wife, “Lucy, I’m home!” It appears as though acting as a Cuban icon is not the same as actually setting foot on the island governed by communism and harsh rule. Here we can see that the Harvey family is certainly out of their secure haven of America where they can keep such allusions at a safe distance; for example, the distance from the couch to the television set. Nevertheless, this idea of American protection is still upheld when they are conveniently rescued from the pirates by the US Coast Guard.

Apart from the character development of the Harvey family, we also see the Caribbean expand its own character. Places like St. Haag and San Juan are displayed in the film as party islands, filled to capacity with rich tourists enjoying their 2-for-1 happy hour drinks and dancing to the beat of a Caribbean steel-drum on a carefree vacation. This is what Caroline had imagined the Caribbean to be: a St. Bart’s or Club Med; instead of Captain Ron’s aptly put description of “voodoo, hoodoo, and all kinds of weird shit”, which would explain their run-in with guerrillas and being chased by pirates. The film displays a vagueness of location; purposefully with the beautiful islands that the group comes across when lost, and unconsciously with places like St. Pomme de Terre, which is actually Puerto Rico and may only be recognized as such by the flag hanging in the local police station. It may not be clear as to how the Caribbean should be viewed, as cruel or as carefree, after watching the assortment of facades; but it is presented as a place of wonder, where, with the right captain at the helm, one can find both leisure and quirky adventure.

Brenda Starr

Brenda Starr (1989) takes the successful 1940s comic strip of the same name for its primary plot, which centers upon a beautiful female reporter, Brenda Starr (Brooke Shields), whose sense of adventure will drive her after any scoop. We are first introduced to Brenda as she is being drawn in the comic strip by Mike Randall (Tony Peck). He absent-mindedly insults her character when all of sudden she starts talking back to him and then walks out of the frame, refusing such treatment. Mike is dumbfounded and then, seeing no other alternative to find this leading lady, draws himself into the comic to try to convince her to come back.

Brenda proves in the first scene, where she apprehends a notorious mobster and gets the story before her arch-nemesis Libby “Lips” Lipscomb (Diana Scarwid), that she is more than capable as a reporter, but The Flash newspaper for which she works is still likely to go out of business unless she can uncover the lead on a new miracle fuel which appears to be strong enough to power rocket ships and was found in the Amazon jungle of Brazil by Professor Von Kruetzer. When the President of the United States confides to her that the fuel would allow the Russians to go into space and fry cities like ants under a magnifying glass, Brenda realizes the scale of the situation and immediately heads to Brazil, armed with advice on where to find the professor from the mysterious, one-eyed man, Basil St. John (Timothy Dalton), who also warns her of the dangers of the trip.

These dangers emerge from all corners, and apparently all countries, as Brenda is first apprehended in Puerto Rico by the Russians, later becomes a prisoner on a tug boat chugging up the Amazon river, and is then taken captive by a traveling circus. She manages to escape in every circumstance by using her know-how and her surroundings; for example, throwing her cover-up in the eyes of the Russians or using her purse to climb up a building. Her talents seem endless, and they are definitely noticed by the debonair Basil who frequently appears throughout her trek. The two begin to fall for each other, which is when Mike catches up to the duo and insists that Brenda return to his comic strip. Brenda refuses and before long Mike is caught up in the chase as well and relying on Brenda’s adventurous spirit to get him out of sticky situations. Before long Mike falls for Brenda and begins to demand that she choose between being with Basil or returning with Mike to the real world. Although Brenda does like Mike, she can’t be bothered to choose when she’s on the trail of a big scoop, in addition to the Russians and Libby relentlessly on her tail.

Brenda, Mike, and Basil finally discover the professor on his deathbed in a secluded Amazon village. After he passes away, Brenda discovers the fuel capsules in his hand and she rejoices as they head to Basil’s house, in a car powered by the miracle fuel, to telephone her newspaper. Alas, Libby is already waiting at Basil’s house and runs off with the fuel capsules. Brenda thinks she’s ruined until they realize that the fuel used on the car was actually a fraud and could never power a rocket ship. With this story Brenda returns to New York as a hero, but then refuses Mike’s offer to return to the real world. Mike reluctantly draws himself back into his own world, but is comforted by the thought that he will still be able to see Brenda Starr everyday as he draws her in the comic strip.

Brazil is portrayed in the film with two different faces. When Brenda and Basil are romancing each other in fancy restaurants and town squares in the city of Belém, Brazil takes on the look of a vacation destination; but when Brenda ventures into the Amazon on her quest, the dangers surround her with mercenaries, piranhas, snakes, and corrupt characters. In addition, when we are first introduced to the professor and his miracle fuel in a black and white projection film, he is surrounded by excited, yet ambiguous, indigenous men, with white war stripes, beaded jewelry, and loin clothes. It appears as though the film uses Brazil for what is called for in the script, with almost no regard for culture (although Brenda and Mike do enlist the help of a group of Capoiera dancers at one point to evade the Russians). The scenes in Puerto Rico aren’t much better as they exhibit the country as a Caribbean beach town with bustling markets and road-side cafés: charming, but lacking in depth. The line between countries is even more blurred as the characters use a mix of Spanish and Portuguese when they try to communicate with the locals, most of whom already speak English and appear to compassionately tolerate the ignorance of the foreigners. As may be predicted from a film with a plot from a comic strip, the audience of Brenda Starr must be prepared to accept misconstrued cultures and implausible situations with a grain of salt.

They Came to Cordura

They Came to Cordura (1959) depicts a desperate trek by U.S. Army personnel and a civilian woman, from a Chihuahua battlefield to the military base of Cordura, Texas. Reversing the conventions of the typical Western, leading man Major Thomas Thorn is branded as a coward, yet his job is to select candidates for the Congressional Medal of Honour in the 1916 U.S. invasion of Mexico against Pancho Villa. Suspense mounts as the viewer wonders who will mutiny against Thorn under the intense physical and psychological strain of the trek, but They Came to Cordura is about more than suspense alone. The meaning of heroism, existential questions about the self, and the possibility of redemption are all raised by the quiet, tense and guilt-ridden Thorn.

They Came to Cordura begins with the exhilarating rush of a cavalry charge on a hacienda filled with rifle-bearing Villistas. The cavalry are initially mowed down by the Villistas, but brave maneuvers by a few individuals secure an American victory. Thorn (played by Gary Cooper) watches the battle through binoculars, then approaches Captain Rogers with the names of Medal of Honour candidates. These exceptionally brave men are to be taken out of action so that when the U.S. enters World War I its army will have exemplary role models. Rogers becomes angry when Thorn refuses to add his name to the list; he could have had Thorn court marshaled for cowardice in a previous battle, but instead he recommended him as the Awards Officer. Though the details of this event are still unknown, it is clear that Thorn is haunted by it. Thorn is ordered to take five Medal of Honour candidates to Cordura, plus Adelaide Geary (played by Rita Hayworth), the American hacienda owner charged by Captain Rogers with aid and comfort of the enemy.

After the initial burst of action, the rest of the two-hour film depicts how the hardships of the journey make the candidates act in ever greater juxtaposition to their new heroic titles. Thorn carries a small book in which he makes notes on the men to support their citations. On the road, he interviews them one by one, attempting, as he says, “to put [his] hand on the bare heart of heroism, to hear answers about one of the great questions that man has even asked himself: What is courage?” He pays special attention to those who are still ignorant about the journey’s purpose, reasoning that once a man has been called a hero he will assume this identity to the point of forgetting what originally motivated him. Thorn is confronted with the men’s forgetfulness and self-interest, but remains patient throughout his moral inquiry. Meanwhile, he has to keep dousing the passions that Geary arouses in the men; not only is she the object of their sex-starved desire, but her aloof and taunting attitude raises their hackles.

It is not long beofre dehydration, physical discomfort, the Villista threat and growing doubt that Thorn can lead them to Cordura cause the men's civility to degenerate. Added to this, each has given Thorn their own reasons for not wanting the medal, but he is adamant that they receive it anyway. The moral code breaks down; Geary is the victim of an attempted rape and Thorn is offered bribes. Two men have a mutinous hatred for Thorn, another two resent him, and the last is delirious with fever. Sergeant John Chawk tells Thorn that he will kill him the second he closes his eyes. Geary, who like Thorn has a murky past in need of redemption, sacrifices herself by having sex with Chawk so that Thorn can get some shut-eye. However, the men are still insane with exhaustion, and in the penultimate scene, as Thorn pulls a cart along the railway bearing the ill soldier, one man throws a rock at him, causing him to collapse and be dragged downhill. Thinking that he is dead, they seize his notebook intending to destroy evidence of their reprehensible behaviour, but what they find instead are descriptions of their better selves. It turns out that Thorn is not dead and Cordura is visible over the hill, so the men, moved by what they have read, forget about their rejection of the Medal of Honour and follow Thorn’s lead the rest of the way.

They Came to Cordura is an overtly philosophical film that asks whether people are defined by their actions or by some an inherent inner nature. When Thorn opens up to Geary, telling her how in the previous battle he jumped into a ditch amidst the gunfire, she says that one cowardly act does not make a man a coward, nor one heroic act make a man a hero. Thorn disagrees; he will never shed his identity as a coward but he will nurture the heroic kernel in the other men, despite their murderous intentions toward him. Thorn is a Christ-like figure; he is forgiving to even the most evil-minded character, and when he pulls the cart while being stoned he is an unmistakable cross-bearing Christ, sacrificing himself for the salvation of the others. Though it is never entirely resolved whether being a hero is a matter of performance or of being, Thorn at least teaches the men to recognize their potential for good. Mexico serves as nothing more than a backdrop to this philosophical odyssey. Only one Mexican is named and his screen time is brief, and little can be said about the dusty, unforgiving Chihuahuan landscape that blends seamlessly into the Texan one. Despite the historical detail of the American retribution against Pancho Villa, Mexico is merely another foreign land where Americans seek to bury their murky past and the U.S. Army undertakes punitive incursions.

Borderline

One of the strange things about travel South of the Border is that it can have one of two contrasting effects: either reveal the real you, stripped down in elemental conflict with destiny (no better example of this than The Wages of Fear, but see also The Treasure of the Sierra Madre); or it can be an opportunity for reinvention and masquerade (Goofy becoming gaucho in Saludos Amigos, for example). Sometimes, of course, reinvention and rediscovery become one and the same: Charlotte Vale in Now, Voyager, for instance, takes on a false identity in her cruise to Rio precisely in order to reconnect with her true desires; in the end she is Camille Beauchamps, even if she has to leave that identity behind again when she returns North.

And this paradox, that Latin America is the site simultaneously of both truth and falsity, is not so dissimilar from the paradox (which I mentioned in discussing Tycoon) that it instantiates both nature and culture at the same time.

In Borderline, which is a sort of film noir lite, Mexico is the site of duplicity and pretence. Which is why the film rather goes against the conventions of noir, and becomes more a comedy of errors.

Claire Trevor plays Madeleine Haley, and ambitious young cop sent south to infiltrate and investigate a gang of drug-traffickers headed by one Pete Ritchie. She takes on the name "Gladys LaRue" and the character of, first, dancehall floozy and, then, gangster's moll to gain access to the formidable Ritchie, played by Raymond Burr. Yet she ends up kidnapped by another gang boss, who sends her North with a consignment of drugs in the company of hardman Johnny Macklin. Little does she realize, however, that Macklin is, like her, a cop in disguise, tender-hearted Johnny McEvoy under his tough-guy exterior.

In an incident-packed trip through Mexico, "LaRue" and "Macklin" tell each other tall stories about their delinquent pasts as cold-hearted murderer, in LaRue's tale, or in prison or on the lam, "barbequeing the bloodhounds they sent after me," in Macklin's. They take a certain delight in these exaggerated narratives. No wonder Macklin says "Sometimes I get the feeling that you're not telling me everything." "You know, I get the same feeling about you," replies LaRue. But these lies are fun, and especially for Haley/LaRue it's a refreshing change from her role as perpetually spoken-over and unheard subordinate woman in the USA.

But the border itself is the moment of truth, at which their identities suddenly unravel as Haley tries to have Macklin arrested, and McEvory likewise tries to turn LaRue in to the authorities. "You suggest that I cooperate...?" exclaims Haley. "Just who is this girl?" asks McEvoy. And each is as upset with the other as though they were really criminals betrayed by an informer. They have over-identified with their roles, but are shocked by the other's role-playing.

For they don't realize that, in this case at least, the performance has to stop at the borderline.

Bird of Paradise

King Vidor's Bird of Paradise is not a film about Latin America, though it presents an exoticizing narrative that is familiar from films set in the Caribbean or the Amazon.

Here, we are somewhere in the South Seas, on an island paradise visited by a US yacht that, in the opening scene, only barely scrapes across the coral reef that guards its shores. This physical barrier is also, of course, a cultural barrier, and soon enough eager natives are paddling and swimming up to greet the interloping vessel, and they prove themselves only too eager to be pleased by the trinkets that the crew have to offer them.

Suddenly, danger appears, in the form of a shark that appears to threaten the peaceful islanders. But in the end it is an American who gets into trouble: Johnny, who falls overboard trapped in the fishing line that the shark is rapidly dragging out to sea; but help is at hand as an indigenous maiden cuts the line and saves his life.

Soon enough, Johnny falls in love with this enchanting creature, who turns out to be a princess by the name of Luana. He teaches her how to kiss and be kissed, but for his pains the tribe turns on the two of them, who have to exile themselves on a neighbouring island, where they enjoy domestic bliss and discuss the merits or otherwise of civilization.

This tropical reverie cannot last, however, and the tribe come looking for Luana in order to throw her into the local volcano so as to appease a disgruntled deity. Johnny finds himself at risk too, but is rescued along with Luana by his returning crewmates. But in the end, facing the choice between savagery or civilization, extinction in a smoking crater or everyday life in California, Luana chooses to sacrifice herself but save her tribe. Loyalty among indigenes trumps cultural rescue, so avoiding the inconvenience of permanent inter-racial coupling.

Bird of Paradise is mostly notable for a bit of pre-Hayes code titillation: it features a poetic underwater courtship scene in which are treated to the sight of Joel McCrea (who plays Johnny) in a rather figure-hugging pair of underpants, and in which we may be seeing Dolores del Rio nude.


For del Rio plays Luana, and this reveals what I think is a revealing tension within Hollywood portrayals of race. On the one hand, as with the narrative that this film presents, what’s emphasized are the barriers between races and cultures: “they” are fundamentally different from “us,” and although this difference can generate desire, in the end cross-cultural liaisons are doomed. But on the other hand, in the casting process, cinematic conceptions of race are quite labile, especially around latinidad. Whites can play Latinos (say, Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil, Latinos can play whites (Rita Hayworth), Greeks can play Latinos (West Side Story), and as here, Latinos can also play South Sea islanders.

It’s true that some racial barriers prove more impermeable than others to casting agents, above all the separation between black and white. But the pragmatics of Latino casting, even of major stars, is often in tension with the exoticising narrative strategies of the films in which they are playing. And precisely because these are stars, the contradiction is palpable. The racial ambiguity exacerbates the characteristic tension between star and character. Latino stars can not only play out of character; they can also play out of race.

Indeed some, notably Antonio Rudolfo Oaxaca Quinn, made a career out of it.

Born in East L. A.

Cheech Marin's Born in East L. A. is a Chicano take on "Latin America on Screen." Marin takes the questions of border permeability, national security, and identity's performativity, ironizes them, and attempts to milk what comedy results.

Marin plays Rudy, a fairly thoroughly deracinated Los Angelino (who speaks no Spanish and is completely ignorant of Latino music, for instance), who by one of those strange mix-ups finds himself taken to be an illegal and deported to Mexico. He then spends most of the film attempting to cross back over the border, hustling for money with which to pay a coyote, and falling in love with a beautiful young Salvadoran woman, Dolores.

The romantic subplot, though at first sight (like, frankly, much else in this rather incoherent movie) incidental to the main narrative, is in fact significant. For the film shows the process by which Rudy's desires and habits are re-engineered as he learns to become Mexican--or perhaps assume his own mexicanidad. At the outset he trawls round Silverlake and environs in pursuit of a leggy redhead with a French accent. Indeed, the whole community's desire seems to be concertedly fixated on this vision in a skimpy green dress: whenever he stops to ask passers-by if they have seen a redheaded woman recently, as one they turn and point in the direction she has gone; they have been tracking her movements, but she has also been synchronizing their gaze.

Once in Tijuana, however, Rudy learns to appreciate the perhaps more homely virtues of the latina woman, as he also accepts that as far as US immigration is concerned, he himself for all his protestations of US citizenship is as shifty and untrustworthy as the next wetback seeking work north of the Rio Grande. (Of course, it hardly hurts Dolores's case that, though she lives in a trailer and cooks Rudy arroz con pollo, she does so in an immaculate white strapless cocktail dress.)

So by the end, far from asserting his difference from his brown brethren by insisting on his rights as a citizen, Rudy not only gives up his place in a coyote's truck to a more deserving border-crosser, but also like some Chicano Moses leads a flood of Mexican humanity across the frontier, overwhelming the border police's attempt to stem the tide, all to a soundtrack of Neil Diamond's "America".

For sure, this is the film's ideological blindspot: the United States remains very much the Promised Land; while Mexico is dirty, corrupt, and dangerous, paradigmatically experienced in and as prison. Still, there are wrinkles even here to this binary dichotomization. For instance, an apparently harmless and helpless middle aged gringo couple in their winnebago turn out to be up to their necks in smuggling.

Above all, Chicano identity (at least) is revealed as a set of discrete and transferable gestures and vocalizations. Rudy teaches a group of Asian (Chinese or Korean) immigrants how to pass in East LA: a bandana properly tied and cocked; one hand thrust into a jeans pocket, the other lazily waved behind; and the all-purpose exclamation "Waas Sappening." So if the film evidences some ambivalence as to whether Rudy learns to become Mexican, or rediscovers his forgotten heritage, ethnicity in the United States is seen to be thoroughly constructed.


And just as Rudy plays a German folk song (picked up as a GI in Europe) to seduce appreciative European tourists to part with their money, so he teaches a band of Mexican buskers to play rock and roll. Though Mexico may still (just) be a cradle of authenticity, it can also be a site for the experimentation in multiple identities and identifications, preparing the intrepid for the risky step of crossing the border and claiming all the same rights and benefits as those actually "born in East LA."

Kill Bill: Vol. 2

Perhaps surprisingly, at the end of a two-part movie extravaganza that's so much a homage to pop culture Orientalism, the climactic "final chapter" of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill turns out to be a rather sedate melodrama in Latin American setting.

It's true that plenty of the preceding action has also taken place on the Southwestern frontier: Texas and Southern California. The shift south of the border is, then, not unlike the move in the Tarantino-penned From Dusk to Dawn from an extended crime sequence in the US desert to the occult sensuality of a Mexican biker bar.

Still, the sudden and (here) almost random displacement is jarring in both films.

And if From Dusk to Dawn depicts Mexico as a zone of affective intensity to speed up the pulse, by complete contrast for Kill Bill Tarantino chooses Latin America as the most suitable location to ease up on the accelerator and slowly bring his frenetic bloodfest to a halt. What we see here is a picture of rural indolence and domestic retreat.

The Bride (whose name has now been revealed to be Beatrix Kiddo) stops first in a flea-bitten bar in which the local whores lounge in hammocks or idly play cards. Here she meets Esteban Vihaio, who has been the eponymous Bill's father figure since the future contract assassin was only five years old. Vihaio is living out a comfortable retirement from his own previously hectic exploits, drinking rum and catching up on some reading. Meeting Kiddo, he takes the opportunity to reminisce about the past and how she might have been his girl when he was in his prime. But those days are long gone; and this sleepy Mexican village is a good enough place to lie low and pass what time is left.

And so on to Bill's lair, which is revealed to be some kind of condo in an upscale development that is in fact a converted hacienda. The complex boasts all mod cons, including a private beach--suitable if necessary for a sword fight. But no sword fight of any note results. Indeed, the violence here is mostly playacted or mediated: Kiddo bursts in on what turns out to be a childhood game of toy guns and playing possum, and is encouraged by the daughter that she had thought long lost to play dead, too; later, the two of them curl up in bed to watch a Shogun movie on video.

When the final confrontation does arrive, an initial flurry of violence is replaced by a truth-telling session in which the Bride explains how pregnancy changed her life and made her decide to give up contract killing. Bill himself relates his own tale of a broken heart--and fittingly, that is how he is finally dispatched, dying almost in his own time ("You look ready," Beatrix observes, putting her hand on his) of an injury with no outward scars. Striding out into the garden, his back turned, he slumps to the ground in the most unspectacular of all the many demises that Tarantino has represented hitherto.

But not before Bill provides us with one of the film's very few trademark speeches of pop philosophy that otherwise litter Tarantino movies such as Pulp Fiction. Bill explains that Beatrix and he are in fact like Superman: and only performing when they give in to normal human conditions of cowardice and fear.

So for all the domesticity, a US setting to the film's finale would be out of place: this drenching of hyped-up motherhood, larger-than-life parenting, far-from-senile superannuation has to be played out in the distorted mirror that is Latin America. Asia--the Japan of Kill Bill: Vol. 1 or the China of Vol. 2--is an almost inhumanly inhospitable world of absolute difference and brutal demands for perfection. Latin America, however, is like but not like, familiarly different: a good place for superheroes to play normal.


Because for all his Far Eastern obsessions, it's the South, and the Latin America that's so recognizeable from its many classic celluloid incarnations, that most resembles Tarantino's own colourful Movie-verse.

Moon Over Parador

I've mentioned before that a detour through Latin America is often a means to approach the question of governance. I've also discussed the way in which performativity seems to be at the core of Hollywood's Latin America.

Moon Over Parador combines these two concerns: it depicts a US actor, Jack Noah (played by Richard Dreyfuss), who finds himself playing the role of his life standing in as dictator of a Latin American banana republic.

Naturally enough, Noah's act turns out to be more convincing than that of the real dictator whose place he takes. Equally predictably, Noah also comes to take his role increasingly seriously, coming up with policies that will materially improve the plight of his oppressed people.

Not that the notion of an actor as president is so very novel: within Hollywood, it can be dated at least as far back as The Magnificent Fraud (which this movie essentially remakes); similar substitutions occur in Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper, Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda, Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator, or, more recently, Ivan Reitman's Dave. Outside of Hollywood, and in 1988 when Moon Over Parador came out, there was of course Ronald Reagan.

The film even nods towards Reagan when Noah employs the Gipper's characteristic trick of pretending not to hear press queries by gesturing that their questions are drowned out by the roar of a helicopter's rotors. It also alludes to Reagan's then-current policy towards Latin America in its portrayal of a CIA agent, Ralph, whose mission is to ensure that the Republic of Parador is not engulfed by encroaching Communist guerrillas.

Meanwhile, Sonia Braga's role as the dictator's somewhat disreputable mistress, Madonna, is more than a little reminiscent of Evita Perón. And indeed Noah, as he gets into his role and apparently subverts it by tempering autocracy with liberalism, in fact increasingly comes to resemble a populist leader such as Juan Perón or Getulio Vargas.

This layering of references (and there are others, deliberate or otherwise, such as the echoes of Casablanca and the citations from Man of La Mancha) establish that power is performed effectively only by its imitation of other instances of power. Noah learns to rule not by learning anything about the political or social situation of Parador, but by following models drawn from previous representations of power. It's significant that the dictator's name is "Simms": dictatorship is shown here to consist in the art of (dis)simulation.

There is no original. Convincing Noah that he must play the dictator's part, chief of police Roberto Strausmann (Raul Julia) points out that "Noah," too, is no more than an act, a performance: "Isn't your real name Noah Blumberg? And haven't you assumed a totally new identity?"

What's more, the previous dictator, whose place Noah assumes, wore a wig and make-up, and is described as "Parador's greatest actor." Power is an act, a sham, a matter of smoke and mirrors, that is parasitic on previous shamshows that stretch back to infinity.

But the only thing, the movie suggests, that can overturn power's performativity is yet another simulation. Though the guerrillas might otherwise be imagined to be the "real" against which this imaginary dictatorship is posed, in the end it is only Hollywood that can rescue Noah from his predicament as an actor whose acting is unrecognized, taken to be real. For the special effects guy from a visiting film crew arranges the dictator's fake assassination, so that Noah can smuggle himself away, out of the country and back to his former life as jobbing Broadway thespian.

And retelling his story in New York, Noah finds that his fellow actors find his tale simply too unlikely. The problem with power, Moon Over Parador suggests, is that it provokes only either credulousness or incredulity. We should be prepared, rather, to take its unseriousness seriously. Which is also a pretty good rule of thumb with which to approach light-hearted comedies such as this one.

malleability

What, if anything, unites Hollywood movies that portray Latin America? Is there some shared element beyond the contingent commonality of theme? Hollywood's Latin movies don't constitute a genre--they follow many different generic conventions. But perhaps they make up a mood, a style?

DeeDee Halleck suggests that there is one over-riding narrative to these stories set south of the border. By contrast, what's most striking is the variety of excuses or reasons for invoking latinidad. Latins can play (or be played as) sexy lovers, tragic heroes, ridiculous clowns, noble savages... their "expressive faces" are multivalent.

Is this one possible key: that there is some resonance between Latin America and the movie industry. Both are defined by the self-reflexivity and variability of their performative affect. It is in its (re)production of the Latin that Hollywood sees its chance to incarnate, make real, the other; to think through an other's body.

Gilda

Rita Hayworth had a good war, and was wrapped up in it "in a way no other movie icon was".

She was a favourite pin-up girl for US servicemen: One particular image, taken for the magazine Life, in which Hayworth kneels but also rises up from satin sheets, expectantly looking off camera, was second only to a bathing-suit picture of Betty Grable as GIs' choice to accompany them into battle. But where Grable was the girl next door, cheeky and charming, Hayworth radiated sensuality and a somewhat disturbing aura of power.

It was Hayworth's picture that adorned the first atomic bomb to be dropped on Bikini Atoll, a bomb nicknamed "Gilda."

Gilda is the role with which Hayworth is most associated: a sassy, seductive femme fatale in the noirish thriller that takes her name for its title.

But Gilda herself hardly seems to have had such a good war as Hayworth: the film locates her, her husband the casino proprietor Ballin Mundson, and her ex-lover Mundson's right-hand man Johnny Farrell, all in Buenos Aires as the war ends.

Farrell appears first, taking money off US sailors by gambling with loaded dice. Mundson is in league with Nazis who (much as in Notorious) are using South America as their base for a sinister plot to take over the world. And Gilda? We know almost nothing about her past or what she is doing here so far from home.

The Buenos Aires that Gilda presents is a true noir landscape of smoke-filled, somewhat disreputable interior locations while outside is perpetual night and frequent rain. The film is set mostly in the illegal casino owned by Mundson and run by Farrell, its associated restaurant and dancefloor, or Mundsen's nearby mansion. The vitality and possibilities enshrined in these seedy but opulent locales appear at first as a welcome respite from the dangers lurking elsewhere: in the opening scenes Mundson rescues Farrell from a hold-up down at the docks, and gives him a pass to this new lifestyle of money, smart dressing, power, and responsibility.

But it becomes clear that the casino is at best a gilded cage, not least for Gilda who is trapped first by Mundsen and then (when Mundsen disappears and she takes back her old flame to be a second--third? fourth?--husband) by Farrell. In voiceover, Johnny tells us "She didn't know then what was happening to her. She didn't know then that what she heard was the door closing on her own cage."

Gilda's only recourse is to take advantage of and subvert the men's gaze and its constricting surveillance, by performing their fear and fantasy of female power as provocatively and outrageously as she can.


Gilda displays and flaunts female sexuality, most famously in the "Put the Blame on Mame, Boys" scene in which Hayworth performs a "clothed striptease": in fact all she removes is one glove, but then a striptease is never about revelation, about surface and depth, or rather never about the revelation of femininity. What's revealed, instead, is the desire of the men watching, who rush up in response to the classic line that ends the routine: "I'm not very good at zippers, but maybe if I had some help."

Here Johnny intervenes, takes Gilda off the dancefloor, and slaps her at precisely the point where she might otherwise reveal something of her history, the reasons that have led her to Argentina: "Now they all know what I am, and that should make you happy, Johnny. It's no use just you knowing it, Johnny. Now they all know that the mighty Johnny Farrell got taken, and that he married a..."

Through Gilda, the film consistently incites but also questions Johnny's power, and the power of the heterosexual male gaze. It suggests that Gilda's crime is to have broken up Johnny and Ballin's homosocial, perhaps even homosexual, relationship, which had been cemented around their mutual "friendship" for the phallic cane-cum-dagger that is Mundsen's signature prop, and around an agreement that women ("funny little creatures," Mundsen calls them) and gambling don't mix.

In the end, the sophisticated surveillance and insulation devices on which both Farrell and Mundsen depend are shown to fail. Both believe in setting up boundaries that they think they can make permeable or impermeable at will: their casino control room is an isolated eyrie in which business can be discussed, but also rigged with a series of electronic listening devices and shuttered windows through which they can observe what goes on around them. Mundsen believes in shutting the outside out at whim: "See how easily one can shut away excitement? Just by closing a window." But both characters are blinded by their gaze, deafened by their hearing.

Is this not because they remain fundamentally out of place? These American men believe that they can impose their own topography of power on Buenos Aires. But it's the two Argentine characters, who are constantly in the background, who permeate and belong to that background, who finally demonstrate that only they are fully aware of events. The lowly, philosophical bathroom attendant, Uncle Pio, hears all the casino gossip. It is Pio who kills Mundsen, the man who would rule the world, with his own best "friend," the blade emerging from its cane sheath. And ultimately the nondescript policeman, Detective Obregón, both gets his man and determines the fate of the other characters.


Gilda turns away: she can no longer bear to see or be seen. Her final words, the film's final words, are a plea to return to a more familiar world, a world in which she can become anonymous once again, can stop performing: "Johnny, let's go home. Let's go home."

Copacabana

It's no great surprise that latinidad can be and often is a matter of performance. Indeed, it was Carmen Miranda, Portuguese-born, Brazilian-raised, US-domiciled, who had established the model for Latin performance in the early and mid-1940s.

But in Copacabana, seven years after her Hollywood debut in Down Argentine Way, Miranda tries to shake off her image, show that she can perform European, act as well as sing, and veil the "Brazilian bombshell" reputation that was leading her career nowhere.

The film's plot has Groucho Marx as Lionel Q. Devereaux who, with Miranda's Carmen Navarro, is one half of a down-at-heel double act unable to get bookings. Frustrated, Devereaux turns agent and by mischance books Navarro at the Copacabana club twice: once as herself, a South American cha-cha girl, and again as blonde French chanteuse Mademoiselle Fifi. Naturally, this double identity has to be concealed from the club owner Steve Hunt and the ever more curious press. But the duplicity becomes unmanageable as Hunt falls for Fifi and press attention brings Hollywood movie producers to town.

Mademoiselle Fifi, in short, soon eclipses Navarro, who from the start is portrayed as but one more in a line of what have become seen as Latin novelty acts. "I've got sixteen of them on my list," says talent agent Liggett of South American singers, "they're a dime a dozen."

As the consequences of her performance become evident, Carmen-as-Fifi tries to deflect attention back to Carmen-as-Carmen, but no dice: latinidad is no longer saleable, and it's Fifi's contract alone that becomes subject to an increasingly inflationary bidding war.

In the end, the blonde chanteuse has to be killed off, but the police are called in as Devereaux's disposal of his former star is taken a little too literally. Carmen therefore has once more to veil herself and play French, but this time in order that she be unmasked as "really" Navarro. Even with her veil off, however, doubt remains, which Carmen can only dispel by kissing Hunt (and the various other male characters). For only Carmen, it turns out, can kiss like Fifi.

The final twist (if one can really talk of twists in such a thoroughly predictable movie) is that the whole story is taken up, self-reflexively, to become the plot of a movie to be entitled... Copacabana.

It would seem, therefore, that here almost everything is on the surface: Miranda's own declining appeal, her inability to break out of the mold that she herself helped shape, the limits set to performativity by Hollywood's economic realities. But almost un-noticed, the film subtly indicates another story, of successful whitening.

Andy Russell plays (a version of) himself as the Copacabana's male star. Russell is presented as all looks and voice and no brain, a clean-cut kid continually befuddled by what's going on around him.

Yet Andres Rabajos (as this Chicano vocalist was born) was no doubt more aware than anyone of the dangers and possibilities of Anglicization as a strategy to make it in the USA. A crooner in the style of Bing Crosby and Russ Columbo, Russell's first hits had been Spanish language ("Bésame mucho" and "Amor"), but he crossed over and by the later 1940s had become arguably "the first truly successful Latino-American vocalist".

By the 1950s, Russell's star, like that of Miranda, was on the wane, and he moved to first Mexico then Argentina. But his apparently unquestioned all-Americanness in Copacabana is a reminder that for many--from Rita Hayworth (born Margarita Cancino) to Anthony Quinn (Antonio Rudolfo Oaxaca Quinn)--success could come for Latinos playing gringo.

See also: That Night in Rio, Week-End in Havana, The Gang's All Here, Carmen Miranda.