Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

The Paul Lynde Show: “Howie Comes Home To Roost”

The late comic actor Paul Lynde was best known to my generation as the guy who played the lovable prankster Uncle Arthur on the TV show Bewitched so naturally when it came time to give him his own show, the suits made sure to keep him as far away from that type of role as possible. Instead, they gave Lynde the rather thankless role of Paul Simms, a conservative attorney who was always ordering his wife (played by actress Barbara Allen) to make him a martini when not ranting about the troubles of the world in general.

Simms seemed like an odd role for Lynde to play since Lynde seemed far more comfortable with sarcastic quips and what would today be called gay mannerisms than he was with portraying a normal heterosexual father. To his credit, Lynde did his damnedest to fulfill the needs of his role even though his postmortem reputation as a gay icon often made his performances seem a bit surreal to the modern viewer. It didn't help that a key part of the plot involved Simms repeatedly making quips about his daughter Barbara's most recent husband Howie Dickerson (played by John Calvin), a "hippie" character who was usually dressed in shorts, swim trunks or other types of abbreviated clothing. Of course, most of the odd parts of Lynde's performance went right over my head when I first saw this show as a kid. But nowadays, it seemed so obvious that I'm surprised no one older than me noticed.

In any event, the plot of this episode involved Lynde's law firm trying to close down a X-rated movie theatre, only to have their efforts wasted when Howie dropped by Simms' law office and inadvertently gave free legal advice to the owner of the movie theatre. Later on, Howie found a way to fix the mistake and for a while, all was well. But Simms was still not happy with having Howie as a son-in-law and he got even less unhappy when he found out that Howie and Barbara were moving in with them.

Did the TV show improve after this particular episode? Well, it would be nice to say so, but alas...

Quote of the Week

I do not want to find Toni Morrison in the “African American” section of the bookstore. I want to find her in the Great Author section of the bookstore. Our stories, all of us, are important and mainstream. In a nation where Texas and California no longer have “white” majorities, our experiences ARE the mainstream. The media has yet to figure that out. Interestingly, the mainstream American media is more likely to place foreign-born authors in the mainstream category than they are to place homegrown “minority” authors there. Think about this.
--Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, “Misunderstood…again,” La Queen Sucia, July 5, 2007

Liberals and Conservatives

For every person who conforms to the conventional stereotype of conservative or liberal, there are many more who fall somewhere in-between. Some people are liberal on some issues like abortion and conservative on others like gun control while others are just the other way around. Indeed, even some conventional conservatives are more complicated than they appear at first glance which might explain why the one female co-worker I knew who fought hardest against a male co-worker who was a sexist jackass was also the same woman who listened to Rush Limbaugh on a daily basis. (I'm not going to pretend that all Limbaugh fans are like her but she was definitely different than what I had expected.)

That said, liberals historically tended to be more pro-active at fighting against racism, sexism and the like while conservatives rarely participated in such fights. Granted, there were exceptions like Lincoln and Eisenhower but even these were more often than not reacting against a situation. For example, Truman took it upon himself to order the racial integration of the military while Eisenhower's decision to support the integration of Little Rock was more a reaction to events than a pro-active decision.

As for Woodrow Wilson, I would like to believe that he too was an exception since he chose to expand the limits of Jim Crow during his time in office despite his reputation as a very liberal president and not many presidents on either side of the aisle did that. Then again it was not unusual to find many Democrats -- especially in the South but also in the North as well -- who were not exactly in favor of integration.

Indeed, many of the "moderate" civil rights views that some conservatives like P.J. O'Rourke take such pride in today were once considered very radical as recently as the 1960s. For that matter, I can say the same thing about certain "moderate" views concerning feminism.

What's Race Got to Do with It?

When I first saw the 1993 movie What's Love Got to Do with It?, I found it sadly amusing how much they played down the influence of racism in the life of Tina Turner as if the average moviegoer was supposed to believe that it was possible for a black woman in 1960s America to go through life without meeting one white person who was mean to her.

However, I did not realize how ridiculous that assumption was until I started adding up the number of white women I have known who have been beaten by white men (either husbands, boyfriends or whatever) -- and found that number to be depressingly high. (And I'm an introvert. Just imagine how many women in that category a more outgoing person would know.)

Yes, I realize that even the best movie in the world can't cover every pov in view in the space of two hours but there seemed to be something obscene about the way the script seemed to imply that white men -- as opposed to non-white men -- were above that type of thing. As if it somehow improves the problem of domestic violence if we can "prove" that it's their problem and not our problem.

Then again I guess I'm biased because one of those women I mentioned above was not only my best friend but a woman who later on saved my life.

Poema de Mi Id: Parte IX

"White Trash Girl"

I want myself a white trash girl.
A chick who knows where all the pawn shops are.
A woman who looks how to use a food stamp card.
A girl whose hair smells like mayonnaise and
whose skin is the same color as cottage cheese.

I want myself a white trash girl.
A dame who hides her nakedness in Dollar Store underwear.
Who bears scars and bruises from her last boyfriend
And who continually bumps into doors when I'm not around.
A girl who still has a scar on her belly from her last child.
One who knows every last cuss word in the book -- and then some.

I want myself a white trash girl.
Of course, I could just date a girl
from the local barrio instead.
But that would be tacky.

Pop Song of the Week: "Too Young to Fall in Love"

No, this is not an excerpt from a recent Matt Damon film but I would not be surprised to learn that the makers of said film were inspired by this video.

For that matter, I was surprised to see Liv Tyler making an appearance in this video, but given the fact that it was made in the mid-1980s, it was more likely that her character was being played by someone who just looked like her.

Quote of the Week

Yet it makes me cringe to read, for the millionth time, the words black and Hispanic as synonyms for victim. How many times does one have to read that linguistic link before the brain fuses ethnicity with wretchedness? How does this link affect people who come in contact with blacks and Hispanics? How does it affect blacks and Hispanics themselves?
--Enrique Fernandez, “Label Warning,” The Village Voice, November 5, 1991, vol. 36, no. 45

Quote of the Week

We tend to believe that all stereotypes are based in truth except for the one that applies to us.
--Lynn Snowden, Nine Lives: From Stripper to Schoolteacher: My Yearlong Odyssey in the Workplace

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

The Monkees: "I Was a Teenage Monster"

As some of you might have guessed from reading my home page, my real-life last name is not Kruger but Mendoza -- a name inherited from my Mexican-born father. Like most Spanish surnames, that name does not often appear on American movies and TV shows -- a fact that can either be blamed on the scarcity of Hispanic characters on American movies and TV shows or else on the lack of imagination on the part of those few American screenwriters who see fit to include Hispanic characters in their scripts.

So imagine my surprise when I finally saw my real-life surname appear on a popular television show. Granted, it was a television show from the 1960s, but it was still a popular television show. Then imagine my dismay when I realized that the character with my last name was a mad scientist! To add insult to injury, the character in question was not even played by a Hispanic actor. Instead the makers of this episode chose to cast non-Hispanic white actor John Hoyt, who was previously best known by me for playing an industrialist in the 1951 movie When World Collide and a -- ahem -- mad scientist in the 1958 movie Attack of the Puppet People. (Which, of course, raises the question of why the writers chose to give the character a Spanish surname in the first place. I'm guessing that it was because they were starting to get bored with the usual Germanic and Slavic surnames that were usually given to mad scientists in the TV shows of the 1960s.)

Of course, it might be argued that no one in the 1960s ever watched The Monkees expecting realistic storytelling, much less realistic representations of various minority groups. After all, this was an era when white actors still routinely portrayed Asian characters in movies and TV shows and almost any dark-skinned ethnic group -- apart from African-Americans, of course -- was considered interchangeable with any other dark-skinned ethnic group -- and African-Americans were generally rewarded for their distinctiveness by having few chances to appear on popular TV shows.

Indeed, even if you bypass the ethnic angle, a lot of this particular episode comes across as mediocre, even by 1960s standards. (And judging from my memories of past Monkees episodes, that was unfortunately the norm for this series.)

Anyway, the gimmick of the episode involved the various members of the Monkees being hired by a Dr. Mendoza -- the above-mentioned mad scientist -- to teach his monster (played by Richard Kiel) how to become a rock and roll singer. No, seriously, that was the plot. For what it is worth, Richard Kiel did a good job playing the Frankensteinish monster that the Monkees were teaching -- though I must admit that as much as I liked seeing Kiel doing something different than his usual big dumb thug routine, the humor of seeing him imitate a typical rock singer of the 1960s got old really fast.

As you might guess, the Monkees had a falling-out with the mad scientist when they found out that he planned to eliminate them after their work is finished -- and as if that was not enough, the scientist's equally insane daughter (played by blonde non-Hispanic actress Bonnie Dewberry) made a couple of appearances partway through the episode with news of a future episode. (Of course, said episode never happened.) Toss in the mixture of scenes that happened while a Monkees song played in the background and you got a brief description of the entire episode. Of course, Dr. Mendoza was brought to justice at the very end and the Monkees survived to play another day.

It would be nice to say that the next few episodes were better but I have not seen those yet so you are welcome to come to your own conclusions. However, it should be noted that neither Hoyt nor Kiel ever made another appearance on this show so if you really feel the need to see the two of them together -- or for that matter, to see what Richard Kiel looked like in green makeup -- then this is the episode for you. Personally, I prefer to consider this episode a reminder of why I don't watch The Monkees more often.

Book of the Week

The biggest problem with Americanos: Latino Life in the United States is that the people who most need to read it probably will not read it because they are quite sure that they already know what Latinos are like. Of course, those who are most likely to read the book will undoubtedly have similar notions about what actual Latinos are like but their notions are more likely to be based on fact since they are either themselves Latinos or else have Latino friends, in-laws, co-workers or relatives. So while it would be nice if they read the book too, I suspect that such a book will be doing little more than preaching to the converted.

Then again actor Edward James Olmos once said in response to a photo in this book that portrayed a Hispanic child playing chess, "Who puts chess with Latinos? Nobody. Or water polo? Or surfing? You just don't, in the U.S., put them together."

This quote makes me sad because when I was growing up, neither my Mexican-born father nor any of my Mexican-American cousins had any problem seeing chess as a Mexican-American activity. Indeed, as my father often noted, chess has quite a history in the Hispanic world. Unfortunately that aspect of chess history is rarely recognized here in the United States where chess is presumed to be not only an activity for smart people but an activity for white non-Hispanic people as well. And if I had not grown up with the type of relatives I have, I might have thought of chess in the same way that Olmos alluded to in that quote.

Indeed, as much as I would like to dismiss Olmos's statement as an obvious untruth, I can't help remembering that I had a problem seeing surfing as a Latino thing for many years even though some words of surfer slang -- for example, "chick" -- were derived from Spanish. For that matter, I rarely saw water polo as anything other than an activity for rich WASPs because that was the impression I got from American books, movies and TV shows -- an impression that might not have existed if a book like Americanos had existed in my youth.

So maybe I should not be so hasty about dismissing the importance of Americanos to would-be readers in the Latino and Latinophile communities. After all, it would be nice if would-be Hispanophobes read it too but that does not mean that there is not much in this book that non-Hispanophobes can learn from as well. And if you choose to be one of the few smart people out there who don't believe this book is worth reading, you can always look at the pictures.

Black as the Pit from Pole to Pole

Funny how stereotypes change over time. Back in the first century A.D., Germans were considered synonymous with chaos and barbarism. Today they are more often identified with order and efficiency. The Scandinavians horrified Western Europe with their Viking raids back in the Middle Ages but nowadays, they are known primarily for their pacifism. The Englishmen of the Elizabethan era were considered to be rude, crude individuals as were the Spaniards of Cervantes's time. Yet by the Victorian era, Englishmen were known for being anything but rude and crude and today we are more likely to associate Spaniards with foppish mannerisms than with the rude behavior they displayed in Cervantes's day.

In short, stereotypes are not engraved in stone and they tend to change over time. The average historian knows this quite well. The average chauvinist should know it as well but he tends to deny it -- even when the popular culture proves him wrong time after time.

Consider the way Poles were portrayed in the 1935 movie The Wedding Night. If you were to ask the average American nowadays what ethnic groups they most associated with arranged marriages, agricultural labor and domestic violence, neither Poles nor Polish Americans would be among the first few ethnic groups to come to mind. Ironically, they would be more apt to associate Mexicans or Mexican-Americans with these traits -- and yet, in this movie, there were no characters of Mexican descent that I could see. Instead it was the Polish characters in this movie who acted out the type of stereotypes that most people today would associate with Mexican immigrants. Indeed, the Poles in this flick were depicted as rural folk who are hot-tempered, prone to arranging marriages and obsessed with controlling women. Moreover, they were also depicted as being so different from mainstream Americans that one would hardly associate them with today's Polish-Americans.

So is this a good thing? Not necessarily. Then again The Wedding Night told its story so convincingly that it never occurred to me, the son of a Polish-American woman, to question its image of Polish-Americans. If anything, I found the movie quite convincing in its heartbreaking portrayal of the problems faced by a young immigrant woman named Manya Novak (played by Ukrainian-born actress Anna Sten) who struggled to reconcile her loyalty to her Polish roots with her attraction to the modernity of the American way and I could not help but wonder how often the same story could be told today about many non-Polish immigrants.

But enough about that.

The movie started out in New York City as bored author Tony Barrett (played by Gary Cooper) found out that his latest novel was such a flop that even his best friend and publisher chose to have nothing to do with it. He talked his wife Dora (played by Helen Vinson) into vamoosing back to his family homestead in Connecticut where he discovered that he had a family of Polish immigrants as neighbors. He became intrigued by their quaint ways and in return, the family's oldest daughter (the above-mentioned Manya) became intrigued by him and his quaint ways. Nothing came of it though until Dora departed for NYC and Tony was forced to rely more and more upon his Polish neighbors for supplies. Along the way, he learned something about the work ethic from Manya and before long, she was performing as the unofficial muse for his new novel.

Then Manya's father caught on that Manya was spending a little too much time at the Barrett household for an engaged woman. Tony found out that Manya did not love the man she was engaged to marry and that the engagement was part of an arrangement between her father and her husband-to-be. However, Tony was powerless to stop her from going through with it.

Things got worse when a snowstorm stranded Manya at Tony's place and she was forced to stay the night. Even though Manya and Tony spent the night in separate bedrooms, that fact did little to spare Manya from the wrath of her father the next morning. Then the audience discovered that Manya was not necessarily going along with her father by choice. At the first sign of defiance, Manya's father showed no hesitation in slapping her and reminded her that she did not have the same freedom as an American girl. After all, she was a Polish girl, which meant Manya had no choice but to obey her father's wishes -- whether she liked it or not.

Then Dora returned and learned of the relationship between Manya and Tony. Though Tony insisted that everything was innocent and that Dora was the one who should be explaining her social activities in his absence, Dora suspected differently. She read Tony's unfinished novel and realized from his written words just how strong the bond between writer and muse had become. But Dora was not yet ready to step aside from her marriage and poor Manya was already in enough trouble with her father as it was. Once Dora spoke to her, things just got worse.

Soon afterward, Manya got married and it looked as if everything would be finally settled. But, alas, Manya's wedding night had one last nasty surprise left for the Novaks and the Barretts. And someone ended up paying a big price for said surprise...

I don't know what I expected from The Wedding Night but I found myself far more moved by it than I had expected. Perhaps it was because I identified a bit with Manya. Perhaps it was because I identified a bit with Tony (though I hate to admit that). But most likely it was because I liked the rather complex relationship it depicted between Tony and Dora. Dora was hardly the ideal wife but she was not unsympathetic either. A bad movie would have portrayed her in shades of black, but this film just settled for portraying her in shades of gray and as a result, I actually felt for both her and Manya. Tony had his moments too but I could not help thinking that if he had been a more responsible person and not so intent on putting Manya in an impossible position, things would not have gotten so bad.

It said a lot about the movie that although Gary Cooper played Tony as a sympathetic character, he too had scenes in which he was less than sympathetic. For example, the time he acted so priggish to his returning wife was not one of his better moments. Nor was his attempt to hit on Manya as if she were just a woman whose sole reason for existence was to please him and only him.

Towards the end of the movie, it became obvious that Tony felt strongly about Manya and that Manya felt strongly about him. But ultimately his feelings for her appeared to do her more harm than good. While it would seem naive to believe that Manya's life would have been happier had she never met Tony Barrett, it seems equally naive to believe that Tony bore no responsibility for Manya's fate. Perhaps this last part was why he was so quiet at the end of the movie. And why he was so eager to remember Manya as she had been in the comparatively happy past -- and not as she was in the present.

Quote of the Week

My Latin roots are very strong. All my life, because I'm blonde and blue-eyed, people who aren't Hispanic can't believe I am. And people who are Hispanic always think I'm not, because I don't look like them. Being Latin is part of who I am and I bring that part to every role.
--Cameron Diaz

Comic Book Image of the Week

That's funny. She doesn't look like Eva Green.

In fact, the lady in the above drawing does not look that much like a white woman at all, especially given the angle from which she is drawn. I don't know whether or not that is intentional. After all, Sin City creator Frank Miller has not been shy about drawing people of color in the past. Yet he usually is not so ambiguous in his creation of such characters either. So could he be trying to tell us something by making Sin City resident Ava Lord out to be a black femme fatale? Or am I just seeing things?

After all, dark-skinned minorities are more often than not absent from most classical examples of the film noir that inspired Frank Miller's Sin City. Even Raymond Chandler's novel Farewell, My Lovely -- which made little effort to downplay the fact that its hero's office was located in a poor black neighborhood and that its first major conflict involved a white gangster throwing his weight around in a black-run tavern -- was considerably whitewashed when it was adapted for the movies and renamed Murder, My Sweet.

Then again, you don't exactly have to be a rocket scientist to guess why Frank Miller would not want his fans to instantly perceive Ava Lord as a black woman. After all, if there is anything more politically incorrect than a unrepentant femme fatale who brags about herself being evil, it's a black femme fatale who does the same thing. Yet one of Frank Miller's characters in one of the other chapters of Sin City is a black prostitute and yet another is a female Japanese assassin so it is not like he's above drawing nonwhite criminals.

I guess only Frank Miller knows for sure which race Ava Lord is supposed to be and so far he's not telling. And since director Robert Rodriguez has chosen to cast a white actress in the part, I suppose that should settle the question.

And yet I can't help but wonder what difference it would make if Ava Lord were black. Or Hispanic. Or Asian. Ideally, it should make no difference but then we don't live in an ideal world.

Then again one could argue that dark-skinned actresses have enough problems without being cast as evil women. So it should be all right to leave those roles for white people. After all, no one objected too much when the producers of the Broadway production of Miss Saigon chose to cast a white guy as a biracial and half-Asian pimp...

Oh, wait. They did.

Trailer of the Week: Lucy

Oy vey! They couldn't give us Americans a Wonder Woman movie but they could give us this?

It's official. Scarlett Johansson needs a new agent if for no reason that it has been a long time since I've seen a male character acquire superpowers by getting kicked in the stomach. In fact, I have never seen that happen.

And please don't get me started on the Asian stereotypes.

Buffy Goes Latin

I have joked for years about the scarcity of Hispanic characters on the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- a thing that seems especially frustrating when you consider that the show is set in California, a state in which Hispanics are not exactly uncommon.

Yet I did not realize how bad the situation was on that show until I came across this site and I realized that my first reaction was not so much "that few?" but rather "that many?".

Yet more proof that we might as well take a cue from Ray Bradbury and start writing our own stories because it is not likely that they are going to get told by anybody else. Especially Joss Whedon.

Quote of the Week

Anyone, of any race, of any ethnicity, of any species will think poorly of themselves if they look to Hollywood for existential sustenance.
--San Diego State University Professor William Nericcio, as quoted by Gustavo Arellano in his "¡Ask a Mexican!" column in the February 27th issue of The Dallas Observer

Quote of the Week

It is not wrong to be a maid, or even a Latina maid, but there is something very wrong with an American entertainment industry that continually tells Latinas that this is all they are or can ever be.
--Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, "The problem with “Devious Maids” goes far beyond Hollywood", NBCLatino.com, June 07, 2013.

My comment:

I know I should have commented on the Devious Maids controversy long before this, but unfortunately, I got caught up with other issues. I often put off commenting on controversial issues until I find the right words to do them justice, but unfortunately, the right words don't always come at a convenient time.

Anyway, as much as I admire Marc Cherry's and Eva Longoria's work on the TV series Desperate Housewives, I always have found that show's take on ethnic issues a bit embarrassing -- almost as if the hearts of the show's writers and cast were not really in it. In a way, I could understand. After all, Longoria's character Gabby Solis wasn't meant to be the ideal example of a Mexican-American woman any more than Ricky Ricardo was meant to be the ideal Cuban-American man. Indeed, part of what made her so entertaining on Desperate Housewives was that she was anything but an ideal person of any ethnic background and yet because she was less than ideal, she came across as being more human -- and thus, more believable and sympathetic -- than a more PC character would have been. (Then again I grew up with a father who always liked Donald Duck better than Mickey Mouse because he too was more "human" -- or at least more believable -- than the squeaky-voiced rodent. Not that a talking duck is all that comparable to Ms. Solis but still...)

As for the Devious Maids series, I have not seen it yet. And while I hesitate to comment on it for that reason, I have yet to read anything concerning it which would suggest it would be an improvement on Desperate Housewives. Indeed, as a person of Mexican descent who spent most of his life around relatives of Mexican-American descent -- and who has yet to meet any one who has ever worked as a maid or a domestic servant -- I can not help but be a little tired of seeing yet another TV series in which the main Mexican-American characters are maids. After all, it is not like such shows are rare. Indeed, I find it a bit ironic to note that most of my more prosperous relatives in Mexico are more likely to hire maids than be maids -- and yet one rarely sees such Mexicans portrayed on American TV shows.

But then most American TV shows are not made for either Mexican or Mexican-American viewers. And I doubt very much that the success of a Devious Maids is going to change that. Which is a shame -- for both Mexicans and non-Mexicans.

Quote of the Week

Imagine a half-Russian, half-American living in Moscow lamenting that all he sees of Americans is Red Dawn, Dr. Strangelove and Rambo and getting real, real depressed that all he ever sees of himself is loutish, loudmouthed, meat-brained 'Merican Neanderthals.
--San Diego State University Professor William Nericcio, as quoted by Gustavo Arellano in his "¡Ask a Mexican!" column in the February 27th issue of The Dallas Observer

Quote of the Week

What is interesting to me is having the vision so early and yet feeling so inferior to everybody else in the business for years and years because I believed I had to be subservient to anybody who wasn't Latino. Before West Side Story I was always offered the stereotypical Latina roles. The Conchitas and Lolitas in westerns. I was always barefoot. It was humiliating, embarrassing stuff. But I did it because there was nothing else. After West Side Story, it was pretty much the same thing. A lot of gang stories.
--Rita Moreno, "Rita Moreno overcame Hispanic stereotypes to achieve stardom", The Miami Herald, September 14, 2008

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

The Wild Wild West: “The Night of the Inferno”

The Wild Wild West used to be one of my favorite shows in high school thanks to syndicated black-and-white reruns that used to be broadcast every weekend on a late night program called Night Moves. (And yes, that program used the Bob Seger song of the same name as its theme.) Eventually I got the chance to watch the series all the way through and my enthusiasm diminished but I still have fond memories of the show's earliest episodes.

However, this episode -- the first of the series -- was not one of those episodes.

The episode begins with U.S. Secret Service agent James West (played by Robert Conrad) getting arrested on a charge of desertion, only to find out that it was a setup ordered by President Ulysses S. Grant himself. His mission: travel to the American Southwest in order to track down a dangerous Mexican revolutionary named Juan Manolo. Along the way, he runs into his partner Artemus Gordon (played by Ross Martin) as well as King Tut (aka Victor Buono) and Bob Newhart's wife (aka Suzanne Pleshette).

This episode is shamelessly politically incorrect by today's standards but it is difficult to think of any spy show this side of the Atlantic that was not. Besides, it is not likely that even the most liberal writers of the era would have found a way to make a Mexican revolutionary sympathetic to a predominantly Anglo-American audience -- though after seeing West comment on the size of a Chinese individual, one has to wonder just how ignorant of other ethnic groups this episode's writers presumed its white viewers to be to think that they would find this unusual.

Oh, well. At the very least, the episode gives today's viewers an interesting look at the way TV writers thought back in 1965 (the date of this episode's initial airing). And hope that today's TV writers might have learned better since then.