The Lebanexican

La Bamba

I like to say that what the Super Bowl is to men (especially the men in my family), the Academy Awards are to me. A Sunday afternoon spent eating popcorn, glued to the TV, while enjoying a once a year spectacle at times predictable and at times thrillingly unpredictable (Bjork’s original black swan, anyone?). Yet I can’t help but notice that this year’s Academy Award nominated films are a little on the homogenous side. I’m not the only one who’s noticed.

Just a few days ago, New York Times movie critics Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott (the latter is one of my favorite critics, along with the New Yorker’s Anthony Lane and the always great Roger Ebert) discussed the dearth of faces of color in the movies of 2010, on the occasion of the Oscars. I would agree with their premise that the stories being told and celebrated by Hollywood reflect an unbearable whiteness of being, but while the writers focus on the history of African Americans in Hollywood, I would say that the issue of diversity onscreen is not only a black and white issue. We are not seeing stories by and about people of color, period.

When it comes to the portrayal of Latinos onscreen, there is reason to believe that we will see more- but will these movies be any good? Pantelion films is a new film studio dedicated to making movies specifically for the U.S. Latino market. And yet its first feature, “From Prada to Nada”, has received both poor reviews and low box office.  This movie (which I haven’t seen) is proof that even with Latinos behind the camera, stereotypes can abound. One need look no further than the films of Tyler Perry to see that, as much as critics (including Spike Lee) may decry the depiction of African-Americans in his movies (see: men in drag), audiences love his middlebrow fare.  So does it matter if filmmakers of color are at the helm if they are just rehashing the same old Latino boxer/African-American thug stereotypes? Does quantity (number of roles for minority actors) matter more than quality? And what’s quality?

Anthony Mackie in The Hurt Locker

In recent years, there have been Oscar-nominated movies featuring diverse casts- “Babel”, “Children of Men”, “Pan’s Labyrinth” (and those are just the Mexican directors); most recently, last year Mo’nique won Best Supporting Actress for her role in “Precious”, and only two years ago, the 2009 Best Picture went to “Slumdog Millionaire”, which has an all-Indian cast (further proof that it doesn’t take a director of color to helm a good movie with a minority cast).  Last year’s Best Picture winner, “The Hurt Locker”, centers around a hotheaded bomb defuser, played by Jeremy Renner, and his more levelheaded sergeant, played by Anthony Mackie.

So perhaps it is an anomaly that this year’s Best Picture nominees are about the British royal family, a band of Old West gunslingers, Bawston working class folks, Harvard tech geeks, New York City Ballet dancers…a real variety in terms of setting and tone and theme. But all really, really white (with the exception of the Asian girlfriend in “The Social Network”).  I am reminded of the controversy surrounding Vanity Fair’s Young Hollywood 2010 issue, when 9 up and coming actresses were on the cover…not a non-WASP among them. I believe it’s not that the young actresses of color aren’t out there (hello, Zoe Saldana), but the Hollywood arbiters of who’s in, who’s out, and who’s worthy of a gold statuette are a little behind the times.  Maybe this year, a lot behind the times. I will be watching the Oscars on February 27th, and in the coming months, this movie fan will be watching and hoping to see good movies that don’t look like they were cast at Andover Academy. A little less Kate Hudson, a little more Queen Latifah, please.

Daniel Tosh

I’ll say this much about the BBC’s Top Gear and its hosts- they don’t back down from a controversy. Two weeks ago, hosts Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Mark Hammond dismissed the idea of driving a Mexican car, since the cars from that country must be like the people- “lazy, feckless, flatulent and overweight”.  Excuse me for not howling with laughter. Yeah, and Germans are uptight, Arabs are irrational, and Asians are bad drivers. Har!

As a serious fan of comedy, I am offended more by the unfunniness of jokes based on ethnic stereotypes than anything else. But yes, they are offensive because they draw a line in the sand. You and me, we get this joke. We can tell it because we’re in the majority. Those other guys? They’re not in on the joke.

The controversy over Top Gear’s ugly Mexican stereotypes lies not just in the jokes but in the fact that the hosts issued a totally clueless non-apology. The BBC actually stated that, while apologizing for insulting the Mexican Ambassador to Mexico, “national-stereotyping was part of British humour“. Perhaps this is why British humor has always struck me as pedestrian and juvenile. National stereotyping is hilarious when you’re 12- not so much when you’re an adult. Who likes laugh out loud humor.

I’ve been noticing this a lot lately- a glut of white comedians just swimming in white privilege. I was recently watching a series on Comedy Central of comedians ranked from 20 to 1 (when we count the best in pop culture, we count backwards).  We had a couple of black comedians, two women, and one Asian comedian, Eliot Chang, who gets an A for enthusiasm but an F for unfunny. Bo Burnham, number one? A teenager with a piano? Gack. Yet many of the (white) comedians told jokes about (minority) races that really brought it home to this viewer that, let’s face it, comedy is for white folks. And Arabs smell funny.

There are several offenders when it comes to comedians bathing in the glow of white privilege. To wit:

– Daniel Tosh, he of Tosh 2.0. I love Daniel Tosh- no one has taken down Nebraska quite like he has. His early stand up is intelligent, insightful, and hilarious. Yet in nearly every episode of Tosh.0, we witness a dynamic of white dudes mocking people of color for doing “ghetto stuff”. And yes, there is a segment called “Is it racist?”. Usually, it is!

–  I recently attended an improv show that was part of SF Sketchfest, and while the performance itself was mildly funny, choosing which performance to attend was even harder. Three weeks packed with top comedians from yesterday and today, and each one whiter than the last. SF Sketchfest is perfect for you if your idea of hilarious is Bo Burnham.

Now, am I one of those wimpy, super PC San Franciscans that weeps if something even has the hint of offensiveness? Hardly. I think the best comedy is insightful, as the best comedians are the truthtellers of the day. This doesn’t require a simple, us vs. them, I can tell jokes about you people because I’m in the majority style that many white comedians adopt. But let’s face it, most of the comedy we see out there, whether on Comedy Central or on stage or in the movies, is made for 12 year old boys. So who’s still great? Dave Chappelle, who this very evening performed a secret show in San Francisco (I couldn’t get tickets in time!). His riff on women who dress sexy is classic. He’s edgy, and walks the “white people do this/black people do that” line better than most comics (because he’s actually insightful). You can discuss race in a way that is neither offensive nor milquetoast. According to this lazy, feckless, flatulent and overweight Mexican.

Menudo- Coma y No Hagas Preguntas

Todo el año, soy media mexicana, pero durante la Navidad y el Año Nuevo, las tradiciones de mi familia se vuelven más importantes, y soy más mexicana que nunca. Esto no tiene nada que ver con la cultura mexicana en sí; es decir, todas las culturas tienen sus tradiciones más arraigadas durante la Navidad. Ayer asistí a una Feria Navideña Sueca, que contaba con la participación de una amiga estadounidense de padres suecos.  Estaba obviamente orgullosa de su cultura- los disfraces tradicionales, la comida, el idioma, los cantos.  No importa si seas sueca, mexicana, o de cualquier cultura.  Esta temporada navideña es la hora de celebrar nuestra cultura, poco importa de donde venimos.

En mi casa, en vez de ser biculturales, somos, digamos, triculturales.  Tenemos la cultura libanesa, la cultura mexicana, y la cultura estadounidense, la que prevalece. No miramos el fútbol; miramos, apasionadamente, el fútbol estadounidense. Preparamos el puré de papas más a menudo que…bueno, más que el menudo.  Pero durante la Navidad, preparamos los tamales.  Durante todo un fin de semana, mi madre emplea un ejército de ayudantes, y toma el papel de coronel, manejando la cocina como si fuera su zona de batalla.  Admito que muchas veces no se me permite quedar por mucho tiempo, por falta de destrezas con la elaboración de la masa.  “No, no, mira, así no se hace!”, grita mi madre.

Así que no es un proceso democrático, pero resulta en un lote increíble de tamales verdes de pollo.  Bueno, también hacemos rojos, pero prefiero los verdes, y los de pollo.  Los dulces, para mí, no sirven para nada- es un mal uso de piña y pasas, en mi opinión.  Los tamales los comemos la mañana de Navidad con chocolate mexicano- hecho con Ibarra– y no empezamos a abrir los regalos hasta que todos tengamos el chocolate, y un plato de tamales con huevito en las manos.  Esta tradición se repite en Nuevo Año.  Pero hay una tradición que no tiene nada que ver con la comida, pero sí tiene que ver con el Nacimiento. Y es la más importante de todas.

Nacimiento 2007

El Nacimiento toma lugar al lado del árbol navideño, y usamos figuras de todas partes- aún tenemos algunas de México, que datan de más de 50 años, aunque todas las figuras originales ya son “mancos”, con brazos pegados con un pegamento sencillo.  Hemos incorporado juguetes infantiles, decoraciones de pasteles de cumpleaños, todo. Pero una figura importante falta.

Tras llegar a casa después de la Misa de Gallo, cantamos una canción de cuna al niño, todos le besamos en la frente, y lo colocamos al lado de José y María.  Cuando vivía, mi bisabuela se encargaba de esta tradición, cantando más alto que todos.  Y ahora, al preservar esta tradición a lo largo de los años, tiene más importancia que nunca.  Y siempre arrullo al niño con una lágrima en los ojos.

Cuáles son tus tradiciones navideñas? Dime en los comentarios. Y que tengan un muy Feliz Navidad.

Salma, the other Lebanexican

Yes, the above question was actually posed to me just a couple of day ago, by my boyfriend, who is aware that I am half Lebanese and half Mexican.  It’s a natural question to ask, and hey, if I met, say, Salma Hayek, I might ask her the same thing (mil gracias, Salmita, for being one of the other Lebanese Mexicans in existence.  You help people wrap their minds around my ethnic background)!

But in all seriousness, the question of how much a mixed person identifies with one side or other is not just a matter of public fascination, it’s the essence of being mixed.  A bit of background: one of my proudest accomplishments is having been one of the founders of M.E.S.H. (Mixed Ethnicities Student Headquarters) at my alma mater, UC Santa Cruz.  So I have been identifying as a mixed person for some time, and I am familiar with the issues that define us mixed folks. In the past (in the pre-M.E.S.H. days),  I admit that I often felt either not Lebanese enough or not Mexican enough.  And through meetings that M.E.S.H. would organize each trimester, which usually consisted of simple gatherings of curious students, we would discuss our cultural identity and our families.

So what did I tell the boyfriend when he asked me the question that gives this post its title? It’s the Exican, stupid.  No, really, although my last name and face are decidedly more Arabic than Mexican (and what does Mexican look like? That’s a subject for a future post!), having grown up with my Mexican grandmother and great-grandmother living at home with the family (my great-grandmother passed away at age 100 when I was 18), speaking Spanish in my home as a child, and being in closer proximity to my Mom’s family than my Dad’s (his family is spread along the East Coast; my Mom’s is all in California), all lead to my feeling just a little more Mexican.  More importantly, I think it is significant that while my Mom is from Mexico, and is therefore closer to her culture, my father’s family is much further removed from the Lebanese/Syrian culture, since our ancestors came to the U.S. in the 1880’s.  All of this leads to my identifying closer to my Mexican culture than my Lebanese side.

Of course, the whole story could go much longer, as cultural identity is a topic rife with material to be explored.  Since being mixed informs how I see the world, and I intend for this blog to be a source for exploring trends in politics, Web 2.0, and marketing (especially the kind that targets Hispanics), I may revisit this topic more in depth or from a different angle in the future.  For now, suffice it to say, I’m a little less Leb and a little more exican.

The Latina in this Election- Meg Whitman's Former Maid

Is it just me, or is it crazy that in a state where some 1/3 of the population is Latino, the only way a Latino is remotely involved in the race for governor is when a candidate’s former housekeeper comes forward with allegations of mistreatment?

I know, this doesn’t have the upbeat tone of my previous post, “Still Waiting for that Latino Revolution”.  But it irks me that of the four candidates for governor and senate- Meg Whitman, Jerry Brown, Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina- are hopelessly white and out of touch in California, the most diverse state in the Union. California is home to every culture, every religion, every language in the world (well, I don’t know about that last part, but you can get a court interpreter in Armenian if you need one.  Not sure they offer that in Tennessee). And yet we get these milquetoaost, run of the mill candidates, bland in every way.  And I mean the incumbents, too (sorry, Barb).

Never mind the fact that the two men running California’s two great cities, and doing great things in both of them, Gavin Newsom and Antonio Villaraigosa, opted out of the Democratic primary, leaving us with Linda Ronstadt’s former boyfriend.  Why did Antonio not run? I’m sure pixels and pixels have been spilled over the reasons why, but suffice it to say, L.A.’s handsome, Telemundo-loving lothario-mayor could have been California’s great chance for a Latino in the Governor’s mansion in Sacramento. But it was not to be.

Granted, I am not a believer in identity politics-  I don’t vote for candidates solely based on race or gender. Nevertheless, I believe that there should be some sort of representation of the electorate by its leaders.  It’s no coincidence that Hawai’i, a state that has an Asian-American majority, is represented by two Japanese-American senators.   And yet California, Mexicalifornia, state of brown, black, yellow and pink, has a candidate for governor whose knowledge of Latinos and their concerns comes from her acquaintance with her housekeeper.  Will this be the case in the next gubernatorial election- will Latinos remain on the sidelines or will we take center stage? I certainly hope it is the latter.