Skip to main content

BEATRIZ AT DINNER: THE MAGICAL MEXICAN AND WHY I HATE THIS MOVIE

I have to admit I was hesitant to watch this movie. Beatriz at Dinner was presented as a movie about a Mexican immigrant at a dinner party where she encounters a series of microaggressions and deals powerfully with them. You would think I would be down with the powerful part of this, but I am just tired, as a professional Latina woman, I deal with these stereotypes all the time and didn't want to deal with them during my leisure. I ultimately gave in and went in order to support Latinas in leading roles.

I walked into the theater in a very diverse City and I was the only attendee of color. I understood. I assumed many like me did not want to watch their lives play out on screen. I was open though and have to admit that ultimately, this is a horrible movie.

First of all, I couldn't help but feel that Salma Hayek's character is your standard Hollywood Magical Negro, with the twist that this time it was a Magical Mexican. If you remember, The Green Mile literally had a Magical Negro who dies in the end for the benefit of the Tom Hanks Character.

In Breatriz at Dinner, you have a character that appears to be on the autism spectrum and is a healer by trade. It appears she sacrifices herself for the healing of the soul of greedy white men.

Besides being predictable, and not uplifting at all, the end of the movie is just bizarre and left me wandering "what just happened." I think if Hollywood wants to be predictable, it should be predictable. If it going to take the liberty to be "artistic" or "cutting edge" it may just want to use as much energy in not relying on old, tired and racist tropes...oh and the dinner was too close to what I experience on a regular basis, so not empowering at all. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

INSPIRATION

This is one of my favorite paintings because it is so unexpected. It is not of my typical style or executed the way I would've have liked to see it executed. Instead, I love this picture because it reminds me that you never know what can be inspired by what. I did this painting after a trip to Vermont during the fall. I assumed I would have been inspired to paint organic images and shapes, but instead, I was inspired to paint primary colors in squares and triangles.

WHAT PRESENCE OF "BIRTHERS" TELLS US ABOUT WHAT IT MEANS TO TRULY BELONG IN AMERICA

It appears Trump has been satisfied with the long form of President Barak Obama's birth certificate. I guess the various affirmations and certifications from Hawaii's officers that he was in fact born in Hawaii were not enough. Trump may be satisfied, but the rest of the birthers are not. Frankly, they never will be. Fundamentally, they are not so much concerned with whether he was born or not born in the U.S. Their concern is whether he is a "Citizen" in the truest and purest meaning of the word. Whether he is a human being endowed with rational thought and entitled to the same rights as any other human being who is endowed with rational thought as they imagine themselves to be. In other words, is he just as important to society as they are? Is he as human as they are? They would like the answer to be no. What I always find fascinating about the birthers' position is that they have never challenged President Obama's mother's citizenship. They have onl...

I CAN'T PASS JUDGMENT ANYMORE

I know all of my friends are loving the ease and convenience of carrying books around on a Kindle, or whatever the gadget of the day is, but this move to electronic reading is really affecting my ability to judge others, yes, you heard me right-judging others is now difficult. It used to be that I could sit on the train and just by watching book covers, and their respective readers, I would get an idea of what books I might like. Now, everyone has a kindle and I can't really derive reading recommendations without appearing to be a stalker. But worse than that, new friendships are severely affected. I used to be able to walk into someone's house and look at their bookcase and know whether I should run the other way-now, the non-visibility of books makes identifying incompatibility so much more difficult. For example, if someone were to walk into my house, this is what they might see:   You would be correct in making quite a few assumptions about me based on this ...