“Los Vendidos,” translated to “The Sellouts” by Luis Valdez is a one act play that draws attention to the prejudice against Mexicans. Salesman, Honest Sancho, is a used Mexican lot owner that sells “robots,” each representing a Mexican model stereotype. The secretary, Miss Jimenez, works for the governor of the town who has sent her to purchase a Mexican to help their votes. Sancho shows the secretary the many different Mexicans they have from a farm worker to Pachuco (a lazy Mexican that causes trouble), to a revolucionario and a Mexican-American. Each Mexican model has a quality that the secretary doesn’t like, represented through a stereotype, which shows the prejudices society holds on the race. Although throughout the play the Mexicans …show more content…
Bertolt Brecht successfully accomplishes this in his work through his technique called the alienation effect where “he forces the audience to look at everything in a fresh light and, above all, to think” (Barranger, pg. 121). His main goal by using this was for the audience to “absorb his social criticism and to carry new insights out of the theater into their own lives” (Barranger, 121). Valdez applies this technique through his use of the Secretary, representing the American population as a whole, and the stereotypes of the Mexicans. When she is first introduced to Sancho, she comes with a list of criteria for what the Mexican should acquire including: “suave, debonair, dark, but not too dark, beige, American-made and hard-working” (Valdez, p. 1288). From the start of the play, Mexicans are already being stereotyped on how they should look and act to be accepted by Americans and their culture. This gets the audience thinking of their own perception on Mexicans and what qualities they might consider if they were in this situation. From the qualities represented of each of the “models,” the Secretary then denies any quality of the model that isn’t sufficient enough for her liking, and “shops” around until she finds the right …show more content…
The same ownership applies to Nora in “A Doll’s House” by Henrik Ibsen. In the play, Ibsen “explored the conflict between social and moral restrictions of bourgeois society and the psychological, often unconscious, demands of individual freedom” (Worthen, p. 666). Nora, throughout the play, is owned by her husband, Helmer, who restricted her from doing certain things, such as going into town to get macaroons. This represents the lack of power Nora has in her life being a women in a society where a man can overpower her, and how gender roles take place in this time. The same concept is shown through the Mexican models where the American’s buying them have power over them. They are bought and used for work from the used Mexican lot, and don’t have any control over who buys them and what work they
Vendidos or the sold out ones by Luis Valdez is an enlightening film about the Mexican struggle for survival in the United States. It is thought provoking and challenges the viewer to question some of the history and values that American education has engrained into our lifestyle. Although, the film is only about twenty-five minutes long, it is packed with symbolism and information about the Mexican history in the US. In particular, the film explores the Mexican identity issue.
Luis Valdez and August Wilson transformed the reflecting of multicultural in two plays through characters. Fences is the picture of the conflict culture for African-American in USA in 1957 and Zoot Suit is the picture of Mexican-American in USA in 1942. Different culture, Different people in the time period. That is affected by the racism and discrimination. The picture of the poor life and poor colors from characters on the stage in Fences. The poor languages, and the biggest fear come from by Troy Maxson. That is the lowest stream in American society. The Zoot Suit is the conflict reflecting between Mexican and American. They do not accept in the America society in 1942. El Pachuco is standing for the justice revolution and the equally rights
In the essay of Mr.Gary Soto, Like Mexicans, we learn about his experiences about falling in love with someone of a different race.Gary’s grandmother would always proclaim: “... the virtues of marrying a Mexican girl: first, she could cook,second, she acted like a woman” (pp.219). Being conditioned into the notion that all Mexican women have been trained to be proper women, Mr. Soto set out on finding his brown eyed girl; however, what love had quite a different plan. As He explains, “ But the woman I married was not Mexican but Japanese” (pp.220). Though he searched to find his Mexican wife, fate had other plans for him. This paper will cover three different themes Gary’s essay: The tone, the mindset of the characters, and the overall message of the piece.
In Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll House, Ibsen tells a story of a wife and mother who not only has been wronged by society, but by her beloved father and husband because of her gender. Nora left her father’s house as a naïve daughter only to be passed to the hands of her husband forcing her to be naïve wife and mother, or so her husband thinks. When Nora’s husband, Torvald becomes deathly ill, she takes matters into her own hands and illegally is granted a loan that will give her the means to save her husband’s life. Her well guarded secret is later is used against her, to exort Torvald, who was clueless that his wife was or could be anything more than he made her. However, Nora has many unrecognized dimensions “Besides being lovable, Nora is selfish, frivolous, seductive, unprincipled, and deceitful” (Rosenberg and Templeton 894). Nora is a dynamic character because her father and her husband treat her as a child and do not allow her to have her own thoughts and opinions, as the play progresses she breaks free from the chains of her gender expectation to explore the world around her.
Clemencia sees her father not as a showoff, but just as his "calidad." Quality” (Cisneros 129). Clemencia's father was not born in the US, so her own father views US Mexicans to be not on par with the Mexicans who originate from Mexico. In her father’s opinion, Mexican girls who “didn't know enough to set a separate plate for each course at dinner, nor how to fold cloth napkins, nor how to set the silverware” (Cisneros 127) are ridiculous.... ...
Los Vendidos means the sell-outs. All the characters in the play sold-out at some point during the play. The characters sold out both their races and their way of life. I would say that the person who sold out the most was the Mexican-American because he sold-out both his Mexican, his American heritage and way of life. He wanted to be perfect, so when he found that the Americans and the Mexicans had their flaws he sold them out. He now has to search for a new and perfect race to identify with.
In this short story Sandra uncover the tension between Mexican heritage and demands of the American culture. Cleofilas life consisted of never ending chorus, no good brothers, and a complaining father. She is so excited when the day come for her to become married so she can move away from her town where she grew up, were there isn’t much to do except accompany the aunts and godmothers to the house of one or the other to play cards. She was excited to be far away, all she could think about was to have a lovely house and to wear outfits like the women on the tele. Her picture of the ideal Mexican wife soon became a nightmare when she finally arrived to Texas, where she
...cept of model Mexican Americans being traded, bartered, bought and sold for a price, as depicted in the play, is an accurate portrayal of what has taken place in Mexican American history. Mexican Americans have been accustomed to such inhumane acts and they continue to be looked upon as "Mexican" though their rights as citizens just as valid as the rights of any immigrant to this country. "Los Vendidos," or the sell-outs, had to familiarize themselves with the notion of selling short their heritage in order to establish a new heritage in this new land.
The fundamental conflict that led to their arrest and unfair trial was a clash between Mexican-Americans and the dominant White American culture. Acting as a host, El Pachuco is the spirit of the ideal, defiant Pachuco and serves as Henry’s Reyna’s alter ego throughout the play, intermingling past Mexican culture with the current Zoot Suit culture. El Pachuco serves as a corrective to illustrate the heavy biases that the court and media displayed throughout the 1940s against Chicano people. Through his constant interjections during the courtroom scene, and his final confrontation with the reporter at the conclusion of the play, he points out the injustices that Mexican-Americans had to endure. El Pachuco highlights each point in which the court discriminates or treats the Zoot Suiters unfairly.
The stories of Sandra Cisnero center on the ideas that Mexican-American women have a hard time dividing themselves between two separate worlds, countries and cultures. Traditionally, Mexican and Chicano women are quiet, obedient and not sexual. American women are outgoing, do their best to be different from traditional standards and have freedom in their sex lives. In the stories “Woman Hollering Creek” and “Never Marry a Mexican,” this separation is explored in the mode of strong, female characters. The analysis shows that the struggle for a Mexican-American woman is real in modern times, but can be overcome with a strong female identity – as a woman undefined by her ethnic background.
Cofer uses the rhetoric appeal of ethos to establish her authority to make the argument that Latina stereotypes are just myths. Growing ...
For a first example of stereotypes, In “The Myth of the Latin Woman,” Judith Ortiz Cofer writes about the many stereotypes that she, as a Puerto Rican woman, has endured. She opens with a tale of how she had been publicly serenaded—on a London bus, of all places—by, as Cofer puts it, “a young man, obviously fresh from a pub” (187). Later on, she mentions a second random serenade of sorts, this time from a older man in a classy metropolitan hotel. The young man sang “Maria” from West Side Story, the older man first chose a song from Evita, then encored with a crudely-worded song to the tune of “La Bamba.” In both situations, whether it was their intention or not, their actions resulted in alienation of the author, singling her out and thrusting the stereotypes of her lineage in her face. The men may have meant well; they may have felt that what they were doing was good-hearted fun. They may have even been trying to...
As a journalist in 1920 for the New York Herald Tribune, Sophie Treadwell was assigned to go to Mexico to follow the situation after the Mexican Revolution. (Mexican Revolution 1910-1917) She covered many important aspects of the Mexican Revolution during this time, including relations between the U.S. and Mexico. She was even permitted an interview with Pancho Villa in August 1921 at his headquarters. This interview and other events that she experienced in Mexico are presumably what led her to write the play Gringo. In Gringo Treadwell tries to depict the stereotypical and prejudicial attitudes that Mexicans and Americans have about each other. There is a demonstration of how Mexican women are looked at in the Mexican culture and how they see themselves. The play also corresponds to similar events that occurred during the Mexican Revolution.
The enforcement of specific gender roles by societal standards in 19th century married life proved to be suffocating. Women were objects to perform those duties for which their gender was thought to have been created: to remain complacent, readily accept any chore and complete it “gracefully” (Ibsen 213). Contrarily, men were the absolute monarchs over their respective homes and all that dwelled within. In Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House, Nora is subjected to moral degradation through her familial role, the consistent patronization of her husband and her own assumed subordinance. Ibsen belittles the role of the housewife through means of stage direction, diminutive pet names and through Nora’s interaction with her morally ultimate husband, Torvald. Nora parades the façade of being naïve and frivolous, deteriorating her character from being a seemingly ignorant child-wife to a desperate woman in order to preserve her illusion of the security of home and ironically her own sanity. A Doll’s House ‘s depiction of the entrapment of the average 19th century housewife and the societal pressures placed upon her displays a woman’s gradual descent into madness. Ibsen illustrates this descent through Torvald’s progressive infantilization of Nora and the pressure on Nora to adhere to societal norms. Nora is a woman pressured by 19th century societal standards and their oppressive nature result in the gradual degradation of her character that destroys all semblances of family and identity.Nora’s role in her family is initially portrayed as being background, often “laughing quietly and happily to herself” (Ibsen 148) because of her isolation in not only space, but also person. Ibsen’s character rarely ventures from the main set of the drawi...
In A Doll’s House, which ‘opened the door to a whole new world for women2’, Nora Helmer, wife to Torvald Helmer, is treated insignificantly by her husband. This is in relation to the title of the play. A doll is not a human being; it becomes what its owner makes of it. It does not have a role to play in public life. In the final act of the play, Nora certainly disputes this, by saying in the final act that ‘before everything else I’m a human being.’