Talking #browntv: Latinas and Latinos on the Screen

by Frederick Luis Aldama, William Anthony Nericcio

Like two friends sitting down in front of the television together, in  Talking #browntv ,  Frederick Luis Aldama and William Anthony Nericcio dialogue about the representations of Latina/os in American television and film from the twentieth century to the present day. One part conversation, one part critique, one part visual cultural studies, and one part rant against the culture industry profiting off warped caricatures of Latina/o subjectivities, Aldama and Nericcio analyze the ways in which Latinx performers have been mediated—with varying degrees of complexity—on the American screen. A comprehensive review of the history of Mexicans, Mexican Americans, Hispanics, Chicana/os, Latina/os, and Latinx performers in television and film,  Talking #browntv  boldly interrogates one of the largest paradoxes in the history of American Why are there so few Latina/os on television, and why, when they do appear, are they so often narcos, maids, strumpets, tarts, flakes, and losers?
 
From the subversive critiques embedded in well-loved children’s characters like Speedy Gonzalez to the perpetuation of racial stereotypes in modern-era pornography, from Eva Longoria as ethnic mannequin to J-Lo flipping the sexy Latina music video on its head in “I Luh Ya Papi,” and with more than 150 full-color images, Aldama and Nericcio seek to expose the underlying causes as to why Latina/os constitute only 2 percent of mainstream cultural production when they’re the majority minority in the US. In a moment when anti-Mexican and anti-immigrant rhetoric oozes from TV sets and medias platform,  Talking #browntv  emerges as a bold antidote, an eloquent rejoinder, and a thoughtful meditation on Latina/os on the American screen and in America today.

200 pages, Paperback

Published December 13, 2019

Reviews

[Stephen Andes · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the tradition of Great Conversational Narratives (think: Tuesdays with Morrie, but with life lessons about TV, culture, and Latinx representation; or, maybe Eisner/Miller talking comics), this book is a tour de force through decades of #browntv. The highs. The lows. And, surprisingly, the authors describe a whole lot of nuance in the #browntv of the 1960s and 1970s. Shows like High Chapparal, Bonanza, even CHIPs (Erik Estrada as both stereotype and also rompe-stereotype), reveal that the cultural shakeups of those decades produced quite a variety of televisual semiotic [de]construction (as, perhaps, Prof. Nericcio might have it). Aldama and Nericcio are also, to use a different Lit analogy, the Virgils leading us also through the 9 circles of #browntv hell that also populate the boob tube imaginary. (Ah, what dreams may come...). We find the Kitsch, the Latina spitfire, the bandit, the narco, and myriad other Latinx stereotypes that are so ingrained in US pop culture that, according to the authors, they are bound to appear, re-appear, and morph time and again. But just as Aldama and Nericcio seem to be playing an unending game of Whack-a-Mole (to change analogies, once again), we find that Latinx TV creators are changing the landscape from the margins, too--shaking up our view of Latinx life, culture, the borderlands, etc. The Revolution Will Be Televised, in other words, and it's gonna take Latinx voices to lead the grito de guerra! A highly recommended book.

[Carlos Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

As you read Talking Browntv: Latinas and Latinos on the Screen you may notice how reading morphs into a nostalgic trip through the fantasmagoric imagination attached to Latinx bodies in mainstream media. You will find yourself amidst a charismatic dialogue between two of the foremost scholars on Latinx imagination and/or how the gringos imagine us. Dr. William Nericcio and Dr. Frederick Aldama take readers on a journey through their nostalgic relations to everything from Speedy Gonzales to Wonder Woman to Lucha Libre and Saturday morning cartoons to the speculative and future imaginings of Latinxs. #Browntv is an accessible spelunking into how Latinxs are imagined into being by Hollywood and Latinx mainstream media platforms. Hard to put down, #Browntv reads like a novel, offering knowledge in ways that challenge the very idea of what it means to Browntv.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I wrote the damn thing, with my good friend and professorial partner-in-crime, Frederick Aldama, I reserve judgement!