Ethnicity and Popular Culture - Hispanics and Contemporary Hollywood

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,0, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: HS Youth Culture, Popular Culture and Aesthetics , language: English, abstract: [...] The increasing importance of Hispanics in U.S. society has brought up a number of new literature regarding the Hispanic community, especially in the context of film. Two important authors / editors should be named at the beginning: At first, Chon A. Noriega, who has published the latest overview of Chicano cinema in 20003. Second Gary D. Keller, who edited a number of 'groundbreaking' (Noriega on Keller) surveys about the development of Chicano cinema in the 20th century. This seminar paper covers a longer, more recent period of time, and names also movies from Hispanics or about Hispanics after the year 2000, which were not mentioned in these books. Therefore I will refer to some websites dealing with Chicano cinema. I will begin my analysis with describing the Hispanic image in Hollywood. Their presentation in 20th century mainstream cinema is not just decisive for the image that consumers have about the Latino culture, but has also been decisive for the obstacles towards an Hispanic establishment in Hollywood.