Giving the Midwestern White Gaze a Latinx Spin: Mediated Latinx Lives in the

American Heartland

Dissertation

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

Laura Fernandez, M.A.

Graduate Program in Spanish and Portuguese

The Ohio State University

2020

Dissertation Committee:

Frederick Aldama, Advisor

Paloma Martinez-Cruz

Ashley Pérez

Copyright by

Laura Michelle Fernandez

2020

ii

Abstract

In this dissertation, I argue that Latinx representations based in the Midwest have

been largely understudied. In the national imaginary, Latinxs have been historically

situated in either the East Coast (Miami, New York), the Southwest (Texas, New Mexico,

Arizona), and California; the Midwest becomes a Latinx void as far as the public is

concerned. This twofold project shines a light on the obscured Midwestern Latinx

through both textual analysis and community engagement in order to comprehend the

place Latinxs have in the “white” Midwest. The first part of this project consists of close

readings of five popular television shows set in the Midwest as well as a sketch from

Saturday Night Live. Understanding Latinxs in the current political climate to be

considered a “threat,” this investigation proposes that to ameliorate the threat, US popular

culture, as depicted in these shows, sublimates Latinidad in order to uphold American

(white) values, while also pigeonholing Latinx performances into two categories: the

clowned Latin Lover and the angry Latina “bitch.” In order to counteract the

blanqueamiento of Latinidad in popular culture, the final part of this project is an

examination of my own theoretical concept, the Latinx Gaze, which examines popular

culture from the perspective of the Other. Through this analysis, I demonstrate how

certain popular culture texts manage to subvert the White hegemonic gaze that has

controlled the national discourse on Otherness.

iii

Dedication

This project is dedicated to my sister, Gina; my parents; Coco; Rambo; and to my Lily, I

will miss you and love you always. Thank you.

iv

Acknowledgements

This dissertation is a result of all the support I have received from my professors,

colleagues, friends, and family members. I am grateful to my advisor, Frederick Aldama,

for providing me the freedom to pursue my academic interests, and for introducing me to

the field of Pop Culture Studies. I am also indebted to my professors and committee

members that I have studied with along the way at The Ohio State University: to Paloma

Martinez-Cruz for her much needed emotional support, as well as her expertise in

challenging Latinx identities, and to Ashely Pérez for her knowledge in Latinx narratives

and for taking on this project. This project began at The Ohio State University when I

started my work with Theresa Delgadillo on the placemaking practices of Latinxs in Ohio

through their participation in Latinx festivals.

I am grateful to The Ohio State University’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese,

for providing me the space to grow as a scholar. I would also like to thank various professors

in the department who through participation in their courses and our interpersonal

interactions have helped me in my personal and professional growth. I would like to thank

Professors Laura Podalsky, Rebeka Campos-Astorkiza, Ana Del Sarto, Anna Babel, Rebecca

Haidt, Lisa Voight, Isis Barra Costa, and Ignacio Corona. I am also grateful for my advisor

from the University of Notre Dame, Carlos Jauregui, for introducing a former

v

Anthropology major to the study of Latin American literature and culture, and for helping

find my niche in a new field of study.

Finally, on a very personal level, I extend my thanks to my family for their

unwavering love and patience as I completed this project: to my mom, Laura, for always

being the one to push me forward and to always be willing to gossip when I needed a break;

to my dad, Guian, for always being the voice of reason and for showing me the value of hard

work; to my sister, Angela, without whom I would not have Coco; and especially to my

oldest sister, Gina, who has always been my best friend and closest mentor and advisor, who

went through the Ph.D. process on her own and then guided me through mine. To my closest

friends: Leila Vieira and Cesar Gemelli (and my quasi-nephew Alexandre), you made the

transition between ND and OSU bearable, and to James Leow and Yuniel Sardinas for being

amazing human beings (and for risking COVID-19 to give me a hug when I needed it most).

Lastly, my fur babies both near and far: Coco, for being the most adorable puppy and for

helping me get through one of the hardest moments so far, Rambo, for being so crazy (and

annoying) that you make me laugh, and of course, Lily, my beautiful little angel, who kept

me company these past five years, and almost saw me through to the end, finishing is

bittersweet because of your loss.

vi

Vita

2013…………………………………………B.A. Anthropology & Psychology,

University of Notre Dame

2015…………………………………………M.A. Iberian & Latin American Studies,

University of Notre Dame

2016 to present………………………………Graduate Teaching Associate, Department

of Spanish and Portuguese, The Ohio State

University

Publications

2016 Fernandez, Laura M. “Canta y no llores: Life & Latinidad in Children’s

Animation.” The Routledge Companion to Latina/o Popular Culture. Ed.

Frederick L. Aldama. Routledge, 2016. 68-75.

2018 Fernandez, Laura M. “Transnational Queerings and Sense8.” The Routledge

Companion to Gender, Sex and Latin American Culture. Ed. Frederick L.

Aldama. Routledge, 2018. 222-230.

vii

Field of Study

Major Field: Spanish and Portuguese

Specialization: Latin American Cultural and Literary Studies

viii

Table of contents

Abstract ............................................................................................................................. ii Dedication ......................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... iv Vita .................................................................................................................................... vi Introduction. The Placing of Latinx Representations in Popular Culture ..........................1 1. Brief History of the Midwest’s Latinx Populations .........................................................4 2. Purpose of Study and Research Questions .....................................................................15 3. Organization and Structure of Dissertation ....................................................................34 Chapter 1. The Clowned Lover and the Bitch: Latinx Gender Tropes and Subjugation .42 1. Marking Latin@ Characters: Racialized and Gendered Indicators of Latinidad ...........45 2. From Tropicalized Whore to Midwestern Bitch: The Subjugating of Latina Bodies ....47 3. The Latin Lover: The Earliest Space for Latinos in Hollywood ...................................76 Chapter 2. Latinidad Served on the Side: The Blanqueamiento and Erasure of Latinx Images in Midwestern US Popular Television ..................................................................95 1. Adapting the Narrative Prosthesis: From the Disabled to the Culturally Diverse .........98 2. Overshadowing Latinidad: April’s Marriage to Whiteness .........................................104 3. Switched at Birth Rights the Racial Wrongs ................................................................111 4. Santana’s White Saviors ..............................................................................................133 5. Fez Gets the Girl, But Not the Audience .....................................................................141 Chapter 3. Laughing at or with Latinxs?: Changing the Scope of the Camera’s Narrative Gaze in Midwest-based Sitcoms ......................................................................................154 1. Defining the Gaze ........................................................................................................155 3. Parks & Rec: The In-Between Gaze ............................................................................165 4. “Diego Calls His Mom”: SNL’s Foray into the Latinx Immigrant Experience ...........175 5. The “American” Megamarket ......................................................................................184 Conclusion. Future Pathways for Latinx Representation ................................................198 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................208

1

Introduction

The Placing of Latinx Representations in Popular Culture

My mom’s Puerto Rican, that’s why I’m so lively and colorful.

(“Sister City”)

Latinx representation in popular culture is not a new phenomenon. From Desi

Arnaz’s “colorful” representation of Cubanidad in I Love Lucy (1951-1957) to Sofia

Vergara’s over-emphasized accent on Modern Family (2009—), to the revamping of the

telenovela in Jane the Virgin, Latinx stories have had their place in television since the

“Golden Age” of American television (Stephens 1999). What roles those narratives have

been, however, leaves much to be contested. Latinidad and (Anglo) American television

have had a turbulent history at best. Given the contentious political climate of the Trump

Era, xenophobic anti-immigrant, which in turn becomes increasingly anti-Latinx, rhetoric

has been given a national platform, repeated and expanded upon by conservative media

pundits. Now more than ever, how popular media represents those that are perceived as

Other, needs to come under examination. While Latinx have been present in popular

culture, which for the purposes of this project is limited to television series, they have

more often than not relied on presenting stereotyped caricatures of Latinx experiences in

2

the U.S., than their lived realities. As Gina Pérez, Frank Guridy, and Adrian Burgos, Jr.

note in the introduction to Beyond El Barrio: Everyday Life in Latina/o America, how

Latinx are represented in mainstream media is reflective not of Latinx themselves, but

what the larger (white) American culture thinks of them, wherein Latinx audiences are

forced to view themselves from another’s perspective, “For many Latinas/os, media

images and popular cultural renderings of their families and communities mirror the

anxieties as well as the expectations and hopes of mainstream America, rather than the

complex realities characterizing Latina/o lives” (1).

Tied to that cultural rendering of the Latinx experience based on the mainstream

caricature of Latinidad, is how it is also glaringly territorialized: television shows

figuring Latinx characters in primary roles are almost entirely either set in the East Coast

(New York or Miami)—popular examples being Brooklyn 99, Jane the Virgin, and

Pose—or the West Coast (California)—One Day at a Time, Vida, Modern Family (just to

name a few). For most of its history, Latinidad as depicted in the mainstream media has

largely skipped over the American Midwest, ignoring the every growing Latinx presence

that goes back until the late 19th century. Instead, the Midwest has become iconized as the

"American Heartland" where hard-working (white) individuals work to sustain American

(conservative) values. One need only look at a map of the 2016 presidential election

results, where the Midwest, with very few exceptions, became the champion of (white)

Republican-ness, “the quintessential middle of America: the place of ‘traditional’

American dreams where White residents just so happen to prevail” (Vega 5). As the

3

mainstream perception of the Midwest shows, in a region where whiteness prevails,

“people of color become simultaneously erased” (Vega 5).

The Midwest comes to stand as a pillar of Anglo Americana, which does not

allow space for a minoritized Other. Although speaking on behalf of another minoritized

group within the social imaginary of the Midwest, queer identities, William Spaulding

notes how “the agrarian myth and the subsequent refigured images of the Midwest as

repressive have not only helped to influence current constructions of the Midwest in

general, which do not seem to make it an attractive place for queers, but also have been

reinforced by the axes of contemporary queer power on the East and West Coasts” (XIV).

The same holds true for Latinx identities which have had to contend with the mainstream

understanding of the Midwest as the white man’s heteronormative safe haven. While

Spaulding asserts that “axes of contemporary queer power” are on the East and West

Coasts, Latinxs who undergo a similar process of territorialization, hold “axes of power”

that can be expanded to also include the American Southwest.

As a consequence of the social invisibility of Latinx as pertaining to the cultural

identity of the Midwest, the Midwest is assumed to be the most recent area of Latinx

incursion/invasion given that the Midwest’s identity has been “collectively imagined and

represented mostly in relation to the presence and experiences of white European

ethnicities” (Sandoval and Maldonado 204). Both the national imaginary and perception

of Latinidad in popular culture ignores/is ignorant of the long-standing presence of

Latinos across the Midwest since the end of the 19th century. Latinas/os are largely absent

from popular depictions of the Midwest because they are largely absent from the

4

collective history that the US has built about the region, as Pablo Mitchell and Haley

Pollack note of Latinos in Ohio, “The lives intermarried Latinas and Latinos offer an

especially clear view of sustained and at times intimate relations between Latinos and

other communities in Lorain. Despite such interactions, Latinos remained largely

invisible within broader public discourse and thus generally unrecognized as members of

the city’s body politic” (Mitchel and Pollack 154). In my own personal experience,

having lived in the Midwest for almost ten years now, whenever I discuss the topic of

Latinos in the Midwest with someone outside of academia (and outside of the Midwest),

their first question is always: there are Latinos in the Midwest? There is always an initial

moment of doubt and surprise that the Midwest can be home to anyone who is anything

other than White. Even in the world of academia, Midwestern Latinidades is a much

smaller subsection of research than New York/Miami/Texas/California, and most of the

literature is limited to major industrial centers such as Chicago. There is a need to correct

this dearth of research given the growing population of Latinos in the Midwest, beginning

with a brief overview of Latinx immigration to the region.

Brief History of the Midwest’s Latinx Populations

The history of Latinxs in the Midwest is riddled with at times opposing narratives:

Latinx immigrants are at one moment welcomed as labor relief, while the next moment

are being rejected and expelled due to lack of jobs. They are an ethnic minority, but one

that is tolerated more so than others that are more racially Other. They are seen as able to

be assimilated into U.S. culture, while at the same time discriminated against for being

5

different and foreign, marked by an accented speech. Latinx immigrants are at once

“new” invaders of today’s society, while still understood to pertain to the immigration

waves of the early 20th century.

What I seek to accomplish in this overview is to parse out a general timeline that

demonstrates the historicized and valuable impact that Latinx have left on the

Midwestern socio-cultural landscape, to show that there is more to the Midwest than just

crops and white people. Such efforts echo the motivations stated by Valerio-Jiménez,

Vaquera-Vásquez, and Fox that drove them to compile The Latina/o Midwest Reader,

which was:

Rather than reaffirm an image of the Midwest as a hegemonically white heartland,

one of our motivations…is to challenge the notion that Latinas/os are newcomers

to the Midwest. We emphasize that Latinas/os have resided in the region for over

a century, and Latinas/os have contributed to the social, cultural, and economic

dimensions of rural and urban midwestern communities. (2)

The impetus for Latinx migration to the Midwest is a history that common to most major

influxes of migration to other parts of the country: the prospects of a job and a better life.

Early Latinx settlers to the region, these being of Mexican descent, were

characterized by blurring of rural and urban settings, as Dionicio Nodín Valdés notes

about early Mexican immigrants, “they often worked and lived in rural settings when

employment was available and then returned to their urban homes after the harvest was

ended” (1). Unlike white ethnic immigrant groups, such as the Italians and Polish that

also settled in the region, Mexican and later other Latin American immigrants to the

6

Midwest remained, “overwhelmingly a working people. Although they widened their

social and cultural relations in the cities, they did not attain material equality with the

majority population, even after many generations” (Valdés 2). Part of the reason for

Latinx’s secondary status was due to 19th century biological deficiency theories that

assumed that racial and ethnic minority immigrant groups, “were incapable of

assimilation and did not deserve to participate in the dominant political culture of the

nation” (7). The biological deficiency theories were more consistently applied to non-

European immigrants than to European immigrants, claiming, “African slaves, American

Indians, Asians, and Mexicans posed a threat,” (7) based on their unassimilable nature

based on deficient biological characteristics.

Given the absorption of once-Mexican lands into the U.S. with the Treaty of

Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, U.S. policies had to adapt to new “American” citizens that

did not adhere to the proper (white) image. Although it was assumed that those new

citizens would be forced to assimilate to U.S. cultural standards, deficiency theories of

the late 19th century presumed that the U.S. was “fundamentally Anglo-Saxon in its

institutions, its culture, its modes of thought, and the temper of the people” (7). Those

that fell outside that image could pose a threat and so, “They justified the inequality of

people who had been conquered, subjugated, and/or enslaved on the grounds of

biological or mental characteristics or deficient cultures” (7). While those views of non-

whites meant that Mexican and other Latin American immigrants were seen as

unassimilable, unlike the region’s black populations, there remained some level of racial

7

ambiguity allotted to them, as seen in the early settlement patterns of the Near West Side

of Chicago where:

The area’s diversity belied the rigid physical segregation of African Americans

who lived within Near West Side boundaries but generally did not live among

Italians, Greeks, or other European immigrant neighbors. Ethnic whites often had

slightly more tolerance for Mexicans and, thus, more frequently allowed them to

live among ‘white’ neighbors. In general, Mexicans enjoyed a more ambiguous

racial position, at times considered just another immigrant group like Europeans,

but at other times viewed as racially different like African Americans.”

(Fernández 235)

That is not to say that they were free from discrimination. While Mexican immigrants

were seen as questionably assimilable, they still faced the contempt of their white

neighbors who wanted to force them to Americanize, as Valdés notes, “Countering the

pressures on Mexican immigrants to maintain loyalty toward their native land, social

workers, educators, church officials, and employers engaged in programs aimed at

Americanization” (66) reflecting an “increasing fear within dominant popular culture and

political leadership about foreign subversion” (67).

While Latinx immigrants to the Midwest are not a “new” phenomenon, they have

been described as the “last of the immigrants” (Valdés 23) who arrived to the Midwest in

the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century due to increased industrial expansion

leading to “a phenomenal rate of urbanization in the heartland of the United States, led by

Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, and two pairs of urban twins, the Kansas Cities of Kansas

8

and Missouri, and Minneapolis and St. Paul” (Valdés 22). The increased flow of Mexican

immigrants that began as a result of the largescale construction of the railroad system

during the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, more commonly referred to as the Porfirato

(1876-1910), was later accelerated by the Mexican Revolution in 1910. In the U.S. this

immigration growth was exploited by the railroad and agricultural industry, which had

gradually begun to replace European immigrant workers with ethnic Mexican laborers

(Valdés 23; Valerio-Jiménez, Vaquera-Vásquez, and Fox 3). While Mexican migrants

first passed through Texas, a growing number of migrants continued on to the Midwest

where they were less racially discriminated against than in Texas (Valerio-Jiménez,

Vaquera-Vásquez, and Fox 3). As Valdés explains, there were three distinct phases to the

Mexican settlement of the Midwest: the first period being from 1906-1910 associated

with railroad companies that were previously recruiting Mexicans in the Southwest; the

second between 1916-1919 linked to increased demands from industrial and railroad

employers due to the “wartime economic boom and labor shortages that resulted from

restricted immigration from Europe” (25); and from 1920-1921 caused by the postwar

industrial depression where Mexican laborers were used to break labor strikes and were

also lured into working in Ohio steel mill companies (25).

Although the railroad industry was the first major employer in the Midwest to

“take advantage of international networks, often sending labor agents into the Mexican

interior to attract workers” (Valdés 27) and by 1928 came to represent 43% of track and

maintenance workers across Chicago and Indiana (28), it was the agricultural industry

that managed to entice the most Mexican immigrants was agriculture, specifically the

9

sugar beet industry. Though the cyclical nature of migrant work caused for the Mexican

population of the Midwest to remain unstable given that such work provided sugar beet

workers with “no opportunities to climb the mythical ‘agricultural ladder’ and become

farmers…Only a miniscule portion of midwestern Mexicanos found a stable place in the

industrial proletariat in the early twentieth century” (Valdés 80-1). During the Great

Depression, the numbers of Mexican immigrants in the region was further cut due to the

forced and “voluntary” repatriation of Mexicans from the region. Those that left the

region can be categorized into three groups: those that chose to departed voluntarily with

the assistance of the Mexican consulate; those that were deported by the U.S.

Immigration Service from 1928-1932; and lastly, those that were deported by local

authorities across the Midwest in 1932 (Valdés 125-6). Despite the forced exodus of

Mexican migrants, those that left tended to be “the least rooted, disproportionately male

population, as families had more opportunities to continue working” (126), leading to

increased gender balance and family stability amongst the Mexican communities.

These repatriation methods of the late 1920s, early 1930s demonstrates how

current Mexican and Latin American immigrants’ fears of deportability are not new.

Although they were not labelled “illegal immigrants” at the time, in St. Paul alone, 93%

of Mexican household heads were not U.S. citizens. Their liminal status, coupled with

“paucity of employment options beyond the sugar beet fields, seasonal unemployment,

and dependency on emergency support from welfare agencies, intensified their sense of

vulnerability and awareness of being Mexican” (Valdés 127). That vulnerability is

something that Latinx immigrants have been sharing since the 1920s, creating an

10

atmosphere of fear that relegates Mexican and Latinx migrants to a commodity status, as

Nicolas De Genova explains, “Deportability is decisive in the legal production of …

‘illegality’… the legal production of ‘illegality’ provides an apparatus for sustaining

Mexican migrants’ vulnerability and tractability—as workers—whose labor-power,

because it is deportable, becomes an eminently disposable commodity” (De Genova 215).

The commodification of Mexican laborers continued after the repatriation efforts

during the Great Depression Era and was replaced in the late 1930s with renewed large-

scale migration of Mexican laborers from the Southwest as “agricultural employers

sought to break unionization efforts among resident midwestern farmworkers” (Valdés

130). With the outbreak of World War II, major industries across the U.S. were suffering

from labor shortages and with that the 1942 Mexican Farm Labor Program, more

commonly referred to as the Bracero Program, supplied thousands of Mexican workers

for temporary employment in the railroad and agricultural industries (Valdés 131;

Valerio-Jiménez, Vaquera-Vásquez, and Fox 4). Although Mexican immigrants

constituted the largest group of Latinx immigrants to the Midwest in the first half of the

twentieth century, Puerto Rican immigration was also present, dramatically increasing at

mid-century.

Coinciding with the Bracero Program bringing in Mexican laborers, was the

implementation of Operation Bootstrap/Manos a la Obra that began the largescale

migration of Puerto Ricans to the mainland U.S. in order to control the island’s

overpopulation. Prior to the late 1940s, most major Puerto Rican communities were

concentrated in New York City and it was not until the postwar migration of contract

11

laborers that lead to the formation of Puerto Rican communities in the Midwest in cities

such as Chicago, Milwaukee, and Gary (Valerio-Jiménez, Vaquera-Vásquez, and Fox 4).

One such example is Lorain, Ohio, where Puerto Ricans were recruited to work in the

steel factories as “the first experiment in the country of contracting labor for heavy

industry” (Mitchell and Pollack 158). Puerto Rican migration was so encouraged in

Lorain that data shows that by 1951, one hundred Puerto Ricans were arriving weekly to

the city (158).

By the second half of the twentieth century, the Latinx population of the Midwest

was significantly impacted by the implementation of two immigration laws: the

Immigration Act of 1965, which eliminated the national-origins quota system from the

1920s and created preferences for those seeking to rejoin family members in the U.S.;

and the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 that legalized over 2

million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. who had been in the country since 1982

and developed employer sanctions (Valerio-Jiménez, Vaquera-Vásquez, and Fox 6). One

of the consequences of IRCA was the increased militarization of the U.S.-Mexican

border, leading many undocumented workers to remain in the U.S., while it also

“changed the immigrants’ composition from a seasonal, rural, and predominately male

labor force to a permanent, urban, and increasingly female population” (6). In the 1990s

with the implementation of NAFTA, displaced Mexican laborers that could not compete

with Mexican markets flooded by lower-priced U.S. imports, joined the surging number

of Central American immigrants that were displaced by similar economic hardships as

well as civil war violence (6).

12

While immigration was the cause for the high levels of migration across the U.S.

from 1980 to 2000, with increased border enforcement and harsher immigration laws,

native births have been the leading cause of Latinx population growth in the current

century (Valerio-Jiménez, Vaquera-Vásquez, and Fox 6-7). According to the most recent

census data, of the 308.7 million people residing in the US, 50.5 million are of

Latino/Hispanic origin, comprising 16% of the general population, and that number

excludes the roughly 12 million undocumented Latinos also residing in the US (Ennis et

al. 2; Aldama 3). Particularly pertinent to this investigation, is that of those 50.5 million

Latinos officially living in the US, 9% reside in the Midwest, with the Midwest being one

of the major regions in the US, besides the South, to see the most significant rise in

Latinos between 2000 and 2010 (Ennis et al. 4).

The Latino/Hispanic population of the region increased by 49%, a number which

was, “more than twelve times the growth of the total population of the Midwest (4

percent)” (Ennis et al. 5). Illinois counts as one of the top five Latino states in the

country, five of the top ten fastest growing counties by Latino population since 2007 are

in North and South Dakota, and Latinos actually made up the majority population in two

counties in Kansas: Ford and Seward (Krogstad; Ennis et al. 11). While the nation’s

overall Latinx population grew by 43% from 2000-2010, in eight of the twelve

Midwestern states, it increased by more than 73%, and are the majority minority in states

such as Iowa and Illinois (Valerio-Jiménez, Vaquera-Vásquez, and Fox 7). It is no

wonder then, that the Latinx presence has been a sense of tension in the current political

climate. Given that Latinx fall outside the racial dichotomy of black versus white, they

13

cannot fully be assimilated nor fully rejected. This is what Leo Chavez defines in the

Latino Threat Narrative that surrounds Latinx immigrants, which states that:

Latinos are not like previous immigrant groups, who ultimately became part of

the nation. According to the assumptions and taken-for-granted ‘truths’ inherent

in this narrative, Latinos are unwilling or incapable of integrating, of becoming

part of the national community. Rather, they are part of an invading force from

south of the border that is bent on…destroying the American way of life. (Chavez

3)

For a region that has been popularly defined by whiteness, Latinx are perceived as a

threat to the established order. The “new threat” comes from Latinxs establishing the

Midwest as their own. As new incoming Latinx immigrant groups change and adapt the

Midwest to fit their own needs, through various placemaking processes such as, “creating

their own niche immigrant commercial markets” (Sandoval 56), the fear is that they are

transforming the Midwest into a non-white space. As Sujey Vega notes of the growing

Latinx community in Lafayette, Indiana, Latinxs perform, “daily acts that construct

ethnic identity and weave an ethnic sense of belonging necessary for cultural citizenship

efforts" (179) which she labels “ethnic belonging.” These everyday moments of being in

a space that creates a sense of belonging to a place, “without having to think about their

ethnic opposition to the mainstream” (197)

By creating this sense of belonging to the Midwest, it becomes a challenge to

mainstream (white) society, because as Vega states, “Latino Hoosiers enacted their own

feelings of home that challenged politicized exclusion. Openly speaking Spanish,

14

scheduling quinceañera portraits in public areas of downtown Lafayette, and participating

in ethno-religious processions on city streets all asserted their rights to belong. Though

not purposefully planned to contest the politics of immigration, these organic displays of

ethnic belonging still subverted the narratives that protested their presence” (Vega 14).

And so, by refusing to hide their culture, they are claiming the right to reside in these

predominantly Anglo sites without having to assimilate to Anglo norms.

Migration patterns once again have largely impacted the status of Latinx in the

Midwest. The increased Latinization of the country is felt most strongly in the Midwest

since the “continuous out-migration of white youths to urban locales has left behind an

aging low-growth population in small towns…immigrant workers, who provide the labor

for industrial and service industries, increasingly maintain the way of life for older white

midwesterners” (Valerio-Jiménez, Vaquera-Vasquez, and Fox 7). In states such as

Illinois, the Latinx population growth accounted for all of the state’s population growth,

and in Michigan helped staunch the state’s declining population (7). Despite this growing

demographic, US popular media, in the form of primetime television, is slow on the

uptake—the emphasis remains on repeating similar spatialized trends, highlighting major

Latino regions such as New York, Miami, and California while ignoring the Midwest.

Although Latinidad is becoming increasingly more and more visible in pop

culture, thanks in large part to shows such as Jane the Virgin and Netflix’s recently

cancelled show One Day at a Time,1 those are again East Coast/West Coast affiliated

1 Although the show was cancelled by Netflix in March 2019, due to social media pressures by fans, which had #saveODAAT trending worldwide on Twitter, the show was picked up by CBS-owned cable network, Pop and a fourth season will air in 2020 (Acevedo and Variety 2019).

15

programs. One Day at a Time, a reboot of the CBS sitcom that aired between 1975-1984

that was set in Indianapolis, moved from the Midwest to Echo Park, California, a county

whose Latino population makes up 64% of the population (“Echo Park”), compared to

Indianapolis’s 9.4% (Thompson). That is not to say that all shows set in the Midwest are

entirely devoid of Latinx representations, they are not, and that gets me to the crux of my

analysis: investigating the presence of Latinxs in popular television series set in the

Midwest and understanding whose perspective is being promoted through that

imagination of Latinidad.

Purpose of Study & Research Questions

This project stems from my own personal interest in seeing myself represented in

popular culture. The first part of the study allows me to analyze a subject that I am

already familiar with—the shows in question are shows that I was already naturally

drawn to; academic research becomes less of a chore when it is something you actively

enjoy and being able to base my dissertation in part on shows I am already inclined to

like, makes my job all the more easier. Likewise, having lived in the Midwest far longer

than I have ever lived in any place—as a Navy brat you learn not to plant roots too deep

into places—this region is now home to me, which prior to living here, was not a concept

I had ever associated as tied to an actual, physical space. And yet, when I turn to my

favorite television shows, I never find a sense of myself represented. While I appreciate

shows like Brooklyn 99, Vida, One Day at a Time, and Jane the Virgin for diversifying

the narratives of Latinx in television, there are very few examples of such narratives that

16

can speak to a Midwestern Latinx audience. In the small, but growing, field of

Midwestern Latinx Studies, there too analyses of popular culture are still a minority

number. Some scholars such as Isabel Molina-Guzmán have examined the role of women

in television shows such as the Ohio-set Glee, but have not focused on what mainstream

media has to say about Midwestern latinx, hence my focus on Latinx representations in

Midwestern television programs, and how those representations can evolve through

changes in social perspectives.

The main question that drives my analysis of the texts to be analyzed is: how are

Latinx characters represented in these television shows that are set in the Midwest? That

is followed by questioning what stereotypical tropes are enacted upon supposedly Latinx

characters—who may or may not be played by Latinx actors—in these Midwestern set

narratives. As my analysis in Chapter 2 demonstrates, it is driven by the question as to

why many of these characters seemingly undergo a process of erasure/social

whitening/blanqueamiento as their character evolves throughout the trajectory of a show?

The research question driving my third chapter, which focuses on an evolution of

narratives occurring in contemporary series, which I argue are representative of a Latinx

Gaze, questions how Latinx representations are redeveloped when the critical focus is

redirected towards the dominant white culture?

While it can be argued that there is no need to take a spatialized approach to

Latinx Studies, assuming that the lives of Latinx across the U.S. are all the same,

however panethnic one’s definition of Latinx and Latinidad is, some variation has to be

taken in consideration. As I attempted to establish in laying out the history of Latinx

17

migration to the Midwest, the presence of Latinxs in this region already marks them as

distinct from other major Latinx centers. The earliest Latinx migrants to the region were

migrant workers who led unstable, unfixed lives, moving from harvest to harvest. It was

only until Latinxs were lured into the region to work in more urban industrial spaces that

true Midwestern communities began to take shape. As I stated previously, the disconnect

between rural and urban is something that most early Mexican migrants shared, unlike

similar migrants in New York City, and much less in California and Texas, where

Mexicans claimed historical antecedence to white, U.S. hegemony. As Valdés notes,

Mexicans in the Southwest could claim to be a race and class apart from whites and as an

indigenous people of the Southwest whereas “Mexicans in the Midwest can be best

understood in the context of European-based models of assimilation” (Valdés 16). In the

Midwest, Latinxs are perceived as the “newest” immigrant group to the region, one that

unlike the Southwest, had a greater degree of ethnic diversity. In the earliest decades of

Mexican immigration to the Midwest, Mexican assimilation into white society was made

easier by the larger and more racially visible African American population that became

the racial “other,” making the much smaller Mexican population, “a less visible

population, not as subject to recrimination, while permitting conditions conducive to

assimilation” (Valdés 17). While that is not to say that Latinx immigrants did not face

racial discrimination from white Midwesterners, it was less systematic than the

oppression of African Americans in the region (38).

Despite the reduced visibility of Latinxs in the Midwest, their presence should no

longer be swept aside, as they are a small, but growing community that has been majorly

18

impacted by increased anti-immigrant legislations, with undocumented workers being

targeted in the region since the Obama administration. Given the ephemerality of today’s

national attention with the advent of social media, Midwestern Latinxs remain largely

forgotten, easily overlooked whenever something new trends on Twitter. While the texts I

plan to analyze are not strictly “Latinx” texts, they each figure Latinx characters whose

identities are just as often overlooked as the Midwestern Latinx experience, and how they

are represented is important because as Isabel Molina-Guzmán notes, “to be culturally

visible is to be socially and politically legible” (Latinas: 83).

For the purposes of my research, of particular interest to me are five very different

television shows and one Saturday Night Live skit set in the Midwest that depict

Latinidad: That ‘70s Show (1998-2006), Glee (2009-2015), Parks and Recreation (Parks

and Rec) (2009-2015), Switched at Birth (2011-2017), Superstore (2015—), and the

Saturday Night Live (SNL) skit, “Diego Calls His Mom” (2016). The shows cover a

number of different primetime and family networks: NBC, Fox, and ABC

Family/Freeform; and highlight a number of different issues faced by Latinos: racial

discrimination, queer identities, immigration, and social marginalization.

As I will illustrate in my first two chapters, a pattern emerges in the depictions of

Latinidad in the shows Glee, Switched at Birth, Parks and Rec, and That 70’s Show:

Latinos are either absent altogether or they are buffoonish adaptations of the Latin Lover,

while the new Latina image is that of the “bitch.” These gendered tropes will become the

subject of inquiry in Chapter 1. Additionally, I have found that what these representations

share in common, is that a character’s alleged Latinidad is something that Isabel Molina-

19

Guzmán labels as “sublimated,”: “a safely assimilated Latin or Latin American”

(Dangerous: 128). While I am not arguing that a Latinx character on television needs to

loudly vocalize their Latinx pride every episode, it does not mean that that voice needs to

be overshadowed by Whiteness, which is what inevitably occurs across the chosen

selections. This leads me to the question driving Chapter 2: why do Latinx voices need to

be silenced; why must their brown-ness undergo a process of blanqueamiento? For this

analysis I will be taking a transdisciplinary approach by utilizing the theoretical concept

of the “narrative prosthesis” which I am borrowing from Disability Studies to provide a

framework for how a character’s inherent Otherness is used and discarded.

In order to account for more recent trends in television that is working towards a

more inclusive outlook, in my final chapter I look to Superstore and “Diego Calls His

Mom” as counter-arguments to the other pop culture texts I analyze, with Parks and Rec

serving as an example of a show that makes an honest overture towards inclusivity, but

retains a predominately White gaze. What texts such as Superstore, “Diego Calls His

Mom,” and to a more limited extent, Parks and Rec, share, is how they turns the gaze

onto white culture—Latinxs and Latinidad are questioned, but white assumptions about

them are and are the subject of parody. In this section I seek to propose a Latinx Gaze—

one where the established and assumed audience might still be predominately White, but

does not present their perspective, instead relying on an othered interpretation of

mainstream culture.

Theoretical Frameworks and Methodology

20

Theoretical Frameworks

The overall project is designed around the concept/conceptualization of Latinas/os

in the Midwest and how Latinidad is performed. To that end, I begin by defining my own

conceptualizations of those terms, focusing as well on the performative component of

ethnicity, drawing on the works of scholars such as Ramón Rivera-Servera and Theresa

Delgadillo. From there I will map out the Latino Threat Narrative, as outlined by Leo

Chavez in his book, The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the

Nation, tied to perception of the Latino in America as a threat, is the concept of the

Latino’s ethnic whitening, which I draw upon the work done by Isabel Molina-Guzmán

in Dangerous Curves, while also drawing upon research from Disability Studies to

illustrate the connections between race/ethnicity and disability as what Mitchell and

Synder term, “narrative prostheses.” Lastly, I will briefly outline the concept of the

Latinx Gaze that I am proposing and its relationship to Latinx identity-formation in the

Midwest.

A. Latinidad, Latina/o/x, and Performance

While it cannot be stated enough—every Latinx experience is different—there is

a shared sense of social history, which Marcelo Suárez-Orozco and Mariela Páez argue is

the “shared sociohistorical processes that are at the heart of the Latino experience in the

United States” (9). To be Latinx does not necessarily mean sharing a national background

or heritage, instead it is marked by the lived everyday social realities, as Valerio-Jiménez,

Vaquera-Vásquez, and Fox iterate in the introduction to The Latina/o Midwest Reader,

21

“Latina/o does not refer to a shared set of cultural values or heritage. Rather, it is a

racialized and politicized concept, produced through everyday experiences and social

interactions in specific historical and geographical settings” (Valerio-Jiménez, Vaquera-

Vásquez, and Fox 11). Similarly, Suárez-Orozco and Páez argue for a panethnic

interpretation of Latinidad that focuses on the shared racialization that Latinx undergo in

their everyday lives, defining Latinidad as: “the experience of immigration; the changing

nature of U.S. relations with Latin America; and the processes of racialization as Latinos

enter, and complicate, the powerful ‘black-white’ binary logic that has driven U.S. racial

relations” (9). While it is important for the parameters of this study to maintain a

panethnic understanding of Latinidad, that does not mean eliminating the spatialized

differences that marks the Midwestern Latinx experience as unique.

In order to understand the place of the Midwestern Latinx further, I draw upon

Theresa Delgadillo’s definition that understands the Latinx experience in the Midwest to

exist within the presence of various Latinidades, emphasizing the pluralities and

intersections of identities, something distinct in the Midwest Latinx that has a larger

history of inter-ethnic coexistence unlike Latinx of other regions in the US arguing that

“one way the Latina/o experience in the Midwest for much of the twentieth century has

been distinct from that of other regions is in the greater level of multi-, inter-, and intra-

ethnic experiences” (10). Delgadillo’s emphasis on the multi-ethnic and intra-ethnic

experiences of Midwestern Latinx are important to understanding the racialized,

gendered relationships that occur in the texts I analyze. As I will demonstrate, while

Midwestern Latinidad in US popular culture has existed across a number of television

22

genres, it has primarily been utilized as a stand-in for diverse programming, ignoring the

Latinx viewer and the Midwestern Latinx experience, and so while intra-ethnic

experiences are depicted, they are white-washed to accommodate mainstream

sensibilities.

In my definition of who constitutes "Latinx," I also draw upon Ramón Rivera-

Servera' s definition of Latina/o as a reference to "populations of Latin American descent

born, currently residing, or with a history of residence in the United States" (21). I focus

on this definition of who constitutes "Latinx" because this definition recognizes the

transnational component that many Latinas/os experience. Through Rivera-Servera’s

definition, he expands beyond US-born Latinas/os and foreign-born Latin Americans that

have established permanent residences in the US, "to account for the increasingly circular

patterns of migration from Latin America that have brought large numbers of temporary

visitors in proximity to settled Latina/o communities" (21-22). By expanding the

definition of Latina/o to include "revolving-door" immigrants, this particular definition of

Latinx works to incorporate migrants and undocumented individuals under the term

Latino/a/x that have been so central to the Latinx settlement within the region.

The performative component of Latinidad stems from what Rivera-Servera notes

as “an identity-in-process” (25). There is no set standard for Latinidad because it is a

performed identity, John Clammer writes, “identity is reproduced performatively without

the origins of the original ‘script’ being known, or lost…The boundaries of identity then

are not so much blurry as not fully ‘known' until performed…culture to be manifested

must always be performed" (2161). The "performance" of Latinidad is never static

23

because, "performative objects are unstable rather than fixed, simulated rather than real.

They do not occupy a single ‘proper' place in knowledge… Instead, objects are produced

and maintained through a variety of socio-technical systems, over-coded by many

discourses and situated in numerous sites of practice" (McKenzie 18). It is perhaps the

unfixed nature of Latinidad that makes it so terrifying to the American public—because

definitions of who constitutes a Latinx is constantly expanding, and there is no way to

control the “invasion,” Latinidad becomes a threat to the “American” way of life. As I

will show in Chapter 1, the inherent performance of Latinidad is standardized in order to

maintain a “safe” portrayal of Latinx in the Midwest. In reiterating tired stereotypes of

Latinos and Latinas (never Latinx), these shows present a sterilized version of Latinidad

that is palatable for American cultural consumption. These shows deny the dynamic

characteristics of the Midwestern Latinx in order to reaffirm a white hegemonic

perspective. As I will show, with the Midwestern Latinx experience being in a constant

state of “becoming,” it becomes parts of a social identity and community that cannot be

controlled, despite the best (worst) intentions of US immigration policies.

B. The Latino threat and its elimination

Despite the historical presence that Latinxs have had in this country that can be

traced backed centuries, Latinxs in popular media and the political discourses are always

perceived as “new.” In the need to create an “Other,” US discourses alienate Latinx

audiences as non-citizens that do not have a place in US society. As Leo Chavez argues,

“When something or someone is ‘out of place,' it or they are often considered dangerous,

24

as pollution, threatening the purity of those in place—that is, in their ‘proper' category.

Mexicans in the United States are constructed in the discourse examined here as people

out of place and thus as a threat to the nation in which they reside" (Chavez 46). The

Latino Threat Narrative, therefore, "does not imagine Latinos, whether immigrants or

U.S.-born, as part of the national community" and when they are included, "it is as an

internal threat to the larger community” (46). The basic premises of the Latino Threat

Narrative that are taken as social truths are defined by Chavez as:

Latinos are a reproductive threat, altering the demographic makeup of the nation.

Latinos are unable or unwilling to learn English.

Latinos are unable or unwilling to integrate into the larger society; they live apart

from the larger society, not integrating socially.

Latinos are unchanging and immutable; they are not subject to history and the

transforming social forces around them; they reproduce their own cultural world.

Latinos, especially Americans of Mexican origin, are part of a conspiracy to

reconquer the southwestern United States, returning the land to Mexico’s control.

This is why they remain apart and unintegrated into the larger society. (53)

Tied to the discourse of the Latino Threat Narrative, is the role that Latinxs play in

popular media. I propose that in order to “deal with” the Latino Threat, representations of

Latinidad are sublimated/assimilated into a show’s overall white agenda. I argue that pop

culture shows representing Latinxs in the Midwest use Latinidad to push a “diversity,”

which is eventually written out of the show once a character’s Latinidad is no longer

useful.

25

For this part of my analysis, I will borrow the term “narrative prosthesis” from

Disability Studies which describes a literary dependency on disability to drive a plot. The

term comes from Mitchell and Snyder’s work in Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the

Dependencies of Discourse in which they demonstrate how, "disability has been used

throughout history as a crutch upon which literary narratives lean for their

representational power, disruptive potentiality, and analytical insight" (49). In my

analysis, I will show how disability has been replaced by Latinidad in Midwestern pop

culture, which lends to its eventual erasure from the scene given that, just as in literature

where disability is forced out, so too is Latinidad from the mainstream narrative.

I argue that Latinx characters serve to prove a show’s attempts at diversity,

although whose difference is inevitably eliminated, as Mitchell and Synder write about

disability, so too can be said about ethnic diversity in Midwestern television shows:

“deficiency inaugurates the need for a story but is quickly forgotten once the difference is

established” (56). As I will show, these characters need to be eliminated or controlled in

order for the “white hetero-patriarchal institutions of media production” (Molina-

Guzmán, Latinas; 82) to maintain their institutional power and privilege. To support my

analysis, I draw upon Isabel Molina-Guzmán’s analysis of Ugly Betty, in which she

highlights how such a show managed to capture American audiences: by portraying “a

safely assimilated Latin or Latin American” (Dangerous; 128). As I will show, characters

such as Park and Recreation’s April Ludgate or Switched at Birth’s Regina and Daphne

Vasquez are initially racialized as Latina, but who throughout the course of the series,

adopt increasingly whiter personas—April through her marriage to her white coworker,

26

Regina through her aiding in the gentrification of a previously Latinx neighborhood, and

Daphne through the reveal of her actual white parentage.

C. Latinx Gaze

In my final chapter I am proposing a new theoretical framework for how to

understand Latinx popular culture. While in this project I am limiting myself to its

application within a Midwestern context, it is a concept that can be extrapolated to

understand how Latinidad is performed and utilized across genres in popular culture and

across geographic spaces. My concept of the Latinx Gaze questions what happens when

the “Othered” is no longer cause for humor/fear/discrimination? What’s the Latinx

perception of white culture?

My original conception draws from the work of film studies scholar Laura

Mulvey and her conceptualization of the Male gaze as one in which the camera stands in

for masculine desire in that it objectifies the female body in order to fulfill a male

fantasy. As I will show, while Mulvey was describing the films from the Golden Era of

Hollywood, very little has changed with the change in media, the only change being the

ethnicity of the women in question—thereby doubling the potential anxiety of the white

heteronormative viewer. While the male gaze is still perpetuated in the texts I will

analyze, it is compounded by the presence of race.

Race as defined by Stuart Hall, “works like a language…the classification of a

culture to its making meaning practices. And those things gain their meaning, not because

of what they contain in their essence, but in the shifting relations of difference…always

27

something about race left unsaid…objected position outside the signifying field to trouble

the dreams of those who are comfortable inside,” (Hall Race: 8). As such, race is defined

in part by what is excluded. While the male gaze is certainly at work in many of the texts

I will analyze, it cannot take into account what is excluded when race is also an issue.

What is also at work in these texts in their depictions of Latinx in the Midwest is the

promoting of a White Gaze, and I am borrowing the concept from the field of education,

which has shown how in schools Latinx youths have been taught that their language

practices are inferior, in which the “appropriate” language is the one approved by white

listeners (Flores and Rosa 150). In this analysis of the White Gaze, socio-linguistic

identities are rejected when performed by a racialized subject but are seen as normal

when produced by a white agent. By applying this analysis to shows such as Switched at

Birth, Glee, That 70’s Show, and Parks and Rec, the elimination of difference becomes

an obvious choice—if television is meant to provide a sense of realism for its target

audiences, then it is presenting (a white) one that is deemed “appropriate.” It therefore

normalizes the performance of white actors/actresses in non-white roles (such as the

reveal of Stephen Hyde’s—Danny Masterson—African American father in That 70s

Show and Daphne Vazquez’s—Katie Leclerc—Latina identity in Switched at Birth),

while at the same time forcing minority actors to render their ethnic identities almost

invisible. But that is not to say that every portrayal of Latinidad is one that perpetuates a

white gaze, which is what led me to develop the concept of the Latinx Gaze as a counter-

narrative.

28

In proposing a Latinx Gaze, I am proposing that there is the potential in popular

culture to subvert the racialized rhetoric of U.S. political discourse. It is a concept that

draws upon the male and white gaze in order to understand texts that do not adhere to

either standard. By presenting an image of America in which the gaze (and laughter) is

turned on the white viewer, texts that employ the Latinx Gaze are managing to dive into

the unspoken, taboo topics of race while straddling the lines of comedy and the

unfamiliar. I argue that these texts, while still considered comedies, force an

uncomfortable humor upon its viewers—it creates a sense of the uncanny by focusing the

mirror back upon the white viewer. Beyond creating a sense of anxiety within the

mainstream audience, by projecting a reality that is not expected, the Latinx Gaze

questions who is meant to be the intended audience, for once not expecting it to be a

white viewer.

Methodology

Through an emphasis on interdisciplinary research, this project will combine

methods and literature from multiple fields: literature, film and television studies, cultural

studies, education, linguistics, and disability studies.

The bulk of my research (Chapters 1 and 2) will focus on four of the shows

mentioned above: That ‘70s Show, Glee, Parks and Recreation, and Switched at Birth.

The rationale behind the selection of these shows is relatively straightforward: they

comprise almost the entirety of television shows set in the Midwest that feature Latinx

characters as part of the main cast. Although there are certainly more Latinx characters in

29

series such as Chicago Med and Chicago PD (amongst a number of older Chicago-based

shows), by focusing on works outside of the Chicago-area, a more comprehensive

analysis of the Midwest can be achieved—there is more to the Midwest than Chicago,

and one of the goals of this dissertation is to shine a light on areas that are overlooked in

Midwestern analyses. Moreover, while those shows do feature some secondary Latinx

characters, my goal was to find texts in which Latinx figure as central characters (even if

their identities do not). In the final chapter, I will first discuss the liminal position that

Parks and Rec has within the two main gazes I will be analyzing: the white and the

Latinx. I am including Parks and Rec alongside Superstore and “Diego Calls His Mom,”

because as a comedy show based on satire and parody, Parks and Rec does manage to

challenge some concepts of the white gaze, though as I will show, not to the extent of the

other two texts I plan to examine.

In my analysis of That ‘70s Show, a period sitcom that follows the story of six

teenage friends from 1976-1979,2 I will focus my attention on the character of Fez, the

ethnically ambiguous “foreign exchange student” in the fictional town of Point Place,

Wisconsin, portrayed by Venezuelan actor, Wilmer Valderrama, and his relationships

with Red Forman, the show’s patriarch played by Kurtwood Smith, and Jackie Burkhart,

played by Mila Kunis, with whom Fez is obsessed with in the show’s early seasons.

These relationships demonstrate the various tropes utilized in the show to gain a laugh

from the audience: the racial insensitivity of Red who often refers to Fez as a “foreigner”

2 Though the show is meant to only cover three years, the actual timeline is much more convoluted as every season of the show has its own Thanksgiving and Christmas episode (Guida 2018).

30

and Fez’s status as a bumbling and foolish excuse for a Latin Lover. Tied to that analysis

will be an incorporation of Jane Hill’s sociolinguistic research on “mock/junk Spanish” to

demonstrate the second-class status that the Spanish-language has in popular culture. I

will also briefly discuss the fan backlash that the show faced in the final season when the

showrunners made the decision to have Fez end up as Jackie’s final love interest, with

numerous online blogs and reaction posts listing them as a television couple that should

not have ended up together. Many online comments mention how Jackie was always

meant to end up with Hyde, who despite being played by white actor, Danny Masterson,

was eventually revealed in season 6 to be the son of William Barnett, played by black

actor Tim Reid, making him biracial.

My examination of Glee, a musical comedy-drama set in Lima, Ohio, that follows

the various character arcs of the students, parents, and faculty members involved with the

glee club of the fictitious William McKinley High School, will focus on the character of

the again, ethnically-ambiguous Santana Lopez, played by mixed-race actress Naya

Rivera,3 and her tumultuous relationships on the show, most of which cast her as the

show's resident mean-girl. I will also examine her relationship with her fellow

cheerleader, Brittany Pierce, who helps Santana realize she is queer, and whose eventual

coming out estranges her to her conservative and traditionally Latina grandmother. Tied

to this analysis is where Parks and Recreation’s half-Puerto Rican character, April

Ludgate, played by half-Puerto Rican actress, Aubrey Plaza, comes into examination.

Parks and Rec, a political satire sitcom based around the various government officials

3 Rivera is half Puerto Rican, a quarter African American, and a quarter German. (Wayne)

31

and town residents of the fictional Pawnee, Indiana, again draws upon the Latina

character as a snarky, mean-girl, whose Latinidad only becomes a point of awareness in a

number of episodes, mainly when her knowledge of Spanish can be used as a tool for

others to take advantage of, or for her to take advantage of others. I will also analyze the

characters of Jhonny and Eduardo, two “Venezuelan” characters that April briefly dates,

who like Fez, fumble their way through their romances with April.

Switched at Birth, set in the Kansas City metropolitan area, presents an interesting

text to study because of the show’s overall premise: two girls realize they were

accidentally switched at birth leaving Regina Vasquez, a half-Puerto Rican single-

mother, played by Mexican-American actress, Constance Marie, to raise Daphne Paloma,

a pale red-headed girl played by Katie Leclerc as her own. Bay Kennish, played by

Italian-American actress Vanessa Marano, is meant to be Regina’s actual quarter-Puerto

Rican daughter. From the beginning, Regina is painted as the untrustworthy mother due

to her ethnicity, marking her as suspiciously Other to the Kennish’s white, upper-class

sensitivities. Besides the characters of Regina, Bey, and Adriana (Regina’s mother), I will

be analyzing the character of Daphne, a clearly Anglo young woman whose upbringing

marks her as Latina (at least for those in the show). The race politics of the show are

particularly interesting given how the Kennish family initially attempts to justify Bay’s

“dark” complexion by noting the family’s Italian heritage, whereas Daphne’s whiteness

becomes justification for Regina’s husband to abandon her, claiming Daphne is proof of

Regina’s infidelity. Moreover, despite both Regina and later Daphne knowing of

Daphne’s true parentage, Daphne maintains her claim of Latinidad, presenting the

32

question whether one’s culture/ethnicity/race is an issue of nature or nurture—though I

am not making the argument for who can claim themselves as Latinx, it will be

something to consider.

My focus on these particular characters stems from the ability to categorize them

as either failed Latin Lovers (Fez, Jhonny, and Eduardo) or as angry, catty characters

such as Regina and Santana. This racialized, gendered categorization is not surprising, as

it is another means to subjugate the so-called “inferior” group. Feminist theorist,

Monique Wittig, demonstrates how the categorization of the sexes in itself creates a

category of oppression. The so-called “social relationships” between man and woman are

therefore based on the subjugation of an inferior category (women) by its superior (men)

(Wittig 5), which is an almost primordial belief in man’s dominance over woman:

What is this thought which refuses to reverse itself, which never puts into

question what primarily constitutes it? This thought is the dominant thought. It is

a thought which affirms an ‘already there’ of the sexes, something which is

supposed to have come before all thought, before all society. This thought is the

thought of those who rule over women. (4)

Wittig points out that despite how ingrained such concepts are in the social reality, it is

not a natural reality, “The category of sex does not exist a priori, before all society. And

as a category of dominance it cannot be a product of natural dominance but of the social

dominance of women by men, for there is but social dominance” (5). It is society

therefore that has naturalized the gender binaries and continues to do so to this day. The

33

fact that these series are based on racialized gender binaries serves to further promotes

patriarchal systems of oppression.

In order to preserve those power dynamics, is the need for an elimination of

ethnic difference within most of these characters. Fez remains the only character whose

Otherness is constantly the butt of jokes, and it is his refusal to name where exactly he is

from that allows him to maintain an aura of the exotic. Even with Fez remaining the

perpetual foreigner, these representations of Latinidad are mired in stereotypes that make

them safe to consume. They may not be perceived as part of the Latino Threat, but that is

because they are forced into easily molded and controlled tropes. As I will show in my

second chapter, while these characters are never eliminated completely from the show—

they are not killed off—their cultural identities become less and less significant until they

cease to matter altogether.

In regard to the final part of this investigation, I will be combining textual

analyses relevant to film and television studies with linguistics and language studies,

focusing on how the show Superstore, the SNL skit, “Diego Calls His Mom,” and to a

certain extent, Parks and Rec, work as counter-narratives to those I examine in my first

two chapters. Superstore, a single-camera sitcom that follows a group of employees

working at “Cloud 9,” a fictional big-box store in St. Louis, Missouri and starring

America Ferrera (who also serves as co-producer), complicates my previous analysis by

providing white culture as the focus of the show’s humor by highlighting white racism as

a social ill—oftentimes, the audience is prompted to laugh at an ignorant, white

Midwesterner commit a racial faux pas, and the characters of color are forced to endure

34

the small moments of racism given their place in society. Likewise, in “Diego,” a skit set

in North Dakota about a Latinx immigrant calling his mother back home to share what he

has learned about U.S. culture, starring Lin Manuel Miranda and done almost entirely in

Spanish, reflects a migrant’s confusion about what constitutes white culture utilizing the

laugh track in order to turn the audience’s laughter onto small-town, Middle America.

Organization and Structure of Dissertation

Chapter 1: The Clowned Lover and the Bitch: Latinx Gender Tropes and Subjugation

In this chapter I will be analyzing the two gendered tropes that Latinx characters

seemingly fall into in Midwestern television shows: Latin women are cold, rude, and

antagonistic to their white counterparts, a new variation of the Tropicalized Latina trope,

while Latin men become failed representations of the Latin Lover stereotype.

I begin by analyzing the character of Santana Lopez on Glee as the resident

“mean girl” of the show. She constantly uses her sexuality/sensuality to cause rifts

between established romances on the show, and her eventual discovery of her queerness

causes her to lash out aggressively towards those attempting to help her. While Santana

has many redeemable moments throughout the show’s history, it is often in response to

an exceptionally catty interaction that occurred previously in an episode. In Switched at

Birth, Regina Vasquez, is turned into the show’s antagonist, first because of her overall

position as a Latina outsider in an upper-class, WASP neighborhood, and second because

of the eventual discovery that she had known of the hospital’s mistake for years and

never revealed the truth. My analysis of April's character from Parks and Rec highlights

35

how her sarcastic attitude and overall antipathy towards those around her sets her apart

from her fun-loving and amiable co-workers, while at the same time serves to also set the

show apart from Glee and Switched at Birth for attempting to recognize and discredit the

stereotypes employed against Latinas in popular culture. This analysis of the Latina

characters leads into the second chapter, in which I argue that these representations are

inevitably “tamed” as their Latinidad is erased.

In regards to Latino masculinity as it is portrayed in Midwestern popular culture, I

will specifically analyze the characters of Fez (That ‘70s Show), Jhonny (Parks and

Recreation), and Eduardo (Parks and Recreation) as they are the only Latino characters

with any considerable screen time, which is telling given that Jhonny only appeared in

one episode. As I will show, these shows capitalize on the image of the Latin Lover to

draw upon a “safe” representation of Latino masculinity. Midwestern portrayals of Latin

men overlook machista readings of Latino culture, preferring to objectify Latino bodies

for their sexuality and sensuality. But despite this focus, these Latin Lovers cannot seem

to catch a break; they are all set up to fail in their sexual conquests. Fez starts off the

series as a virginal, exceedingly hormonal teen, who although he eventually succeeds in

“conquering” his virginity, he forever fails to live up to the sexual prowess of his white

peers. Although he ends up getting the girl by the series’ end, it is only after eight years

of her torturing and belittling him. In Parks and Recreation, Jhonny and Eduardo are

merely April's playthings—they are pretty to look at and shows off April's ability to have

them on her hook, but they never amount to anything in the show's history. They are

36

forgettable characters in light of April's eventual marriage to Andy Dwyer, played by

Chris Pratt.

Chapter 2: Latinidad Served on the Side: The Blanqueamiento and Erasure of Latinx

Images in Midwestern US Popular Television

In this chapter I will be analyzing how Latinidad is maintained across the various

shows I have selected. Part of this analysis entails an understanding how the shows in

question introduce and enter into racialized dialogues. As I demonstrate in the case of

Switched at Birth, in regard to the characters of Bay Kennish and Daphne Vasquez, both

characters are played by white actresses and yet in the show they are meant to be Latina

characters, and both experience moments of accepting and rejecting that label. The ability

these characters have to discard or take on their “Latinidad” demonstrates the secondary

role that race, and ethnicity play in the show—for these characters, being Latinx is

merely a costume. Likewise, in many of the shows I have chosen to study, a character’s

Latinidad is something that has to be “fixed” or corrected and is only done so through the

intervention of their white costars.

Throughout the chapter, I underscore the pattern that emerges in these

Midwestern-based television series: a character’s given Latinidad is almost always

eliminated across the show’s trajectory. In eliminating the Other, the texts in question are

promoting what Žižek defines as systemic violence, or the violence which is, “inherent in

a system: not only direct physical violence, but also the more subtle forms of coercion

that sustain relations of domination and exploitation, including the threat of violence” (9).

37

Though the characters are never fully the victims of racial violence, they are subjected to

the everyday “small acts of racism, consciously or unconsciously perpetuated, welling up

from the assumptions about racial matters most of us absorb from the cultural heritage in

which we come of age in the United States” (Delgado and Stefancic 2). These

microaggressions, which Žižek refers to as objective violence or, “the violence inherent

to this ‘normal’ state of things. Objective violence is invisible since it sustains the very

zero-level standard against which we perceive something as subjectively violence … It

may be invisible, but it has to be taken into account if one is to make sense of what

otherwise seem to be ‘irrational’ explosions of subjective violence,” (Žižek 2) are never

fully addressed in the texts, instead they are simply eliminated alongside the characters’

Latinx identities.

Leaning on Isabel Molina-Guzmán’s analysis of Ugly Betty, in which she argues

that the show’s success was due in part to it “ideological sublimation of Latina identity

and Latinidad” (120), I will demonstrate how characters such as April, Santana, Regina,

Bay, and Daphne all undergo a process of blanqueamiento (whitening). Daphne’s

character problematizes that analysis in that she is White—she is the pale, redheaded

(biological) daughter of John and Kathryn Kennish—and yet the audience is meant to

believe that she is Latina (and even applies for a Latina scholarship). Through my

analysis of Daphne, I intend to illustrate how in order to overcome the Latino Threat,

what inevitably occurs is a complete whitewashing of Latinidad. Through Daphne, white

America is able to become Latinx, thereby eliminating the threat altogether, illustrating

how the racialized “Other” does not have a permanent place in the white imaginary of the

38

US. It is here that I will also analyze how the character of Regina changes throughout the

shows trajectory. Although her status as a more sexually promiscuous Latina is toned

down, so too is her ethnic pride. As I will show, she becomes the face for gentrification,

aiding in restructuring her former barrio.

The only exception to this rule is the character of Fez, whose “exoticness” is a

running gag up until the end of the series, in which his ethnicity is never specified. His

entire identity is tied to his Otherness—so much so that his “real” name is never revealed.

Of all the characters, Fez becomes most emblematic of the Latino Threat Narrative,

though one that is neutralized through his interactions with his white counterpoints, until

the show attempts to fully incorporate him into society by having him paired off with the

white Jackie Burkhart in the finale. Given the backlash the pairing received online from

fans, I link that response to the fear of the incorporated Other. My point is to illustrate

how Latinidad becomes a tool for popular media to appropriate in order to appeal to a

wider demographic, which then needs to be discarded in order to maintain the (white)

status quo.

Chapter 3: Laughing at or with Latinxs?: Changing the Scope of the Camera’s Narrative

Gaze in Midwest-based TV Comedies

This last chapter is where I will layout the groundwork for my concept of the

Latinx Gaze. Through my discussion of Parks and Rec, Superstore and “Diego,” I turn

the narrative gaze onto white culture, using as my starting question: what happens when

white culture is “othered?” In doing so, I propose a “Latinx Gaze” that is being

39

constructed in these representations of the Midwestern Latinx. In this chapter I seek to

better understand how popular culture depicting Latinx in the Midwest manages to create

a sense of place and social standing for racial and ethnic minorities in a region that is

characterized by its Whiteness. Although I am promoting my own intervention, it is

based on the foundations of previous theories in Film and Education.

In the first part of the chapter, I will return to the series Parks and Recreation in

order to demonstrate how shows based on political satire and parody work to imbalance

conservative discourses. I begin with Parks and Rec since it serves as a text that stands

in-between the White and Latinx Gaze—while it does manage to subvert many of the

racial constructs that I argue the Latinx Gaze does, it cannot do so without relying on

racialized humor that is reflective of a White Gaze. Parks and Rec serves as an

intermediary text, which I will use to illustrate the need for shows that challenge the

white gaze without resorting to what Molina-Guzmán refers to as “hipster racism” where

in an allegedly “post-racial” era of television, sitcoms “use sexism, homophobia, racism,

and xenophobia alongside the multicultural representation of racial, ethnic, gender, and

sexual difference as a strategy to produce humor” (Latinas 13). The Latinx Gaze that I

perceive in Superstore and “Diego Calls His Mom,” serves to challenge the underlying

assumption that “audiences are living in a moment when the popular and commonsense

belief is that representations of ethnic, racial, and gender differences no longer carry

social or political consequences and are therefore fair comedic game” (13) by challenging

the perspective of the audience, either by challenging the assumed background of the

40

viewer or by creating a space where the white viewer is forced to view themselves from a

subalterned perspective.

Conclusion

One of the driving questions of my research is: how does popular culture imagine

the Latinx Midwest? In my study of various television series that are meant to depict life

in the Midwest, more often than not what is shown is a “culturally safe articulation of

Latin/a American identity” (Molina Guzmán: Latinas; 68). As I have noted I have teased

out two tracks into which those safe articulations tend to fall under: men are generally

buffoonish versions of the common Latin Lover icon whereas Latinas serve as negative,

ill-tempered foils to the happy-go-lucky white protagonists. Tied to this categorization of

Latinidad, is its eventual elimination from a character’s identity. Through my analysis I

plan to demonstrate how in most cases, race/ethnicity stands in as a narrative prosthesis—

something to spark general interest, or drawn in particular audiences, but that inevitably

is eliminated from the equation. In the end, these shows can claim diversity, without

threatening white hegemony. Latinidad serves as a tool for diversification of popular

culture, yet the culture seen on screens fails to challenge the hegemonic, white national

imaginary of the Midwest.

However, that is not to say that there is no hope for the Latinx experience within

popular American television. The few shows (and brief video) in the final section of my

project offers a new way to approach issues of diversity in popular culture—to question

what is so rarely questioned: white hegemony. My hope is for this project to serve as a

41

model for future analyses, emphasizing the need to read texts from popular culture

against the grain. By presenting my own framework for reading these shows, I also seek

to challenge the white heteronormative patriarchy that has defined American television

since its very earliest beginnings. That is also why I chose to focus only on shows set in

the Midwest—to question the continuing political rhetoric that continues to isolate Latinx

voices. By claiming a Midwestern Latinx presence in popular culture, I seek to challenge

racialized discourses that whitewash an increasingly brown sector of America.

42

Chapter 1

The Clowned Lover and the Bitch: Latinx Gender Tropes and Subjugation

Santana: Oh please, you guys love me. I keep it real and I’m hilarious.

Lauren: Actually, you’re just a bitch.

(“Silly Love Songs”)

Televised representations of Latinx bodies are not new to U.S. popular culture.

Gendered representations of Latinx bodies have gone hand in hand with those

representations since Latinx have first appeared on television. From some of the earliest

iterations of television in I Love Lucy’s suave, bongo-playing Ricky Ricardo, played by

Cuban-American Desi Arnaz in the 1950s, to the contemporary—the voluptuous Gloria

Pritchett, played by Colombian actress Sofia Vergara, on Modern Family and the

obsession with Jane’s sexual activity as the basic premise of Jane the Virgin—American

television has rarely strayed far from capitalizing on the perceived sexuality of Latinx

bodies. Sexualizing the Latinx character is not the only trope used in U.S. television.

Latinx stereotypes abound in televised depictions—from the Latinx thug/gang

banger/drug dealer to the undocumented immigrant to the single, working mother

43

struggling to make ends meet, all of these images have been picked up, used, abused, and

recycled throughout the history of Latinx faces on television.

Tied to these tropes is place—when one thinks of Latinx television characters

they are drawn to certain places: Gloria lives in suburban Los Angeles, Ricky lived in

New York with his beloved Lucy, and Jane (not so much a virgin anymore) is tied to her

Miami roots. Even shows that are re-booted with a predominately Latinx cast are

relocated to more “culturally appropriate” spaces. The reboot of One Day at a Time

resituated the premise of the show from Indianapolis, Indiana to Los Angeles, California

when the family changed from a white middle-class family to a Cuban one. Likewise, the

reboot of Party of Five moved the plot from San Francisco, whose Latinx population is

15% (“U.S. Census”), to Los Angeles, a city which contains 4.9 million Latinx, or 9% of

the national Latinx population (Brown and Lopez 2013). When the Midwest is taken into

consideration, Chicago becomes the sole beacon for Latinidad in the entire region. It is

when moving outside of these obvious Latinx spaces that the representations come harder

to find.

When one is asked to think of television shows that are set in the Midwest, it is

easy to think of a number of key examples that easily come to mind—Parks and

Recreation (Parks and Rec), That ‘70s Show, and a number of Chicago-based shows

stemming from Dick Wolf’s highly popular Law & Order variations; but when the

question is posed—who is a main Latinx character? As I have found when explaining my

research to others, I am often met with empty stares. Coming back to Parks and Rec, I

have people ask me in shock: there are Latinx characters in Parks and Rec?! April

44

Ludgate, played by half-Puerto Rican actress Aubrey Plaza, never crosses peoples’ minds

when I mention the show. Fez from That ‘70s Show is often remembered, though his

Latinidad is a questionable one given that he technically never reveals his heritage,

despite being played by Colombian-Venezuelan-American actor, Wilmer Valderrama.

But what these characters do share is their inevitable categorization based on their

Latinidad. As I will show through an analysis of various characters from four different

television shows set in the Midwest—That ‘70s Show, Switched at Birth, Glee, and Parks

and Recreation—Latina characters are targeted as the angry, “mean girl” who lives to

create drama amongst her friends and family. While the Midwestern Latina might not be

as visually “tropical” as Modern Family’s Sofia Vergara, she is also not as affable. Her

Latino counterpart is more often than not type casted into a laughable caricature of the

“Latin lover” trope. While these Latino men are somewhat smooth and sophisticated,

they are not meant to be taken seriously—their failed attempts at romancing (white)

women is seen as a laughable offense.

This chapter will analyze the roles that Latinx characters take in four highly

different series all set in the Midwest: Parks and Recreation (set in the fictional Pawnee,

Indiana), That ‘70s Show (set in the fictional Point Place, Wisconsin), Glee (set in Lima,

Ohio, though introduces the fictional Lima Heights Adjacent, Ohio as the “ghetto”

residence for the show’s only Latina character), and Switched at Birth (set in the Kansas

City metropolitan area). I will begin by analyzing the Latina characters of each series,

given that Latinas are more prevalent than Latinos in any of these given series, with That

‘70s Show being a notable exception. The focus of this chapter will be the gendered

45

dynamics that drive the plot for many of these Latina/o characters, and I emphasize here

the gendered binary of Latina/o given that in none of these examples, are there any

characters that question the duality of male-female gender identities.4 I argue that by

categorizing Latinx bodies into these “safe” stereotypes, these Midwestern-based shows

temper any perceived threat that Latinx could pose to the (white) heartland of Americana.

While these shows cannot deny altogether the Latinx presence in the Midwest, they can

package them into neat stereotypical boxes that make them easily adapted into the

dominant (white) narrative of the show.

Marking Latin@ Characters: Racialized and Gendered Indicators of Latinidad

As Frederick Aldama and Christopher González write in Reel Latinxs, “When it

comes to representing Latinidad, the ethnoracial mainstream media schemas mark

ethnicity in exaggerated yet deliberate ways…mainstream media like to go for easily

identifiable, ethnoracially marked bodies” (30). The media is able to mark ethnicity

because of a general assumption of the “normal” American that is based on whiteness,

which stands in direct opposition to any form of racial or ethnic “difference,” such as

anthropologist Bonnie Urciuoli explains:

At the base of U.S. assumptions about ethnicity and race is the idea of the

normative or generic American, white, middle-class, English-speaking. This

persona represents a cultural default setting, the automatic point of comparison for

4 Though GLEE does incorporate issues regarding transgender individuals, first through the male-to-female trans character of Wade “Unique” Adams, played by the gay, black actor, Alex Newell, and later through the female-to-male transition of Coach Shannon “Sheldon” Beiste, played by the openly queer actress, Dot Marie Jones; Santana Lopez, though a lesbian character, never questions the Latina/Latino binary.

46

any kind of difference. It stands in opposition to all categories of origin

difference, racialized or ethnicized, and stands furthest from racialized difference.

Whiteness is unracialized so any kind of non-whiteness is subject to racialization.

The racial polarity shapes perception of all language and cultural difference as

problematic, often as parasitic—hence the intense reactions frequently expressed

to public recognition of languages other than English, especially Spanish.

(Urciuoli 16)

In this polemic of the racialized versus ethnicized body, Latinxs fall under an amorphous

zone between the two—according to the U.S. Census and other legal forms of

categorization, Latinxs are an ethnic group. On the other hand, according to the lived

reality of any darker-skinned, Spanish-accented English speaking Latinx, it is absolutely

a racialized reality. The liminal space that Afro-Latinxs reside in is its own complex

issue. In the mainstream media however, the complex ethnoracial reality of Latinxs is

rarely taken into consideration, “Latinxs can and do look like all races or ethnicities.

Studio executives don’t understand what Latinxs can look like, or rather, the possibilities

of what they can look like” (Aldama and González 30).

Despite this glaring failure on the part of studio executives to attempt to challenge

stereotypes, Latin@ actors and actresses are forced to accept these roles because of the

lack of opportunities available to Latinx performers. In “The Latino Media Gap: A

Report on the State of Latinos in the U.S. Media,” Frances Negrón-Mutaner and her team

of scholars found that, “despite significant achievements and present expansion of the

Latino consumer market, a review of contemporary television and film reveals that,

47

relative to the fast-growing Latino population, there are fewer Latino types of roles and

lead actors today than seventy years ago” (Negrón-Mutaner et al. 6). The study found that

Latinxs comprise between 2-6.4% of membership in professional media guilds (8).

Specifically, in the realm of television, from the period of 2010-2013, Latinxs comprised

only 1.1% of producers and creators, 4.1% of directors, and 2% of writers (9). In terms of

gender representation, Latinas have seen a growth in representation in comparison to

their male counterparts: “while the overall inclusion of Latinos is limited, when we

consider gender, we see a striking phenomenon: the near disappearance of the Latino lead

actor concurrent with a relative increase in the number of lead Latina actresses” (10). In

terms of supporting roles, the study found the same trend to be present across film and

television: “In the 2010-2013 seasons, Latinas constituted 11.8% of female supporting

roles while Latino men were only 4.9% of supporting male roles. in general, Latinas

played 67% of all supporting Latino characters. The current gender economy suggests

that media decision-makers view Latinas as more culturally desirable than Latino men”

(11). What makes Latinas so much more culturally desirable? Although such connections

go beyond the study by Negrón-Mutaner, I would argue that it is tied to the rise of stars

such as Sofia Vergara and the overarching history of tropicalization of Latina bodies.

From Tropicalized Whore to Midwestern Bitch: The Subjugating of Latina Bodies

The Allure of the Tropical Latina

As Molina-Guzmán and Valdivia explain:

48

tropicalism erases specificity and homogenizes all that is identified as Latin and

Latina/o. Under the trope of tropicalism, attributes such as bright colors, rhythmic

music, and brown or olive skin comprise some of the most enduring stereotypes

about Latina/os, a stereotype best embodied by the excesses of Carmen Miranda

and the hypersexualization of Ricky Martin. (Molina-Guzmán and Valdivia 211)

Mainstream media does not distinguish between the Caribbean or Latin American Latina,

because to them, we are all the same, “The tropes of tropicalism extend beyond those

people with Caribbean roots to people from Latin American, and recently to those in the

United States with Caribbean and/or Latin American roots” (211). The tropicalized

Latina lives amongst, “widely circulated narratives of sexual activity, proficiency, and

desirability” (211). While threatening to the self-image of the Latina, the tropicalized

Latina is a non-threatening figure to American audiences because as Jennifer Esposito

explains, “This common stereotypical representation asserts that Latinas are also sexually

desirable, though not so desirable as to raise miscegenation fears…she is still Othered to

the extent that her body will always be a source of curiosity and fascination as an exotic

object” (330). While not necessarily threatening images to the mainstream American

audience, the continued tropicalization of Latina bodies threatens Latinx representations

in the media by establishing norms regarding who can “pass” as Latina.

Given Latina bodies are underrepresented in the media, the few representations

available suffer what Ella Shohat and Robert Stam call the “burden of representation”

which arises from “the powerlessness of historically marginalized groups to control their

own representation” (184). In the U.S. racial imaginary, there still exists a binary notion

49

of black or white. Despite the presence of Latin bodies since prior to the formation of the

U.S. in the Southwest, Latinx bodies still find themselves caught in an intermediary

ethno-racial standing. How the mainstream media chooses to codify Latinidad serves as

what Mary Beltrán labels as a “battleground” for the social positioning of Latinxs:

“media representations of the Latina body thus form a symbolic battleground upon which

the ambivalent place of Latinos and Latinas in US society is acted out” (82).

Unfortunately for women of color, beauty standards are based on white standards which

can impact their lives and livelihoods when considering women of color in the media,

“for Latinas and other women of color, American ideals of beauty can have a real impact

on their day-to-day lives and livelihood. Because with cultural ideals of appearance and

particularly of ‘beauty,’ comes associations with social status and power” (82). For

Latinas in the media, how they are represented becomes a space where American

ideologies can be imposed upon them, maintaining the imbalance of power with Anglo

America and the superior “in” group and Latinas as the “out” group that needs to be

regulated in order to alleviate societal fears about the “Other”:

representations of the Latina body act as a site where fears about race, difference,

and nation are played out… contradictory representations of cultural difference

exist to represent anxieties about identity as society experiences a shift in borders.

As media and popular discourse troubles the notion of US “borders,” the

Latina/Chicana body becomes that much more hypervisible and contradictory as

fears about “illegal” border crossing are discursively enacted. The Latina/Chicana

body, then, becomes in need of discipline and regulation. (Esposito 331)

50

The need to discipline and regulate Latina (and all Latinx) bodies, comes from the notion

of Latinxs as a threat to U.S. ideologies. The mainstream image of the Latina needs to fit

into a particular mold in order to be deemed as “safe.”

The concept of Latinxs as threats to (Anglo) America is precisely the subject of

Leo Chavez’s work on “the latino threat narrative,” a narrative which “characterizes

Latinos as unable or unwilling to integrate into the social and cultural life of the United

States. Allegedly, they do not learn English, and they seal themselves off from the larger

society, reproducing cultural beliefs and behaviors antithetical to a modern life” (209).

With the Midwest and the South experiencing the most Latinx population growth, and

with the three fastest-growing counties by Latino population since 2007 being in North

Dakota (Stepler and Lopez 2016), the Whiteness of the Midwest is coming under

question. Midwestern states such as Iowa are now seeing counties become majority-

Latinx counties, as Gerardo Francisco Sandoval finds in his assessment of the Latinx

Midwest:

In nine Midwestern states, immigration has accounted for more than half of the

population increase since 2000. In Iowa, with immigrants drawn by jobs in the

restructured meatpacking industry, small town are changing dramatically: Latinos

represent 52.2 percent of the population in West Liberty, 48 percent in Columbus

junction, 41.9 percent in Columbus City, and 43.9 percent in Fredonia. …the

formerly homogenous elementary school population is now over 50% Latino. (51)

The fear of Latinx encroachment is exacerbated in the Midwest since part of the beliefs

propagated by the Latinx threat narrative is that Latina fertility and reproduction is “out

51

of control” (Chavez 97). This fear is compounded by mainstream representations of

women of color by associating them with sexuality and fertility, as Molina-Guzmán and

Valdivia note, “Dominant representations of Latinas and African American women are

predominately characterized by an emphasis on the breasts, hips, and buttocks. These

body parts function as mixed signifiers of sexual desire and fertility as well as bodily

waste and racial contamination” (211-212). Elizabeth Grosz notes the historical

associations between the feminine and the “unclean,” wherein women’s bodies and

sexuality has been understood as “uncontainable flow, as seepage associated with what is

unclean… lacking in itself but fillable from the outside, has enabled men to associate

women with infection, with disease…Bodily differences, marked and given psychical and

cultural significance…form a kind of zone of contamination” (206). Molina-Guzmán and

Valdivia complicate Grosz’s initial dichotomy of the female body and the grotesque by

taking an intersectional approach, placing the feminine body within the ethnoracial social

structure that characterizes Eurocentric ideologies by emphasizing the roles within the

bodies that different racial groups take precedent:

Within the Eurocentric mind/body binary, culture is signified by the higher

intellectual functions of the mindibrain while nature is signified by the lower

biological functions of the body. That is, Whiteness is associated with a

disembodied intellectual tradition free from the everyday desires of the body, and

non-Whiteness is associated with nature and the everyday needs of the body to

consume food, excrete waste, and reproduce sexually. (211)

52

The tropicalized Latina, therefore, stems from this connection between the feminine and

excess and especially, the racialized feminine body and sexuality. It is only when Latinas

refuse to abide by these tropes that their characters are seen as promoting an “ground-

breaking” performance of Latinidad, such as Gina Rodriguez in Jane the Virgin, Isabella

Gomez in One Day at a Time, or Mishel Prada in Vida. However, such examples are few,

and growing smaller with the ending of Jane the Virgin in 2019, and the cancelling of

Vida after only three seasons. As I have noted previously, there is also a spatial

boundedness to these interpretations—the tropical Latina appears where Latinas are

meant to be.

The Latina Midwestern Villain

Just as the tropical Latina is expected to be colorful, vivacious, and sexy, she is

also expected to exist within the appropriate spaces that Latinxs are supposed to reside in

within the U.S. A quick Google search on the top-billed/top-rated television shows

featuring a Latina protagonist will lead one to a number of reoccurring series: Jane the

Virgin (set in Miami, Florida), On My Block (inner-city Los Angeles), One Day at a Time

(Los Angeles), Queen of the South (Texas), East Los High (Los Angeles), Ugly Betty

(New York), Vida (East Los Angeles) (Betancourt 2019). As I stated in the previous

chapter, the Midwest remains a region that is often overlooked when one imagines the

Latinx experience in the United States. When the Latinx presence in the region is taken

into consideration, most notably after the 2006 Postville, Iowa raid, such high-profile

cases force a spotlight onto the existence of Latinxs in the Midwest, which in turn, “has

53

led some observers to characterize Latina/os as new immigrants to the region” (Valerio-

Jiménez, Vaquera-Vásquez, and Fox 2). However, as previously mentioned, Latinxs have

been present in the Midwest since the end of the 19th century, whether that be as interim

migrant workers or railroad constructions workers across the Midwest, or as factory

workers in major industrial regions such as Chicago. One positive component of the

shows I will come to analyze is how they too place an emphasis on the historicity of their

Latinx characters—many of the shows and characters I will be discussing are second-

generation Latinx characters who live in (or lived in) established Latinx communities

within their Midwestern setting.

In the context of television shows based in the Midwest, the tropical Latina takes

on a new version—that of the disruptive bitch that attempts to sabotage “appropriate”

family dynamics. As I will come to show in my analysis of two Midwestern-based

television series: Glee and Switched at Birth; Latina characters are both incendiary and

secondary. I will then briefly discuss Parks and Recreation as it stands in its own

category, one that attempts to subvert the normative gendered stereotypes about Latinas,

but still finds itself perpetuating the notion of the Latina character as one that is in

opposition to the other central characters. I will return to my analysis of Parks and Rec in

my third chapter in which I highlight Midwestern-set comedies that work to challenge

hegemonic ideologies. As I will show in that chapter it is only when a Latina is placed in

the forefront of a series, both as primary character and executive producer, that she is

able to claim for herself an altogether new Latinx persona—though that is for Chapter 3

to discuss.

54

Through my analysis of the previously mentioned series, I will demonstrate how

Latina characters are vilified across the board in order to pose them as narrative foils for

their white counterparts. While these characters are inevitably redeemed through a

show’s overall trajectory, as I will discuss in Chapter 2, that is done so in order to

“normalize” these characters and render their Latinx identity as a “non-issue.” Taking

into consideration the chronological order in which these shows first appeared on various

television networks, I will begin by discussing Glee, particularly the character of Santana

Lopez.

Glee’s Off-key Note: Latinx Representation

Ryan Murphy’s hit show Glee, which ran on Fox for six seasons from 2009 until

2015, centers around the fictional William McKinley High School glee club, the New

Directions, in Lima, Ohio. The show was known for approaching a number of different

social issues that American teens face: teen pregnancy, questioning of one’s sexuality and

gender, bullying, and relationships (to name a few). The show follows the high school

progression of various glee club members, with more notable figures remaining relevant

plot points well after their high school graduation and their departure from the New

Directions. One such character is Santana Lopez, played by Naya Rivera, and who is the

only regularly reoccurring Latinx character in the show. Besides Rivera, in the show’s six

seasons, there were only four notable Latinx guest stars to appear on the show: Ricky

Martin (who played a rival Spanish teacher that was pitted against New Directions coach

Will Schuester—Matthew Morrison—in one episode), Demi Lovato (was a briefly

55

reoccurring guest star as Santana’s love interest for four episodes), Gloria Estefan (plays

the role of Santana’s mother and appears in two episodes), and Ivonne Coll (Santana’s

grandmother who kicks Santana out of her house when she learns about her

granddaughter’s sexuality). While many critics have lauded Glee for its diversity and

representation of LGBTQ+ individuals, and even attacked by right-wing organizations as

promoting an anti-Christian and homosexual agenda (Hobson 95), the burden of Latinx

representation falls solely upon the shoulders of Naya Rivera’s character, Santana. And

though Santana has many redeemable qualities, as I will discuss, in a show that

challenges a number of social stereotypes, it does not challenge the need to depict

Santana too far beyond her catty exterior.

Though Santana eventually becomes a major character in the show and serves as

the main rival to the show’s main protagonist, Rachel Berry (Lea Michele), in the later

seasons, she is initially barely a blip on the screen. In the first season of the show, she

served primarily as a back-up figure for Quinn Fabray (Dianna Agron), the head

cheerleader and the main antagonist for Rachel’s character. As the “queen bee,” Quinn in

the first season is often shown travelling with her two “best friends”/peons—Santana and

Brittany (Heather Morris). In the show’s pilot, she has no speaking lines, appearing only

for a few moments laughing as Quinn leaves hateful comments on Rachel’s video. In the

second episode she again plays second fiddle to Quinn, first as one of the minor officers

in the Celibacy Club (of which Quinn is the president) and later as one of Quinn’s backup

vocalists in her audition for the glee club. When approached by the cheerleading coach,

Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch), for auditioning for what she considers to be the competition,

56

Quinn reveals she did so to make sure Rachel did not interfere with her relationship with

Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith), while Brittany and Santana merely there supporting her.

When Sue says the three will work to “bring this club down from within”

(“Showmance”), the camera pans to the three girls all sporting different looks: Quinn

looking hopeful (wanting to salvage her relationship), Brittany smiling (she is the “dumb

blonde” of the group), and Santana smirking and chuckling at the chance to cause chaos

and initiating a high-five with Brittany at the opportunity to serve as spies. Santana’s role

increases slightly as she is shown on screen more as she enacts Coach Sylvester’s various

plans to eliminate the glee club—for example, in the third episode she helps Quinn

persuade glee club member Mercedes to romantically pursue another club member, Kurt

(Chris Colfer), who happens to be gay.

While seemingly pleased to be a part of the glee club—often participating in

impromptu dancing/singing sessions with the other club members—Santana remains

loyal to Sue early in the show’s history, at one point siding with Sue over Will in creating

a separate glee club—one that caters specifically to the needs of minority students. The

episode ends with the club reunited and Will apologizing to his minority students, though

utilizing language that is more akin to color blindness than an understanding of the

struggles underrepresented students may experience, stating first to Sue, and later

addressing the entire club:

Will [addressing Sue]: In hindsight, you were right to shine the spotlight on the

fact that those kids are minorities.

57

Will [addressing New Directions members]: …because you’re all minorities. You

are in the Glee Club. Now, there are only 12 of you and all you have is each other.

So, it doesn’t matter that Rachel is Jewish, or that Finn is…

Finn: Unable to tell my rights from my lefts. [all laugh]

Will: Sure. Or that Santana is Latina, or that Quinn is…

Sue: Pregnant. (“Throwdown”)

The scene, like much of the episode, posits issues of race and minority status as a fight

between the morally good (Will—willing to apologize and accept the diversity of all) and

the morally reprehensible (Sue—willing to out Quinn’s pregnancy to the entire club). By

doing so, the show glosses over major structural and institutional issues behind racial

discrimination, and instead ties it to individual character traits, as Rachel Dubrofsky

further explains, “This offsets potential for looking at how issues of racism and

disenfranchisement might function in the larger institutional setting of the public school

system and, in particular, in glee club, where the action of the series…suggests racism is

alive and well. Apparently, when good people own up to their actions, racism disappears”

(89). Will’s speech to the Glee Club is meant to be inspiring—they can all understand the

ramifications of racial discrimination because they are all bullied for being part of the

Glee Club. According to Will (a middle-class white man), being in Glee Club erases race

because they all suffer equally. Will seeks to unite the group by showing that they all

struggle—equating Santana’s Latina experience as the same as Finn’s low grades. By

ending the scene on the even more sobering note that Quinn is pregnant, everyone else’s

issues become irrelevant. The episode, meant to highlight racial issues, ends with the

58

entire group singing Avril Lavigne’s “Keep Holding On,” focusing on the distraught

Quinn, which “suggests viewers should equate her tribulations with those of the students

of color” (Dubrofsky 89). The show’s problematic handling of overt issues of racism

aside, despite Santana being featured in the episode as one of the minority students, she is

still a minor character, with barely any speaking lines and no solo moments in the many

musical numbers. For much of the first season, Santana is meant to be seen but not heard,

her persona one that is at odds with the rest of the Glee Club, though never important

enough to be taken seriously.

Santana’s first major plot line happens in the second half of the first season, when

she makes it her mission to take Finn’s virginity. In the episode “The Power of

Madonna,” various glee club members are discussing the pros and cons of losing one’s

virginity, and when Rachel asks the other girls how to avoid angering one’s partner when

refusing sex, Santana gives her some advice: “Just do what I do, never say no” (“The

Power of Madonna”). Though Santana may not have many significant moments that adds

to the plot of the first season, the few moments she does have on screen are often tied to

her sensuality and sexuality—whether it be making out with Noah Pukerman (Mark

Salling) and then dumping him for being poor, revealing that she and Brittany engage in

casual sex, offering to make out with Brittany in front of Finn when the three go on a

double date together, to manipulating Finn into sleeping with her. In the episode “The

Power of Madonna,” Santana uses Finn’s lingering feelings for his ex-girlfriend to get

him to sleep with her, which she claims will better her image since he is the quarterback

of the football team, though one that needs to lose his “innocence,”:

59

Santana: Hey Finnocence…Look, Finn, it’s high time you lost the big V.

Everything about you screams virgin. You’re about as sexy as a Cabbage Patch

Kid. It’s exhausting to look at you…So come on, let’s do the deed. It’ll be great

for my image, and Sue will promote me to head cheerleader. It’s win-win…You

get to have sex and make Rachel jealous… I meant for me, okay? It’s win-win for

me (“The Power of Madonna”)

The scene highlights the angry whore model that Santana portrays throughout most of the

series. She is willing to use her sexiness to make others (men or women) do what she

wants, all the while being insulting and uncaring of their emotional reactions to her

words.

Rivera’s character is promoted to a series regular by Glee’s second season, though

for the most part, she still remains a background character, though no longer simply

Quinn’s lackey. Instead Rivera’s character arc evolves to highlight her character’s

grappling with her sexuality. What was revealed in season 1 to be occasional “hook-ups”

between her and Brittany, become a major plotline for Santana who throughout the

season is forced to come to grips with her homosexuality. Santana’s struggles begin in

the fourth episode of the season where she and Brittany are kissing and Brittany suggests

they sing a duet together for the Glee Club’s assignment, angering Santana because,

“There’s a lot of talking going on and I wants ‘ta get my mack on” claiming she is simply

with Brittany because her ex-boyfriend is not around, “I’m not making out with you

because I'm in love with you, and want to sing about making lady babies. I’m only here

because Puck’s been in the slammer for about 12 hours now, and I’m like a lizard. I need

60

something warm beneath me, or I can’t digest my food” (“Duets”). Again, Santana’s

actions are couched in her overt sensuality. She claims an uncontrollable sex drive leaves

her open to whatever option there is, in the virgin/whore dichotomy that Latina women

are often forced into.

As Gloria Anzaldúa writes in Borderlands/La frontera, there are few paths for the

mestiza: “For a woman of my culture there used to be only three directions she could

turn: to the church as a nun, to the streets as a prostitute, or to the home as a mother.

Today some of us have a fourth choice: entering the world by way of education and

career and becoming self-autonomous persons” (17). Santana repeatedly reminds her

(white) privileged classmates that she is from “Lima Heights adjacent,” which means she

is from “the wrong side of the tracks” (“Silly Love Songs”), claiming a working-class life

experience that most glee club members lack, and one that makes her tougher and meaner

than those around her. Santana’s actions, and the beliefs of those who know her, show

that she does not expect to fall into the fourth category that Anzaldua lays out, instead, in

a heated moment, Rachel and Lauren Zizes (Ashley Fink) reveal to Santana and the rest

of the club exactly what everyone thinks of her and where everyone expects her to end

up:

Santana: Oh please, you guys love me. I keep it real and I’m hilarious.

Lauren: Actually, you’re just a bitch.

…Rachel: The truth is Santana, you can dish it out, but you can’t take it. Okay,

maybe you’re right. Maybe I am destined to play the title role in the Broadway

61

musical version of Willow but the only job you’re going to have is working on a

pole! (“Silly Love Songs”)

The exchange is followed by the whistles and catcalls of the other glee club members, all

of whom snicker and give Santana side-long glances showing they agree with Rachel.

Not even Will, the teacher in charge, attempts to silence Rachel, nor comfort Santana,

merely allowing her to walk out of the practice space. In the next scene, she is seen being

comforted by Brittany, while she is visibly crying, because no one seems to understand

her point: “I just try to be really, really honest with people when I think that they suck,

you know? No one gets it!” (“Silly Love Songs). Santana does not even attempt to

challenge the assumptions of her, merely reiterating the points made by her classmates as

to her not being a nice person. Moreover, there is no reconciling moment between Rachel

and Santana, instead the episode continues to posit Santana as the meddling bitch—next

by revealing that Quinn was cheating on her boyfriend with Finn, by exposing them both

to mononucleosis. Again, her overt sexuality is expressed when she claims she is immune

to the disease because, “I’ve had mono so many times, it turned into stereo” (“Silly Love

Songs”). Instead of receiving an apology, Santana enacts revenge, as is her default status

as the show’s primary antagonist.

In order to excuse much of Santana’s negativity, her sexuality is again brought

into the equation. In the episode “Sexy,” which revolves mainly around the topics of sex

and sexuality, Santana’s sexuality is called into question over her relationship with

Brittany. When Brittany seeks to confirm their relationship, Santana tells her, “I'm not

interested in any labels,” (“Sexy”) which becomes her mantra for the episode. She

62

normalizes her sexual desires by claiming she has no preference, “I’m attracted to girls,

and I’m attracted to guys. I’ve made out with a mannequin. I even had a sex dream about

a shrub that was just in the shape of a person” (“Sexy”). Again, Santana’s sex drive is

depicted as uncontrollable, to the point where she does not/cannot distinguish who/what

she actually prefers. When she is forced to confront the emotions behind her actions, she

uses it to explain away her oppositional behavior towards all the other characters:

I’ve realized why I’m such a bitch all the time. I’m a bitch because I’m angry. I’m

angry because I have all of these feelings, feelings for you, that I’m afraid of

dealing with, because I’m afraid of dealing with the consequences…I want to be

with you. But I’m afraid of the talks, and the looks. I mean, you know what

happened to Kurt at this school…I’m so afraid of what everyone will say behind

my back. (“Sexy”)

For Santana, her fear is compounded by her character’s Latinx identity—she a Latinx

queer woman has more to fear than Kurt, a gay, white male. As Anzaldúa highlights, a

Latina’s body is policed from birth, and the queer woman of color transcends all cultural

norms by expressing both her sexuality and her homosexuality: “For the lesbian of color,

the ultimate rebellion she can make against her native culture is through her sexual

behavior. She goes against two moral prohibitions: sexuality and homosexuality”

(Anzaldúa 19). In the third season, when Santana finally comes out to her family, she

reveals that her parents are supportive, her grandmother, however, disowns Santana, the

scene evoking Alma’s (Santana’s grandmother) inability to accept her queerness and

rejecting her because of it:

63

Alma: Everyone has secrets Santana; they’re called secrets for a reason. I want

you to leave this house. I don’t ever want to see you again. Go, now!

Santana: I’m the same person I was a minute ago!

Alma: You made your choice, now I have made mine.

Santana: But why?

Alma: It’s selfish of you to make me uncomfortable. Esto es una vergüenza. The

sin isn’t in the thing, it’s in the scandal when people talk about it aloud.

Santana: So, you’re saying it would’ve been better if I would’ve kept this a

secret? (“I Kissed a Girl”)

Santana receives no answer, instead Alma walks away, turning her back on Santana who

views Alma as one of the most important people in her life. Santana’s fears of revealing

her sexuality highlights what Anzaldúa notes that queer Latinas fear: the rejection by

one’s mother/culture: “Fear of going home. And of not being taken in. We’re afraid of

being abandoned by the mother, the culture, la Raza, for being unacceptable, faulty,

damaged. Most of us unconsciously believe that if we reveal this unacceptable aspect of

the self our mother/culture/race will totally reject us” (20). After this break from her

grandmother, Santana is not reunited with her until the series finale, where Brittany and

Sue intercede on her behalf to coerce Alma into attending Santana and Brittany’s

wedding. Moreover, the show chooses to gloss over Santana’s parents’ acceptance of her

sexuality (they are told offscreen) focusing instead on Alma’s rejection of her sexuality,

reversing the narrative that the show established for its other queer characters—Kurt’s

father’s constant support and acceptance (and physical presence in the show).

64

The show perpetuates an image of Latinidad that is tied to a patriarchal, macho,

heteronormativity. As Carla Trujillo writes, “Chicana lesbians are perceived as a great

threat to the Chicano community because their existence disrupts the established order of

male dominance, and raises the consciousness of many Chicana women regarding their

own independence and control” (281). Unlike Kurt, whose coming out process was on his

own terms, especially to his father, Santana is forced to reveal the truth to her parents and

grandmother before she is outed by a political attack ad against Sue Sylvester claiming,

“If you’re so into family values, why did you promote a lesbian student to be your head

cheerleader, and when did you plan on telling Ohio families” (“Mash Off”), showing

Santana’s picture alongside a rainbow heart. She is then forced to tell her family before

the ad is aired on television. By taking away Santana’s agency in forcing her to out

herself, the show adds another dimension of fear to the Latinx coming out experience,

one which Trujillo notes, “can be a major source of pain for Chicana lesbians, since the

basic fear of rejection by family and community is paramount…familia…as traditionally

constructed, may be non-supportive of the Chicana lesbian experience” (284). Santana

carries the pain of her grandmother’s rejection with her, noting in a later episode, when

asked what she looks forward to, she responds, “I’m looking forward to the day when my

grandmother loves me again” (“On My Way”).

As the show progresses, Santana leaves Ohio for New York City, moving in with

Rachel and Kurt. It is there that Santana is again pitted against Rachel, often times

competing with her for various roles, landing the role of Rachel’s understudy in Funny

Girl and doing her best to sabotage Rachel in order to gain her spot. Santana is once

65

again shown the error of her ways by her (white) colleagues and eventually becomes a

recording artist and later, Rachel’s publicist. Rivera was demoted to a recurring character

for the show’s final season, allegedly to pursue other career venues, but also tied to

rumors of feuding with Glee’s main star, Lea Michele (Dos Santos 2014). Santana’s

character arc ends with her marriage to Brittany, which I will further discuss in Chapter

2. While Santana is inevitably redeemable, she remains one the show’s few antagonizing

characters—verbally assaulting her friends and colleagues and hiding behind her “bad

girl” exterior in order to avoid confronting her feelings. Presenting Santana as the bitch of

the show, while always having her dressed in skintight, low cut, short clothing,

perpetuates the image of the Tropical Latina. She stands out all the more for being the

only Latinx character on a show that boasts a “diverse” cast.

As I will discuss in the next chapter, while Glee has been noted to transcend many

cultural norms and push boundaries of what can be depicted on mainstream television

and has even received backlash from conservative groups for its portrayal of teen (gay)

sexuality, it comes always from a White perspective. In a show that is centered around

Whiteness, characters of color are minor plot points who depend upon their white

counterpoints to move their narratives forward. I will now be moving on to another case

study, Switched at Birth, in order to further my analysis of the role of Latinas within

Midwestern-based television series.

Switched at Birth’s Latina Scapegoat

66

Switched at Birth is a teen drama series that first premiered on ABC Family in

2011 and ran for five seasons until 2017 (the last season airing on the rebranded Freeform

network). The show, set in the Kansas City metropolitan area, follows the lives of two

teenage girls: Bay Kennish (Vanessa Marano) and Daphne Vasquez (Katie Leclerc) who

(as the show’s title implies) were switched at birth and grew up in two very different

worlds—one in upper-middle class, white suburbia (Bay), the other in an ethnic working-

class neighborhood (Daphne). While it is revealed that the Kennishes had no idea of the

switch—Bay’s “ethnic” looks (dark, thick hair and dark eyes) are attributed to Kathryn

Kennish’s (Bay’s mother played by Lea Thompson), Italian heritage, reassuring Bay that,

“My grandmother was Italian. That’s where Bay gets her beautiful coloring from” (“This

Is Not a Pipe”). In reality, Bay gets her coloring from her birth mother, Regina Vasquez,

who is half-Puerto Rican and played by Mexican-American actress, Constance Marie.

The meeting between the two families results in a number of culture shocks. The

show over-emphasizes the differences between the two families: establishing the

Kennishes as the “quintessential” Midwestern family—white, well-off, conservative, and

religious. While the Vasquez’s come from a working-class neighborhood, are liberal,

non-religious, and Latinx. Not to mention the fact that Daphne is deaf. In comparison to

the Kennishes’s over-the-top mansion—with its own tennis courts, swimming pool,

gazebo, guest house, and more, Daphne and Regina initially live in the “diverse” part of

Kansas City. When John, the Kennish patriarch played by D. W. Moffett, drops off

Daphne at her home in the show’s pilot, police sirens can be heard in the background to

67

emphasize the lack of safety in the area, with Daphne joking that there had not been a

murder there in weeks.

The initial plot of the show centers around how the Kennishes adapt to their new

reality, how they are going to deal with “that woman” (“This Is Not a Pipe”)—Regina.

Regina, for her part, though minor in the show compared to the other characters, has to

contend with the Kennishes’s ignorance—both of Latinx culture and of deaf culture.

When they have their first get together in order to introduce their respective daughters to

each other’s family, Regina notes the importance of raising Daphne in East Riverside,

since it is a “diverse” neighborhood, to which Kathryn bluntly asks if she is Mexican.5

Later in the episode, Regina has to guide Kathryn and her husband John, on how to

address the issue of Daphne’s deafness:

John: So, um, how did—how did Daphne go… [gestures to his ears]

Regina: It’s okay.

John: --deaf?

Regina: It’s not a bad word. She got meningitis when she was three.

…John: And how did she get the meningitis?

Regina: It’s a bacteria. She caught it.

John: And she goes to school and everything?

Regina: Yes? It’s just her ears that don’t work, not her brain.

John: Right. (“This Is Not a Pipe”)

5 Regina as previously mentioned, is half-Puerto Rican. Her mother, Adriana, is played by the same actress who played Santana’s grandmother in Glee, Ivonne Coll, who also played the grandmother figure in another well-known Latinx television series—Jane the Virgin.

68

Regina may be more socially liberal when compared to the Kennishes, however, she is

also posed as the more closed off of the two—wanting to give the girls time to adjust

before forcing them into weekly meetings that they may or may not want. Whereas the

Kennishes note have they have “lost so much time already” (“This Is Not a Pipe”).

The differences between the Kennishes and Regina are seen also in how they

approach the idea of co-parenting. While Kathryn Kennish is overly hospitable to the

Vasquez’s, Regina is stand-offish, often reminded by Daphne to be nice and cordial.

Moreover, the Kennishes seem genuinely excited to meet Daphne and get to know her,

working hard in the first few episodes to accommodate her and her family, even inviting

them to live with them after learning about Regina’s financial struggles, whereas Regina

does not openly reciprocate such affection or desire to get to know her birth daughter,

Bay. After being invited to stay in the Kennishes’s guest house, Regina establishes firm

barriers between her home and that of the Kennishes, she has no desire to join their

families, nor show Kathryn the same hospitality she has been shown:

Regina: We don’t know anything about each other except we raised each other’s

daughters. Look we agreed to this arrangement so I could get to know Bay and

you could get to know Daphne, and frankly, I could use the free rent. But I’m sure

you’re about as thrilled to have me in your backyard as I am to be here. So, let’s

make one thing clear: I do not intend to enter your house without permission, and

I assume you’ll extend me the same courtesy. (“This Is Not a Pipe”)

The camera then pans to Kathryn’s shocked expression. The antagonism between the two

mothers continues throughout the first season as the two families learn to cohabitate,

69

though with Regina always standing in opposition to what she considers the arrogance

and entitlement of the Kennishes. Daphne, who seems much more concerned with

pleasing her birth parents, often sides with them over Regina. Regina is again the one to

harshly criticize Daphne for attempting to “fit in” and be the perfect (hearing) daughter

the Kennishes expected. When Daphne considers switching from her school for deaf

students to a (private/elite) hearing school, Regina calls her out for allowing the

Kennishes to pressure her into a decision that would hurt her: “You’re letting these

people pressure you because you’re so desperate for their attention. Let them love you for

who you are, not who they think you should be” (“This Is Not a Pipe”). Daphne, for her

part, blames Regina for “ruining everything” (“American Gothic”), because she

continually questions the Kennishes for their extravagant lifestyle and for their ableism,

which Daphne refuses to acknowledge.

Kathryn Kennish stands as the polar opposite of Regina: white, rich, kind,

conservative, and though not openly antagonistic towards her, early in the show’s

trajectory, she is highly suspicious of Regina and demeans her when it is simply her and

John talking. In the early episodes of the series, when John and Kathryn discuss Regina,

she is always referenced as “that woman.” After realizing that “that woman” got her

biological daughter, Kathryn’s paranoia leads her into hiring a background check and

discovers that she had been an alcoholic. After Bay is apprehended for underage

drinking, Kathryn uses Regina’s past to declare her an unfit mother (and the cause of

Daphne’s deafness):

Kathryn: Court date, that should sound familiar!

70

Regina: What was that?

Kathryn: We know about your DUI’s.

Regina: That was 12 years ago, how do you even know about that?

Kathryn: Were you drunk when Daphne got sick? (“This Is Not a Pipe”)

Part of the reason Kathryn and John allow Regina to move in is because of their fear of

where Regina had allowed them to live, as John remarks after seeing Daphne’s childhood

home, “Bars on the windows, bail bonds on every corner. I was nervous” (“This Is Not a

Pipe”). In later episodes, Kathryn ominously notes that Regina must be hiding some big

secret, especially after Regina refuses to pursue legal action against the hospital that

caused the initial mix-up. Kathryn’s wealthy (white) neighbors are also suspicious about

Regina, wanting to know who the new “live-in maid” is, prompting Kathryn to need a

cover story for Regina since Bay notes, “Some of mom’s friends are getting…curious”

(“Portrait of My Father”). After learning that Regina is continuing to run her salon out of

her guest house, Kathryn is even more concerned about her neighbor’s opinions since

Regina is bringing in clients from her previous (ethnic) neighborhood. When Kathryn

finds Regina a job in a local (Mission Hills) salon, Regina again reproaches her for her

actions, telling her, “You got me the job at ‘Queen Bee’ so more riff-raff like me don’t

come traipsing through your yard and give your neighbors even more to gossip about”

(“Portrait of My Father”). Regina, who is open with those she knows about the “truth,”

uses Kathryn’s hesitance to reveal the true nature of their relationship as proof of

Kathryn’s need to seek the approval of others, in order to hide her own reasons behind

not wanting others to look too deeply into her past.

71

Kathryn’s initial distrust is linked to her own intuition about someone like “that

woman” inherently having something to hide. It ends up being true when it is revealed

that Regina was aware of the switch since Daphne was three years old. Regina’s actions

are further villainized when the truth comes not from Regina, but from the hospital’s

attorney who uses the information to discredit the Kennishes’s claim for suing the

hospital for negligence. When pressed by the Kennishes and her daughters, Regina’s

defense is that she was doing what was best for the girls, having by then been someone

else’s daughter for three years. Bay, seeing that her birth mother had known about her

existence and kept Daphne instead, claims Regina’s actions were motivated by

selfishness instead, telling her, “You did what was best for you!” (“Pandora’s Box”).

When Regina attempts to explain herself to Daphne, she once again falls back on her

judgement of the Kennishes for their lifestyle, claiming Daphne would not be the strong-

willed, independent woman she is had she been raised by the Kennishes, “Do you really

think you would’ve come out the same here? Raised by them?” (“Pandora’s Box”).

Instead of allowing the audience to sympathize with Regina’s situation—she too was the

victim of the hospital’s mistake—her disdain for the Kennishes and her inability to

answer for her actions sets her apart from the other characters, victimizing them over

Regina.

From then on, Regina becomes the target for the Kennishes’s and Bay and

Daphne’s wrath and mistrust. She is asked to leave because according to John, “We have

no idea who that woman is or what she’s capable of” (“Pandora’s Box”). While Regina is

able to reconcile with her daughters, and to a certain extent with the Kennishes, she is

72

never fully forgiven. For the rest of the series, it remains a point of contention between

Regina and her daughters, often brought up again and again as reasons why they are

angry with her or why they choose to lie to her/not confide in her. As I will discuss in the

next chapter, Regina ends up not only being the villain of her daughters’ stories, but also

that of her former neighborhood. In the third season, Regina helps her former employer

with the redevelopment of East Riverside, leading to protests and attacks against her for

aiding in the gentrification of the area. Regina is not only the villain of her daughters’

stories but also the woman who turned her back on her community and culture by

furthering the cause for gentrification.

While not the typical “tropical” Latina, Regina, like Glee’s Santana, becomes the

easy target for the audience to root against. While not as overtly sexualized as other

tropicalized Latinas in mainstream media, Regina’s character still plays to many of the

same tropes. Unlike Kathryn Kennish, she is a single mother who can barely make ends

meet in the beginning of the series, and also a recovering alcoholic. Moreover, she is the

“cool” mom because she often insists on the self-governing of one’s body—when Bay

feigns getting a nose ring in the pilot as a way of rebelling against the changes in her life,

Regina is the one to accept it without a question, because it is her body, her choice, which

cuts against the Kennishes’s outright rejection of Bay’s decisions. Regina is also involved

in multiple romances across the series’ trajectory, many with men who are married or

involved with another woman in some capacity. Her quick anger also causes many

arguments between Regina and other characters, notably Kathryn who is often in the

position of receiving Regina’s judgement and harsh words. While the show never claims

73

Regina’s Latinidad as cause for her alienation from the other characters, it is present in

the show positing two vastly different families to have been involved in the switch. It

would not have been as sellable of an idea had the two families been white, well-standing

examples of American ideals. Instead, as I will show in the following chapter, the show

relies heavily on the trope of the white savior in order to save Daphne from her Latinx

identity and most especially, from her Latina mother.

April Ludgate-Dwyer, the Office Emo

April Ludgate (later Ludgate-Dwyer), played by Aubrey Plaza, is first introduced

in the pilot episode of Parks and Recreation as the college intern for the Parks and

Recreation Department of Pawnee, Indiana. In the show’s initial seasons, April is a

tertiary character, whose plotlines are minimal, until she becomes romantically interested

in Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt). As a Latina character, April is an interesting case to

consider, because while the show recognizes the stereotypical Latina representation and

attempts to undermine it through Plaza’s interpretation of April as a snarky, disinterested

and apathetic half-Latina, her portrayal follows the pattern that I have established of

Latinas in Midwestern-based series. She may not be the fun, colorful Vergara Latina, but

she is the one who is often at odds with the rest of the characters.

As mentioned earlier, Plaza’s role in the show was minimal in the early history of

the series. In the show’s pilot, April does not appear until the second half of the episode

and is reluctantly following along her boss, Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), to the site of an

abandoned construction site/pit, which Leslie hopes to turn into a park. When Ann

74

Perkins (Rashida Jones), the woman who brought the pit to Leslie’s attention asks April

if her job is of interest to her, April woodenly replies, “Yeah, it’s so much fun” (“Pilot”),

and Ann walks away after the awkward interaction. She is shown later in the episode to

be going through a number of photos she took of Leslie after she fell into the pit, joking

with Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari), Leslie’s subordinate, about the pictures she took of

Leslie to “document” the moment, noting with glee that in one picture, “I think she’s

crying in that one,” and claiming that the “upskirt” photo is the “best one” (“Pilot”). She

also lets Tom know she can (and is willing) to print off more pictures, when City

Manager Mark Brendanawicz (Paul Schneider), takes the upskirt picture away for

demeaning Leslie. April is present on camera for only a matter of moments, regardless,

she is already posited as a lackluster employee who derives humor from the pain of

someone who was simply trying to help.

As the series progresses, while April’s role in the show moves from singular takes

and one-off sarcastic lines, she is continually cast as the dissenting voice amongst the

crew of characters. April’s overall depressed and negative demeanor set her at extreme

odds with Leslie’s formidable optimism, as well as Ann’s overall pleasantness. In the

latter half of the second season and beginning of the third season, April is pit against Ann

after she develops feelings for Ann’s ex-boyfriend, Andy. In the third season, April’s

animosity against Ann reaches its breaking point in the second episode, “Flu Season,”

when April uses her position as Ann’s patient to make her life miserable, starting off by

insulting Ann claiming anyone can do a nurse’s job:

April: I want another nurse.

75

Ann: Well, there are none. We’re stretched pretty thin right now.

April: Then I want a janitor. They can do what you do, right?

Ann: Yep, nurses and janitors are totally interchangeable.

April: Except no one dresses up like a janitor when they want to be slutty. (“Flu

Season”)

Not only is April willing to make Ann’s already difficult job all the more so by paging

her for inane tasks or making false claims against her: at one moment calling her in to

pick up blankets she had thrown on the floor, later claiming her “slutty nurse” is trying to

smother her after Ann offered her an extra pillow for her comfort; April also slut-shames

Ann throughout the episode for daring to interfere in her and Andy’s budding

relationship. It is only after Ann finally “snaps” after her shift is over and yells at April

for her actions towards her because she kissed Andy (in the previous season) that April

tells the camera afterwards, “That’s the most I’ve ever liked Ann” (“Flu Season”).

Instead of apologizing for her behavior, April scoffs at Ann’s attempts to be civil.

Throughout the series, her antagonism remains, and April is difficult and mean simply for

the sake of being contrarian.

While April is mean-spirited, she is not the show’s antagonist. As I will discuss

further in Chapter 3, Parks and Recreation, is a show that is caught between trying to

utilize racialized stereotypes in order to mock them, while at the same time, fails to

recognize when it inadvertently calls upon other stereotypes. With April, the show

employs what Isabel Molina-Guzmán labels as the “antiexotic Latina role” (Latinas: 83)

in presenting a character that “disrupts stereotypic assumptions about the Latina type

76

through her oppositional performance of Latina whiteness” (Molina-Guzmán, Latinas:

83). Given that Plaza “fits” the mold that the mainstream media has for the quintessential

Latina: brown eyes, dark hair, lighter complexion; her characterization of April could

have been that of the loud, vivacious, colorful Latina with a strong accent and a strong

sexual appetite. Instead, as Molina-Guzmán points out about Plaza’s acting choices,

“Plaza has spent her acting and stand-up career playing against the exotic Latina

stereotype through her muted performances of ethnic and sexual identity” (Latinas: 83).

The show also works against mainstream media’s expectations of heterosexuality and

Latina femininity by having April involved in a polyamorous relationship with two men:

“This is my boyfriend, Derek, and this is Derek’s boyfriend, Ben… Derek is gay, but he’s

straight for me, but he’s gay for Ben and Ben’s really gay for Derek, and I hate Ben”

(“Pawnee Zoo”). Moreover, in the series finale, it is April’s husband, Andy, who is the

one desperate to have children, whereas April is reluctant to be a mother and change the

family dynamic she has already established with Andy. Instead of the virginal, saintly

mother-figure, that goes in hand with the cult of la Virgen that Latina women are

allegedly meant to aspire to, Plaza’s April rejects being pigeonholed into any one

particular stereotype of femininity. While I do give Parks and Rec a lot of credit for what

it attempts to do, as I will show in Chapter 2, for April, her character’s rise in popularity

comes at the cost of her Latinidad.

The Latin Lover: The Earliest Space for Latinos in Hollywood

77

The trope of the Latin Lover has been utilized by the mainstream media since the

early days of Hollywood. Starting in the early 1920s and the rise to stardom of Italian-

actor Rudolph Valentino after the release of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

(1921), the image of the Latin lover reconfigured the image of the “Latin” man from

greaser to smooth romancer (regardless of the actor’s Latinidad or the authenticity of the

portrayal), “clad in Hollywood’s rather fanciful interpretation of Argentine gaucho

garb…Authenticity be damned. America got a taste, and wanted more…the film also

reoriented his screen persona from greaser-thug to a dancer with a hero’s heart…he

introduced moviegoers to a new genre, that of the noble seducer” (Thomas 21). From

then on, the portrait of the Latin lover has been constructed around, “the synthesis of

eroticism, exoticism, and danger; he is attractive and irresistible […] possesses three

basic attributes: good looks, masculine features/behaviors, and ethnic markings (whatever

may be construed as ‘Latin’—dark hair, olive skin, a foreign accent)” (Pérez 439). The

first “Latino” Latin Lover was Roman Navarro, the Mexican-born actor played the title

role in Ben-Hur, the most expensive silent film made (Thomas 27), and was considered,

“the most truly beautiful of the silent era Latin Lovers…dubbed ‘Ravishing Ramon’ by

his publicists” (29). But the Latin Lover is not confined to the annals of Hollywood

history, as Paloma Martinez-Cruz and John Cruz note, “Hollywood’s Latin lover became

a stalwart in the U.S. cinematic and performatic imaginaries of sexuality and seduction”

(209). The image of the charming and sophisticated Latin Lover has stuck because of the

inherent appeal of the character. The Latin Lover is the Latino threat made desirable, and

in that regard, he is safe.

78

Part of the appeal of the Latin Lover is his ability to capture the audience’s desire:

“Politically incorrect or not, the character of the Latin Lover was, and is, a miracle

worker. He makes every woman who sees him feel unspeakably desired, and impossibly

desirable. He gives even the weariest spirit, male as well as female, a glint of much-

needed wickedness” (Thomas 15). Despite the Latin Lover’s overt masculinity, a

character who is “utterly at ease in his abundant, freewheeling masculinity,” (9) it is the

ability of the Latin lover to capture both the male and female eye, that makes the Latin

Lover trope a queer Latinx representation. The true Latin Lover according to Daniel

Enrique Pérez is queer because he defies (hetero)normative definitions of masculinity and

sexuality: “his identity and his sexuality are constantly fluctuating and digressing from

heteronormativity. His continuous movements along a gender and sexual continuum

prevent his identity from being categorized in any fixed way; ‘queer’ is the term that best

describes these varied positions” (438). The Latin lover stereotype is steeped in queerness

given that, “the display of the male body as erotic ‘feminizes’ the subject. […] Men as

sex objects are queer in the way they assume a passive role in exchange between viewer

and subject […] The Latin lover is by default non-heteronormative. His foreignness,

promiscuity, and body are all sites for mapping queer identities,” (440-1). Just as the

camera objectifies the feminine body, so too does it objectify the Latin male body,

leaving it open as a site for “its gender destabilizing potential” (Martinez-Cruz and Cruz

211).

Part of that potential lies in the Latin lover’s general ethno-racial ambiguity. One

need only read the subtitle of Victoria Thomas’s work (Latino, Italian and French Men

79

Who Make the Screen Smolder) to see just some of the places these “Latin” men have

come from: Latin America, Italy, France. Bring in actors such as Antonio Banderas and

Javier Bardem, and Spain is also inculcated. For Hollywood, so long as these men have

dark, vaguely “ethnic” good looks, they can pass as Latin/Latino. According to Frederick

Aldama and Christopher González, Hollywood has no problem utilizing “brownface”—

the casting of non-Latinx actors in Latinx roles—because “a good portion of the U.S.

non-Latinx moviegoing audience doesn’t really know the difference between a Spaniard,

a Latin American, or a US Latinx. It’s a confusion and conflation that happens to Latinxs

every day when non-Latinxs refer to us as ‘Spanish’” (Aldama and González 41). When

it comes to the Latin Lover, the differences in nationality are further erased, because he is

meant to be an all-encompassing Latin, whether that means he is Latinx, Latin American,

or European, is of little importance so long as he is olive-skinned and speaks with an

accent, “To be a Latin lover, he must conform to an Ibero-Mediterranean appearance that

is decidedly swarthy—never blond or blue-eyed—but also not mistakable for his mestizo,

indigenous, or African-descended counterparts who share his regional and political

cartographies in Latin America and the U.S.” (Martinez-Cruz and Cruz 208). As

Martinez-Cruz and Cruz point out, “the Latin lover is—must be—nationless” (208). No

one place he can claim as his own (especially not the US), and as stated previously, he

does not even have to be of Latin American descent, so long as he looks the part: “Often

an Italian-American interpreting a Latin American, or a U.S. Latino of undefined

provenance with a thick accent, the lover is characterized by cultural transience and

shiftlessness, an instability that distances him from the possibility of being a serious

80

prospect for either marriage or nation building” (Martinez-Cruz and Cruz 208). While

Martinez-Cruz and Cruz argue that the Latin Lover is the most dangerous when “he is

shown to erode the national project as a cartographic Other” (216), in the Midwestern-

based interpretation of the Latin Lover, this ambiguity, while marking him as Other,

renders him safe because that otherness is the source of humor. Since the audience can

laugh at the Midwestern Latin Lover for being transformed into a joke, he is not a threat.

As I will show in the following section, when it comes to the Latin Lover of the

Midwest, he is defined by his ambiguity, overt sexuality (downright raging horniness),

and exoticness. While he certainly looks the part of the Latin Lover, he is set up to fail in

his amorous endeavors, everything from his over-the-top flair for the dramatic, his heavy

accent, to his effeminate gestures, turns the once charming and sophisticated image of the

Latin Lover into a fumbling clown who cannot seem to ever get it right, especially when

compared to his white, male counterparts.

The Midwestern Latin Lover: The Horny Foreign Clown

In this section, I will focus the bulk of my analysis on That ‘70s Show’s Fez

(Wilmer Valderrama). As noted above, while the number of Latinxs in the media has

been in flux, one common thread is that there are more Latinas than Latinos making

names for themselves in film and television. In terms of Latino characters in the shows I

have chosen to analyze, Fez is the only male Latino whose presence lasts more than a few

episodes, and who is considered a part of the show’s main cast. I will end by briefly

81

referencing two Latino characters that appear in Parks and Recreation as a way of

broadening the scope of my analysis, despite those being very minor characters.

That ‘70s Show is a period sitcom that ran on Fox from 1998 until 2006, with a

total of eight seasons. The series focuses on the lives of six teen friends living in

(fictional) Point Place, Wisconsin from May 17, 1976 through December 31, 1979—

though the timeline is questionable since every season features seasonal holidays such as

Thanksgiving and Christmas and featured a number of historical inaccuracies (Cotter

2020). From the moment Fez is introduced in the show, he is associated with an almost

perverse obsession with sex and sexualizing (white) female bodies. He is not a charming

womanizer, but instead he is at best, creepy, at his worst, disturbingly obsessed with

objectifying his female friends and sex in general. Whereas Victoria Thomas describes

the Latin Lover as: “the man your mother warned you about…the man women yearned to

touch…the man other men yearned to become…a dark-eyed, dark-haired she-magnet,

utterly at ease in his abundant, freewheeling masculinity” (9), Fez considers himself to be

just that, but to his wiser/whiter friends, he is simply a joke. He might be the man

mothers warned you about—if only because they warned you against the advances of

strange men.

While Fez is one of the six members of the core group of characters in the show,

his plotlines regularly revolve around those of Eric Forman (Topher Grace), who is the

show’s leading protagonist. Like Glee’s Santana, Fez is primarily a backup character,

inserted for an easy joke about his lack of cultural understanding or his over-the-top

sexual appetite. In the show’s pilot, he is the last of the main cast to be introduced, not

82

appearing until midway through the episode with his first line being about Jackie’s

(played by then 14 year-old Mila Kunis) breasts: “I may not say this right because I am

new to English, but she has tremendous breasts, yes?” (“That ‘70s Pilot”). When Jackie

questions who this stranger is, her boyfriend, Michael Kelso (Ashton Kutcher),

introduces him: “Oh, that’s Fez, he’s a foreign exchange student” leaving Jackie to

respond, “Who did we exchange for him?” (“That ‘70s Pilot”) as if to say, how did we

get stuck with this creep? Instead of the Latin Lover that makes any woman swoon on

site, Fez incites disgust.

Part of Fez’s sex-mania deals with the fact that he is still a virgin for much of the

series. While his group of friends is clearly aware of Fez’s lack of sexual history, it is not

until the middle of the second season that Fez openly admits to what everyone else

already knows. In an animated version of “the circle”6 where the group is drawn to mimic

a Scooby Doo fashion to reflect their current state of intoxication/hallucination, Eric,

Hyde (Danny Masterson), Kelso, and Fez discuss Eric’s lackluster performance after

losing his virginity to Donna (Laura Prepon). After Hyde expresses that Eric’s problem

was losing his virginity to another virgin (claiming that was the point of middle-aged

hookers), Fez quickly chimes in his agreement: “Amen, brother! Because if there’s one

thing men like us know, it’s how to have sex” (“Afterglow”). His (animated face) then

falls and he reveals his big “secret”: “Oh, I cannot live with this lie! Everyone prepare to

be shocked. I, Fez, am still a virgin.” The camera then pans to Eric who tonelessly states,

6 Device used readily throughout the series and present multiple times per episode wherein a group of characters, usually the male teenagers, sit in a circle in Eric’s basement smoking marijuana. As the camera pans, it stops at each member as they speak, and an extreme wide-angle lens is used to add to the illusion of being under the influence.

83

“Gosh, my world no longer makes sense” and the conversation moves on to Eric’s

troubles. When the camera pans back to Fez, he tries to steer the conversation back to

himself: “Okay, maybe you did not hear me. Fez, the man you all revere, has still not had

sex” which Hyde promptly brushes off by telling him, “Yeah, heard you the first time”

and again moving on. The circle interlude ends with Fez trying one last time to make the

others listen to him saying, “Alright, you called my bluff. I am not really a virgin—yes I

am” (“Afterglow”). The scene demonstrates how Fez’s sexual history is of little

importance to the group, who often go into very intimate detail about their own sex lives.

Fez’s own “big moment” does not happen until halfway through the fifth season,

and even then, instead of being a grand romancer who sweeps his white female leading

lady off her feet, he is the passive agent in the entire interaction. When given the option

by his girlfriend, Nina (Joanna Canton), to further their relationship, Fez does not know

what to respond:

Nina: So, A: we can further explore our relationship, and hope that relieves the

tension, or B: I can fire you.

Fez: Is this some kind of trick?

Nina: It’s not a trick

Fez: Hmm, So, it is a trick. I choose B!

Nina: No! You choose A! (“Whole Lotta Love”)

Later in the episode, when confronting Nina about the experience and their mutual lack

of pleasure, Fez once again, lacks the confidence and forces Nina to take command:

84

Fez: Nina, I know what you’re going to say—the other night was awful, and you

just want to be friends.

Nina: No, I was going to say the other night was awful, and we should practice

and get better at it!

Fez: Oh, well, I have to say—I don’t hate the sound of that. So, should I make an

appointment or--? (“Whole Lotta Love”)

In both situations, Nina drags Fez into a kiss, forced to take action or else dealing with

Fez’s ineptitude and hesitance. His failure to perform to both partners’ satisfaction is

brought up when he discusses the moment with his friends.

After five seasons, when he finally gets to brag to his friends about finally

“becoming a man,” they doubt him, with Eric asking, “Wait, wait, this isn’t like the time

you bought a hamster, named it ‘Virginity,’ and then lost it, is it?” (“Whole Lotta Love”)

referencing the many times Fez has lied about his sexual prowess in order to impress his

friends. In relating the story to them, instead of what was meant to be a proud moment for

him, becomes further proof of Fez’s lack of sexual aptitude:

Fez: Then, we did it.

Kelso: Details, Fez! We need details!

Fez: Well, our faces didn’t line up right, so I kept bumping my chin on her nose.

And then there was some sounds.

Hyde: What kind of sounds?

Fez: Well, I will say this—it was not applause. There was no romantic music like

in the movies, so I had to hum. And then Nina told me to stop humming, and then

85

I started again without realizing it. And then she got mad, and then I think she got

sad.

Jackie: Oh well, don’t worry Fez, she probably just felt bad she was doing it with

a foreigner.

Fez: And then afterwards, I went into the bathroom and cried a little. And then I

snuck out the back door.

Donna: Poor Fez, well, you know, at least it couldn’t have been any worse.

Fez: I left my underwear in her bathroom. (“Whole Lotta Love”)

As the gang is talking and consoling Fez, the camera pans to their cringing faces as Fez

tells his story. Unlike the episode where Eric lost his virginity, which becomes the focal

storyline of the episode, when Fez loses his, only one scene is devoted to his rehashing

the events and then the rest of the characters move on—not without Jackie throwing in

the fact that Fez’s foreign-status was the likelihood of his issues.

Unlike the Latin Lover, whose Exoticness is part of his appeal, Fez’s foreign-

status is simply a running joke. Instead of the smooth, olive-skinned lover, Fez is the

dark-haired creepy friend who most likely comes from some backward, third-world

country. At the end of the fifth season, Fez faces deportation once he graduates from high

school, and he spends his last few days in America being extra creepy—starting with

taking inappropriate photos of Donna in her Catholic school-girl uniform: “Okay, now

cross and uncross your legs. Okay, now make a face like, like, ‘Oops, did I do something

bad?’ Okay now crawl to me. Good, good! Now crawl away from me, ooh, sexy!”

(“Immigrant Song”). When the group learns that Fez may be deported, Donna’s first

86

reaction is to be worried about how Fez is going to use the pictures he took of her: “Eric,

we can’t let this happen. If Fez goes back to his country with those pictures he took, my

panties are going to end up on a stamp!” (“Immigrant Song”). When the group goes off

for one last night of celebration before graduation and Fez’s deportation, Fez manages to

come across Donna naked, and again she tells Eric of her fears: “Fez is a good artist, he’s

gonna paint me onto a nudie poster and sell it to every gaucho in Argentina, or wherever

the hell he’s from. Eric, I’m going to be Miss Nude Argentina” (“Celebration Day”).

While both scenes are clearly meant to be jokes, they reflect the overall premise about

most jokes surrounding Fez: he must come from some backwater country, with little to no

actual civilization, and his perverse, sexual nature knows no bounds. The explicit sexual

nature of his character is also present in the jokes—he cannot stop himself from turning

everything into a sexual innuendo. For example, when discussing when he first met

Donna (and had walked in on her naked), he jokes, “What about the day I met you? All of

you. …now that’s a good memory, or should I say, mammary?” (“Class Picture”).

Fez’s over-the-top sexual immaturity stems from another aspect of his character

that often becomes a joke—his sexuality. As stated previously, the Latin Lover is a queer

figure in that he “exudes an unrestrained and ambiguous sexuality” (Pérez 453), in That

‘70s Show, Fez’s character is queer in that he demonstrates time and time again an

affinity for the non-heteronormative. Though instead of making him more appealing, it

makes Fez more of a joke. His effeminate nature marks him as less of a man than Eric,

Hyde, or Kelso. After learning that Eric was caught wearing Donna’s blouse in order to

87

cover his nudity, Eric jokes that he will soon be moving to Madison, Wisconsin where he

is free to wear women’s clothes all day long. Fez, intrigued, wants to know more:

Eric: Soon, I will be starting my new life in Madison, where if I so choose, I can

wear ladies’ clothes all I want.

Fez: Really? Where is this Madison? (“The Kids Are Alright”)

The camera then pans to Eric’s and Hyde’s disbelieving faces, forcing Fez to quickly

cover up his apparent predilection for wearing women’s clothing by claiming that by

marrying Eric’s sister, Laurie,7 in order to avoid deportation, he has clearly proven

himself to be a “man”: “So, I can go there and kick their dress-wearing asses! Guys come

on. I’m all man. I’m married to Eric’s slutty sister” (“The Kids Are Alright”). In order to

prove his “manliness,” he automatically switches to violence against those dress-wearing

pansies. When questioned about his new marriage, Fez reveals that she went on their

honeymoon to Cancun, but not alone because, “Oh, no. that would be crazy. She took her

friend Carlos along to keep an eye on her. But I paid for both of them, so everyone knows

who the man is in this deal” (“The Kids Are Alright”). Again, Fez feels the need to assert

his masculinity to his friends because of his actions. He is the “macho” in his “marriage”

to Laurie because he is the one who put in the money, like a “real” man is meant to do.

Despite Laurie’s alleged slut-status, when she finally confronts Fez, who has been

trying to sleep with her since they were married, she claims that he is beneath her very

low standards, claiming, “I’m not that trashy, I won’t sleep with you” (“I’m Free”).

7 Laurie Forman was originally played by Lisa Robin Kelly in her reoccurring role from seasons 1-5, and then replaced by Christina Moore in season 6, which is the last season to feature her character.

88

While Fez is “straight,” his inability to get women to sleep with him by their own

volition—he tries to get a girl to inadvertently pledge to sleep with him three times—

three because, “Well, because the first time I’ll be nervous, and then the second time I’ll

have to please her because I got nervous, and then the third time…the third time is when I

get funky” (“Immigrant Song”)—highlights that while he believes himself to be smooth

and a lady’s man, he is little more than a creepy joke.

Fez’s role as the dopey, horny Latin, not-so-much-a-Lover, renders him a safe

character. The audience cannot help but laugh at his antics and his constant failings.

However, as I will discuss in the following chapter, when Fez finally does manage to get

the girl of his dreams—Jackie—his character is rejected. Fez remains safe so long as he

remains a failure, but once attempts are made to normalize his behavior, he loses the

audience’s favor. Whereas Martinez-Cruz and Cruz argue that a Latin Lover’s nationless-

ness marks him as dangerous (208), as I will show in my subsequent analysis in Chapter

2, it is when the Midwestern iteration of the Latin Lover—one that is meant to a source of

humor—attempts to find himself at home in the US that he becomes dangerous.

Parks and Rec: A Brief Interlude

In order to conclude my analysis of the clowned Midwestern Latin Lover, I will

very briefly discuss the few male Latinx characters that pop up in Parks and Recreation:

Jhonny (JC Gonzalez) and Eduardo (Carlo Mendez)—two of April’s failed interests.

While they both have characteristics of the Latin Lover—they certainly fit the Latin part

89

well, neither character is meant to be taken seriously as a potential love interest for April,

they are mainly there for her to use and discard once they have served their purpose.

Jhonny appeared only in one episode in the second season, when Leslie hosts the

parks department from their sister city in Venezuela. When the delegates are being

introduced, Jhonny is left out, because, “He is our intern, Jhonny, he is worthless”

(“Sister City”). After hearing that he is “worthless” the camera pans to April who looks at

him with interest. When he later approaches April to impress her, he tells her how his

position is an envied post and proof of the connections he has in Venezuela: “En

Venezuela, internados en el gobierno son posiciones muy codiciadas. Tienes que ser muy

bien conectado;” April for her part sarcastically responds, “Sí, yo soy muy poderosa y el

mundo me tiene miedo” and then scares off her mild-mannered colleague Jerry (Jim

O’Heir) as proof of her “power” (“Sister City”). He is clearly enamored with April after

the interaction and later in the episode begs her to spend time with him, and when she

reveals she “sort of” has a boyfriend (Derek), he vows to kill him, which of course peaks

April’s interest given her character’s love of dark humor.

One thing that Jhonny and Eduardo share is that they both only speak in Spanish

with April. In “Sister City,” translations are provided for the audience to understand. The

subtitles in the episode are consistent and accurate, up until the end of the episode, when

Jhonny pleads with April to come to Venezuela with him. He tells her in Spanish: “Me

vuelves loco. Vente conmigo. Vivirás una vida de princesa. Yo me voy en un avión en

seis horas y si tú no estás, me voy a ahorcar. Vente por favor” which roughly translates

to: “You drive me crazy. Come with me. You will live a princess’s life. I am leaving on a

90

plane in six hours and if you are not there, I will hang myself. Come, please!” Such a

desperate declaration is made all the more dramatic by April’s simple “Nah” and then

walking away. The show, however, translates Jhonny’s speech as: “You drive me crazy!

Come away with me. You will live like a princess. I am only an intern, so my estate is not

as big as those of my superiors. I must have you. Please” (“Sister City”). The translation

errors have not been the subject of much debate (beyond a few Reddit discussion posts),

it is possible Jhonny was just too dark for the showrunners to keep that joke in English.

His willingness to kill and kill himself marks a desperation that is similar to That ‘70s

Show’s Fez—no Fez is not suicidal, but he is willing to make women uncomfortable if it

meant him getting some sort of sexual gratification. Jhonny’s desperation works for him

somewhat, in that the episode end with April sending Leslie a video message from

Jhonny’s estate in Venezuela where she plans to spend some time, though she is already

back by the following episode.

Venezuela becomes the place for April to find disposable love interests because in

the season premiere of the third season, after travelling to Venezuela for the summer—in

order to avoid Andy after she saw him and Ann kissing—she returns with Eduardo, her

new boyfriend (who lasts all of two episodes). When Andy confronts April and Eduardo,

telling April he will come back day after day until she agrees to go out with him,

Eduardo, who seems to barely understand/speak English asks what Andy is saying; April

tells him in Spanish that: “Él está pensando hacerse una mujer y quiere mi consejo” (“Go

Big or Go Home”). Eduardo, attempting to be supportive, tells Andy in his halting

English, “You should do it! Follow you dream” (“Go Big or Go Home”). Andy, being the

91

affable doofus that he is, takes this as a sign of Eduardo’s support of his plan to steal

April. Eduardo later appears in the third episode of the season, where he begins to bond

with Andy over their shared love of Dave Matthews. When he chooses to spend time with

Andy instead of April, claiming that they are bonding because Andy is a good guy, April

leaves in anger exclaiming “¡Para que te tengo aquí!” (“Time Capsule”). Eduardo is

subsequently dumped and shipped back to Venezuela off camera, with April stating that

Andy’s support of Eduardo is “what made me start to hate him” (“Time Capsule”). While

Eduardo’s relationship with April lasted longer than that of Jhonny’s with April, he too is

easily removed from the picture once he fails to make Andy jealous.

While Jhonny was a meek character—constantly begging to be involved in

April’s life and desperate to have her with him; Eduardo was more of the stereotypical

Latin Lover. He was not shown to have to pine/beg over April, he simply was a dark,

good-looking, exotic Other, meant to inspire Andy’s jealousy. It is only after he begins to

assert his independence from April and act beyond the role of foreign arm candy, that

April sends him back to where he belongs—far away from the mundane, white, Pawnee,

Indiana. Like Fez, Jhonny and Eduardo stand in as models for the Latin Lover that cannot

live up to the expectation—Jhonny because he is too desperate for love and Eduardo

because he turns out to be a simple, kind person who quickly loses his appeal.

Conclusion

How the mainstream media presents Latinxs and Latinidad to the larger public

cannot be ignored. The impact those images have on the social psyche of the US cannot

92

be understated. Latinxs are seen as threat because that is the message that the media

projects. As Leo Chavez notes, “The Latino Threat Narrative is pervasive even when not

explicitly mentioned. It is the cultural dark matter filling space with taken-for-granted

‘truths’ in debates over immigration on radio and TV talk shows, in newspaper editorials,

and on Internet blogs” (4). While Chavez was marking the trend in anti-Latinx sentiment

in the post 9/11 era, with Donald Trump’s 2015 winning presidential campaign, Chavez’s

work is given new life. Though Trump would never claim to be racist nor that he

employs racist rhetoric, by couching his language under the claims of “patriotism” and

“America first,” which are terms also vaulted by white supremacist groups, Trump has

enabled, “a rhetorical climate for white supremacy in public discourse” (Sanchez 45).

Though the shows analyzed in this chapter do not spout explicit racialized

rhetoric, the commonalties I have sought to understand, illustrate how the Midwest is still

read first as a predominately white space. While the Latinx characters analyzed within

this chapter are not all necessarily “threats” in their shows, by perpetuating common

tropes such as the tropical Latina and the Latin Lover, they are placing themselves within

a “safe” discourse. The slight variations made to these stereotypes present in Midwestern-

based television series reflect a cultural consumption of those stereotypes in order to use

them to promote a sense of “diversity.” These shows can avoid overt issues of race and

ethnicity because they employ characters of color. And yet, they employ them in tired

forms. Latinas cannot help but cause problems for their white colleagues and Latinos try

to live up to the Latin Lover persona but fail.

93

Glee for all that it was celebrated for showing LGBT+ relationships and for

making queer characters’ narratives central to the show, cannot help but present its one

Latina character as anything other than a problem. Yes, Santana is a lesbian character,

which is not common for Latina characters, and yet she is still rejected by her Latina

grandmother. Moreover, her character often revolves around drama and intrigue—she

causes the most problems for others. Switched at Birth, a teen drama that lives up to its

format, posits Regina Vasquez as the easy target for the other characters to blame

whenever there is a problem. Before it is even revealed that she knew about the hospital’s

mistake, she is portrayed as overly dramatic and suspicious. Since she is not the happy-

go-lucky Kathryn Kennish, she must be up to something. Parks and Recreation tries to

challenge the status quo by presenting a Latina who knows of and actively refuses to play

into the image of the “spicy” Latina, but as I will show in the following chapter, it only

manages to do so by eliminating the Latinidad from the show’s singular Latinx character.

As for Latino men, the options are very limited. That ‘70s Show presents

audiences with Fez, a perpetual foreigner who is also perpetually horny. He is a character

who at first glance, fits the image of the Latin Lover—dark, accented, foreign, exotic—

but the moment he opens his mouth the illusion is lost. He is a loser, not a lover. Parks

and Recreation introduces two Latinos as possible partners for April, but she rejects them

outright once she tires of them—or once Andy becomes available. The lack of male

Latino representation in these series is reflective of the overall lack of Latino

representation in film and television, and evidence of the fact that when Latinos are

94

present, they are forced to mold themselves to what the mainstream media expects of

them.

In the following chapter I will further tease apart the nuances of Latinidad as

presented in the shows discussed in this chapter. As I will show, the presence of

Latinidad is allowed, because it is something that can be controlled, and by controlled, I

mean erased. These characters are accepted and well-liked because they do not cause

quite a stir, and when they do, the audience is quick to reject them.

95

Chapter 2

Latinidad Served on the Side: The Blanqueamiento and Erasure of Latinx Images

in Midwestern US Popular Television

Fez: It’s my damn Latin pride.

Red: So, you’re Latin?

Fez: No, just my pride is. And I also have a Swiss sense of frugality

(“Who’s Been Sleeping Here?”)

While the representations of Latinidad in popular culture has always been a mixed

bag, in contemporary media caricatures of racial stereotypes have given way to political

correctness. For example, in 1999, when Cartoon Network acquired the rights of former

Warner Brothers cartoons, the network deemed the character of Speedy Gonzales or “the

fastest mouse in all of Mexico,” to be an “offensive ethnic stereotype of Mexicans” and

pulled the show from the airwaves (Fox News 2015). That is not to say that the question

of representation has been appropriately addressed across all of popular culture. As I have

shown in the previous chapter, in television series set in the Midwest, Latinx characters

are merely new forms of the same message—where Latinas are the instigators of drama

and intrigue, while also much less restrained in their sexuality than their white

96

counterparts and Latinos draw upon the image of the Latin Lover, but fail to be actual

lovers.

As I will show in this chapter, in recreating these easily consumable images of

Latinidad, these shows are constructing a version of Latinidad that is safe. That safety

stems mostly from the fact that for most of the Latinx characters I will come to analyze,

their Latinidad comes to mean very little. These characters are not the “bad hombres”

from Mexico coming to rape and murder American citizens. Instead, they are true

“Americans”—both in the socio-political context that they are all U.S. citizens, but also

that they have been assimilated so seamlessly into the cultural fabric of their social

context, that their Latinidad is erased entirely from their identity.

In order to understand how Latinidad is erased from the social narratives of the

shows I will be analyzing: Parks and Recreation, Switched at Birth, Glee, and That ‘70s

Show. I will first begin by discussing how the introduction of characters of color has

become the way that popular culture has allowed itself to proclaim a sense of social

diversity, without changing the social institutions in place nor threatening the ability of

the mainstream white audience to see itself represented in the media. As I will come to

discuss, even though a character is Latino/a, they are never so “ethnic” that a white

viewer would feel excluded from their narrative. As Rudine Sims Bishop wrote in regard

to the power of literature to recreate reality:

Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or

imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and

readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever

97

world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are

just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human

experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection, we can see our own

lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then,

becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in

books. (Bishop 1990)

For the white, dominant group, literature, and in the case of this study, television, opens

doors to various new worlds, through the safe lens of the white protagonist. They are not

threatened because what is narrated through text or recreated onscreen is a mirror of a

social reality that they are a part of and is comprehensive to them. In discussing the

narrative power of literature to allow a particular reader—one that comes from the

dominant social group—to find themselves mirrored in the stories they read, Bishop

questions where the reader from a non-dominant social group will find their mirror.

Likewise, in film and television, it is easy for the white viewer to see themselves

mirrored onscreen, but for the viewer/reader of color, they are much more limited in their

options. Bishop sees the need for more diversity in publications because “When there are

enough books available that can act as both mirrors and windows for all our children,

they will see that we can celebrate both our differences and our similarities, because

together they are what make us all human” (Bishop 1990). The same goes for film and

television—roles for Latinx actors and actors of color in general are severely limited, and

for much of the history of popular culture, limited to representations of the white man’s

imagined perception about minority experiences.

98

As I will show through my analysis of the four selected television series, the

portrayals of race and ethnicity are not meant to be depictions of the Latinx’s lived

experience, but one that allows for the white viewer to be able to safely interact with the

Other, without having to question their role in society. To do so, I will borrow the

concept of the narrative prosthesis, developed by disability theorists David T. Mitchell

and Sharon L. Synder, in order to discuss how in the contemporary “politically correct”

society of the U.S., diversity comes to stand as a narrative crutch—where it was once

disability, it is now a person’s ethnicity that serves as a plot device, one that has to be

discarded once it serves its purpose in order to maintain the right/white order.

Adapting the Narrative Prosthesis: From the Disabled to the Culturally Diverse

In their study of the narrative prosthesis, Mitchell and Snyder were examining the

“pervasiveness of disability characterization…in order to get at the primacy of

representations of disability in our national literature and to theorize its productive value

for writers and artists alike” (175). Their analysis covered the representations of disabled

characters throughout classical and contemporary literature and found that disability was

employed as a narrative crutch for a plot’s development. They argue that disability in

literature is perceived as a form of social deviance that can jumpstart a narrative:

“Deviance serves as the basis and common denominator of all narrative…Whereas a

sociality might reject, isolate, institutionalize, reprimand, or obliterate this

liability…narrative embraces the opportunity such a ‘lack’ provides—in fact, wills it into

existence—as the impetus that calls a story into being” (55).

99

Disability is a topic that is difficult to define (and whose definition goes beyond

the scope of this particular project) but has historically been used as a sign of difference,

either physical or mental, and perceived as an anomaly to those that are able-bodied.

Within its own terminology, dis-ability, the prefix “dis” marks a negation—the dis-abled

body is a negative of the abled body, and so is seen as the inferior human form.

Disability, is therefore, unfortunately usually associated with social stigma and serves as

a counternarrative to the normal body since, “the deficient body, by virtue of its

insufficiency, serves as a baseline for the articulation of the normal body” (Michell and

Synder 47). This does not mean that the “abled bodied” are perfectly normal, because

normalcy is nothing more than an idealized concept. Being “normal” is not actually

possible as Mitchell and Snyder demonstrate, “A normal body is a theoretical premise

from which all bodies must, by definition, fall short. The body is up against an

abstraction with which it cannot compete because the norm is an idealized quantitative

and qualitative measure that is divorced from (rather than derived from) the observation

of bodies” (47). Consequently, the supposed abnormal or disabled characters are actually

deviations from a constructed concept of the “normal” which is built upon an imagined

foundation.

In popular culture, the “normal” is that which mirrors the primary audience’s

lived experience, and in contemporary society, that is based on the primacy of whiteness.

While the audience is also still considered to be able-bodied, and that ableism is never

questioned, disabled narratives are much rarer than in literature. While historically in

literature, “Disability pervades literary narrative, first, as a stock feature of

100

characterization and, second, as an opportunistic metaphorical device” (Mitchell and

Synder 47), I argue that in popular culture, diversity has replaced disability as that

opportunistic device.

A push for “diverse casting” has been noted across popular culture media forms.

The 2014 GLAAD report: “2014 Where We Are on TV,” found that “ethnic and racial

diversity on primetime is improving for some groups,” (Kane et al. 5). More recently,

according to UCLA’s “2020 Hollywood Diversity Report,” “the march toward increasing

overall cast diversity in Hollywood films has been slow but steady. This trend is marked

most notably by the sharp decline of films with casts that are less than 11% minority—

the majority of all films in 2011—and the concurrent rise of top films with majority-

minority casts in recent years” (Hunt and Ramón 12). Despite the fact that “The

race/ethnic landscape of the U.S. is rapidly changing…Black adults 18+ on average

consume nearly thirteen and a half hours of media per day, almost two-and-a-half hours

more than the average adult” (Katsingris 9), the “imagined community” of American

viewership is still considered white. The “average adult” viewer is meant to be a white

male.

As discussed in Chapter 1, the racialized dynamics of the U.S. social imaginary

views whiteness as the “unmarked” body, whereas the racialized body “are typified as

human matter out of place: dirty, dangerous, unwilling, or unable to do their bit for the

nation-state” (Urciuoli 16). In contemporary media, the racialization of Latinx bodies has

taken form through its exoticization, which bringing it back to the concept of the

narrative prosthesis, Mitchell and Synder demonstrate the common use of disability in

101

literature to introduce the exotic, because that which is considered Other, sells: “A

subject demands a story only in relation to the degree that it can establish its own extra-

ordinary circumstances. The normal, routine, average, and familiar fail to mobilize the

storytelling effort because they fall short of the litmus test of exceptionality” (Mitchell

and Synder 54). Where they argue that literature manipulates the disabled character into

disrupting a normative narrative, in popular culture I have found that characters of color

are used in the same way. Exotic characters thus create the story, because what is

different requires being narrated. It is not the normality that the narrative creates but the

abnormal as Mitchell and Snyder demonstrate: “The anonymity of normalcy is no story at

all. Deviance serves as the basis and common denominator of all narrative […]

Difference demands display. Display demands difference” (55). That need to put

difference on display explains in part the numerous examples of Latin Lovers and Latina

vixens in film and television, which like disabled characters in literature, have been a

“vehicle of an insatiable cultural fascination” (61). Disability, just like race and ethnicity,

lands just outside of the reach of the cultural understanding of “normal” society, which

makes it all the more desirable to mainstream audiences to view and consume.

In order to matter, the Latinx representation in popular culture, just like the

disabled body in literature, initially is a space of difference—something other than the

norm which deserves to be included in the narrative since, “Bodies show up in stories as

dynamic entities that resist or refuse the cultural scripts assigned to them […] the

disabled body represents a potent symbolic site of literary investment” (49). As discussed

in the previous chapter, the Latinx characters of note (Regina Vasquez, Santana Lopez,

102

April Ludgate, and Fez), each serve a particular function when they are initially

introduced—they are the angry instigators of intrigue and drama, or they provide an easy

cultural punchline. I argue that this desire to include Latinx characters that perpetuate the

“expected” roles that Latinxs are meant to play in society reflects how, while Latinxs are

a site of cultural fascination, that does not mean that those who deviate from the normal

are accepted by society. They are still forced to live on the margins of society by their

otherness. These “diverse” characters can be introduced, but they have to conform to

certain expected standards in order to remain in place. As Mitchell and Synder note of

disabled characters, “the deficiency inaugurates the need for a story but is quickly

forgotten once the difference is established” (56), in other words, a “diverse” character

can be introduced in a text (or in this case, a television show), but that character’s

difference cannot become a focal point of their identity.

In popular culture, a Latinx character may initially perform their Latinidad in

some limited capacity—someone may note their “ethnic” looks or mention their accent or

the character may say something in Spanish—but such performances are limited and not

repeated. This also works to demonstrate that Latinidad serves as a “narrative prosthesis”

in popular culture because it “forwards the notion that all narratives operate out of a

desire to compensate for a limitation or to reign in excess” (Mitchell and Snyder 53).

Although social deviations are fundamental to creating a narrative, or in the case of

popular culture, of being able to claim a “diverse” cast, that abnormality/diversity has to

be later forgotten, because “Disability inaugurates narrative, but narrative inevitably

punishes its own prurient interests by overseeing the extermination of the object of its

103

fascination” (Mitchell and Snyder 57). According to Mitchell and Snyder, normalcy is

restored to a narrative through “the erasure of disability via a ‘quick fix’ of an impaired

physicality or intellect removes an audience’s need for concern or continuing vigilance”

(58)—as I will show in my analysis of the selected television series, a Latinx character

undergoes a similar process of being “normalized,” though in their case, it is more an

erasure of their performed Latinx identity than any actual physical changes. Either way,

the process of eliminating a character’s “deviance”—whether physical, mental, or ethno-

racial—is implying an almost violent process: “the repair of deviance may involve an

obliteration of the difference through a ‘cure’” (53). One way I argue that “problem” of

Latinidad is “cured” in popular culture is through blanqueamiento—a social whitening—

of a character, most often by having the Latinx characters married off to their white

costars. In the case where that Otherness is not fixed, as I will discuss in my analysis of

That ‘70s Show’s Fez, there is a pushback against that disregard for the norm. These

characters have to be “cured” since, “a marred appearance cannot ultimately be allowed

to return home unscathed” (56). The difference has to be reinstated within normal, but

when that is disregarded and the deviant character (Fez) remains “unscathed”—and even

worse, ends up with a white character—their narratives are rejected by the audience since

the deviant character “is either left behind or punished for its lack of conformity” (56).

In the following sections, I will discuss how the shows I have chosen to analyze

addresses the issue of Latinidad in order to “correct” the social order. Given that these

shows are set in the Midwest, there is an increased need to “normalize” the narratives in

order for them to reflect the perceived notion of the Midwest as the American heartland,

104

because as Mitchell and Snyder note, “the story rehabilitates or fixes the deviance in

some manner” (53) and in doing preserves the whiteness of the Midwest in order to

diffuse the Latinx threat, thereby promoting “the extermination of the deviant as a

purification of the social body” (54). As I will show, these Latinx characters are

“purified” through a process of blanqueamiento, or social whitening, where the

characters’ vestiges of Latinidad are stripped away until they can be easily incorporated

into the white narrative of their shows. I will begin by discussing the blanqueamiento of

Parks and Recreation’s April Ludgate as she becomes April Ludgate-Dwyer.

Overshadowing Latinidad: April’s Marriage to Whiteness

As mentioned in Chapter 1, unlike some of the other female characters I analyze,

Parks and Rec’s April Ludgate-Dwyer is a difficult character to nail down. The character,

as portrayed by Aubrey Plaza, maintains some of the stereotypes perpetuated in popular

culture against Latina women, while at the same time, entering into that conversation in

order to disrupt those racialized depictions of feminine Latinidad. While the character of

April can be read as subversive in some regards, what she shares in common with other

Latinas in Midwestern-set television series, is the inevitable erasure of her Latinx

identity, not that it was ever a major plot point to begin with in the series.

April’s character was initially a minor role in the series. While Plaza’s

performance of April as standoffish and uncaring is present since the beginning of the

series, only an informed audience would be aware that it is also a Latinx performance. As

Plaza notes in an interview with Cosmopolitan for Latinas magazine, “A lot of people

105

don’t assume I’m Puerto Rican because I’m faired skinned” (Moreno 2017). When

questioned about my own research, I have had many surprised reactions whenever I

mention studying Latinx performances in Parks and Rec, because many forget that both

Plaza and April are Latinas. In Chapter 3, I will go into further analysis about the episode

“Sister City,” which is the first, and only direct mentioning April does of her Latinx

background. In that episode, April reveals that her mother is Puerto Rican, which she

explains in a talking head, is why she is so “lively and colorful” (“Sister City”), which the

audience is meant to understand as a joke given April’s overall preferences for dark

humor. While April mentions her mother, Rita (Terri Hoyos) in the episode, she does not

appear onscreen until the end of the second season, in the 21st episode, “94 Meetings,”

when April’s boss, Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman), goes to “Castle Ludgate” in order to

convince April to return to work after he regrets firing her. Rita immediately welcomes

Ron into her home, offering him a drink, and rushing to get April for him, all the while

presenting herself as welcoming and kind, a generally kind person that stands as a polar

opposite to April’s aggressive and sarcastic demeanor. While April never seems to seek

her parent’s approval, the episode reveals how April is often motivated to seek the

approval of those she works with—when Ron tells April she is “Good girl,” for not

revealing his secret identity8 to the rest of the Parks and Recreation department, and also

for agreeing to return to work, the camera pans to a close up of April quickly trying to

hide her smile after being praised by Ron.

8 Ron moonlights as a jazz musician name Duke Silver, which is kept secret from most of his coworkers until the end of the sixth season. April in the episode “94 Meetings” tells Ron she knew he was Duke Silver the moment she met him—her mother owns all his CD’s—and had kept it to herself the entire time.

106

April’s mother reappears in the ninth episode of the third season, “Andy and

April’s Fancy Party,” as an attendee of the couple’s “fancy party” which turns out to be

their wedding. She does not have any lines in the episode, and the camera pans to her

only once, after Andy promises in his vows to protect April from any danger: “I vow to

protect you from danger, and I don’t care if I have to fight an ultimate fighter, or a bear,

or him, your mom—I would take them down” (“Andy and April’s Fancy Party”). After it

is revealed in the episode that the party is meant to be a wedding, instead of April’s

mother being the one to help her get ready/give her advice, it is Leslie that spends the

majority of the episode trying to dissuade April from marrying Andy so quickly, which

Leslie sees as a terrible mistake, claiming, “I love April and Andy, I want them to stay

together, and that is why I have to stop their wedding” (“Andy and April’s Fancy Party”).

After her brief appearance, this is the last time that Rita Ludgate appears in the series.

April vaguely references her father later in the series, he is paying for her college tuition

and she offers to have him pay for Andy’s as well, but her mother is never brought up.

Just as April’s Latinidad is erased, so too are her biological links to her Latinx heritage.

April’s reliance on her white coworkers and husband is part of how I interpret the

“normalization” of her Latinx character to take place. Her Latinidad serves as a narrative

prosthesis in that it only comes up when it makes for an interesting plot device—such as

in the episode “Sister City,” where she serves as translator and interpreter between the

Parks and Recreation departments of Pawnee, Indiana and Boraqua, Venezuela.

Similarly, in the episode “94 Meetings,” it serves to introduce April’s mother as someone

107

who is the polar opposite of April. Unlike her daughter, Rita is the lively and colorful

Puerto Rican that April’s characterization tries to avoid.

April is shown early on to be an independent character, her standoffish-ness

makes it difficult for her coworkers to get emotionally close to her, but she does create

meaningful attachments to the other characters in time. While it takes time for some

characters to get close to April, she is shown to be partial to Ron from the beginning and

begins to flirt with Andy early on in the second season. Moreover, once she is shown to

care for Leslie, she is extremely devoted to her, as seen in the season six premiere

episode where she reveals to Leslie that she had secretly nominated her for an award

from the International Coalition of Women in Government, and at the end of the episode,

reads to Leslie the nomination letter she wrote, because she sees that Leslie is “getting

sad about how stupid and lame people are, and that is my job, not yours” (“London: Parts

1 & 2”). In the letter she reveals all that she admires about Leslie—how she is caring,

helpful, and motivated:

She cares about everything and everyone in our town. I don’t know how she does

it. People come to her with the pettiest, stupidest problems, and she cares—like,

really, actually, cares—what happens to them. And if you’re lucky enough to be

her friend, your life gets better every day…There is something wonderful about

seeing someone who has found her true purpose on earth…for Leslie, her true

purpose on earth, her true meaning, is making people’s lives better. That’s what I

love about her, and that's why she deserves this award. (“London: Parts 1 & 2”)

108

But of course, being April, she cannot help expressing her emotions so fully without

reverting back to her snarky self and claims that she signed the letter, “Sincerely, Satan.”

While it is definitely a moving moment in the series, and one of the few instances where

April makes herself vulnerable to those she cares about, it shows how those in the Parks

and Recreation Department are more of a family than her own as she is only ever

vulnerable to them, and only references her family in disparaging tones. April’s character

can pass as white because she is most at home amongst the other white characters.

Characters like April are able to find themselves most at home amongst white

Americans because of the (slowly) changing perception in the U.S. of its former white-

black racial dichotomy. As Ginetta Candelario writes, “US society is transforming from a

White/non-White binary system to a Black/non-Black one in which Latinas/os and Asian

Americans have been and will increasingly become incorporated into Whiteness. This is

so because both they and the majority White society have a vested interest in their

whitening” (344). Returning to the concepts laid out by Leo Chavez about the Latino

Threat Narrative, which argues that in the national imaginary of the U.S. about Latinxs,

“Latinos are unwilling or incapable of integrating, of becoming part of the national

community” (3), what is seen in Parks and Recreation is an attempt to ameliorate that

threat. If the Latinx can be adopted into white culture, then they no longer pose a threat.

This is possible for a Latinx character because of the possibility for Latinxs to “unbecome

as well as become Latinos over time” (Marrow 40). As Helen Marrow explains, for some

Latinxs, they can “unbecome” Latinx according to how they are racialized according to

the U.S. (white) perception of them:

109

incorporation into a minoritized Hispanic/Latino group depends more on what

immigrants are perceived to look like by U.S. natives in racial terms, rather than

on linguistic or nativity differences that fade over time. By the second generation

when…ties to being born in Latin America and speaking a foreign language have

diminished, the racial logic of external categorization remains as the principal

axis determining where U.S. natives see them…very light-skinned or very dark-

skinned children of Latin American immigrants are likely to be perceived more as

white or black and less as Hispanic/Latino as English replaces foreign languages

and U.S. citizenship replaces immigrant status, unless they continue to look

Hispanic/Latino, mestizo, brown, multiracial, and other such classifications.

(Marrow 63)

As mentioned above, Plaza herself has stated that she often was overlooked as Latina

growing-up, demonstrating how “easy” it is for some Latinxs to “pass” as white.

In the show, other than referring to herself as part Puerto Rican in one episode,

the interplay of April’s Latinidad with her character’s identity is never mentioned. As

Mitchell and Snyder note, difference/deviance is introduced in a narrative, in this case the

April’s Latinx heritage, and then quickly forgotten (56) in order to for that difference to

be normalized. April’s Latinidad marks her as “different” and not only ethnically from

her fellow coworkers, but also from other Latinxs—she is not one of those

“stereotypical” Latinxs—she is not hot and spicy, instead she is more doom and gloom.

While it is commendable that the show posits April as a character that challenges the

gendered stereotypes of Latinas in media, it also serves to show that the only

110

“acceptable” Latinxs are those that can “pass.” April’s Latinx identity serves as a

narrative prosthesis in the show because that which marks her as ethnically/racially

“Other” is a difference that can only be sustained for so long, which is why it is only

mentioned in a single episode that does not serve to move the narrative plot forward.

“Sister City” is a standalone episode where the main plot of the episode is divorced from

the overall plot of the show since it could easily be removed from the show’s trajectory

and not cause any plot holes to develop. Just like April does not rely on her Latinidad as a

major part of her identity, the show does not rely on this particular episode to drive the

rest of the story forward—it is a “fun” interlude, but one that can easily be overlooked in

the series’ seven-season trajectory.

Another way that the show manages to “correct” April’s Latinx identity is through

her relationships—her longest lasting relationships are primarily with white characters.9

In marrying Andy Dwyer in the third season, she marries into a large, white, Midwestern

family, solidifying her place within white society, and entering into the social discourse

of blanqueamiento—by marrying lighter/whiter she is ensuring even more social mobility

for the children she has with Andy in the series finale (Candelario 341). As the Pew

Research Center has found, while second generation Latinxs (the U.S. born children of at

least one immigrant parent—in other words, April) have a Hispanic self-identification

rate of about 92%, that percentage drops to 77% by the third generation (that of April’s

children), and by the fourth or higher generations, only around half of U.S. adults with

9 As noted in Chapter 1, April enters into two different relationships with Latino characters but neither relationship lasts beyond two episodes, whereas her polyamorous relationship with Ben and Derek lasts for the majority of the first two seasons, and her relationship with Andy begins in the third season and continues throughout the rest of the show’s history.

111

Latinx ancestry claim they are Latinx/Hispanic (Lopez et al. 2017). The Latinx Threat is

therefore mitigated in Parks and Recreation by having the audience be able to forget that

April is meant to be a Latinx character.

While April’s character in Parks and Recreation was socially whitened in order to

fit the image of Midwestern America, the show at least hired a Latina actress to play a

Latina character. As I will show in my analysis of Switched at Birth, the question of

Latinidad becomes so whitewashed, that white, Anglo characters are able to portray

Latina characters without any pushback. Instead, the show promotes the White Latina as

the “answer” to the “racial problem.”

Switched at Birth Rights the Racial Wrongs

In Chapter 1, when discussing Switched at Birth, the primary focus was on the

character of Regina Vasquez, as she is one of the few “Latina” Latinx characters on the

show—and by that, I mean a Latina actress playing a Latina character. As previously

mentioned, the “switch” occurs between two families that are meant to be polar opposites

of the other: one is a White, well-to-do, religious, conservative, upper-middle class

family—the Kennishes—living in the wealthy (white) Mission Hills10 suburb of Kansas

City, Kansas. On the other side of the switch are the Vasquez’s—Latina, working class,

liberal, atheist, and living in “East Riverside”11 where there are bars on the windows and

police sirens blaring at all hours. Daphne Paloma Vasquez, played by Katie Leclerc who

10 This same residential area was ranked by Forbes as the third most affluent neighborhood in the U.S. according to the 2010 Census (Vardi 2011). 11 It is possible that this area is meant to represent the city of Riverside, Missouri, which is part of the Kansas City metropolitan area that the show is meant to represent, but the connection is not clear.

112

is of French-Canadian descent, is the daughter Regina raises due to the accidental switch

and claims her to be Latina, and throughout the series claims both a White identity and

Latinx identity according to what best suits her needs in a given context. Bay Kennish,

played by Vanessa Marano who is of Italian descent, is meant to be the quarter-Puerto

Rican birth daughter of Regina who is raised “White” and becomes Latina as she learns

of the switch. Bay learns to become Latina throughout the series and plays up her

Latinidad in order to distance herself from her “perfect” family (the Kennishes) and as a

way of explaining why she has always felt “different.” As I will show, the series utilizes

Latinidad as a way of introducing something foreign and exotic to the mundane, quiet,

White world of the Kennishes, but which is then mitigated as secondary to the main

source of difference in the series—Daphne’s deafness and the introduction of the deaf

community of Kansas City. Showrunners can only seem to be able to handle one cause of

difference at a time and so Latinx storylines fall to the side in order to respectfully

address deaf issues. And while it is commendable for the show to focus on the deaf

community—which so rarely is ever represented on screen—it would have made a

greater socio-cultural impact if the deaf character actually were Latina. Moreover, the

show’s “most Latina” character is then treated as a traitor—labelled la Malinche by those

she once considered friends—to her community by working alongside a contractor in

order to “better” her former barrio. As a narrative prosthesis, Latinidad in the show works

to normalize itself.

From the beginning of the series, “correcting” the mistake made by the hospital

which allowed for a white family to raise a “Latinx” baby and a Latina woman to raise a

113

white baby and learning to live with that new reality has been the focal point of the show.

Bay initially asks her parents to go through with a DNA test in order to address her

inability to “fit in” amongst the Kennishes. When John Kennish first meets Adrianna

Vasquez (Ivonne Coll), Regina’s mother, Adrianna notes that now all the questions and

doubts surrounding Daphne’s parentage are made clear:

Adrianna: Suddenly a lot of things are making sense.

John: I guess we’re all wondering how the hell we didn’t know, right? (“This Is

Not a Pipe”)

In other words, John should have realized he was raising a quarter-Puerto Rican baby,

just as Adrianna and Regina should have noticed that they were raising a blonde, blue-

eyed Anglo baby given that both Regina and Bay’s biological father, Angelo Sorrento

(Giles Marini), have olive-toned skin and dark hair and eyes. Likewise, Bay’s biological

parentage does not fully address her feelings of otherness, given that throughout the

series, she is noted for having alabaster and porcelain-like skin color, and yet she claims

she is not White whenever it is used to signify her privilege.12 In the series premiere,

when Bay goes to East Riverside to see where she was meant to live, she is assumed to be

looking for drugs by another resident, Ty Mendoza (Blair Redford):

Ty: It’s my neighborhood and I don’t like seeing rich white girls slumming it

looking for dime bags.

Bay: I’m not looking for pot and I’m not a rich white girl.

12 Not only does the Kennish family live in the upscale Mission Hills, but John Kennish is a former MLB star and owner of a number of small, successful businesses and by the second season, becomes a state Senator.

114

Ty: Really? […] Oh, you know Daphne and Regina? Should I tell them you

stopped by? You sure look like a rich, white girl to me. (“This Is Not a Pipe”)

Though Bay has only just learned of her Latinx heritage, she latches onto her “Latinidad”

in order to contradict who she was raised to be—she is not privileged and white because

she is now Latina.

While Daphne rushes to embrace her new family, asking to lead the daily blessing

before dinner, despite being raised atheist, and considering attending the elite hearing

school that both Bay and her brother Toby (Lucas Grabeel) attend, Bay is not as

accepting as Daphne about the changes in her life. When reminded by Kathryn that she is

still family, and nothing changes that, Bay reminds her of everything that had changed in

just one meeting with Daphne and Regina: “Nothing has changed? I just found out my

middle name’s Paloma. I’d probably be a vegetarian, and I’m supposed to have grown up

in East Riverside, the daughter of a half-Puerto Rican single mother hairdresser. But

aside from that, nothing’s changed” (“This Is Not a Pipe”). She also uses her newfound

identity to act out against the Kennishes’s conservative raising:

Kathryn: You pierced your nose without asking me?

Bay: Yep.

Kathryn: Bay [Bay takes out a cigarette] what are you doing?

Bay: Just living the life I was supposed to live.

For Bay, who has no idea what living in East Riverside or being the daughter of a “half-

Puerto Rican single mother hairdresser” entails, she ignorantly reduces Regina’s

mothering skills to nothing, and implies that being even a quarter-Latina means that she

115

would be heavily pierced and a smoker. When she manages to put aside her presumptions

about what her life should have been like, she returns occasionally to East Riverside in

order to gain “authentic” life experience:

Bay: I love this place it’s so authentic—

Ty: That’s what rich people say when a place is rundown.

Bay: You know what I mean, it just, it feels real, like, real people come here.

(“Portrait of My Father”)

By real, she means low-income and non-white—her “real” people.

While Bay rarely is confronted with her Latinidad—as previously stated, she is

phenotypically, very white—she is still racialized, though only in one episode in the

entire five-season series. In the first-season episode, “Las dos Fridas,” Kathryn’s mother,

Bonnie (Meredith Baxter), visits in order to meet her “real” granddaughter Daphne.

While visiting, though she treats Bay as she normally would, she offers Daphne a family

heirloom that initially was meant to go to Bay. When Kathryn confronts Bonnie as to

why she did not give the heirloom to Bay, Bonnie remarks that she is not blood, and that

such things need to be kept within the real family. As Kathryn claims that Bay is her real

daughter, Bonnie attempts to shut her down, because she can no longer see Bay the same

way now that she knows that Bay is Other by blood. Bay’s biological race and ethnicity

means she is no longer good enough to be considered family (all of which Bay

overhears). Additionally, throughout the episode Bonnie makes casual remarks about

Daphne’s intelligence—surprised she came out so smart despite her circumstances, while

also remarking that Bay has always struggled in school, and now she understands the

116

reason, linking Daphne’s intelligence to her whiteness and Bay’s deficits to her

Latinidad. The incident with her grandmother leads Bay to reflecting on her former white

privilege and how she has seemingly lost that, telling Kathryn: “I’m not like her, I’m not

like you. I’m a whole other race. My name is supposed to be Vasquez. Grandma is not

going to be the last person who automatically thinks that I’m bad at school or illegal or

whatever. Mom, I have never had to think about what that feels like until now, have

you?” (“Las dos Fridas”). Since Kathryn has little experience in regard to being racially

profiled, Bay turns to Regina for comfort and solace, in order to better understand how to

deal with others labelling her Latina and what being Latina entails:

Regina: Being Latina isn’t some sort of program you can download into your

brain like in the Matrix…it’s a culture, I mean, you live it and learn about it.

Bay: I’ve known about being part Puerto Rican for a little while now, and I guess

I never thought about what it meant until I heard Grandma say what she said.

Regina: Most of the time when people say things like that, it’s more ignorance

than out of meanness.

Bay: You’re taking this way better than I thought.

Regina: When Daphne got her first hearing aids, and we were learning to sign?

People would just stare. It made me so angry…but it didn’t make me feel any

better, and they still stared. (“Las dos Fridas”)

For Regina, who (knowingly) raised a white child as Latina, a person’s Latinidad is a

learned experience, not associated to one’s origins by blood, but the environment in

which they were raised. For Regina, Latinidad is not a question of “nature versus

117

nurture,” it is simply nurture. Bay can nurture her inherent Latinidad by learning about

her Puerto Rican heritage, just as Daphne can claim Latinidad by being raised in a Latinx

household. Regina’s response to Bay’s situation is to change the discourse towards

Daphne’s situation, which is a common occurrence in the show. While the show

discusses Latinidad and issues of race and ethnicity, they are always secondary to the

issues faced by someone who is Deaf. In the show, Deafness and Latinidad are posited as

two facets of one’s identity that cannot occur at once. Daphne is not characterized as a

Deaf Latina, but as Deaf or as Latina, depending on the social context.

In the show’s premiere, Bay reaches out to Daphne about how she feels now that

she knows about the switch. When Bay asks Daphne, “Did you know? Growing up, did

you ever feel different,” Daphne responds, “Well, yeah, I’m Deaf” (“This Is Not a Pipe”).

Growing up (white) in a predominately Latinx neighborhood, Daphne claims that her

feelings of Otherness stemmed from her hearing loss, not her heritage. Upon learning that

Daphne is Deaf, John and Kathryn hope to set her up with a cochlear implant in order to

provide Daphne with a “normal” life, leading to Regina having to school John into how

to live with a daughter who is “different”:

Regina: The Cochlear implant.

John: Yeah, that thing. That’s amazing right? So anyway listen, I know that the

surgery is very expensive, but I just—

Regina: It’s about 100-grand with speech therapy and follow-up.

118

John: Yeah, I know, and maybe it wasn’t something that you were able to offer

Daphne, which I completely understand, but I just want you to know that Kathryn

and I—

Regina: If I had wanted it, I would have found a way to get it for her.

John: Why wouldn’t you want it for her?

Regina: You think she needs to be fixed, right? Daphne is comfortable being deaf.

She likes it.

John: Oh, come on, no one likes being deaf […] isn’t it worth it? The rest of the

world can hear and now she can join it.

Regina: You just found out you have this kid, and you want her to be just like

you, I get it. But Daphne will never be like you. (“This Is Not a Pipe”)

Regina claims that Daphne will never be like the Kennishes yet disregards all the ways

that she has adapted to her new family. She claims that it is Daphne’s deafness that will

always mark her as different from her new family, instead of her ethnicity. Since Daphne

cannot claim a racial connection to Regina, her Latinidad is forgotten in favor of her

deafness as a marker of difference.

Initially for the Kennishes, Daphne’s Deafness was a problem to be fixed—they

have the means to make Daphne as “normal” as possible and cannot understand why

Regina would not want that for her daughter. As the show progresses, they learn more

about the Deaf community and Deaf culture, even learn American Sign Language, to

better communicate with Daphne in her native language. They feel no such qualms about

her Latinidad however, because once they remove Daphne from East Riverside, they can

119

forget that Daphne is considered Latina by Regina and Adrianna. There is no effort from

any of the Kennishes to learn Spanish or learn about Puerto Rican culture, because they

can simply ignore that facet of her identity.

When Daphne does mention her upbringing, she refers to herself as Latina, often

as a way of showing she is not like other rich, entitled, white girls (in other words, Bay).

She uses her claims to a Latinx upbringing as a way of demonstrating she is not from

some rich, white neighborhood, but a down-to-earth, girl from the streets of Kansas

City—despite the fact that she does live in a rich, white, upscale neighborhood. In the

episode, “Las dos Fridas,” when Daphne is sent to clean up graffiti in East Riverside, she

encounters a former friend, Monica (Natalie Amenula), who questions why Daphne is

back:

Monica: They punish you by making you “give back to the ‘hood”?... Even her

name’s fancy, and don’t you get like that just because you live in Mission Hills

now, all right?

Daphne: I’m the same Daphne I was before. My name is still Vasquez.

Monica: Till you change it to something white. You never looked like any

Vasquez I ever knew anyway. (“Las dos Fridas”)

For Monica, Daphne’s whiteness allows her a way out of East Riverside, which also

means it creates a barrier for her to return, telling Daphne, “This ain’t the Wizard of Oz

güera, you can’t go home again,” (“Las dos Fridas”). For Daphne, her childhood

experience growing up in the barrio of East Riverside should grant her the power to come

and go as she chooses, however, by Daphne choosing to present herself as white and

120

Kennish, she is ignorant of the privilege she is afforded in being able to do so—she can

choose how to self-identify, whereas many other Latinxs, who fit the mold of the Latin

look, are not afforded the same option.

Daphne is again forced to confront her whiteness in the third season when she is

applying for college. Regina encourages Daphne to apply for a Latina scholarship

because she does not want John and Kathryn to pay her way through college since

according to Regina, “I taught Daphne if it’s worth having, it’s worth effort and sacrifice.

Giving her a blank check for college is the opposite of that…we’re supposed to teach her

to be responsible for herself” (“Oh, Future!”). Instead of wanting Daphne to rely on the

Kennishes’s wealth, she encourages Daphne to apply for the “Kansas Latina Merit

Award.” When Daphne raises doubts about qualifying for the “Latina” part of the

scholarship, Regina tells her, “You are Latina because that is the culture you were raised

in,” that seems good enough for Daphne who boldly claims, “If I got an interview I know

I could nail it” (“Oh, Future!”). Though Regina and Daphne see no issue in her applying

for the scholarship, Sharee (Bianca Bethune), Daphne’s African-American lacrosse

teammate, raises some concerns:

Daphne: I’m interviewing for the Kansas Latina Merit Award.

Sharee: Excuse me, you’re not Latina.

Daphne: My last name is Vasquez!

Sharee: But you’re supposed to be a Kennish…

Daphne: Well I didn’t know that for 16 years! I grew up Puerto Rican with a

Puerto Rican mom with a Puerto Rican last name.

121

Sharee: But when people look at you, they see a white girl.

Daphne: Not in East Riverside, people knew me there.

Sharee: But in the rest of the world, if you walk into a store with a big coat on and

some girl with dark hair and dark skin walks into a store with a big coat on,

you’re not gonna have 10 salespeople follow you around. She will.

Daphne: But that’s about skin color, not about being Latina. Some Latinas are

blonde, some are redheads!

Sharee: But what I’m saying is, you’re not even that. You’re not Latina.

Daphne: According to who?

Sharee: What do you want me to say?

Daphne: If you were me, would you have applied for the scholarship?

Sharee: Yes, because I need all the breaks I can get. Your dad, he’s a state senator

and you live in Mission Hills, what breaks do you need?

Daphne: But that’s not me—Mission Hills, rich white person. That’s not who I

am, not inside. Even if it’s what I should have been.

In this exchange, Sharee, an African-American youth from a working-class background,

seemingly takes offense at Daphne’s labelling herself Latina. For Sharee, it is an issue of

race, whereas for Daphne (and Regina) it is simply a matter of culture. Daphne does raise

valid issues about race in regard to Latinidad—being Latinx is considered an ethnicity

not a race according to the U.S. Census, which only lists White, Black or African

American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or Other

Pacific Islander as the official race classifications (US Census Bureau 2020). Going back

122

to Valerio-Jiménez, Vaquera-Vásquez, and Fox’s definition of Latinx from the

Introduction, “Latina/o does not refer to a shared set of cultural values or heritage.

Rather, it is a racialized and politicized concept, produced through everyday experiences

and social interactions in specific historical and geographical settings” (11), so in theory,

Daphne could be considered Latina through her everyday experiences and social

interactions, which would have been true of her life in East Riverside. But as Sharee

points out, her father is a white state senator, and she is a Mission Hills resident. As

Orozco and Páez point out, Latinidad is defined in part by, “the experience of

immigration” and “the processes of racialization” (9), that Latinxs experience in their

everyday lives. Daphne can claim a cultural connection to Latinidad, but given that by

blood she is a Kennish, she is not subjected to the same racialization that most Latinxs

experience. For Daphne, her ethno-racial reality is not that she is a light-skinned Latina,

but that biologically, she is White.

When the moment comes for Daphne’s interview, the camera focuses first on

Daphne, then pans to a series of young Latinas, all with dark complexions and dark, thick

hair, as if to show the audience, these are the real Latinas. When asked by her interviewer

if she has ever felt limited by her deafness, Daphne responds, “Sometimes. People see

hearing aids or see you signing, and they think something’s wrong with you or they feel

sorry for you. When I tried to get a job at a kitchen one summer, I kept getting turned

down when I said I was deaf” (“Oh, Future!”). When asked if she had experienced any

similar instances of discrimination because of her Latinidad, Daphne is silent. She has

nothing to say. The interviewer explains to Daphne that the scholarship was designed to

123

help Latinas who had been “overlooked or passed over because they’re Latina,” causing

Daphne to defensively respond with, “So, I’m not Latina if I haven’t been a victim

because of it?” (“Oh, Future!”). Daphne defends herself by claiming her Puerto Rican

heritage is a large part of her identity—though one never explored in the show—and her

interviewer claims that is a good thing, stating “This is not an ethnicity test. If I’m being

honest, I’m glad you don’t have a story of discrimination handy. It means you haven’t

experienced what some of these other girls have” (“Oh, Future!). It does, however, mean

that Daphne does not win the scholarship she thought she could so easily attain. When

Regina asks Daphne how she did in her interview, Daphne tells her she withdrew her

application, leading to an argument between the two:

Daphne: I shouldn't have applied in the first place.

Regina: Daphne, we went over this. You are Latina!

Daphne: You and I are the only ones who see it that way.

Regina: We’re right! Why does someone else get to decide what you are?

Daphne: If I won, I wouldn’t feel right about taking it from someone who the

whole world saw as Latina.

Regina: So, they deserve it more because they have dark hair and brown skin?

Daphne: No, because people hold it against them the same way they hold being

deaf against me. I know what it feels like.

Regina: So, you’re not Latina because you don’t feel burdened enough? Me and

your grandmother and generations before us face discrimination because our

name is Vasquez. You don’t think that affects you?

124

Daphne: Yeah, my name is Vasquez but by blood I’m a Kennish—whatever they

are! (“Oh, Future!”)

The scene raises the debate on how Latinxs are categorized in the U.S., and how that is a

double-sided coin: there is the way one self-identifies and then the way society

identifies/categorizes members of society.

Latinxs, while considered an ethnic minority, are still a racialized group, “whose

phenomenal and cultural characteristics serve to distinguish them from the dominant

‘white’ population” (Inda and Dowling 4). One of the consequences of the racialization

of Latinxs is their increased criminalization, especially in regard to issues concerning

immigration, as Inda and Dowling note, “it is quite evident that the targets of immigration

policing are not just any bodies, but physically and culturally distinct ones. It is thus

racialized migrants, Latinos in particular, who disproportionately suffer the consequences

of immigration policing” (18) which leads Latinxs in the US “feeling anxious and

discriminated against amid public immigrant bashing and enhanced immigration

enforcement” (22). While that is not to say that Latinxs cannot be phenotypically white,

as Daphne points out, there are redheaded and blonde Latinxs, but as Sharee reiterates,

they are born into that system. What Daphne’s interviewer illustrates is how many

Latinas, simply because of their skin color, face increased hardships—just as Daphne

claims is the result of her Deafness. Regina claims that she and her mother and others

have faced discrimination because their name is Vasquez, but as Daphne demonstrates in

her inability to provide an example of ethnic/raced-based discrimination, the name is not

the subject of discrimination, but the person behind that last name. Regina and Adrianna,

125

who both present as stereotypically “Latina,” face discrimination because of the way they

look and talk—as noted in the previous chapter, when Regina first moved to Mission

Hills, she was assumed to be the Kennishes’s live-in maid and/or John’s mistress. While I

agree with Regina that being Latinx entails a cultural connection, the ethno-racial reality

of Latinxs cannot be dismissed as she so easily wants to do in order to protect Daphne’s

claims to a heritage she was raised in, but not born into. Regina herself notes that she is

defensive about Daphne’s ability to claim a Latinx heritage because any doubts about her

Latinidad would only reiterate the fact that biologically, Daphne is not her daughter. In

the end, the question about how to finance her college tuition lands on the Kennishes—

Daphne need not seek out Latinx scholarships when her “real” white family is wealthy

enough to cover the costs. Once again, the question about Daphne’s Latinidad is quickly

overshadowed by the benefits afforded to her by her whiteness.

While Daphne and Bay are noted as “Latinas” often in passing, Regina stands-in

as the “main” Latina character in the show, but that does not make her a champion for

Latinx rights. As a narrative prosthesis, Regina’s Latinidad has to be “normalized” and in

the show it occurs through her attempting to “better” her former community in East

Riverside. One of Regina’s longest story-arcs, that spans seasons two through four, is her

work alongside a developer, Wes Gable (Kenneth Mitchell). Wes is seeking to transform

East Riverside, allegedly for the betterment of the current residents, and those that can be

attracted to the newly renovated area. In his pitch to the East Riverside community, Wes

claims that the project, “The Friends of East Riverside,” will only work with the input of

the local community, because “It’s you people that need to bring the magic that turns a

126

development like this into a real community” (“Memory Is Your Image of Perfection”).

Despite some initial doubts from Regina, Wes has her meeting with property owners in

East Riverside as a way of placing a familiar face to the proceedings who also speaks the

language in order to speed the process along:

Wes: I need you to take this offer to the owner of that taco place in the East

Riverside strip mall.

Regina: Oh, Chuy’s too? I love that place.

Wes: Well, the sooner we buy him out and the others, the sooner we can start

demo and start building.

Regina: Don’t you have somebody else who normally does this?

Wes: They don’t speak Spanish.

Regina: Well, I speak Spanish, but I don’t negotiate real estate deals—in English

either.

Wes: You’re not negotiating, you’re just a friendly face delivering the news in a

language they can understand.

Regina: Well, what if they have questions?

Wes: Then they can talk to their attorneys or their accountant or their mother. The

bottom line is we’re offering 10% above the appraised value. (“The Ambush”)

When Wes sees how effectively Regina is at getting the store owner to sign over his

property, because she assures him that the deal is worthwhile, he has her also go into

English-speaking businesses, telling her to, “do what you did with that guy, but in

English” (“The Ambush”).

127

Despite Regina’s firm belief that the project will be beneficial for East Riverside,

since it will make the area, “a better place to live” (“Memory Is Your Image of

Perfection”), she turns to John to make sure that the residents of area are not being

mishandled by Wes, and therefore by herself. It is John that has to explain to her how

businesses are run and how Wes is using the development project to benefit himself, not

the community:

Regina: So, we lied to the owner about how much his business is worth in order to

get a cheaper buyout?

John: It’s not illegal, it happens all the time.

Regina: But is it fair?

John: Okay, let me ask you something: was the owner coerced into selling?

Regina: Not exactly.

John: Okay, he could have hired his own appraiser, come up with his own

number, negotiated. That’s the way things usually happen.

Regina: He didn’t do that, he asked me what I thought, and I said it was a good

deal.

John: It is—for your boss. He got the place for a steal. (“The Ambush”)

When the members of East Riverside learn that Regina has been working alongside Wes,

manipulating them into taking less money for their properties, they label her “La

Malinche” with former friends and neighbors assuming that she is sleeping with Wes.

Her own mother accuses her of the same claiming “Regina, I barely recognize you these

days. So, caught up in your fancy new car, and your expensive clothes. Where is the

128

woman I raised? The one with such integrity?” (“Love Seduces Innocence, Pleasure

Entraps, and Remorse Follows”). Regina comes to be hated in East Riverside, with the

situation escalating to the point of violence—an angry resident, Nacho (Rene Moran),

throws a brick through Regina’s storefront window.

Daphne naively thinks that confronting the perpetrator will save her mother from

further attacks. She, along with Bay, go to East Riverside to meet with Nacho and try to

show him the error of his ways, which leads to them being shown what remodeling the

community really entails:

Nacho: Your mom and her white boyfriend, they think they’re gonna bulldoze in

here with their J. Crew and aba-phony and fitch and make lofts and places for

brunch […] Not that it matters to you, but there’s a history here, there’s a

community. My dad’s a bus driver, where’s he gonna go when the rents triple?

Huh? Where are me and my friends gonna hang out when this place is a mall

parking lot?

Daphne: There’ll be jobs and money and better education--

Nacho: You know what, we don’t need saving! And if we did, we’d do it

ourselves.

Daphne: But we haven’t saved ourselves! I was afraid to park my car on the street

tonight. This place has turned. And you know what? We deserve better. My mom

was just trying to help.

Nacho: Your mom is a sellout and a whore. (“Love Among Ruins”)

129

Though Daphne is more than at home in Mission Hills, she will associate herself as a

member of East Riverside when convenient for her. She inserts herself into the “we” of

East Riverside despite not having lived in the area for years and claiming to fear entering

into the space once again. Nacho, an actual East Riverside resident, knows that the

community can only get better if they are involved, not if a foreign invader attempts to

recreate the area in their (white) image. Though harsh, Nacho’s claims that Regina is a

sellout/whore follow her even after the project is inevitably terminated at the end of the

third season.

Throughout the entire story arc of the redevelopment of East Riverside, Regina is

posited as an unknowing conspirator. Yes, she does sellout her former neighborhood, but

she is depicted as more ignorant than malicious. As demonstrated earlier, it was John

Kennish that had to spell out for Regina that Wes was using her to manipulate the

residents into selling their properties at a much lower cost. Later, when she is debating

whether or not to continue with the project after she is the victim of Nacho’s vandalizing,

it is again John, and to a lesser extent, Kathryn, who motivate her to not give up:

John: You’re letting fringe elements run the show?

Kathryn: That’s a terrible example to set for the kids.

John: Regina, you take precautions, you be smart. But you do not cower […] If I

believed in something as much as you believe in this project, you can bet your ass

I wouldn’t let thugs change my mind.

Kathryn: Give them hell! (“Love Among Ruins”)

130

While she seemingly does believe in the merits of redeveloping the neighborhood, she is

depicted as not having the knowledge as to how to go about doing that, so she relies on

her white counterparts to fill in the gaps in her knowledge. The project is eventually shut

down at the end of the third season—after Nacho vandalizes the project site again (this

time with Daphne as a co-conspirator in her attempts to rebel against her mother), Wes

pulls out of the project entirely—what happens to the residents is not addressed and

everything is seemingly all good—for Regina and Wes.

The show never fully addresses the results of the East Riverside project’s

cancellation, though in the fourth season, Regina attempts to help a newcomer, Eric

Bishop (Terrell Tilford), to East Riverside design his coffeehouse, and is confronted with

someone who was negatively impacted by her associations with Wes. Her former

friend/neighbor calls her La Malinche, leading to Eric being hesitant to work with

someone who is hated in the community:

Regina: I grew up in this neighborhood. I saw a chance to do something good for

it and I took it, but I got in over my head and I made mistakes. I still think I could

do something good […] I grew up here. I know these people

Eric: Yeah, and they don’t like you. And they don’t trust you.

Regina: They used to, and I can win them back […] I’m Regina. Regina Vasquez,

also known as la Malinche.

Eric: What is Malinche anyway?

Regina: A traitorous whore. (“Bracing the Waves”)

131

Like many of the secondary (Latinx) plotlines in the show, Regina’s actions in East

Riverside are eventually forgotten. She may have been a traitor to her community but to

those who “really” matter in the show—the Kennishes and Daphne—she is a strong,

independent woman who did not let herself be intimidated. In the conservative narrative

of the show, gentrification is the “correct” response to poverty and lack of community

resources. Regina and Wes were not the villains of the East Riverside project, but its

saviors.

When the show is not attempting to pass off white actors as Latinxs, it is

promoting a conservative perspective in how to “deal” with Latinx issues. In the fourth

season, Bay and Daphne head to Mexico for Spring Break to work as volunteers

distributing hearing aids to deaf locals—but first are given sombreros and serapes to

wear, of course. In helping a young mother and her Deaf daughter, Daphne is shocked

that the girl cannot read nor write, prompting her volunteer coordinator to remind her

that, “We’re not here to lecture or shame anyone” (“Instead of Damning the Darkness,

It’s Better to Light a Little Lantern”). Despite the good intentions of the volunteers, they

cannot help but promote a derisive view of Mexican and Latin American countries and

their lack of “development”: “Deaf people in countries like this are disconnected […]

Most developing countries are 50 years behind, they just don’t have the resources […]

It’s a different reality. Most people are just trying to do their best to survive (“Instead of

Damning the Darkness, It’s Better to Light a Little Lantern”). Latinidad is once again

demonstrated as something that needs to be fixed, this time, the under-developed locals

have must rely on the good grace of others in order to reach some sort of “normalcy.”

132

While Switched at Birth should be noted for its depiction of Deafness and Deaf

culture, the show cannot seem to handle too much difference at once. While it posits two

families as polar opposites, one white, conservative and rich, the other run by a working-

class, single-mother who is Latina, by the end of the series, those differences are

inconsequential. The families are thoroughly intertwined, with all the rough (Latinx)

edges smoothed away. While such differences made for moments of tension and conflict

throughout the series, the show reflects its network’s conservative roots. Despite ABC

Family being rebranded in 2016 to Freeform, the original network was launched in 1977

by televangelist, and right-winger Pat Robertson (Andreeva 2019). Just like the network’s

founder, Switched at Birth posits the right-wing, conservative Kennish family as the

family to model. They are not without their faults, but they are the ones that initiate the

plot of the show and are the “main” family that is followed when it comes to screen time.

Besides Daphne, the other members of the Vasquez family are secondary—Regina is

onscreen much less than Kathryn and Adrianna’s character is written off after the third

season (presumably to star in Jane the Virgin, but her absence from Switched at Birth is

disregarded). The Latinx storylines are just as dismissible in the show as its Latinx

characters. Latinidad serves as a narrative prosthesis in the series by providing an outlet

for introducing ethno-racial plotlines, but ones that are either easily forgettable or

redeemed through White characters, which I argue is a similar case of Glee’s Santana

storyline.

133

Santana’s White Saviors

As discussed in Chapter 1, Santana Lopez (Naya Rivera), is Glee’s bad-girl

character—she’s sassy, slutty, and spicy—in other words, she’s pop culture’s

stereotypical Latina character. While Santana is portrayed as those three things

throughout the series, her character, while villainous, is not the show’s main villain.

Santana is no saint, but she is redeemable, mainly through her devotion to her (white)

partner, Brittany S. Pierce (Heather Morris), and her continued love of her abuela, Alma

(Ivonne Coll), despite her disavowing Santana after her coming out. As I will show,

much of Santana’s redemption arc relies on her white counterparts, which also serves to

erase Santana’s Latinidad from the show’s narrative.

Santana’s storylines in the show were initially secondary subplots. Naya Rivera

was not promoted to series regular until the second season and given Rivera’s tumultuous

relationship with the show’s primary star, Lea Michele, her role was again minimalized

in the last season of Glee. Santana’s first impactful storyline—that does not center around

her deflowering another character for fun—revolves around her acceptance of her

(homo)sexuality. While she is shown since the first season to openly engage in sexual

activity with fellow cheerleader Brittany, it is not until the third season that she finally

admits to herself, the Glee club, and her family that she is a lesbian. Unfortunately for

Santana, she is forced to do so because her coach, Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch), is running

for Congress and her opponent runs a smear campaign claiming Sue is unfit to promote

“family values” because she promoted a lesbian as head cheerleader (“Mash Off”). When

Santana learns about the campaign, and how it came about as a result of a conversation

134

she had with Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith), she slaps Finn, who then saves her from a

two-week suspension by claiming the slap was a joke. Finn’s condition for “saving”

Santana is that she opens up to her family about her sexuality, which she claims is forcing

her before she is ready, leading to a tender moment between the two:

Santana: Do you realize you’re basically forcing me out of the flannel closet?

Finn: Salazar’s ad’s going to run. That’s what’s forcing you to deal with this.

Santana: Why are you getting so worked up about this?

Finn: Because I don’t want you to die. A few weeks ago, some kid who made one

of those “It gets better” videos killed himself. Alright? You deal with your anxiety

surrounding this stuff by attacking other people, and someday that’s not going to

be enough and you might start attacking yourself […] You mean something to

me. If something ever were to happen to you, and I didn’t do everything that I

could to try to stop it, I’d never be able to live with myself. (“I Kissed a Girl”)

The scene is representative of many of Santana’s decisions—they are informed,

supported, or even instigated by her white peers. Santana is made to see that living in the

closet will only be harmful, only after Finn makes a case for it. Despite not having the

closest relationship with Finn, because she took his virginity, he feels responsible for her.

As is customary for the show’s white protagonists, they are the ones who feel the need to

make sure their colleagues succeed.

Just as Finn feels he has to protect Santana from the potential harmful effects of

remaining closeted, Glee coach Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison), when reflecting on

the futures he sees for his senior Glee club members, worries most for Santana. After

135

discussing the problems he finds in a number of graduating Glee members, he focuses

specifically on Santana because, “I’m really worried about Santana. She’s got all the

ambition, but she doesn’t have the focus” (“Saturday Night Glee-ver”). When he asks

Santana what her plans on post high school, Santana claims to seek fame, in whatever

way possible and has no need for college since, “College is a waste of time. I just want to

famous, plain and simple. Don’t even care how it happens. Just want everyone to know

my name” (“Saturday Night Glee-ver”). After Santana performs “If I Can’t Have You,”

by the Bee Gees as her Glee assignment, Will applauds her choice, which he grossly

misinterprets:

Will: I can see exactly where you were going with it. This was more than just a

beautiful love song to Brittany. It’s also a powerful way to convey your dream

that marriage equality will someday be a reality for everyone, and you’re off to

law school to make it happen! Amazing!

Santana: Of course, I want marriage equality. And yeah, Brittany will always be

my girlfriend. But my mistress is fame, and that song was all about how I can’t

live withouts my fame.

Will: Then I have to say, I’m disappointed in you. Fame is not something to

aspire to. (“Saturday Night Glee-ver”).

When it is evident that Will cannot help Santana, Brittany and Sue step in to show her the

error of her ways. After Brittany leaks a sex-tape of her and Santana to the entire school,

Sue reveals that she conspired with Brittany in order to show her that achieving fame “by

any means necessary” is a shallow life to live. It is only after Sue reveals that she also

136

submitted a college application for Santana and secured her a full cheerleading

scholarship, that Santana feels confident in her ability to succeed, so long as she has Sue

and Brittany in her corner:

Sue: What’s so disappointing is not that you want to be famous, but that you don’t

care how you get there.

Santana: I see that now. I’m embarrassed I’ve been so shortsighted. I want to

make something of my life. I want to do something of substance with it. And yes,

I do want to go to college […] What is this?

Sue: That is an acceptance letter. You got a full ride from the University of

Louisville. It’s the nation’s top cheerleading program and you got a full

scholarship. Now I know you don’t want to be a cheerleader for the rest of your

life, but this will get you a foot in the door.

Santana: I don’t know what to say. Thank you […] I don't know if this is 100%

the answer for me, but just to know that I have someone who believes in me as

much as you do. (“Saturday Night Glee-ver”)

Santana may be talented, but the show posits her talents as the direct result of the actions

of others. So long as she has those who are willing to put in the effort on her behalf, she

is liable to succeed. Likewise, in her familial relationships, it is only through the direct

intercession of Brittany that she is able to have her grandmother present at their wedding.

In the sixth season, after being demoted to a recurring character, Santana’s

storyline revolves around her pending nuptials to her long-time girlfriend, Brittany. In the

137

sixth episode of the season, Santana mentions to Brittany what having her grandmother

present at her wedding would mean to her, given how close the two once were:

You know, when I was little, we used to play wedding all the time. She would

give me her veil, and I would wrap her shawl around me like a dress. I would

march down the aisle, and she would hum the wedding march. And then she

would ask me what guy I was gonna marry that day. My whole life, I’ve dreamt

of my wedding, with her sitting in the front row, bawling. And, and believe me, if

I could get in her head and bring her into this century, I would, and I would

forgive her and have her here. She’s my abuela, you know? The lady with the big

plates of rice and beans. (“What the World Needs Now”)

Despite such a strong connection she feels to her grandmother, it is Brittany who sends

Alma an invitation to their wedding, not Santana. For Brittany, it becomes her

prerogative to change Alma’s mind because in her words, “It’s our job as young, hot

progressives to educate older, scary farts. I mean, if abuela gets to know us and sees that

we’re somewhat normal […] she’ll see us for who we really are, okay? And then, maybe,

she’ll understand that […] we’re just like everybody else. We at least have to try, right?”

(“What the World Needs Now”). Unlike Santana, who claims that “nothing has changed

for her and it never will,” (“What the World Needs Now”) Brittany will not be so easily

defeated. In the question of action versus submission, while Santana is often depicted as

the go-getter, take no prisoners, head cheerleader, it is Brittany that takes the lead when it

counts. Given her understanding of how closed off Alma is to change, Brittany decides to

trick her way into Alma’s trust by posing as her nurse.

138

After buying into Brittany’s ruse, Alma and Brittany discuss her upcoming

wedding—omitting the fact that it is to a woman/her granddaughter—causing Alma to

reflect on the joy and happiness weddings are meant to represent. Brittany has Alma star

in her webcast show, “Fondue for Two,” though in deference to Alma’s heritage, calls it

“Queso por dos,”13 where Alma explains that a wedding is a special event meant to be

shared with family: “When two souls unite as one, it is a day of celebration. You should

be surrounded by your loved ones, especially tu familia. Friends come and go, but family

is your blood and they need to share in your joy” (“What the World Needs Now”).

Afterwards, Brittany invites Alma to a Glee presentation, where her fiancée is the lead,

and it is then that Alma learns the truth after watching Santana perform Cilia Black’s

“Alfie,” leading to Alma and Santana’s first confrontation in three years:

Santana: You taught me to be a strong Latina woman. To be bigger than the world

was ever gonna give me permission to be and I have. You taught me not just to

exist because I’m worth so much more than that, and without Britt I just—exist.

She’s the love of my life and I’m going to marry her, and I want to share that with

you because without your love I think I just exist, too.

Brittany: Please, please just come to the wedding

Alma: No. Right is right. I love you Santana, but I don’t love your sin. Girls

marry boys, not other girls!

Santana: So, you’re really not coming?

13 In true Glee fashion, “Queso por dos” becomes an instant hit with the Ohio Latinxs and Brittany signs a multi-season contract with Univision.

139

Alma: No. I’m sorry to disappoint you but you disappointed me first. (“What the

World Needs Now”)

Instead of allowing Alma to get the last word in, Brittany comes to Santana’s aid once

again and tells Alma that they are better off without her in attendance, proving to Alma

that it is once her generation is gone, the world will be a better place:

I’m glad you’re not coming. You know, the New York Times said, um, half the

increase in support of gay marriage is due to generational turnover. That’s what

smart people call, ‘crazy, uptight bitches dying.’ You guys lost okay, and honestly

the rest of us are just going about our business, being normal and waiting for you

not to be around, and not because you can stop us from getting married, but just

because you’re kind of annoying. (“What the World Needs Now”)

Alma leaves, offended by Brittany’s remarks, and by the fact that Santana stands by

them. Later when Brittany remarks that she should not have said such “nasty” things to

Alma, Santana notes that she has the love she needs with Brittany and appreciates having

her to defend her, calling Brittany her, “Lady Knight in shining armor.”

At the end of the episode, the Glee club once again steps forward to support

Santana, with her former Glee club members returning to stand in as Santana’s family

and be part of their wedding party since Alma refuses to take part. Santana and Brittany’s

wedding takes place two episodes later, and while Santana initially refuses to allow her

former mentor, Sue, to take any part of the proceedings, because she states she only

wants to be surrounded by the people that she loves and who love her, and claims that

Sue only loves herself and is incapable of a selfless act (“A Wedding”). Instead of taking

140

Santana’s words to heart, Sue shows up the day of the wedding with a gift worthy of

letting her attend the wedding: Santana’s grandmother. Sue claims that she “laid down a

little reverse Sue-chology” (“A Wedding”) in order to show Alma, the error of her ways.

In a flashback sequence, Sue had visited Alma’s house claiming to want to ruin Santana’s

big day, and who better than her grandmother who does not want her granddaughter

marrying a woman? When Sue suggests a number of horrible ways that homophobic

society has historically treated homosexuality—having them stoned like the Bible claims,

having them arrested like they would be in Russia, or picketing the wedding alongside a

large hate group like Westboro Baptists—Alma shuts the door in her face. The scene then

flash-forwards to their wedding day, where Alma tells Santana that while she still does

not agree with her decision, still loves her: “I was wrong, I’m not saying I agree with

every decision you make. I still don’t believe it’s right for two women to get married, but

I do believe that family is the most important thing in the world. And I love you Santana.

I don’t want to be the person in your life that causes you pain” (“A Wedding”). When

forced to confront the painful reality that her granddaughter goes through simply for

loving a woman, that some group will always want to cause her pain, Alma can no longer

be one of those people. Santana welcomes her back because “I just want my abuela back.

I’ve missed you” (“A Wedding”). The reunion ends with a large group hug between

Santana, Brittany, Alma, and Sue, who Santana welcomes into her wedding, and who

Brittany claims is her “lucky charm.”

While Glee does not necessarily gloss over Santana’s Latinidad—she is too

racially ambiguous for it to not come up—it still manages to transform Latinidad into a

141

narrative prosthesis by having it stand for a part of Santana’s identity that has to be

corrected—and not by Santana, but by her white costars. Santana’s fears of coming out to

her Latinx family are mediated by Finn, whose protectiveness over her stems from a

possessiveness tied into their sexual history. Her plans post-high school are directed in

part by Brittany, Sue, and Will. Will is the first to question Santana on her life choices

and question the importance of fame, while Brittany and Sue manipulate Santana into

seeing the price of fame at whatever cost. Her college career, though short-lived,14 was

the direct result of Sue’s interventions. Her dream wedding is also thanks to the

intercession of those around her, with Sue stepping in to show Alma that she was

misguided and antiquated in her views on homosexuality and religion. While Santana is a

hot-headed diva in the show, that is only when confronting others. When it comes to

Santana’s own personal decisions, she most often relies on the intervention of others. She

may be brash and bold, but she is willing to submit to white authority when it comes to

major moments in her life. Though she is too dark for the audience to “forget” that she is

not white, she manages to “pass” just enough that she is accepted. The audience roots for

her happy ending, unlike that of That ‘70s Show’s Fez (Wilmer Valderrama), as I will

now elaborate.

Fez Gets the Girl, but Not the Audience

In regard to utilizing Fez’s Otherness as a narrative prosthesis, That ‘70s Show

differs from the other texts analyzed in this chapter by maintaining the joke throughout

14 Santana drops out of college in the fourth season to pursue an acting career in New York City.

142

the character’s entire storyline. Fez is at his funniest when he is at his most unintelligible

accent-wise, or when Red Forman (Kurtwood Smith) is able to yell at him for being a

“filthy foreigner.” It is Fez’s inability to fit into the whiteness of 1970s Point Place,

Wisconsin that makes him so hilarious. Unlike the texts analyzed previously that attempt

to curtail a character’s Otherness, That ‘70s Show makes it who Fez is, but by tying him

to that identity, he remains perpetually on the outside, meaning that when in the final

season the narrative changes to make him an integral character, one who is meant to end

up with one of the female leads—Jackie Burkhart (Mila Kunis)—that the charm

surrounding this “fish out of water” falls away and the audience rejects the storyline. In

establishing Fez as a character that is so foreign to the space in which he resides, and later

attempts to assimilate him into that cultural imaginary, converts the once lovable (though

creepy) Fez into a threat—a threat to the happily-ever-afters of the show’s primary

(white) protagonists.

Fez’s own name marks him as Other—as it is an acronym for Foreign Exchange

Student. One of the running jokes in the series is that no one ever learns his name, with

Red in particular finding “colorful” epithets to call him: foreign kid, Tonto, Haji, Sabu,

Ali Baba, Muhammad Ali, Pelé. The “diversity” of his nicknames for Fez stems from the

second running joke surrounding Fez’s identity—no one ever learns where exactly he is

from, there are mentions of him being from an island, but no specifics. Fez is Fez from

the beginning of the series, and it is never explicitly mentioned where/how he got his

nickname. As mentioned in the previous chapter, in the show’s pilot Fez is a newcomer

to the group, but how/why he joins Eric and his gang of friends is not explained. It is not

143

until the fourth season that the group reminisces on how they met each other, that it is

shown that the way Fez met the others was after they had saved him from being bullied,

hearing someone calling out for help: “Americans please help me! […] I’m the new

foreign exchange student. The football team asked me if I wanted to hang out, I shouldn’t

have said yes” (“Class Picture”). Instead of introducing himself by name, his foreignness

becomes his identifying factor. In the scene just described, he is eventually asked his

name, but the ringing of the school bell drowns him out, and Hyde (Danny Masterson),

simply states, “Okay, I’m not gonna remember that” (“Class Picture”). It is assumed that

from then on, he was simply “Fez” in order to make it easier for the others, regardless of

Fez’s desires.

Part of the difficulty of pronouncing Fez’s “real” name is that it is “exotic.” Often

times throughout the series, various characters complain that they cannot understand what

Fez is saying—that his accent makes his English is unintelligible. As discussed in the

previous chapter, Fez’s demeanor is more effeminate than the other male characters on

the show. Part of his effeminacy is evident in his accented English, which is also spoken

with a slight lisp. In one moment in the final season, when lamenting that he will be alone

forever, Fez tells Jackie (who is secretly in love with him) that he is destined to be alone

because no one can understand him, and even though Jackie has feelings for him, cannot

help but mock him:

Fez: People can barely understand a word I say!

Jackie: Sometimes that’s a good thing because sometimes you say really stupid

things. (“Crazy Little Thing Called Love”)

144

Fez’s language issues are shown in the final season to be particular to him, as when a

friend from “back home” comes to visit, the others assume he will be just like Fez. Jackie

disparages both by stating: “Oh great, another mocha skinned weirdo in tight pants who

can make any word sound like boogadaboogadaboogada” (“Love of My Life”). Instead

of another “weirdo in tight pants,” Fez’s friend, Andrew Davis (Justin Long), is depicted

as completely different than Fez in that his English is “proper”—English accented and

easily understandable.

In discussing Andrew, who is shown to be less “exotic” than Fez, with their

explanation being that Andrew is from the “west side” of the island, unlike Fez, brings up

the other major joke surrounding Fez’s character—his home country. As I stated earlier,

another of the recurrent jokes is the ambiguity surrounding Fez’s home country. It is part

of the character’s appeal, in being from any country, he belongs to none, and so his

national allegiance is to the US, the place that is his current home. What is known about

his place of birth, is that it is underdeveloped and poor—as all the character’s constantly

joke about the lack of resources available to Fez should he ever return. For example,

when Fez faces deportation in the fifth season, in trying to cheer him up, Eric tells Fez

that with all the knowledge he has acquired attending an American high school, he will

likely be a highly esteemed member of his country: “Hey, come on, Fez, look on the

bright side. I mean, we graduate tomorrow! You go to your country with a high school

diploma, they’ll probably make you, like, head medicine man or something”

(“Celebration Day”). Fez, however, is not so easily cheered up when facing the harsh

realities of life back home, because “there is no bright side about going back to a place

145

where people are outnumbered by lizards” (“Celebration Day”). When the group laments

not seeing Fez again, Eric reminds them that they will likely see him soon:

Eric: I’m sure in a few months you’ll be on the cover of National Geographic.

Fez: Yeah, those bastards are always so intrusive! (“Celebration Day”)

Though it is not known where Fez is from, it is clear that it is a “backwards” country that

captures the interest of nature magazines such as National Geographic who can study the

locals as they so choose. Another “hint” about Fez’s home country is that they are

unaware of the moon landing, in the same episode he says one positive thing he can bring

back with him is knowledge that “People have made it on the great white head”

(“Celebration Day”) as the camera pans to the moon. Over and over, the US is the land of

civilization, knowledge, and culture, whereas wherever Fez is from is the polar opposite.

With the introduction of Andrew in the penultimate episode, as the final credits

roll, Hyde and Donna ask the two the question that has been such a mystery:

Hyde: So, you grew up with Fez, huh? You know we’ve been wondering

something for a long time, where the hell are you guys from?

Fez: Um. isn’t it obvious? [Fez and Andrew scoff]

Donna: Okay, just tell us what’s the name of your country?

Andrew: Well that depends on whether you ask the British or the Dutch.

Hyde: Okay, so what if we ask the British?

Andrew: Oh no, no, no, they wouldn’t tell you. They hate us!

Hyde: So, what if we ask the Dutch?

Fez: Oh, who can understand a word they say. (“Love of My Life”)

146

Despite the repeated jokes, Fez never fights back on any of the comments, allowing

everyone to have their fun on his behalf. The one time he does question one of the many

nicknames meant to mock his “foreignness,” is when Red calls him Tarzan. It is then that

he tells Red he has gone too far, exclaiming, “Okay, that’s it. Anwar I can deal with.

Tonto, in the ballpark, but Tarzan—Tarzan is a white guy!” (“I’m Free”). Fez can deal

with the mockery, so long as his racial ambiguity is respected. As discussed in the

previous chapter, Fez has the looks necessary to be a Latin Lover, just none of the charm

or sensuality. When Red jokingly calls him Tarzan, to reference a jungle heritage, Fez

demands his racial differences to be respected. It becomes one of the few moments in all

of the eight seasons where Fez manages to shut down Red and come out the victor. It is

also one of the few moments where Fez rejects a nickname that would make him less

“Other”—if he were considered “white,” he would lose his appeal.

Since Fez’s charm comes from his difference, his ability to not ever fully fit in

makes him seemingly adorable, someone that the rest of the group tolerates because they

can feel superior by feeling that by being protective of their “foreign” friend, they are

superior to him. Nothing highlights this more than when Jackie develops romantic

feelings for Fez in the final episodes of the entire series. Despite “loving” him, Jackie is

disgusted with herself for falling for a foreigner. Fez is the one who is meant to be

chasing her, not the other way around—as had been their dynamic for most of the series

where Fez would creepily make advances towards her and be rejected outright, as she

notes, “He was after me for years…I never paid any attention to him, because you know,

147

he’s foreign” (“Crazy Little Thing Called Love”). When she is finally willing to admit

her feelings to her friends, she manages to do so in a condescending manner:

Jackie: Okay, Donna, I have something to admit to you, but it’s really

embarrassing […] Um, I like Fez.

Donna: Wow. Well, I guess the only thing I have to say is—I freaking knew it!

Jackie: Ugh, Donna! Look I know I made up that stupid list to find out who my

perfect match should be, and you were right. It’s Fez.

Donna: This is one of the biggest things I’ve ever heard you say.

Jackie: I know, I know. I can’t believe I like him.

Donna: […] Okay, are you sure you like Fez? I mean, think about all the things

you’ve said about him over the years.

Jackie [via flashbacks]: He’s a:

Bad…Poor…Sweaty…Stinky…Crazy…Sick…Ridiculous…Foreign…Spazoid…

Weirdo. [In present] Okay, all right, Donna. You busted me. I like a bad, poor,

sweaty, stinky, crazy, ridiculous, sick, foreign spazoid weirdo. (“Crazy Little

Thing Called Love”)

Not even Jackie’s feelings for Fez are enough to redeem him of the unsavory components

of his identity. He may be the love of her life, but he is still foreign, and therefore should

not be the man for her.

Jackie is not the only one who is disparaging of the relationship. Upon learning

that Jackie now has feelings for Fez, Hyde (Danny Masterson), Jackie’s previous partner,

implies that Jackie’s taste in men is trash: “You know, Fez is a good guy. I think if he’d

148

make you happy, that’s what you should do. And if it doesn’t work out, I hear Bob’s

available. And if that’s no good, here comes the garbage man” (“Crazy Little Thing

Called Love”). While Hyde claims that Fez is a “good guy” by comparing him to Bob

(Don Stark), Donna’s goofball father, he is judging Jackie for finally running out of

options. Likewise, when Kelso (Ashton Kutcher) returns for the series finale, he too

remarks that Jackie is only interested in Fez because she had no one else to turn to: “I

think it makes total sense that Fez ended up with Jackie. She started out with me, the

Ferrari; and then she went to Hyde, the Mustang; and now she’s with Fez, who’s like a

donkey pulling a cart full of brightly-colored Mexican blankets” (“That ‘70s Finale”).

Even Donna (Laura Prepon), Jackie’s best friend and the one who is most supportive of

her relationship with Fez, cannot help but see their relationship as odd, with Jackie

ending up the “winner” of an unfortunate lotto: “Congratulations, it’s like you won the

lottery, well a really crappy lottery” (“Sheer Heart Attack”). It seems that even Fez, who

had been pining for Jackie throughout the entire series, is surprised by the turn of events,

stating in the series finale, “I don’t know what to do because now that she’s not pushing

me away saying, ‘Get off!’ It’s just awkward” (“That ‘70s Finale”). Now that Fez has

gotten his dream girl, the question becomes, “Now what?” and neither he nor Jackie seem

to have an answer.

The instability of Jackie and Fez’s relationship stems from how Fez has been

characterized for the show’s entire trajectory—the perpetual foreigner. As Paloma

Martinez-Cruz and John Cruz note about the Latin Lover, who I argued in Chapter 1 Fez

represents a caricature of that trope, “the lover is characterized by cultural transience and

149

shiftlessness, an instability that distances him from the possibility of being a serious

prospect for either marriage or nation building” (Martinez-Cruz and Cruz 208). While

Martinez-Cruz and Cruz view the Latin Lover as potentially threatening to mainstream

culture because he resists the restraints of a heteronormative relationship, and therefore

disrupts the nation-building potential of the family, in That ‘70s Show, it is Fez’s inability

to fit in that made him so harmless—he was never meant to be taken seriously as a

romantic prospect. As Daniel Enrique Pérez notes of the Latin Lover, one of the defining

characteristics of the stereotype is the Lover’s inability to maintain a healthy relationship,

“Although his identity is constructed around his erotic relationship with women, it is

equally constructed around his inability to maintain a relationship with one woman”

(442). It is only once Fez crosses that barrier and tries to carve out a space for inclusion

through a real relationship with a (white) woman that he is rejected. The characters in the

show are not the only ones critical of the relationship—audience reactions to the Jackie

and Fez surprise ending was overwhelmingly negative.

Though That ‘70s Show has a relatively high Rotten Tomatoes score of 75%, that

rating stems from average audience scores, with the only season that has been critically

rated being the first which has a critic rating of 86%. While most seasons maintain an

audience score in the 70-80% range, the final season is an outlier, achieving an audience

score of only 19%. Similarly, the show’s IMDB ratings are the lowest for the final

season, with the series garnering a rating of 8.1 out of 10, and the eighth season

averaging a score of 6.7 out of 10, with the episodes that focus the most on Fez and

Jackie’s relationship troubles having an average rating of 6.5. The Fez and Jackie pairing

150

are listed on a number of lists of “worst television couples,” as well as numerous Tumblr

and Reddit posts where fans rage against the couple. And while fans cannot decide

whether or not Jackie should have ended up with Hyde or Kelso, the consensus is that

Fez should never have been a real possibility. The couple is so hated by fans that there is

even an Urban Dictionary definition for “Jackie and Fez”: “The worst relationship on

‘That ‘70s Show’ that was a horrible replacement for Jackie and Hyde, the best

relationship of the show” (Extrafangirl21 2018). And while I am not claiming that Urban

Dictionary is the voice of the people, it shows that someone was so annoyed by the

show’s decision that they tried to create cultural jargon surrounding the pair. In a brief

overview of fanfiction inspired by the show and its characters, there is an overwhelming

number of stories written in support of Jackie and Hyde as the primary pairing, and only

a handful of stories supporting the Fez and Jackie pairing. Archive of Our Own, a

fanfiction platform for any and all fandoms, has 287 submissions for the Jackie and Hyde

pairing, but for those mentioning a Jackie and Fez pairing, there are only 17. Of those 17,

the majority still have Jackie/Hyde as the primary pairing and Jackie/Fez as a secondary

or unrequited pairing. Fanfiction.net, another popular fanfiction website, has 27

submissions that mention a Jackie/Fez relationship, and over a thousand for Jackie/Hyde.

Fez and Jackie, and the lack of acceptance of their relationship, both within the

narrative of the show and by the audience’s reactions, are an example of what happens

when the “different” character seeks acceptance without ridding itself of its difference.

As previously defined, Latinidad is allowed in these Midwestern-based series, because

the character’s Latinx identity does not pose a threat to the overall Whiteness of the

151

region. With the other shows analyzed, the characters’ Latinidad was such a minor

component of their identity that it was easy to overlook and correct through their

assimilation into white culture. Fez, however, is always marked by difference and so he is

unable to rid himself of his Otherness. Latinidad, like disability, has to be “rehabilitated”

(Mitchell and Snyder 57) in order for it to work as a narrative prosthesis, and if not, it

must serve a “punishment for his willingness to desire someone physically perfect and

therefore unlike himself” (56). While the character of Fez never undergoes that

rehabilitation, the show itself received the punishment through the negative critical

reception. Fez remained a “safe” Latin Lover so long as he never got the girl, it was once

he was deemed an “appropriate” partner for a white protagonist that his character is

rejected. Fez may have finally ended up with the girl of his dreams, but as a result both he

and Jackie are the subject of the other characters’ ridicule and the audience’s anger, and

even attempts by the audience to “correct” the perceived social wrong as evident in the

number of “fix-it” fanfiction narratives.

Conclusion

Given the diversity that is hidden beneath the umbrella term, Latinx, it is obvious

that the question of how to best represent Latinidad in popular culture is no small

undertaking. As I showed in Chapter 1, it has always been an easier option for writers to

fall back on the images that have been prevalent in the media since the early days of

television, and yet those images are not allowed to be the main stars of the show,

especially in spaces that are not meant to be Latinx such as the Midwest, which in recent

152

decades has drawn in increasing numbers of Latinx immigrants, as noted by Leo Chavez,

“the expanding economy created a hyper-demand for immigrant labor that pulled

Mexican immigrants to ever more ‘exotic’ locations in the Midwest and the southeastern

United States” (Chavez 36). This increase in Latinx presence within an imagined White

space plays into the Latinx threat narrative by creating an us versus them dichotomy,

where the Other is a threat to U.S. society: “The objects of this discourse are represented

as Other and as a ‘threat’ and ‘danger’ to the nation through such simple binaries as

citizen/foreigner, real Americans / ‘Mexicans’ or real Americans / ‘Hispanics,’

natives/enemies, us/them, and legitimate/illegal. Once constructed this way…Latinos can

then be represented as ‘space invaders’” (45).

I argue that in order to contend with this “threat,” Latinx characters in popular

culture are utilized as narrative prostheses—they are “interesting” plot devices that

introduce some level of drama or intrigue into a show, who then have to be “normalized”

and assimilated into the show’s narrative arch through the erasure of their initial

“Otherness.” As seen with April Ludgate-Dwyer in Parks and Recreation, the show

allows audiences to “forget” that April is meant to be Latina by only allotting one episode

to her Latinx identity, and then having her adopted into white culture through her close

relationships with the white protagonists of the show. In Switched at Birth, the various

“Latinx” characters are more often than not played by non-Latinx actors, highlighting

that in popular culture, Latinidad is merely a role to be played, something that can be

added to one’s identity and then easily discarded when something better (and white)

comes along. Glee perpetuates the need for a White Savior—Santana is able to reconcile

153

with her homophobic, conservative grandmother only through the intervention of her

white partner and her former white mentor/coach. Lastly, That ‘70s Show highlights the

need in popular media to “correct” its “diversity problem,” by demonstrating how a

character who is so defined by his Otherness—Fez—cannot step outside of the space

crafted for him without facing outright rejection by the show’s audience.

While the series presented in this chapter mark an erasure of Latinidad, they also

are now dated in their representations of Latinidad. As I will show in the following

chapter, in shows that are emerging in the Trump era, there is a conscientious attempt to

present Otherness, not as something exotic, but as inherently part of the U.S. social order.

In the analysis to follow, I will highlight how these contemporary texts manage to upend

the normal viewing experience by making Whiteness the source of difference. Through

the genre of comedy, popular culture has found a space to transform the perception of

Latinx identity as a site for the analysis of mainstream culture.

154

Chapter 3

Laughing at or with Latinxs?: Changing the Scope of the Camera’s Narrative Gaze

in Midwest-based Sitcoms

We are so happy you liked our dance, but it is also important to remember that Latinos

can be doctors and lawyers, and architects—never mind, I'm just playing, you should see

the looks on your gringo faces!

(“Shots and Salsa”)

When accounting for the place of Latinx characters within Midwestern-based

television texts, those previously analyzed fell into the category of either exploiting a

character’s Latinidad as a sign of foreignness and exoticization or diminished it to the

point of erasure. The series previously analyzed comprised a range of television genres

from the comedic: the sitcom (That 70s Show), the mockumentary (Parks and

Recreation), and the dramedy (Glee); to the melodramatic teen drama (Switched at Birth).

Instead of focusing on a broad category of televisual genres, the focus of this chapter will

be on series that fall under the umbrella of comedy, more specifically, parody and satire.

As I will show, more contemporary television comedies set themselves apart from

their predecessors by challenging the social boundaries of the majority-minority

155

dichotomy. Comedy and humor are much more subjective than dramatic series, and so I

argue that the series I will further analyze in this chapter possess a form of agency that up

to now, does not exist within Midwestern-based dramas. By playing with the subjectivity

of humor—the texts I will analyze work to set up a new perspective that manages to

challenge the hegemonic gaze, in a way that remains palatable to all viewers. These texts

tease the audience to examine a world that is outside of their norms, and then allows for a

cathartic release of that unease through laughter.

This deviation in the social norm is what I am calling the Latinx Gaze. It is a Gaze

that counters the White Gaze by establishing an opposing perspective to the narrative

gaze of the camera onto white culture. Where once a white audience is the presumed

norm, now that same audience is meant to examine themselves from afar. In these texts,

that Latinxs and Latinidad are present and visible is not questioned, but white

assumptions about them are and become the subject of parody. Through my analysis of

the sitcoms, Parks and Recreation, Superstore, and a close reading of the Saturday Night

Live sketch, “Diego calls his mom” I propose a Latinx Gaze—one where the established

and assumed audience might still be predominately White, but does not present their

perspective, instead relying on an othered interpretation of mainstream culture.

Defining the Gaze

I will begin by briefly defining what I mean by “gaze,” both within its historical

understanding from the field of Film Studies to how it has been adapted into what is

known as the “White gaze,” and my own conceptualization that I call the Latinx gaze.

156

One cannot talk about the camera’s gaze without making reference to film theorist, Laura

Mulvey, and her concept of the “Male gaze.” Mulvey establishes the idea of a “male

gaze” as the active gaze that “projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled

accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at

and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact” (436)—in

other words, the camera projects the “gaze” and that gaze is masculine in that it

objectifies the female body in order to fulfill a male fantasy. By fetishizing the female

body to appeal to a male audience’s pleasure, the male gaze allows for a patriarchal

hierarchy to be established, or in Mulvey’s words, “a symbolic order in which man can

live out his fantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on

the silent image of the woman still tied to her place as bearer, not maker, of meaning,”

(433). In appealing to male sexual fantasies, Mulvey argued that one of the main

pleasures that films offered was “scopophilia”—pleasure in looking—thereby demeaning

the role of women in classic Hollywood to male sex objects.

The male gaze is that which utilizes the female body as an erotic spectacle. The

woman, a passive figure in classic Hollywood, was meant only to inspire the male hero to

act because “In herself the woman has not the slightest importance” (Mulvey 436). The

function of the woman in those films was therefore twofold: “as erotic object for the

characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the

auditorium, with a shifting tension between the looks on either side of the screen” (436).

And so, regardless of who is doing the gazing and from which perspective, women in

those films are objectified sexually. But despite this eroticism, Mulvey argues that the

157

role of women in films are not purely pleasurable, but problematic as well. Delving into

the realm of psychoanalysis, Mulvey argues that the female’s role, “also connotes

something that the look continually circles around but disavows: her lack of a penis,

implying a threat of castration and hence unpleasure. […] always threatens to evoke the

anxiety is originally signified” (438). In other words, women in these films had to play

passive roles in order to relieve the male gaze of their anxiety—as long as the woman is

being objectified, she can pose no threat, and thereby “turning the represented figure

itself into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous” (438).

While Mulvey was criticizing the role of women in Golden Age Cinema, her

arguments still hold true to how women are perceived in popular culture today, especially

in regard to the tropicalization of Latina bodies. As discussed in Chapter 1, the

objectification of the female body was not limited to 1950s Hollywood, but persists to

this day, most specifically in the case of the tropicalization of the Latina body as bold,

colorful, and large-chested. As I discuss in Chapter 2, the Latinx body/identity is

sublimated in order to also eliminate any source for Anglo anxiety. The Latinx character

is a threat no longer, because they can pass as white or because their Latinidad is no

longer a major part of their identity/character arc. Their Otherness is subsumed in order

to fit the image of America as a “melting pot”—where all the elements are assimilated

into one bland stew. For the purposes of this chapter, what is of relevance is how the

camera’s gaze has shifted in part from gender to race.

This change in the camera’s perspective is known as the White Gaze. In defining

this term, I borrow from the work of sociolinguists, Nelson Flores and Jonathan Rosa

158

where they define the white gaze as a “perspective that privileges dominant white

perspectives on the linguistic and cultural practices of racialized communities” (Flores

and Rosa 150-151). This is not meant as an individual perspective, but instead is a “Mode

of perception that shapes our racialized society” (151). In other words, whiteness is the

norm to which all national subjects should aspire. For Flores and Rosa, this white gaze is

seen in the field of education when Standard English is perceived as the only

“appropriate” language for language learners, and where a minority language is racialized

and seen as the inferior language—the one that has to be forgotten in favor of English: “a

heritage language learners’ linguistic practices are devalued not because they fail to meet

a particular linguistic standard but because they are spoken by racialized bodies and thus

heard as illegitimate” (161). This white gaze moves into the field of film and television

when diversity casting utilizes white perceptions of Latinidad to create “safe” images of

the other—in other words the stereotypes we are all familiar with (the spicy Latina—who

is often poor and struggling to make ends meet—and the Latino gang banger/Latin

Lover)—characters that fail to “perform White middle class norms” (151).

For Flores and Rosa, the White Gaze when applied to standards of language

“appropriateness,” creates raciolinguistic ideologies, which: “conflate certain racialized

bodies with linguistic deficiency unrelated to any objective linguistic practices. That is,

raciolinguistic ideologies produce racialized speaking subjects who are constructed as

linguistically deviant even when engaging in practices positioned as normative or

innovative when produced by privileged white subjects” (150). Such practices and

ideologies are not limited to the field of education, and instead can be applied to analyses

159

of popular culture when examining the difference between a Latinx character’s utilization

of Spanish versus a white character’s use of the same language. Jane Hill calls such

practices the utilization of “mock” or “junk” Spanish, where (white) characters with any

capacity to speak Spanish are seen as cultured and educated, “that Anglos with even

moderate skills in Spanish are admired as highly educated, and are clearly proud of their

linguistic sophistication” (Hill: “Mock” np). Hill describes how Mock Spanish is a form

of “elite racist discourse” since, “Mock Spanish is not heard, nor are printed tokens of it

usually encountered, at truck stops, country-music bars, or in the ‘Employees Only’

section of gas stations. Instead, the domain of Mock Spanish is the graduate seminar, the

boardroom, the country-club reception […] by writers who come from elite backgrounds”

(Hill: “Mock” np). Conversely, when utilized by a racialized, minority character, that

character “is suspected of being ‘Unamerican,’ or taken as a mark of inferiority” (Hill:

“Mock” np). This can be seen in the series Parks and Recreation in the character of

Eduardo, April’s short-lived Venezuelan boyfriend who only spoke Spanish and a few

phrases in English, and whose sole purpose in the show was to serve as a stand-in for

April’s eventual relationship with Andy Dwyer, as discussed in Chapter 1. The fact that

Eduardo’s character only speaks Spanish serves to keep him isolated from the other

characters in the show, no one is sad to see him go because he was never meant to be

there in the first place. That April can so easily discard her boyfriend (who presumably

moved from Venezuela to Pawnee, Indiana to be with her) shows how characters who

cannot be divorced from their racialized identity, do not have a space within series that

presents a White Gaze.

160

As a contrast to this white gaze, is what I am claiming is a Latinx Gaze. In

coming up with this concept, I question what happens when the White Gaze is turned

upon itself. What happens when the “Othered” is no longer cause for

humor/fear/discrimination? What is the Latinx perception of white culture? I find that a

text is presenting a Latinx gaze when instead of presenting whiteness as the ideal norm, it

highlights the cultural capital inherent to Latinx languages and communities. Though I

use the term “Latinx” to define my understanding of this new turn in television, it is not

necessarily limited to texts that are by/from/about Latinx characters. Such an

understanding of television can be applied to a number of shows cataloging various other

ethnic/racial groups such as Fresh Off the Boat, which relates the experiences of Chinese

Americans living in the U.S., or Black-ish and its subsequent spin-offs that highlights an

affluent African American family’s struggles to maintain their own racial and cultural

identity against upper-middle class (white) social pressures to assimilate. What ties all

these series together is their ability to challenge the assumed Gaze by presenting an

alternative to the social order, just as the sitcoms I will be analyzing (Superstore, “Diego

Calls His Mom,” and to a limited extent, Parks and Recreation) manage to create.

The texts I have chosen to analyze for this chapter, while notable for all

employing (to a degree) a Latinx Gaze, all also fall under the same genre of comedy,

which I argue is unique to a Midwestern Latinx experience. While I would argue that the

Latinx Gaze is present in dramatic series such as When They See Us and Vida, both series

are set in spaces that can be claimed as “Latinx”—New York and Boyle Heights, Los

Angeles—when entering into a space that is marked by Whiteness, comedy becomes the

161

medium for delivering an “acceptable” Latinx Gaze. Before I can begin my analyses of

those texts, I first need to dive into what it is about the comedic genre that allows it to

become a space for the utilization of the Latinx Gaze.

The Agency of the Laugh

As Jonathan Gray, Jeffrey P. Jones, and Ethan Thompson note in “The State of

Satire, the Satire of State,” “satire can energize civic culture, engaging citizen-

audiences…inspiring public political discussion, and drawing citizens enthusiastically

into the realm of the political with deft and dazzling ease” (4) while at the same time

come under fire by those who question, “satire’s ability to engage citizens in any

meaningful way…satire may merely inspire a cynical superiority complex in viewers that

removes them from politics” (7). Satire and parody as Gray, Jones, and Thompson

explain, are coded as subgenres of comedy and so they primarily serve the purpose of

providing humor to the audience. For some, humor is meant to be devoid of political,

racial, or cultural commentary because it is meant to be regarded as a “zone of escape

from real world problems that require pensive stroking of the chin, not laughter” (8). For

the most part, those viewers are correct in their assumptions about the purpose of

comedies. As Simon Critchley notes:

Most humour, in particular the comedy of recognition – and most humour is

comedy of recognition – simply seeks to reinforce consensus and in no way seeks

to criticize the established order or change the situation in which we find

ourselves. Such humour does not seek to change the situation, but simply toys

162

with existing social hierarchies in a charming but quite benign fashion… This is

the comic as sheer pleasing diversion, and it has an important place in any

taxonomy of humour. (Critchley 11)

While some humor/comedy may not seek to challenge the established social order, it does

provide a safe space for such challenges to occur. As Bakhtin notes, humor and laughter

can empower the laugher (viewer/audience) precisely by subverting social norms,

“laughter presents an element of victory…it also means the defeat of power, of earthly

kings, of the earthly upper classes, of all that oppresses and restricts” (92).

By empowering the viewer, comedy and humor provide a platform for change. In

providing narrative critiques that push viewers to experience an emotional response,

humor can call upon the viewer to question their social reality, as Critchley illustrates,

humor can have a redemptive power:

the redemptive power of humour is not, as it is in Kierkegaard, the transition from

the ethical to the religious point of view, where humour is the last stage of

existential awareness before faith. Humour is not nuomenal but phenomenal, not

theological but anthropological, not numinous but simply luminous. By showing

us the folly of the world, humour does not save us from that folly by turning our

attention elsewhere, as it does in great Christian humour like Erasmus, but calls

on us to face the folly of the world and change the situation in which we find

ourselves. (17-18)

The texts I am going to analyze can then promote a Latinx Gaze because they call upon

the viewer to question what they know from within a safe space, as Gray, Jones, and

163

Thompson iterate, humor is a genre that “encourages criticism and reflection about

prevailing systems of power, and it can be a discursive tool used by both parties in a

struggle between dominant and resistive forces” (Gray, Jones, and Thompson 10).

In television, satire becomes the medium for which humor gains power. And here

I make the distinction between satire and parody, in which oftentimes satire relies on

parody to make its point, but it is not always one and the same. As Steve Neale and Frank

Krutnik note, “Where parody draws on—and highlights—aesthetic conventions, satire

draws on—and highlights—social ones. Like parody, but perhaps more insistently, satire

works to mock and attack. It uses the norms within its province as a basis against which

to measure deviations” (Neale and Krutnik 19). Parody, therefore, draws upon generic

conventions in order to make the audience laugh, whereas satire draws upon societal

conventions, though can still employ parody in order to do so. Case in point, Parks and

Recreation is a mockumentary, and so it parodies the documentary genre, while making a

satirical commentary on small-town, Midwestern politics via an approachable medium—

humor.

As Gray, Jones, and Thompson illustrate, satire TV bridges the divide between

Politics and the general public since, “contemporary satire TV offers viewers a means for

playful engagement with politics” (12). It is playful because it employs the ridiculous:

“Satire’s calling card is the ability to produce social scorn or damning indictments

through playful means and, in the process, transform the aggressive act of ridicule into

the more socially acceptable act of rendering something ridiculous” (12-13). That is not

to say that satire is all light-hearted humor and fun. Satire programming, such as those

164

which are the object of this study, “is always at least potentially transgressive” (Gray,

Jones, and Thompson 11). But that potentiality renders satire a safe space for

social/political criticism—a viewer may be angered by the “humor,” but another might

simply find it amusing. Satirical humor is rarely straightforward, allowing for a myriad of

interpretations, and in order to fully “get” the joke, the viewer has to be willing to work

for it:

satire is rarely a form of discourse with clear-cut or easily digestible meanings.

Satire can be ‘work,’ and therefore it tends to require a level of sophistication that

network television infrequently demands of audiences…the best humor is always

something of a puzzle in its camouflaged criticism, implicit standards, and

negativism…its lessons are not hortatory, but self-learned…Satire demands a

heightened state of awareness and mental participation in its audience (not to

mention knowledge). (15)

Satire is therefore the perfect platform to employ the Latinx Gaze, because it provides a

means for audiences to “analyze and interrogate power and the realm of politics rather

than remain simple subjects of it” (17), without fully expecting every audience member

to be aware of its purpose. It is safe, because though the humor is accessible to all, its

capacity to evoke social awareness and social criticism, might not be as readily obvious.

As I will illustrate, what these various texts have in common is its ability to

employ satire and parody in order to produce an alternative to the American public. As

Carl Scott Gutiérrez-Jones writes about the use of humor in Chicanx culture, humor

allows writers to “draw upon everyday, readily accessible scenes, while also promoting a

165

radical transvaluing of the images depicted” (Gutiérrez-Jones 118). The Latinx Gaze is

able to take shape within these series (and SNL skit) because they straddle the line

between the transgressive and the permissible. The series take the everyday

microaggressions faced by Latinxs and other ethno-racial minorities and turn them back

onto the white viewer—making them the subject to question and second-guess, while at

the same time, allowing the viewer to laugh at themselves. And because they are

comedies, these series can be analyzed through a critical lens (as I am clearly doing), or

they can be taken on face value as more light-hearted “fun.” The socio-political stakes are

minimal when a joke can easily be laughed off or “misinterpreted.” Moreover, these

series can still be relegated to the realm of the sitcom, whose primary motive is to make

audiences laugh. The person who is meant to be the butt of the joke, is what makes these

series so particularly distinguishable. What makes them even more remarkable, is that

they are challenging white hegemony while situated in the very center of “Americana”—

the U.S. Midwest.

Parks and Recreation: The In-between Gaze

In order to put this understanding of television into practice, I will begin by

analyzing Parks and Recreation, given that it is the oldest of the texts I will be discussing

and because it is a series that does not easily fit into the category of the White versus

Latinx Gaze. As I will demonstrate, Parks and Rec lives in a middle ground between the

two perspectives—at some points in the show’s trajectory I would argue it does employ a

166

Latinx Gaze, but then at other points, it is only reaffirming the White Gaze for the

audience by falling back on racialized humor.

I have previously stated in my earlier analysis of the gendered dynamics at play in

Parks and Recreation, the show is a political satire situational-comedy (sitcom) set in the

fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana. I begin my analysis of the Latinx gaze through an

examination of race and ethnicity within Parks and Rec because the show is an early

example of what Isabel Molina-Guzmán labels as “post racial tv” or television that

“operates under the assumption that audiences no long see racial difference and are past

racial discrimination--subscribing to the post-racial belief that TV’s comedic texts and

the audiences who watch them are now colorblind” (Latinas: 5). Such “colorblind

television” “presumes a political and cultural climate in which the majority racial group

no longer perceives racial difference and therefore cannot legally or socially discriminate

based on racial or ethnic identity. In this climate, racially conscious laws, policies, and

cultural productions are no longer needed or desirable” (Latinas: 5), meaning that

because (white) society has “moved on” from racism, it no longer needs to address the

issue, because for them, it is a non-issue—they don’t see color so the problems endemic

to a racialized society, simply are (white)washed away. Such ideologies depend on the

invisibility of white privilege that refuses to acknowledge that ethnic and racial

inequalities still exist.

Parks and Rec is an example of this kind of television through its use of casually

racist humor that the audience is meant to interpret as harmless and so it can be easily

swept aside—by the majority white audience. By employing this type of “post-racial”

167

humor, I argue that Parks and Rec cannot completely live up to the expectations of series

that employ the Latinx Gaze. Instead of fully challenging the White Gaze, intermediary

shows like Parks and Rec, “rarely critique the underlying white privilege that inform the

genre’s characters and narrative conventions” (Molina-Guzmán, Latinas: 4). As Molina-

Guzmán demonstrates in her analysis of the series, what the show employs is a new brand

of “hipster racism” where allegedly post-racial sitcoms:

use sexism, homophobia, racism, and xenophobia alongside the multicultural

representation of racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual difference as a strategy to

produce humor…audiences are living in a moment when the popular and

commonsense belief is that representations of ethnic, racial, and gender

differences no longer carry social or political consequences and are therefore fair

comedic game. (Latinas: 13)

Though I argue that the show serves as an intermediary example, one that while a

product of post-racial television, thereby more often than not presenting a White Gaze,

there are moments that reveals traits I find in those that present a Latinx Gaze. While

there are moments in the series that rise to the occasion to challenge white privilege and

the hegemony of conservative, Anglo America, the overall arc of the show manages to

uphold the core normative values of the White Gaze.

One episode in particular that I argue exemplifies the show’s attempts to promote

a Latinx Gaze, but which falls short, comes from the fifth episode of the second season,

titled “Sister City.” I highlight this episode as particularly relevant to my analysis because

it is one of the few examples in the show’s seven-season trajectory that features a

168

predominantly “Latinx” storyline. As a quick recap of the episode, the Pawnee, Indiana

Parks and Recreation Department is hosting a delegation from the same department from

their “sister city” from Boraqua, Venezuela. Leslie as the Deputy Director of the Parks

and Rec Department is given the task of welcoming the visiting department officials and

seeks to give them an authentic Pawnee experience in order to show them the “best” that

the U.S. has to offer. Leslie and her contingent are then introduced to Raul Alejandro

Bastilla Pedro de Veloso de Moraña (Fred Armisen), the Vice-director Ejecutivo del

Diputado del Departamento de Parques, and his colleagues. The “humor” in the episode

stems from both Leslie and Raul’s cultural clashes when neither the U.S. nor Venezuela

quite fits their expectations—Raul claims that their sister city in North Korea is far nicer

than Pawnee, and Leslie’s first reminder to her team is that: “Venezuela is a poor

country, these men are not used to the wealth and flash that we have here in central

Indiana” (“Sister City”). The camera then pans to the other characters, April included,

nodding along to Leslie’s statement, as if to say, “yes, of course.” Instead, the Pawnee

officials meet military officers in full regalia who boast of all the money that Venezuela

has because of its oil industry—at one point laughing at the idea of a budget shortage

because, “Venezuela is very rich in oil” (“Sister City”).

The wealth disparity between the two cities is made evident in the “gifts” that

they exchange: the Venezuelan officials gift Pawnee a gold-plated replica of Hugo

Chavez’s gun used in the 1992 socialist revolution, whereas Pawnee gifts the

Venezuelans a bottle of high fructose corn syrup and rubber baby bottle nipples—

representing the two major, local factories that sustains Pawnee’s economy. Raul then

169

thanks Pawnee for their “bag of garbage.” Leslie responds to his comments in a talking

head aimed directly to the audience where she pardons him by stating, “His English isn’t

perfect, so I don’t think he knows how insulting he’s being” (“Sister City”). Leslie’s

condescending acceptance of Raul’s criticisms of Pawnee stems again from what Nelson

and Flores discuss as raciolinguistic ideologies—because Raul and his compatriots are

English language learners, their language abilities are marked as Other. Although they are

adhering to the Standard English (they speak almost exclusively in English throughout

the entire episode), they are still seen as speaking an inferior form of the language. In the

beginning of the episode, Leslie fearfully questions if they can even speak English,

something she is not equipped to handle.

Despite the issues present in the episode (and across the series), the episode does

manage to highlight how Parks and Rec exists within a liminal space between the White

and Latinx Gaze. For instance, while Leslie disparages the officials’ abilities to speak

English (the appropriate language for the situation), she is forced to acknowledge her

own prejudices when she claims a lack of understanding, which she attempts to posit as a

language barrier issue:

Leslie: The city does not have enough money in its budget.

Raul: I do not understand.

Leslie: You’ve never had a budget shortage?

Antonio: [laughs] No.

170

Raul: Venezuela is blessed with massive oil reserves, massive. I mean,

tremendous, like you would not believe. The state sells the oil and keeps all the

money, and we build whatever we want!

Leslie: Wow, well, now I do not understand. [Chuckles]

Raul: I feel like my English was very clear. Shall I repeat? Venezuela, Venezuela

my country [points to Venezuelan flag on his coat], has a lot of oil. Oil is food for

cars! (“Sister City”)

In her attempts to use language as a means of disparaging the delegates, they are then

able to turn the conversation against her, using simplistic terms and miming alongside

what they are saying in order to demonstrate Leslie’s ignorance—both of their

capabilities and of the general situation in Venezuela. She is forced to acknowledge her

mistake in a talking head where she begrudgingly states, “The Venezuelans are very

confident people” (“Sister City”). Instead of the meek, barely cultured people she

expected to meet—afterwards Tom calls her out because, “You said they might not know

what toilet paper is,” (“Sister City”)—she is confronted with her own failings and lack of

awareness.

Such scenes are present throughout the episode, and it comes to a head in the

“public forum” that Leslie invites the delegates to attend. In the scene, some interesting

power dynamics are at play: on the one hand, the delegates (dressed in military regalia),

condemn the Pawnee public forum as a space for “fat, ugly people yelling” (“Sister

City”) while glorifying Venezuela as a space where government (military) personnel are

treated like kings. Leslie Knope, as she has been portrayed across the series to be a

171

champion of small-town middle America, is visibly outraged. The delegate remarks, “we

answer to nobody” to which Leslie responds by spouting the virtues of a “true

democracy.” This scene, like the rest of the episode, plays in this liminal space of

“colorblind/post-racial” television by employing stereotypes against Latin American

countries like Venezuela as poor and backwards, while still forcing the viewer to question

their own prejudices. Referring back to the moment early in the episode when Leslie

reminds her team of Venezuela’s third-world country status, “these people are not used to

the wealth and flash that we have in central Indiana,” the only humorous part to that

statement is the idea that central Indiana could be considered “flashy.” The other

characters in the show do not comment on that, because they all assume the same thing,

which in itself illustrates in part how the show plays with common misunderstanding as a

way of parodying American ignorance, thereby holding the dominant US culture

responsible for not knowing better and assuming the worst.

While it is true that the show employs the White Gaze in moments such as scene

with the public forum, where despite Leslie being seen as inferior by the Venezuelan

delegates, she maintains the superiority of US ideals—Pawnee maybe be trashy, but at

least it has democracy. Here again the show mocks the political situation in Venezuela by

alluding to an authoritarian regime that a U.S. democracy would never allow. In his own

talking head, Raul explains why such chaos such as the Pawnee public forum would

never be allowed in Venezuela, a police state where citizens would never angrily protest

the government because armed policemen would take them away, and dare not even be

late to dentist appointments for fear of the state’s response:

172

This is outrageous! Where are the armed men that come in to take the protestors

away?! Where are they? This kind of behavior is never tolerated in Boraqua. You

shout like that, they put you in jail. Right away; no trial, no nothing…You make

an appointment with the dentist and you don’t show up? Believe it or not, jail

right away. We have the best patients in the world, because of jail. (“Sister City”)

And yet, by forcing Leslie to question her understanding of what “third world countries”

might look like, the show is also making inroads to addressing one of the main

contributing factors to perpetuating racist stereotypes: ignorance. In moments such as

these, I argue that Parks and Rec is making an attempt towards a Latinx Gaze by forcing

the characters and the viewers to question the presumed “greatness” of America.

Moreover, in this same episode, we have April for the first time identifying herself as

Latina but does so in a way that subverts the white male gaze.

April’s character disrupts the stereotypical image of how Latinas are represented

through her own self-awareness. She is aware of the “spicy Latina” stereotype and

refuses to play the role. By claiming in her monotone voice, “My mom is Puerto Rican,

that’s why I’m so lively and colorful,” the audience is meant to laugh at the “writer’s

critique of Latina media stereotypes and of stereotypic assumptions that all Latina/os

speak Spanish, are hyperemotional, and wear colorful clothing” (Molina-Guzmán 87). So

yes, Plaza’s character subverts the white, heteronormative expectations of the Latina

character, but as I keep reiterating with this show, this only happens to a certain extent.

As I discussed in my second chapter, part of the reason that April is a palatable character

is because it is easy to forget she is Latina. April’s ethnicity comes into play in only three

173

other episodes in the entire series: once where she speaks gibberish Spanish when she is

drunk. The second, when she asks Ben Wyatt, her new housemate, to address her with the

formal “usted” when speaking to her in Spanish, and the third being when she uses her

Latina background to win over more donations during a fundraising campaign for Leslie

in the fourth season.

In that episode, April attempts to beat City Manager Chris Traeger (Rob Lowe),

in a competition to see who can win more support for Leslie’s bid for City Council. Once

April rises to the challenge, one of her ways of gaining the trust and support of local

voters, is by changing her tone, voice, and accent to better match the person she is

speaking to—for more conservative voters, her voice and tone is polite and professional:

“Hello, is this Mrs. Gallivan? Well, my name is April, and wouldn’t you know it, I’m

raising money for a City Council candidate I believe in” (“Bowling for Votes”). Whereas

with an apparently Latinx constituent,15 she changes her demeanor by enacting a more

nasally accented voice that is more informal and grammatically incorrect than her

conversations with white voters, during which she also employs Spanglish to better

access that voter: “No mira, mira, mira, mira, mira. It’s like, whatever you want, like ten

dollars, it don’t matter” (“Bowling for Votes”). While not necessarily employing

junk/mock Spanish in that brief scene, April is exploiting her ability to switch between a

whiter persona and a more ethnically ambiguous personality, when it is of use to her.

This is the last time in all seven seasons that April speaks any Spanish, and as I described

15 The person is not featured in the episode, the audience is merely subjected to April’s one-sided telephone conversations with various town members.

174

in Chapter 2, her character’s Latinx identity is erased by her ability to “pass.” Much

earlier in the series, April’s main connection to her Latinx heritage—her Puerto Rican

mother—disappears from the show after her marriage to Andy in the beginning of the

third season; though to be fair, she only appeared in one other episode where she was

posited as the complete opposite of April—warm, bubbly, and inviting. Her mother’s

erasure from the show’s narrative is so complete that it is even whitewashed as a gag joke

in the season 6 episode “Prom,” where her (white) goth friend, Orin, pretends to be her

mother when Andy comes to pick her up for the dance. In order to emphasize April’s

“oddness,” Orin plays the role of her mother, and the couple’s three-legged dog,

Champion, plays her father. By this point in the series, April’s Latinx identity is

completely overshadowed by her character’s quirky personality traits that mark her as

different, but not because she is racially or ethnically different. It is easy to forget that

April is meant to be Latinx, because that is what the show expects of the audience.

I have included Parks and Rec in this chapter because I argue it exists on the

fringes of what Isabel Molina-Guzmán labels “post-racial” television. And yes, it does

employ hipster racism, especially in regard to Aziz Ansari’s character, Tom Haverford,

but it also makes inroads into questioning some of the hegemonic ideologies of white

viewership. It is in small moments that the satirical nature of the show allows it to

question the White Gaze, allowing for Latinx Gaze to emerge, though it cannot be

sustained. While Parks and Recreation does begin to subvert the white gaze, I want to

move now to an example from Saturday Night Live, a skit called “Diego Calls His

175

Mom,” starring Lin Manuel-Miranda, which I argue, manages to encapsulate the Latinx

Gaze as I have come to understand it.

“Diego Calls His Mom”: SNL’s Foray into the Latinx Immigrant Experience

The primary focus of this section will be to examine how language and other

markers of Latinidad are used in the sketch “Diego Calls His Mom,” to determine how it

serves to promote a Latinx Gaze. I am focusing on this one Saturday Night Live sketch in

particular because given the show’s history of portraying Latinx characters and Latinx

guest hosts as exotic, over-the-top stereotypes, this sketch in particular stands out as

attempting to change the narrative about the Latinx identity in the U.S. Unfortunately,

more often than not, SNL sketches that include a Latinx character, or allude to Latinos in

the U.S., it becomes the Latinx character’s linguistic incomprehensibility or “exoticness”

that is the running gag of the sketch. In order to understand what sets “Diego Calls His

Mom,” apart from its predecessors, this section will focus around three primary points of

analysis: what makes the sketch in question funny and who is meant to be laughing? How

is language being used—is Spanish the dominant language or English and what type of

Spanish is being promoted? And lastly, how is Latinidad being represented and by

whom—is there a measure of authenticity or legitimacy to the portrayal? Before that

though, I think it is pertinent to first discuss SNL’s (lack of) racial history.

Setting the Stage: SNL’s White history

176

Saturday Night Live is a classic part of U.S. television history and has been the

starting point for some of the most well-known comedians of our time—almost all my

favorite comedians (Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, John Mulaney, Seth Meyers, to name a

few)—had their start as SNL writers and/or cast members. Unfortunately, there is an

obvious racial connection to be made of most of the cast members—they are all

overwhelmingly white. Although several black comedians have gained stardom after

their time on the show (for instance Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, and Tracy Morgan all

got their start on SNL), they are more exceptions to the rule than the norm.

The show has been running for 45 seasons now, and it was only in its 42nd season

that the show hired its first full-time Latino writer, Julio Torres, and its first Latina cast

member, Melissa Villaseñor (Villafañe 2016). Amongst the hosts that have appeared on

the show, racial minorities are also few and far between. As Mark Lieberman shows,

“Out of 826 total hosts, 749 were white. Only two Asians—Jackie Chan and Lucy Liu—

have ever hosted, ‘SNL,’ both more than fifteen years ago. There has never been an

Indian-American host, a Native American host or an Arab host” (Lieberman 2016).

Regarding Latinx hosts specifically, “there hasn't been a Latino or Hispanic SNL host

since Sofia Vergara in 2012. Before that, there was Jennifer Lopez in 2010, Antonio

Banderas in 2006 and Eva Longoria in 2005, preceded by only a handful of others in the

show’s 41-year run” (Lieberman 2016). With actors and comedians, Lin-Manuel

Miranda, Aziz Ansari, Octavia Spencer, and Dave Chappelle, all having hosted in the

most recent seasons, the situation is improving slightly, though the numbers remain low.

177

The lack of cast diversity is not the only issue with SNL. The show also came

under fire in its 41st season, for having invited Donald Trump to host the show despite his

inflammatory remarks against immigrants. Lorne Michaels, the executive producer of the

show, defended his decision by stating, “I don’t want to rehash those things. He is the

nominee of the Republican party. We’ve always tried to be non-partisan. I think that he’s

one of the most controversial candidates that’s ever happened” (Abramovitch 2016).

Michaels’s questionable hosting choices, and his refusal to discuss the topic, demonstrate

that racial diversity is not the show’s priority, given that it is “dominated by a white, male

perspective—an appropriate slant considering the early years’ intended audience: young,

white men” (Flanagin 2013). Given the predominance of sketches featuring white

actors/comedians versus those featuring actors/comedians of color, young, white men

continue to be the target audience for SNL’s writers, leaving out a major percentage of the

population. Latinos comprise 16% of the TV-viewing public, with only a fifth of that

population preferring Spanish-language programming (Allen 2012), which shows that

although still in the minority, Latino audiences are growing force that comprise a $1.2

trillion market (Flanagin 2013). Such numbers make it very difficult to avoid the “Latino

problem” that has been questionably covered in SNL.

SNL’s High Note: An Appeal to Latinx Viewers

It is unsurprisingly difficult to find sketches about Latinidad that are not glaringly

problematic (if not outright racist) in tone, though I argue that the skit “Diego Calls His

Mom” from 2016, is proof that not all SNL sketches about Latinos are inherently racist.

178

“Diego Calls His Mom” quickly became one of my favorite skits because despite its

simplicity, it manages to capture a very human moment that many Latin American

immigrants can relate to: calling family members back home and telling them about their

new experiences with Anglo culture. By providing an alternative reading of American

culture, I argue that the sketch is therefore presenting a Latinx Gaze. In the sketch,

instead of the immigrant being the objectified joke, Midwestern (Anglo) culture becomes

the subject of satire.

To briefly sum up the sketch, “Diego Calls His Mom” features Diego (Lin-

Manuel Miranda) as a working class immigrant who is calling his mother to tell her about

his life in the US. The skit takes place mainly in an isolated phone booth in the middle of

a corn field, with Diego catching his mother up on what he has experienced of

“American” culture while living in North Dakota. Though mainly in Spanish, the sketch

also employs code-switching, mainly to highlight some of the more “exotic” U.S.

attractions Diego has discovered. The skit, though less laugh-out-loud funny than some

other SNL sketches, is more of a quiet reflection on an immigrant’s experience here in the

U.S. The fact that it was mainly done all in Spanish, reflects a changing audience—one

which might feel more at home with a Spanglish skit than an all English one. This is one

of the few SNL episodes I have seen “live” (as in while it was airing on television versus

online), and I was pleasantly surprised with the skit. It was shown without subtitles

despite airing in Spanish.16

16 The online version of the sketch also does not provide translations for the Spanish utilized, when subtitles are included, it merely states “Speaking in foreign language” when Diego is speaking in Spanish.

179

Overall, the sketch continues to appeal to me because it was reminiscent of my

own lived experience as the daughter of Latin American immigrant parents. Diego calling

his mother back home made me reflect back on when my mother and father would call

their families back in Colombia to catch up. By calling on this shared experience, “Diego

Calls His Mom” illustrates a Latinx Gaze by highlighting the changing landscape of U.S.

society, one where immigrants should be viewed as part of the regular audience, and

where the Spanish language has just as much of a home on U.S. screens as English, and

where the sharp divide between immigrant and native is not as clear-cut as some may

hope.

The sketch begins with Diego walking into a lonely phone booth in the middle of

nowhere, pulling out his calling card and dialing home. He then explains to his mother, in

Spanish, about some of his new experiences living in North Dakota, from “Marshmallow

salad. No vegetales, marshmallows,” to Little Debbie’s, Walmarts and 7-Elevens, and the

carpeting everywhere, “Everything in América es carpeted” (“Diego Calls His Mom”).

He tells his mother about his “bud” Preston, a high school quarterback with “baby blue

eyes” and Preston’s girlfriend, “Michelle o Becky o Sarah Beth o algo así;” and the new

American phrases he has learned: “Hit the road Jack. Hold your horses. These

immigrants are coming to steal our jobs, but not like you though, you are different. Every

kiss begins with Kay” (“Diego Calls His Mom”). The sketch then ends with Diego telling

his mother that he hopes to see her soon and says goodbye, “See you later alligator”

(“Diego Calls His Mom”) he ends by asking for a “bendición”—a blessing—and hangs

180

up. The sketch is simple but manages to demonstrate the “American Dream” from the

perspective of the immigrant trying to achieve said dream.

The sketch itself is notable for its heavy use of Spanish. Diego begins and ends

his conversation with his mother using only Spanish, and begins to incorporate English to

introduce cultural products or sayings only found in the U.S. Diego’s (one-sided)

conversation moves between Spanish and English to show that he is proficient in both,

yet borrows English terms for words that are markedly “American.” Diego practices code

switching, which Bonnie Urciuoli defines as, “(the alternation of Spanish and English) is

a complex mode of language use that integrates relations among those who do it and

consolidates their identity” (5). In other words, as Diego describes his daily experiences

to his mother, he can move fluidly between English and Spanish throughout his

conversation and that ability helps him mark his identity as both an immigrant and a

Latino. As was the case of the children in Ana Zentella’s study, the switching between

the two languages seems to come naturally to Diego and could also reflect his prior lack

of knowledge of these items. By utilizing code switching, the skit helps to normalize

Spanglish, which Ed Morales defines as, “a hybrid language, an informal code […]

Spanglish is what we speak, but is also who we Latinos are, and how we act, and how we

perceive the world” (3). Diego’s role as an immigrant places him in the category of

Latino, which means he is marked by his “otherness” as Urciuoli explains, “The generic

white American is, in semiotic terms, unmarked while the non-normative, the racialized

or ethnicized person, is marked” (17). Despite Diego’s marked immigrant status, that is

181

not the object of humor in the skit, the skit is funny because it turns the perspective back

onto the viewer and makes the “unmarked” white culture the punchline.

The laugh track that goes with the sketch is only used when Diego remarks on

American culture. From the salad with zero vegetables, to the mounds of yellow and

orange food, to carpeting in every house. When Diego is speaking only in Spanish, the

laugh track is not present, making his conversation with his mother more meaningful,

whereas the English bits are the subject of humor. In the sketch, Spanish is not funny, nor

is the fact that he is calling home from a payphone in the middle of nowhere. The

location of the payphone almost highlights Diego’s isolation as a sole Latino in a

primarily white environment. Instead, the audience is forced to view American culture

from the perspective of the outsider, and forced to laugh at itself, because let’s face it, US

mainstream culture is just as “weird” as “foreign” cultures to someone not from the US.

In doing so, the sketch manages to conflate Urciuoli’s “spheres of interaction” that are

“sets of relations polarized by axes of social inequality. One’s inner sphere is made of

relations with people most equal to one; one’s outer sphere is made of relations with

people who have structural advantages over one” (77). In the sketch, there is no clear

divide between the inner and outer sphere because there is no one in a clear position of

power. While Preston represents the stereotypical white guy, he works alongside Diego

as a dishwasher and the entire sketch can be understood as Diego critiquing the strange

Anglo ways. Preston may have structural advantages over Diego simply because of his

whiteness, but in the sketch, they are equals, just with different cultural values. When

Preston’s father remarks, “These immigrants are coming to steal our jobs, but not like

182

you though, you are different,” (“Diego Calls His Mom”) he is forced to acknowledge

that maybe not all immigrants are evil. Is it condescending? Yes, but it serves as another

example of Diego shaking his head at US ideologies. The father may judge him for being

an immigrant, but Diego is also judging the father for being racist.

Another interesting component of the sketch is that the audience never hears the

mother’s side of the conversation. Diego rattles off a list of foods, places, and catch

phrases to her, without stopping to explain himself, which goes to show the automatic

and unconscious nature of his code switching—Diego does not explain the items because

to him, he is making perfect sense. For me, the sketch made me slightly nostalgic because

I recall similar situations of when my mother would call her mother in Colombia (also

using calling cards). She would be describing something that happened to her and would

slip in an English word or two here and there. She never caught herself doing so, and it

was only when another member of my family heard her using English that we would

remind my mother that my grandmother has no idea what she is saying. And so, for me,

Diego’s code switching reflects reality. Sometimes bilingual speakers (myself included)

cannot help ourselves. I know that when I am speaking Spanish to my mother, I often

code switch, sometimes as a “crutch” as Zentella explains (98), but other times simply

because, “bilinguals sometimes are unaware of alternating between languages because it

has become such an effortless way of speaking” (99). And perhaps that is Diego’s

situation. The viewer is unaware of how long Diego has been in the U.S., from context it

appears that he recently moved to North Dakota, but the audience has no way of knowing

where he was before that, all we know is that life there is different from home.

183

While not one of SNL’s most glaringly political/in your face sketches, “Diego

Calls His Mom,” manages to make a political statement about the place of immigrants in

this country. The sketch’s use of Spanish highlights the importance of the language for

the growing Latino population in the US. Moreover, by using English only to describe

American traditions, American culture from the perspective of an immigrant becomes the

focal point. For once, it is not a heavy Spanish accent or Latino culture that is the joke,

instead, it is US culture. The sketch helps to situate immigrants in a foreign country,

without focusing on the foreignness of the immigrant.

I argue that this sketch in particular is presenting a Latinx Gaze through its ability

to place White American culture as the center of the joke. However, it should be noted

that it does so through the medium of satire—in this particular situation, a satirical

commentary of Midwestern life in general, from the perspective of New York City

writers and dwellers. The humor is compounded by the fact that a more “cultured,” urban

audience would find such situations as foreign and exotic. Interestingly enough, when I

have shown this sketch to students in various classes at The Ohio State University, most

(Anglo) students laugh as well at things that they agree are part of Midwestern living. So

yes, the sketch does take Midwestern culture in general to be something to mock in

comparison to life in the Big City, but not to such an extreme that a Midwestern cannot

find it in themselves to be offended. As I previously discussed about the role of humor

and satire in providing a space for the Latinx Gaze, the entire premise of Saturday Night

Live depends on that in order for its humor to land. It is transgressive, but only up to a

certain point. The sketch is therefore able to present a Latinx Gaze because its threat is

184

minimal, while I believe it is a positive step that the showrunners did not provide

subtitles, it also means that for many non-Spanish speakers watching, those parts of the

sketch are irrelevant. Its only when the Latinx Gaze is present on a wider scale that I

think it can begin to create a lasting impact, which is why I am now moving to the show

Superstore to close off my analysis of the Latinx Gaze. As an entire television series that

continually promotes this gaze, I argue that it is one of the few examples of popular

culture, especially Midwestern-set popular culture that best manages to subvert social

norms regarding the alleged supremacy of white culture as being the culture of the U.S.,

and in particular, of the Midwest.

The “American” Megamarket

Superstore is a sitcom television series that follows a group of employees working

at Cloud 9, a fictional big-box store in St. Louis, Missouri. While Cloud 9 is a fictional

megamart, it serves as a parody of Walmart, while the show in general is a satirical

commentary on the consumerist practices of Americans in general. However, while the

show employs satire, it would likely not fall under the category of “satire television,”

such as shows like Saturday Night Live, Last Week Tonight, or Full Frontal—all series

which harshly criticize American politics through scathing “news” reports and

monologues, or even Parks and Rec, which although a sitcom, is more of a satire sitcom

than Superstore. That is not to say that it does not manage to capture the Latinx Gaze, as I

will show, it is one of the few series that most clearly employs a Latinx Gaze, and one of

185

the only series that is set in the Midwest that manages to criticize Midwestern and Anglo

ways of living without completing alienating its target audience.

As part of my analysis of the show, I will be focusing on a small number of

episodes to highlight various components of the series that I argue are reflective of a

Latinx Gaze. As of now, the series has been in production for five seasons, and has been

renewed for a sixth. In that timeframe, the show has covered a number of pertinent issues

to not just Latinx audiences, but all audiences; dealing with issues of race and racial

appropriation, to discrimination in the workplace, to the plight of undocumented

immigrants living under the “U.S. deportability regime” (Maldonado, Licona, and

Hendricks 321).

Unlike the other series I have discussed, what sets Superstore apart is that it does

not tend to the extremes. As Isabel Molina-Guzmán notes, the show is “gloriously basic

and uncomplicated” (109). In comparison to shows that emerged during the “post-racial”

Obama-era ideologies, Molina-Guzmán argues that comedies such as Superstore, that

have emerged in the Trump-era are moving away from “hipster racism” towards humor

that is less racially and ethnically charged in order to provide audiences with a space to

escape from recent political troubles, noting that “The tone of many comedies provides

audiences with a moment of escapism (from the widening wealth gap; state-sanctioned

violence against black, brown, and queer people; and the 2015 campaign and 2016

election of Donald J. Trump) through the production of feel-good stories and characters”

(Molina-Guzmán113). While it is true that Superstore does manage to produce “feel-

good stories”—often after finishing an episode I am left with a positive feeling—

186

however, that does not mean the show does not delve into major issues such as cultural

appropriation, Latinx identity and belonging, and most recently in the show’s fourth and

fifth seasons, workplace detention raids by ICE.

The show’s pilot episode introduces audiences to a number of different characters,

each with their own “quirks” that highlight a number of different social identities across a

number of races and ethnicities. Amy Dubanowski (later Sosa after she divorces her

husband in the third season), played by America Ferrera, is introduced as the no-

nonsense, yet caring, floor supervisor of Cloud 9. Her foil (and later love interest) is

Jonah Simms, played by Ben Feldman, who is the charismatic, happy-go-lucky character

who is always trying to find the “fun” way to get through their days as a floor worker.

From the Pilot, Jonah and Amy are put at odds when Jonah condescendingly admits to

Amy, whose position as his supervisor is unknown to him, that he does in fact work in

the store, despite appearances to the contrary—that yes, someone like him (white, young,

good-looking) works in a place like Cloud 9. It is Jonah’s arrogance and privilege that

sets him apart from his fellow Cloud 9 colleagues, with Garret McNeill, played by Colton

Dunn, revealing in the fourth episode of the second season that he keeps a list “of all the

crazy white-person stuff” Jonah says such as “I fenced in college…wearing boat shoes,

BBC America, makes his own trail mix” (“Guns, Pills, and Birds”). Often times Jonah

attempts to humble-brag about his experiences in college and elsewhere, such as how he

volunteered for Habitat for Humanity or spent a semester abroad, always to the

annoyance of his fellow workers who quickly shut him down and remind him to check

his privilege.

187

The show is unique because although the characters are of various races and

ethnicities, no one group is singled out, nor is it sublimated. Often times it becomes the

focal point for the episode. Such is the case in the third episode of the first season, “Shots

and Salsa,” when the store manager, Glenn Sturgis, an extremely devout Christian played

by Mark McKinney, who serves as the well-meaning but simple-minded, bordering on

ignorant, character of the group, asks Amy to promote the new Cloud 9 brand of salsa:

Señor Salsa, because she has a “certain natural…spiciness” (“Shots and Salsa”). He had

initially tasked the promoting of the product to Mateo, an undocumented Filipino worker

played by Nico Santos, until he learned that Mateo was in fact Filipino and not Mexican

like he had believed. When Amy refuses because she does not want to play into Glenn’s

stereotyping, she calls him out for picking the only other Latina worker, Carmen,17 to sell

the product. He continues to pressure his employees of color to sell the product, noting

later in the episode that the “Mexican hat” (a standard sombrero) “really pops on darker

skin” (“Shots and Salsa”).

When Amy confronts Carmen for agreeing to Glenn’s idea, having noticed that

Carmen had taken on a highly accented voice to sell the salsa, exclaiming to Jonah her

frustration: “She is from Kansas City, why is she talking like Speedy Gonzalez” (“Shots

and Salsa”). Carmen tells Amy that she chose that accent because, “Oh my God, people

love it. [Turns to customers] Hola señorita, you want to make your day a fiesta?” (“Shots

17 Carmen is played by Grace Parra and this is the only episode she appears in, having been injured by Amy and never seeming to return to the plot/store.

188

and Salsa”) she then points out to Amy the larger number of customers she attracts by

doing so. The exchange leads to a discussion between the two about cultural sensitivity:

Amy: Yep, some people love it, and some people might find it offensive.

Carmen: Offensive? Like who?

Amy: Oh, I don’t know, maybe Latino people who would think you’re exploiting

your heritage and demeaning yourself!

[…] Carmen: I don’t know who made you the Latino police Amy, but I’m just

trying to sell salsa. (“Shots and Salsa”)

When Carmen continues to speak in her accented voice to an elderly (white) customer,

Amy angrily tells her to “Talk like a normal person!” prompting the customer to come to

Carmen’s defense telling Carmen, “You speak the language beautifully” and that “Excuse

me miss, but she is a normal person” (“Shots and Salsa”). Amy, and the rest of the Cloud

9 employees, are then subjected to an hour-long, video training session about “racism,”

led by a blond, white woman, to which Garret remarks, “Thanks a lot guys, when I woke

up this morning, I was hoping to learn about racism from a white lady” (“Shots and

Salsa”). The session devolves into all the employees misunderstanding the point Amy

was trying to make, with another store employee asking, “Are racist jokes okay again?”

and with Glenn giving a final takeaway message: “Color blind, is color kind.” Amy’s

“punishment” for her allegedly racially insensitive remarks towards Carmen (and for

sending her to the hospital) is to man the Señor Salsa station. Dina, Amy’s supervisor,

sees the lackluster sales and prompts Amy to add a little “authenticity” to her pitch:

“People are not going to buy salsa from you unless they think it’s authentic! You gotta

189

add some indigenousness, you know, put a little Vergara on!” (“Shots and Salsa”). Amy,

again, is offended because rightfully so, Mexican and Latinx culture should not be

exploited for financial gain, though she begins to doubt herself once Dina explains that

all the proceeds benefit La Benevolencia Orphanage in Nogales, Mexico.

In light of needy children, Amy begins to play to the customer’s desires. One

white customer asks slowly in English, “Is it similar to what you would eat in your

village?” to which Amy responds in an accented English, “Sí, es muy auténtica. It is just

like the salsa my mother would make in a bowl made from a giant rock” (“Shots and

Salsa”). When the same woman asks (again in slowed, down English), “You must have

enjoyed many fiestas growing up! Where are you from?” Amy is saved from lying when

Mateo shows up as “Jose” her “brother” to explain they grew up in a small village near

the Rio Grande. The woman looks around to her fellow customers and exclaims, “Oh,

there’s two of them!” as if to say, “Isn’t that nice for them?” while at the same time

implying that there had better not be more. The situation culminates with Amy and Mateo

dancing along to “La cucaracha” and Amy reminding the audience that while the dance

was nice, there is so much more to Latinx culture: “We are so happy you liked our dance,

but it is also important to remember that Latinos can be doctors and lawyers, and

architects!” In light of the extremely confused faces of the customers, she remarks,

“Never mind, I'm just playing, you should see the looks on your gringo faces!” (“Shots

and Salsa”). To her shame, Amy is confronted once more with Carmen, who walks in at

that moment on crutches, shakes her head at Amy and walks away, leaving Amy yelling

“It’s for charity!” while she finishes up another round of her dance.

190

The episode, like many others, evokes the Latinx Gaze because it challenges a

number of racialized discourses, while also poking fun at American expectations. What

starts off as Amy’s rejection of Glenn’s overt typecasting, becomes a nuanced discussion

on cultural appropriation and who has the authority/power to perform culture. Carmen,

who is judged by Amy by performing a “false” Latinidad, likewise judges Amy for

claiming to be the voice of the “authentic” Latina. The situation is further complicated by

the financial benefits in “selling” their authenticity—the performance sells salsa and in

turn provides financial aid to needy children in Mexico. When she attempts to challenge

the customers on their assumptions of what Latinxs can achieve, in face of their disbelief

she has to go back to her song and dance, once again showing that it is the larger,

mainstream audience who is too ignorant to understand the true Latinx experience in the

U.S.

Amy’s ability to claim a Latinx identity is something she struggles with

throughout the series, given that she is lighter-skinned, and unable to fluently speak

Spanish. In the third season, Amy briefly dates Alex, a Latinx beverage delivery guy, and

faces another identity crisis when he jokingly states he is going to revoke her “Latina

card” because she is willing to eat burritos made from “a burnout old white dude making

money off Mexican food” (“Local Vendors Day”). In order to “prove” her Latinidad,

Amy pretends to be able to understand his fast and heavily accented Dominican Spanish,

and when she finally admits to not being able to keep up, she defends herself by telling

Alex, “My Spanish isn't that good! My parents never made me speak it in the house, and I

really don't feel like I should be made to feel guilty about that, okay?” (“Local Vendors

191

Day”). Alex sees that Amy is clearly upset by his constant joking about her Latinidad

(and she had to spend the day being told by her non-Latinx co-workers how to “properly”

date a Latino), and he backs off letting her know it is no problem.

Moments like these are present throughout the series and allow for both the

characters and the audience to reflect on what identity means to them and what it means

to pertain to a particular ethnic group. Amy’s experience reflects that of many subsequent

generations of Latinxs whose connections to the language declines as they become more

distanced from their immigrant history (Lopez et al. 2018). The Pew Research Center has

found that while many immigrant parents are likely to speak Spanish to their children,

there is a general decline in Spanish-use across generations:

85% of foreign-born self-identified Hispanics say that when they were growing

up, their parents often encouraged them to speak Spanish. But that share falls to

68% among the U.S.-born second generation and to just 26% of the third or

higher generation Hispanics. By contrast, just 9% of self-identified non-Hispanics

with Hispanic ancestry say their parents often encouraged them to speak Spanish,

again reflecting the distance this group has from its immigrant roots. (Lopez et al.

2017)

Amy’s doubts in the episode reflect many of the doubts shared by Latinxs in their ability

to “pass” as Latinx despite not feeling Latinx “enough” and yet she refuses to allow any

singular definition of Latinidad to discredit her cultural identity.

Beyond questions of identity and cultural appropriation, the show also manages to

tackle major political issues. Mateo, despite being the catty, gay character of the show, is

192

also revealed to be undocumented, and in the season finale of the fourth season, he is

apprehended by ICE during a worksite enforcement raid, despite all of Cloud 9’s best

efforts to conceal his identity and help him escape the store. Thankfully for Mateo, by the

end of the second episode of the fifth season, his immigration lawyer manages to get him

out on bond, but not without Mateo having spent a significant amount of time in the

detention center, where he tells his best friend/co-worker Cheyenne (Nicole Bloom) when

she visits him, the ugly truth of the conditions he is in: “Girl, it's bad in here. It's cold and

there aren't enough blankets. I mean, it's flat out disgusting. And apparently this is one of

the nicer places! The guards think all the undocumented are Latinos, so they just keep

yelling at me in Spanish and I don't understand what they're saying. I just…I just want to

go home” (“Cloud 9.0”). Mateo is assumed to be Latinx simply because of his name and

his presence in the facility, demonstrating the lack of awareness of the immigration

system about the people they hold in custody.

This lack of awareness is tied to what Nicolas De Genova argues as the

racialization of all “illegal” immigrants as “Mexican” where “‘Mexican’-ness is always

doubly produced at the conjunctures of race and space, as an ‘illegal’ transnationality,

reracialized between whiteness and Blackness within the space of the U.S. nation-state”

(Working: 9). Throughout the series, Mateo is terrified of people learning his

undocumented status because it means he is in the “legally vulnerable condition of

deportability—the possibility of deportation, the possibility of being removed from the

space of the U.S. nation-state” (Working: 8). For the most part, Mateo provides a

sarcastic commentary on the daily lives of his coworkers, many times seen gossiping with

193

those around him, without his documented status coming into question because "On a

day-to-day basis, their illegality may be irrelevant to most of their activities, only

becoming an issue in certain contexts .... Much of the time they are undifferentiated from

those around them, but suddenly ... legal reality is superimposed on daily life” (De

Genova: “Migrant” 422). While he is not always mentioning his status, Mateo is aware

that in being labelled as “illegal,” he knows he is disposable, because an undocumented

immigrant’s value, is in their disposable labor-power:

Subjection to quotidian forms of intimidation and harassment reinforces

undocumented migrants' vulnerability as a highly exploitable workforce. Yet, the

disciplinary operation of an apparatus for the everyday production of migrant

"illegality" is never simply intended to achieve the putative goal of deportation. It

is deportability, and not deportation per se, that has historically rendered

undocumented migrant labor a distinctly disposable commodity… The INS is

neither equipped nor intended to actually keep the undocumented out. The very

existence of the enforcement branches of the INS (and the Border Patrol, in

particular) is premised upon the continued presence of migrants whose

undocumented legal status has long been equated with the disposable

(deportable), ultimately "temporary" character of the commodity that is their

labor-power. (De Genova: “Migrant” 438)

Mateo understands that he can easily be replaced/disposed of, which is why he is

constantly shown to be the hardest working employee at Cloud 9, often competing with

Jonah to prove himself to be the better employee.

194

In the show’s fifth season, when gathering testimonials to aide in Mateo’s

defense, his lawyer explains to Amy that Mateo needs to be more an “exceptional

employee” because it is simply not enough for him to be released on bond. When Amy

does not understand why, he explains how he is representing, “a Pulitzer Prize winner, a

heart surgeon that's a father of six, and a former Olympic athlete, and those people aren't

guaranteed to get out on bond. So no, sorry, it's not enough” (“Testimonials”). The show,

despite being a light-hearted comedy, is not willing to make light of Mateo’s situation—

yes, he might be a great employee, and an integral part to Cloud 9 (and the show), but

that does not mean he get an easy “get out of jail free” card. His release does not come

easily. It only came about as a result of his ex-boyfriend Jeff, a Cloud 9 regional

manager, agreeing to testify that ICE was called in to break the store’s attempts to

unionize, thereby jeopardizing his position as a corporate employee, that Mateo is let out

on bond.

Unlike Parks and Rec, Superstore does not employ a character’s Latinidad simply

when it is convenient—it is simply part of their character’s identity. Whereas April’s

Latinidad is so minimally part of her character that it is almost completely erased by the

show’s end, none of the characters of color in Superstore are divorced from their social

realities. What also distinguishes Superstore from shows like Parks and Rec, is that it is

not couched in privilege—the narratives depicted are those of working-class individuals

who are demeaned solely because of their employment. As I noted in the show’s Pilot,

Jonah considers himself to be far above his fellow coworkers, and yet they are all

working the same shifts and dealing with the same customers who treat them all as

195

inferior. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, I am intrigued to see if in future episodes

Superstore will make reference to the exploitation of big-box store workers to maintain

the American way of life during a crisis. Regrettably, America Ferrera is stepping down

from the show after the fifth season, though due to a halt in production because of the

virus, she will be returning for the beginning episodes of the sixth season to wrap up her

character’s narrative arc (Schwartz 2020). Ferrera’s departure is a loss not only for the

show’s narrative, but for the production team as well, given the Ferrera served as

Executive Producer for the show since its inception. It will be interesting to see how the

show adapts its perspective, without any major Latinx characters or writers left, can it

still present an authentic alternative perspective?

Conclusion

What is the future of Latinx representations in television in general? What about

the (few) series that are meant to depict life in the Midwest? The shows that I have

analyzed up to point are series that have either already ended (such as Parks and Rec) or

are already well into their show’s trajectory (Superstore is on its sixth season now). The

texts analyzed in this section give me hope for the future of Latinx bodies in the

mainstream media. With more and more shows cropping up that are featuring Latinx

characters and Latinx plotlines, I look forward to seeing how my conceptualization of the

Latinx Gaze, one where the camera turns the exoticizing narrative onto white,

mainstream, culture, can be understood in those shows. In an era where white supremacy

196

is on the rise (and given a voice on conservative news networks), now more than ever,

there is a need to question the assumed appropriateness of the White Gaze.

In proposing a Latinx Gaze, I am highlighting the potential in popular culture to

subvert the racialized rhetoric of U.S. political discourse. It is a concept that draws upon

the male and white gaze in order to understand texts that do not adhere to either standard.

By presenting an image of America in which the gaze (and laughter) is turned on the

white viewer, texts that employ the Latinx Gaze are managing to dive into the unspoken,

taboo topics of race while straddling the lines of comedy and the unfamiliar. Shows such

as Parks and Recreation, which straddle two different eras—the post-racial Obama era

and the beginning of the Trump era—also straddle the lines between the White and the

Latinx Gaze. By utilizing hipster racism—racist jokes that are no longer perceived as

racist (by white audiences), it cannot fully question the White Gaze. Saturday Night Live

has had a longer history of exoticizing its Latinx hosts than honoring them, though I

argue “Diego Calls His Mom,” is an excellent example of the Latinx Gaze in practice.

The skit questions the very whiteness of SNL’s audience by imposing Spanish as the main

language of the sketch and by employing a number of visual cues (such as the calling

card) that are only familiar to immigrant families. Superstore manages to encapsulate

working-class America while also emphasizing the inherent diversity of that sector of

society. Instead of downplaying a character’s ethnic or racial identity, they come up time

and time again as relevant plot points, whether that be Amy’s fears of losing her Latinx

identity, or Mateo’s status as an undocumented immigrant. The show relies on humor in

order to present major issues in a seemingly non-threatening manner, the show relies on

197

its feel-good nature to be able to slip in a new perspective on American culture and force

a new form of understanding about Otherness—that it is not necessarily the immigrant or

the person of color whose customs are strange and exotic and worthy of ridicule. By

forcing audiences to laugh at the mainstream culture, they are forcing audiences to laugh

at themselves.

The texts discussed in this chapter, while still considered comedies, force an

almost uncomfortable humor upon its viewers—it creates a sense of the uncanny by

focusing the mirror back upon the white viewer. Beyond creating a sense of anxiety

within the mainstream audience, by projecting a reality that is not expected, the Latinx

Gaze also questions who is meant to be the intended audience, for once not expecting it

to be a white viewer, as was the case in “Diego Calls His Mom.” Such as mode of

analysis is not limited to the Latinx Midwest, it can be applied to a growing number of

series that challenge the white status quo, such as Brooklyn 99, One Day at a Time, When

They See Us, and Vida—not all of which are comedies. I chose to focus only on shows

set in the Midwest in order to question the continuing political rhetoric that continues to

isolate Latinx voices. By claiming a Midwestern Latinx presence in popular culture, I

seek to challenge racialized discourses that whitewash an increasingly brown sector of

America, it is my hope that one day, this analysis can be applied to non-comedic texts

that are also set in the Midwest, but unfortunately for now, that is still not possible.

198

Conclusion

Future Pathways for Latinx Representation

Red: I guess it might be fun to just sit back and watch Tarzan here crumble before the full

force of the US government.

Fez: Okay, that’s it. Anwar—I can deal with. Tonto—in the ballpark, but

Tarzan?! Tarzan is a white guy!

(“I’m Free”)

In the supposed “post-racial” period that the country entered into after the election

of Barack Obama, color-blindness became the social response to “racialized” portrayals

in television in order to create “culturally safe articulations of Latin/a American identity

on TV” (Molina-Guzmán 68). Latinx storylines may be present in the post-racial era, but

they are ones that “rarely threaten dominant norms of white masculinity or femininity”

(77). When situating the discussion of Latinx representation within a regional space that

is not socially considered Latinx—the American Midwest—Latinidad and Latinx

representations stand as a direct contrast to the imagined community of the region. The

American Heartland as socially defined in popular culture is the heartland of middle

199

(white), conservative America, where historically there has been little room for Latinxs to

be present onscreen. Those that have been depicted have to adhere to/assimilate into the

whiteness of the region or else be perceived as subversive.

Those Latinx characters that are boldly Latinx are subversive because the

Midwest still remains a white space. The cultural identity of the Midwest is tied to

whiteness because it has historically excluded the Other. As Stuart Hall points out,

“identities can function as points of identification and attachment only because of their

capacity to exclude, to leave out, to render ‘outside,’ abjected” (“Who”: 17-18), in the

case of the Midwest, the role of the Latinxs in the social history is what has been

excluded. While the US prides itself as a nation of immigrants, it cannot help but exclude

those that do not fit the “proper” image of the “right type” of immigrant. As Benedict

Anderson notes, “Seen as both a historical fatality and a community imagined through

language, the nation presents itself simultaneously open and closed” (146)—it is open to

those that share its imagined history and language (English), and closed to those that do

not fit the bill. Moreover, as Anderson explains, racist ideologies are internalized

nationalistic practices against a social Other in order to assert a white hegemony that

ensures that minority groups maintain their social inferior status since together,

nationalism and racism, “justify not so much foreign wars as domestic repression and

domination” (150).

One way Latinxs have been repressed in the Midwest is by their elimination from

the narrative history of the region. Despite the fact that Latinxs have been present in the

region since the late 19th century, they are still viewed as the “newest” encroaching

200

immigrant group to the American heartland. Even though a place for Latinxs in the

Midwest in the national imaginary is slowly starting to grow—not even the staunchest

conservatives can ignore the growing numbers of Latinx immigrant groups across the

region as more and more Latinxs move into the meat packing industries that populate the

rural Midwest—in popular culture, the image of the Midwest has remained

overwhelmingly white.

The Midwest is not just a white “space,” but also a white “place,” as the two

terms bleed into one another—a physical space becomes a social place through the

cultural meanings embedded into the region. As Tim Cresswell explains, “Space, then

has been seen in distinction to place as a realm without meaning—as a ‘fact of life’

which, like time, produces the basic coordinates for human life. When humans invest

meaning in a portion of space and then become attached to it in some way…it becomes a

place” (16). The socio-cultural perception of the Midwest as a white space converts it

into a white place. It is a space where Latinxs are only just now beginning to claim their

own belonging through various Latinx placemaking processes across the region as

Gerardo Francisco Sandoval explains:

Small-business immigrant Latino entrepreneurs are opening stores and businesses,

providing new economic development opportunities sorely needed in these small

[Iowa] towns whose populations and economies have been shrinking. Latino

immigrants are providing the labor, commercial capital investment/markets, and

overall population growth needed to sustain such communities. The transnational

connections immigrants maintain back to their countries of origin provide

201

bidirectional access to economic resources shaping placemaking efforts in both

spaces, as well as to transcultural resources that are helping immigrants establish

a sense of place in their new communities. (Sandoval 50-51)

The Latinx presence in the Midwest cannot be ignored any longer, with many Latinx

communities responsible for the revitalization of cities in the Midwest. Jesús Lara notes

such efforts taking place in cities such as Detroit, Michigan; Columbus, Ohio; and

Indianapolis, Indiana according to his analysis of the socio-economic impact Latinx

immigrants have had to those cities:

immigrant-owned businesses make sizable contributions to the U.S. economy

nationally and locally… They have opened retail shops, restaurants, and markets,

and they have started service businesses as CPAs and electricians. They fill in

gaps within certain niches where particular goods and services are needed.

Immigrant businesses have been revitalizing streetscapes and neighborhoods—

places within urban areas that may have been in decline and at risk of becoming

areas of blight. (Lara 119)

Moreover, going back to Sujey Vega’s notion of “ethnic belonging,” Latinxs in the

Midwest are not waiting for White America to accept them, they are living and

performing their identities as they see fit, regardless of whether or not it “fits” the

perceived image of how the Midwest should look/sound/taste. Midwestern Latinxs are

not only asserting their rights to belong, but also expanding the borders of the Midwest,

“connecting what were once isolated communities to transnational economies” (Sandoval

50) through their sustained ties to their communities in Latin America.

202

Despite the growing presence of Latinxs in the Midwest, and their increased

efforts to belong and transform Midwestern spaces into their own Latinx places—places

that contest the whiteness of the region through their very existence and practice, Latinx

characters are still sorely (mis)underrepresented in popular culture set in the Midwest.

Those (few) Latinxs present in television series based in the Midwest are rarely the stars

of the show—and sometimes they do not even need to be Latinx, so long as the alleged

“Latinx” character looks vaguely ethnic, that is good enough for most viewers.

The bulk of this project surrounded understanding how a number of television

series that encompassed a wide-range of genres and networks—from Fox’s That ‘70s

Show (1998-2006) and Glee (2009-2015) to NBC’s Parks and Recreation (2009-2015),

Superstore (2015-present), and Saturday Night Live sketch (2016), to ABC

Family/Freeform’s Switched at Birth (2011-2017)—took on the challenge of depicting

Midwestern Latinidad. As I demonstrated in my first chapter, shows that predated the

Trump-era tended to appropriate common stereotypes about Latino/as in order to make

their Latinx characters fit in to the common narrative surrounding Latinxs in popular

culture: women were updated versions of the tropicalized Latina—instead of relying on

heavy accents and large breasts/hips, they relied on the “fiery” Latina whose anger and

sass made her the perfect target for the other (white) characters to hate. Latin men for

their part, fit the look of the Latin Lover—dark, accented, good-looking—but through

various trials and tribulations, could never really get the “Lover” part down.

In the second chapter, these tropes take on new meaning when analyzed from the

perspective of Disability Studies. In an era where disability is no longer a narrative

203

crutch, diversity becomes that new stand-in for drama and plot development. Once a

character’s “ethnic” identity no longer serves a purpose, it is eliminated from the

narrative equation. A Latinx character can be introduced as Latinx, but that cannot be a

major aspect of their character’s identity without facing some sort of repercussion.

Latinidad has to be “normalized”—whitened—in order to fit the “proper” image of the

American Midwest. When it cannot be, as was the case with That ‘70s Show’s Fez, the

audience pushes back and lashes out against the character.

Examining further the role of humor and satire in Chapter Three became an

inroad for the development of my own theoretical approach—the Latinx Gaze. By

applying this approach to shows such as Parks and Recreation, Superstore, and the SNL

sketch, “Diego Calls His Mom,” I am proposing a new way to view and understand

popular culture that is emerging now in the Trump era. Humor can no longer reject race

or live within the “colorblind” (white) utopia of the Obama-era, as I have shown in my

analysis of the previously mentioned texts, humor is now based on upending the

normative ideologies. In these examples, Latinidad becomes the lens from which to

understand U.S. culture and makes white, heteronormative society the source of the

“exotic”/strange/Other. In these shows, humor does not rely necessarily on perpetuating

racist stereotypes—though Parks and Rec does to a certain extent as a show that straddles

these two eras—but instead on showing how American racism is systematic and wrong,

while still allowing the predominately white audience to laugh at itself.

I argue that the Latinx Gaze works primarily within in the genre of comedy

because it provides a “safe” space for the viewer to question itself. By permitting the

204

viewer the cathartic release of the laugh, the shows provide a medium for the possibility

for social change without being rejected outright. The subtlety of humor means the

viewer can be receptive to the message without being forced to take a strong political

stance. By presenting narratives that challenge the white status quo without being

labelled as radically liberal, makes these texts all the more important. That these shows

are set in the Midwest—what has been culturally perceived as the nation’s heartland—

also changes the perception of what that heartland is coming to look like—while, yes,

still largely white, by emphasizing Latinx narratives, these shows question the supremacy

of white America.

The Latinx Gaze is not limited to simply television shows set in the Midwest. For

the purposes of this project, I have limited myself to the Midwest, first, because it is the

space I have been inhabiting/embodying for more than a decade, and second, to challenge

the territorialization of Latinxs in the media. While it would have perhaps been easier to

examine shows that are not limited to the Midwest, in doing so, I am challenging the

narrative that Latinxs do not figure into the social fabric of the Midwest. Latinxs are

present in the Midwest—and not just simply Chicago, which was why I also decided to

not factor in the numerous television series that are based in Chicago that have a Latinx

reoccurring cast member. As the shows I analyze point out, Latinxs are not just in

Chicago, they are in Wisconsin (That ‘70s Show), North Dakota (“Diego Calls His

Mom”), Indiana (Parks and Recreation), Ohio (Glee), Missouri (Superstore), and Kansas

(Switched at Birth)—areas that are not at first consideration taken to be Latinx populated

states, and often overlooked in the study of the Midwest in general.

205

The regional limits of this study aside, there are a growing number of television

series, movies, podcasts, YouTube channels, and even “social media influencers,” who

can be read from this perspective. In order to develop this theoretical concept even

further, in the future I plan to examine texts from various mediums within popular culture

in order to see how the Latinx Gaze works in different settings and genres. I am

particularly interested in determining how the Latinx Gaze can be applied to cases that

are not comedies, where satire and laugh tracks are not present to ease the audiences’

potential discomfort.

One way to complicate my understanding of the Latinx Gaze as I have come to

define it, will be to incorporate social media into my future analyses. To complicate

further my analysis of shows like That ‘70s Show, I will want to study the role that social

media had in the outcome of these series. In doing so, I will be able to also better

understand the outright rejection of Fez’s final outcome. By looking to audience ratings

and reaction posts, I can delve deeper into why Fez’s relationship with Jackie was

overwhelmingly rejected. One need only look to Buzzfeed.com to find Fez and Jackie’s

relationship in posts such as “23 of the Worst TV and Movie Couples We’ve Had the

Misfortune of Seeing” (Cleal 2020) or as reason to being included in posts like “24 TV

Finales that Ruined the Show” (Martinez 2020). A further study of some of the fan

written “fix-it” narratives is also necessary in order to better understand audience

sentiments towards the characters. Likewise, there are multiple blog posts on Tumblr and

other sites that disparage Fez’s relationship with Jackie. Further examining social media

206

and audience reactions and reviews while a major undertaking, will only help to add

another perspective to my analysis.

Analyzing fan reactions for the other series I examine can perhaps shed light on

certain character arcs or changes in the narrative that could have been a result of the

audience’s acceptance/rejection of particular plotlines. In regard to the Latinx Gaze, by

examining social media and fan reactions, I can track to a certain extent, the

successfulness of a show’s ability to make its audience question normative ideologies.

Fan reactions to shows like Superstore will be especially beneficial in the show’s

upcoming seasons, given the departure of America Ferrera from the show. By following

fan sites, I can gauge how fans accept/reject the show without its main Latinx star, and

how they react either positively or negatively to the changes made to the show to adjust

to Ferrera’s exit. Moving towards the inclusion of audience reactions and social media

posts will only help to add a necessary personal voice to the project.

This project came about as a way to merge my love for popular culture alongside

my lived experience as a Latina in the Midwest. Having first lived in the small town of

South Bend, Indiana while I attended the University of Notre Dame for my undergraduate

and master’s studies, I was always aware of my brownness—Notre Dame, while a liberal

institution, is very white, and Indiana is a very white state. After moving to Columbus,

Ohio, I felt a little less ostentatious in my brownness, but I was aware that Latinxs

were/are a small minority in the city. It is only during events such as Columbus’s Festival

Latino where the numbers tip in my favor, but even then, only for a limited time in a

207

limited space. It was a small leap from there to looking for Latinxs in shows that are

meant to represent the space I am inhabiting.

Chapters 1 and 2 of this dissertation highlight my attempts to understand where

and how Latinxs are utilized in Midwestern-set television series. Chapter 3 is a departure

from that analysis in order to show where I see the future of Latinx representation to

(hopefully) be heading. In proposing my own form of analyzing television, one that takes

on a Latinx Gaze, my hope is that more popular culture texts make this turn towards the

Other that in turn creates a space for Latinx inclusion and the decentering of white

hegemony. When White America can begin to see themselves in the Other, then perhaps

they can begin to understand that what is so strange and different is simply a matter of

perspective. Given recent trends in film and television that are moving towards more

ethno-racially transgressive narratives, I look forward to the Latinx Gaze moving beyond

Midwestern Latinx popular culture, and into analyses of Latinidad across the spectrum,

highlighting the need to dismantle the White Gaze in favor of one that is a little “spicier.”

208

Bibliography

Abramovitch, Seth. “Lorne Michaels Talks ‘SNL’ Cast Changes and Alec Baldwin’s Trump.” The Hollywood Reporter 30 September 2016. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/lorne-michaels-snl-casting-shakeup-934010.

Acevedo, Nicole, and Variety. “'One Day at A Time' Has Been Saved, after Immense

#SaveODAAT Campaign.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 27 June 2019, www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/one-day-time-has-been-saved-after-immense-saveodaat-campaign-n1023456.

“Afterglow.” That ‘70s Show, created by Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner, & Mark Brazill,

season 2, episode 17, Fox Network, 2000. Aldama, Frederick L. “Multimediated Latinos in the Twenty-First Century: An

Introduction.” Latinos and the Narrative Media: Participation and Portrayal. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 1-31.

Aldama, Frederick Luis, and Christopher González. Reel Latinxs: Representation in U.S.

Film and TV. University of Arizona Press, 2019. Allen, Greg. “Media Outlets Adapt to Growing Hispanic Audience.” NPR 3 April 2013.

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/03/149845056/media-outlets-adapt-to-growing-hispanic-audience.

“The Ambush.” Switched at Birth, created by Lizzy Weiss, season 3, episode 10. Pirates’

Cove Entertainment, 2014. “American Gothic.” Switched at Birth, created by Lizzy Weiss, season 1, episode 2.

Pirates’ Cove Entertainment, 2011.

209

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso books, 2006.

Andreeva, Nellie. “ABC Family to Be Renamed as Freeform.” Deadline, Deadline, 6

Sept. 2019, deadline.com/2015/10/abc-family-freeform-new-name-1201567915/. “Andy and April’s Fancy Party.” Parks and Recreation, created by Greg Daniels and

Michael Shur, season 3, episode 9, Deedle-Dee Productions and Universal Media Studios, 2011.

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La frontera: The New Mestiza. Vol. 3. Aunt Lute, 1987. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Tr. Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana

UP (1984). Beltrán, Mary C. “The Hollywood Latina Body as Site of Social Struggle: Media

Constructions of Stardom and Jennifer Lopez’s ‘Cross-over Butt.’” Quarterly Review of Film & Video, 19 (2002): 71–86.

Betancourt, Manuel. “10 Binge-Worthy TV Shows That Center US Latino

Experiences.” Remezcla, 20 Dec. 2019, remezcla.com/lists/film/10-us-latino-tv-shows-you-can-stream-online/.

Bishop, Rudine Sims. “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors.” Perspectives:

Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom 6.3 (1990). “Bowling for Votes.” Parks and Recreation, created by Greg Daniels and Michael Shur,

performance by Aubrey Plaza, season 4, episode 13, Deedle-Dee Productions and Universal Media Studios, 2010.

“Bracing the Waves.” Switched at Birth, created by Lizzy Weiss, season 3, episode 10.

Pirates’ Cove Entertainment, 2014. Brown, Anna, and Mark Hugo Lopez. “Mapping the Latino Population, By State, County

and City.” Pew Research Center's Hispanic Trends Project, Pew Research Center, 29 Aug. 2013, www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2013/08/29/mapping-the-latino-population-by-state-county-and-city/.

210

Candelario, Ginetta. “Color Matters: Latina/o Racial Identities and Life Chances.” A Companion to Latina/o Studies. Eds. Juan Flores, et al. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. 337-350.

“Celebration Day.” That ‘70s Show, created by Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner, & Mark

Brazill, season 5, episode 25, Fox Network, 2003. Chavez, Leo. The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation.

Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013. Clammer, John. "Performing Ethnicity: Performance, Gender, Body, and Belief in the

Construction and Signaling of Identity." Ethnic and Racial Studies 38.13 (2015): 2159-2166.

“Class Picture.” That ‘70s Show, created by Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner, & Mark

Brazill, season 4, episode 20, Fox Network, 2002. Cleal, Sam. “23 Of the Worst TV And Movie Couples We've Had the Misfortune of

Seeing.” BuzzFeed, BuzzFeed, 17 Mar. 2020, www.buzzfeed.com/sam_cleal/the-worst-onscreen-couples-of-all-time.

“Cloud 9.0.” Superstore, created by Justin Spitzer, performances by Nico Santos,

America Ferrera, Ben Feldman, and Mark McKinney, season 5, episode 1, Spitzer Holding Company and NBC, 2019.

Cotter, Padraig. “That '70s Show Timeline Is Very Confusing.” ScreenRant, Screen Rant,

17 Jan. 2020, screenrant.com/that-70s-show-timeline-confusing/. “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” That ‘70s Show, created by Bonnie Turner, Terry

Turner, & Mark Brazill, season 8, episode 17, Fox Network, 2006. Cresswell, Tim. Place: An Introduction. 2nd ed. John Wiley & Sons, 2015. Critchley, Simon. On Humour. Routledge, 2011. De Genova, Nicholas P. "Migrant “Illegality” and Deportability in Everyday

Life." Annual Review of Anthropology 31.1 (2002): 419-447.

211

---. Working the Boundaries: Race, Space, and "Illegality" in Mexican Chicago. Duke University Press, 2007.

Delgadillo, Theresa. Latina Lives in Milwaukee. Urbana: University of Illinois Press,

2015. Delgado, Richard and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory: An Introduction. New York:

New York University Press, 2017. “Diego Calls His Mom.” YouTube, uploaded by Saturday Night Live, 18 February 2017,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fid_gQEShSg. Dos Santos, Kristin. “Naya Rivera No Longer a Regular on Glee.” E! Online, E! News, 7

July 2014, www.eonline.com/news/557513/naya-rivera-no-longer-a-series-regular-on-glee-but-you-haven-t-seen-the-last-of-her.

Dubrofsky, Rachel E. "Jewishness, Whiteness, and Blackness on Glee: Singing to the

Tune of Postracism." Communication, Culture & Critique 6.1 (2013): 82-102. “Duets.” Glee, created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, season 2, episode 4, 20th

Century Fox, 2010. “Echo Park.” Los Angeles Times.

http://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/neighborhood/echo-park/. Ennis, Sharon R. et al. “The Hispanic Population 2010.” 2010 Census Brief, US Census

Bureau, May 2011. Esposito, Jennifer. “Is Ugly Betty a Real Woman?: Representations of Chicana

Femininity Inscribed as a Site of (Transformative) Difference.” Performing the US Latina and Latino Borderlands. Eds. Arturo J. Aldama, Chela Sandoval, and Peter J. Garcia. Indiana University Press, 2012, pp. 328–343.

Extrafangirl21. Jackie and Fez. 6 July 2018, www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jackie+and+fez.

212

Fernández, Lilia. “From the Near West Side to 18th Street: Un/Making Latino/a Barrios in Postwar Chicago.” Beyond el barrio: everyday life in Latina/o America. Eds. Gina M. Pérez, Frank Guridy, and Adrian Burgos. NYU Press, 2010. 233-252.

Flanagin, Jake. “Diversity, Demographics, and ‘Saturday Night Live.’” Pacific Standard

1 November 2013. www.psmag.com/diversity-demographics-and-saturday-night-live-bd3c6b6b7aa1.

Flores, Nelson, and Jonathan Rosa. "Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies

and language diversity in education." Harvard Educational Review 85.2 (2015): 149-171.

“Flu Season.” Parks and Recreation, created by Greg Daniels and Michael Shur, season

3, episode 2, Deedle-Dee Productions and Universal Media Studios, 2011. Fox News. “Speedy Gonzales Caged by Cartoon Network.” Fox News, FOX News

Network, 25 Mar. 2015, www.foxnews.com/story/speedy-gonzales-caged-by-cartoon-network.

“Go Big or Go Home.” Parks and Recreation, created by Greg Daniels and Michael

Shur, season 3, episode 1, Deedle-Dee Productions and Universal Media Studios, 2011.

Gray, Jonathan, Jeffrey P. Jones, and Ethan Thompson. “The State of Satire, the Satire of

State.” Eds. Jonathan Gray, Jeffrey P. Jones and Ethan Thompson. Satire TV: Politics and comedy in the post-network era. NYU Press, 2009. 3-36.

Grosz, Elizabeth A. “Sexed Bodies.” Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism.

Indiana University Press, 1994. 187-210. Guida, Matthew. “15 Things That Make No Sense About That '70s Show.” ScreenRant,

Screen Rant, 15 Apr. 2018, screenrant.com/70s-show-plotholes-trivia/. “Guns, Pills, and Birds.” Superstore, created by Justin Spitzer, performances by America

Ferrera, Ben Feldman, and Colton Dunn, season 2, episode 4, Spitzer Holding Company and NBC, 2016.

213

Gutiérrez-Jones, Carl Scott. “Humor, Literacy, and Trauma in Chicano Culture.” Comparative Literature Studies, 40. 2 (2003): 112–126.

Hall, Stuart. Race: The Floating Signifier. Ed. Sut Jhally. Media Education Foundation,

1996. ---. “Who needs ‘identity’?” Identity: A Reader. Eds. Paul Du Gay, Jessica Evans y Peter

Redman. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications Inc., 2000. 15-30. Hill, Jane. “Junk Spanish, Covert Racism, and the (Leaky) Boundary Between Public and

Private Spheres.” Pragmatics 5.2 (1995): 197-212. ---. "Mock Spanish: A site for the indexical reproduction of racism in American English."

Language & Culture: Symposium 2. Binghamton University, 1995. ---. "Language, race, and white public space." American Anthropologist 100.3 (1998):

680-689. Hobson, Kathryn. “Sue Sylvester, Coach Beiste, Santana Lopez, and Unique Adams:

Exploring Queer Representations of Femininity on Glee.” Glee and New Directions for Social Change. Eds. B. C. Johnson and D. K. Faill. Sense Publishers, 2015.

Hunt, Darnell, and Ana-Christina Ramón. “Hollywood Diversity Report 2020: A Tale of

Two Hollywoods.” Social Sciences, UCLA, socialsciences.ucla.edu/hollywood-diversity-report-2020/.

“I Kissed a Girl.” Glee, created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, season 3, episode 7,

20th Century Fox, 2011. “I’m Free.” That ‘70s Show, created by Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner, & Mark Brazill,

season 6, episode 5, Fox Network, 2003. “Immigrant Song.” That ‘70s Show, created by Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner, & Mark

Brazill, season 5, episode 24, Fox Network, 2003. Inda, Jonathan Xavier and Julie A. Dowling. “Introduction: Governing Migrant

Illegality.” Governing Immigration Through Crime: A Reader. Eds. Jonathan Xavier Inda and Julie A. Dowling. Stanford Social Sciences, 2013. 1–36.

214

“Instead of Damning the Darkness, It’s Better to Light a Little Lantern.” Switched at Birth, created by Lizzy Weiss, season 4, episode 15. Pirates’ Cove Entertainment, 2015.

Katsingris, Peter. “The Nielsen Total Audience Report: Q1 2018.” Nielsen,

www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/report/2018/q1-2018-total-audience-report/#. “The Kids Are Alright.” That ‘70s Show, created by Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner, &

Mark Brazill, season 6, episode 1, Fox Network, 2003. Krogstad, Jens Manuel. “Key Facts About How the US Hispanic Population is

Changing.” Pew Research Center (8 September 2016). Lara, Jesús J. Latino Placemaking and Planning Cultural Resilience and Strategies for

Reurbanization. The University of Arizona Press, 2018. “Las dos Fridas.” Switched at Birth, created by Lizzy Weiss, season 1, episode 16.

Pirates’ Cove Entertainment, 2012. Lieberman, Mark. “‘Saturday Night Live’: More than 90 Percent of Hosts are White—

Why These Numbers Need to Change.” Indiewire 20 May 2016. http://www.indiewire.com/2016/05/saturday-night-live-more-than-90-percent-of-hosts-are-white-why-these-numbers-need-to-change-289051/.

“Local Vendors Day.” Superstore, created by Justin Spitzer, performances by America

Ferrera, Ben Feldman, and Mark McKinney, season 3, episode 18, Spitzer Holding Company and NBC, 2018.

“London: Parts 1 & 2.” Parks and Recreation, created by Greg Daniels and Michael

Shur, season 6, episodes 1-2, Deedle-Dee Productions and Universal Media Studios, 2013.

Lopez, Mark Hugo, et al. “Hispanic Identity Fades Across Generations as Immigrant

Connections Fall Away.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center. 20 December 2017, www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2017/12/20/hispanic-identity-fades-across-generations-as-immigrant-connections-fall-away/.

215

Lopez, Mark Hugo, et al. “Hispanic Parents' Spanish Use with Children Falls as Generations Pass.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 2 April. 2018, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/02/most-hispanic-parents-speak-spanish-to-their-children-but-this-is-less-the-case-in-later-immigrant-generations/.

“Love Among Ruins.” Switched at Birth, created by Lizzy Weiss, season 3, episode 12. Pirates’ Cove Entertainment, 2014.

“Love of My Life.” That ‘70s Show, created by Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner, & Mark

Brazill, season 8, episode 21, Fox Network, 2006. “Love Seduces Innocence, Pleasure Entraps, and Remorse Follows.” Switched at Birth,

created by Lizzy Weiss, season 3, episode 11. Pirates’ Cove Entertainment, 2014. Maldonado, Marta Maria, Adela C. Licona, and Sarah Hendricks. “Latin@ Immobilities

and Altermobilities Within the U.S. Deportability Regime.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 106.2 (2016): 321-329.

Marrow, Helen B. “Who Are the Other Latinos, and Why?” The Other Latinos: Central

and South Americans in the United States. Eds. José Luis Falconi and José Antonio Mazzotti. Harvard University Press, 2007. 39–77.

Martinez, Kelly. “24 TV Finales That Really, Really Ticked People Off.” BuzzFeed,

BuzzFeed, 4 Apr. 2020, www.buzzfeed.com/kellymartinez/worst-tv-finales-of-all-time.

Martinez-Cruz, Paloma and John Cruz. “Hemisexualizing the Latin Lover: Film and Live

Art Interpretations and Provocations.” The Routledge Companion to Gender, Sex and Latin American Culture. Ed. Frederick Aldama. Routledge, 2018. 206-221.

“Mash Off.” Glee, created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, season 3, episode 6, 20th

Century Fox, 2011. McKenzie, Jon. Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance. Routledge, 2001. “Memory Is Your Image of Perfection.” Switched at Birth, created by Lizzy Weiss,

season 3, episode 7. Pirates’ Cove Entertainment, 2014.

216

Mitchell, David T. and Sharon L. Snyder. Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse. University of Michigan Press, 2000.

Mitchell, Pablo and Haley Pollack. “Making ‘The International City’ Home: Latinos in

Twentieth-Century Lorain, Ohio.” Beyond el barrio: everyday life in Latina/o America. Eds. Gina M. Pérez, Frank Guridy, and Adrian Burgos. NYU Press, 2010. 149-167.

Molina-Guzmán, Isabel. Dangerous Curves: Latina Bodies in the Media. New York:

NYU Press, 2010. ---. Latinas and Latinos on TV: Colorblind Comedy in the Post-racial Network Era.

University of Arizona Press, 2018. Molina-Guzmán, Isabel, and Angharad N. Valdivia. “Brain, Brow, and Booty: Latina

Iconicity in U.S. Popular Culture.” The Communication Review, 7.2 (2004): 205–221.

Morales, Ed. Living in Spanglish. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002. Moreno, Carolina. “Aubrey Plaza Talks Puerto Rican Heritage And ‘Awkward’ Latino

Moments.” HuffPost, HuffPost, 6 Dec. 2017, www.huffpost.com/entry/aubrey-plaza-puerto-rican_n_3678314.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Feminisms: An Anthology of

Literary Theory and Criticism. Eds. Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997. 432-442. Print.

Neale, Steve and Frank Krutnik. Popular Film and Television Comedy. Routledge, 2006. Negrón-Mutaner, Frances, et al. The Latino Media Gap: A Report on the State of Latinos

in the U.S. Media. 2014, pp. 1–42. “Oh, Future!” Switched at Birth, created by Lizzy Weiss, season 3, episode 14. Pirates’

Cove Entertainment, 2014. “On My Way.” Glee, created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, season 3, episode 14,

20th Century Fox, 2012.

217

“Pandora’s Box.” Switched at Birth, created by Lizzy Weiss, season 1, episode 8. Pirates’ Cove Entertainment, 2011.

“Pawnee Zoo.” Parks and Recreation, created by Greg Daniels and Michael Shur, season

2, episode 1, Deedle-Dee Productions and Universal Media Studios, 2009. Pérez, Daniel Enrique. “(Re)Examining the Latin Lover: Screening Chicano/Latino

Sexualities.” Performing the US Latina and Latino Borderlands. Eds. Arturo Aldama, Chela Sandoval, and Peter Garcia. IUP, 2012. 437-456.

Pérez, Gina M., Frank Guridy, and Adrian Burgos. “Introduction.” Beyond El Barrio:

Everyday Life in Latina/o America. NYU Press, 2010 “Pilot.” Parks and Recreation, created by Greg Daniels and Michael Shur, season 1,

episode 1, Deedle-Dee Productions and Universal Media Studios, 2009. “Portrait of My Father.” Switched at Birth, created by Lizzy Weiss, season 1, episode 3.

Pirates’ Cove Entertainment, 2011. “The Power of Madonna.” Glee, created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, season 1,

episode 15, 20th Century Fox, 2010. Sanchez, James Chase. "Trump, the KKK, and the Versatility of White Supremacy

Rhetoric." Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric 8.1/2 (2018): 44-56. Sandoval, Gerardo Francisco. “Transnational Placemaking in Small-Town America.”

Diálogos: Placemaking in Latino Communities. Eds. Michael Rios, Leonardo Vazquez and Lucrezia Miranda. Routledge, 2012. 50–66.

“Saturday Night Glee-ver.” Glee, created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, season 3,

episode 16, 20th Century Fox, 2011. Schwartz, Ryan. “Superstore Sets Up America Ferrera's Exit in Penultimate Season 5

Episode; Ben Feldman Teases Finale Cliffhanger.” TVLine, 3 Apr. 2020, tvline.com/2020/04/02/superstore-amy-exit-explained-america-ferrera-leaving-season-5/.

218

“Sexy.” Glee, created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, season 2, episode 15, 20th Century Fox, 2011.

“Sheer Heart Attack.” That ‘70s Show, created by Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner, & Mark

Brazill, season 8, episode 19, Fox Network, 2006. Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the

Media. Routledge, 2014. “Shots and Salsa.” Superstore, created by Justin Spitzer, performances by America

Ferrera, Ben Feldman, and Mark McKinney, season 1, episode 3, Spitzer Holding Company and NBC, 2015.

“Showmance.” Glee, created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, season 1, episode 2,

20th Century Fox, 2009. “Silly Love Songs.” Glee, created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, season 2, episode

12, 20th Century Fox, 2011. “Sister City.” Parks and Recreation, created by Greg Daniels and Michael Shur,

performance by Aubrey Plaza, season 2, episode 11, Deedle-Dee Productions and Universal Media Studios, 2010.

Spurlin, William J. “What?! Queers in the Midwest?” Reclaiming the Heartland: lesbian

and gay voices from the Midwest. Eds. Osborne, Karen Lee, and William J. Spurlin. U of Minnesota Press, 1996. XI-XXV.

Stephens, Mitchell. History of Television. Grolier Encyclopedia,

www.nyu.edu/classes/stephens/HistoryofTelevisionpage.htm. Stepler, Renee, and Mark Hugo Lopez. “Latino Population Growth and Dispersion in

U.S. Slows Since the Recession.” Pew Research Center's Hispanic Trends Project, Pew Research Center, 8 Sept. 2016, www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2016/09/08/latino-population-growth-and-dispersion-has-slowed-since-the-onset-of-the-great-recession/.

219

Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo and Mariela Páez. “Introduction: The Research Agenda.” Latinos Remaking America. Eds. Marcelo Suárez-Orozco and Mariela Páez. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. 1-37.

“Testimonials.” Superstore, created by Justin Spitzer, performances by Nico Santos,

America Ferrera, Ben Feldman, and Mark McKinney, season 5, episode 2, Spitzer Holding Company and NBC, 2019.

“That ‘70s Finale.” That ‘70s Show, created by Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner, & Mark

Brazill, season 8, episode 22, Fox Network, 2006. “This Is Not a Pipe.” Switched at Birth, created by Lizzy Weiss, season 1, episode 1.

Pirates’ Cove Entertainment, 2011. Thomas, Victoria. Hollywood’s Latin Lovers: Latino, Italian, and French Men Who

Make the Screen Smolder. Angel City Press, 1998. Thompson, Nicole A. “‘The Crossroads of America’: How Indianapolis Has Benefitted

from Booming Latino Business Community.” Latin Post 28 April 2015. http://www.latinpost.com/articles/43251/20150428/crossroads-america-indianapolis-earned-new-nickname-due-booming-local-latino.htm.

“Time Capsule.” Parks and Recreation, created by Greg Daniels and Michael Shur,

season 3, episode 3, Deedle-Dee Productions and Universal Media Studios, 2011. Trujillo, Carla. “Chicana Lesbians: Fear and Loathing in the Chicano Community.”

Chicana Feminist Thought: The Basic Historical Writings. Ed. Alma M. García. Routledge, 2014. 281-287.

Urciuoli, Bonnie. Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences of Language, Race, and

Class. Boulder: Westview Press, Inc., 1996. US Census Bureau. “About Race.” The United States Census Bureau, 22 Apr. 2020,

www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html. “U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: San Francisco County, California.” Census Bureau

QuickFacts, www.census.gov/quickfacts/sanfranciscocountycalifornia.

220

Valdés, Dionicio Nodín. Barrios Norteños: St. Paul and Midwestern Mexican Communities in the Twentieth Century. University of Texas Press, 2000.

Valerio-Jiménez, Omar, Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez, and Claire F. Fox. “Introduction:

History, Placemaking, and Cultural Contributions.” Latina/o Midwest Reader. Eds. Omar Valerio-Jiménez and Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez. UIP, 2017. 1-22.

Vardi, Nathan. “Slide Show: America's Most Affluent Neighborhoods.” Forbes, Forbes

Magazine, 28 Feb. 2011, www.forbes.com/2011/01/18/americas-most-affluent-communities-business-beltway_slide.html.

Vega, Sujey. Latino Heartland: Of Borders and Belonging in the Midwest. New York:

New York University Press, 2015. Villafañe, Veronica. “SNL Starts New Season with Debut of First Latina Cast Member,

Latino Writer and Lin-Manuel Miranda.” Forbes 30 September 2016. www.forbes.com/sites/veronicavillafane/2016/09/30/snl-starts-new-season-with-debut-of-first-latina-cast-member-latino-writer-and-lin-manuel-miranda/#36a588b77ccc.

Wayne, Julia. “Glee’s Naya Rivera Reveals How Her Mixed-Race Ethnicity Made It

Tough to Land Roles.” Wetpaint 30 October 2012. http://www.wetpaint.com/glees-naya-rivera-reveals-how-her-mixed-race-ethnicity-made-it-tough-to-land-roles-734666/.

“A Wedding.” Glee, created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, season 6, episode 8, 20th

Century Fox, 2015. “What the World Needs Now.” Glee, created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, season

6, episode 6, 20th Century Fox, 2015. “Who’s Been Sleeping Here?” That ‘70s Show, created by Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner,

& Mark Brazill, season 7, episode 19, Fox Network, 2005. “Whole Lotta Love.” That ‘70s Show, created by Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner, & Mark

Brazill, season 5, episode 16, Fox Network, 2003.

221

Wittig, Monique. “The Category of Sex (1976/1982).” The Straight Mind and Other Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992. 1-8.

Zentella, Ana Celia. Growing Up Bilingual: Puerto Rican Children in New York.

Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 1997.