Marisa Deren Stereotypes

Latino women in Hollywood films are often portrayed as stereotypical submissive characters. A submissive female character is usually the nurturing figure in a household - she can be found doing the interior housework, teaching the children in their homes, and doing as she is told, no matter what the task at hand is because she just wants to please the person that they deem as authority. Jennifer Lopez’s character, Marisa Ventura, in Maid in Manhattan can be read as a perpetuation of this common female stereotype; in this film she embodies a lowly and inferior female character in her both in her physical stature and her actions towards her male counterpart, Chris Marshall. By making this female protagonist a Latina Cinderella, being swept off

her feet by a white prince charming instead of making it on her own in Manhattan, this film makes us see women inferior to men, lower-class inferior to upper-class, and Latinas inferior to white males.
Marisa Ventura, a low-class single Latina mother, works as a maid in a well-known luxurious hotel in Manhattan to put food on the table for herself and her only son, Ty. As she continues in her daily routine of unpacking suitcases and supplying the guests’ bathrooms, she encounters Chris Marshall, a rich white politician. Working as a maid in Manhattan is still a job, but Marisa really wants to become a hotel manager instead. Stephanie, her friend who works as a maid as well, sends in an application for Marisa since Stephanie knows that Marissa won’t do it on her own. Since Marisa is taking on the role of the submissive female, she feels as though she is not qualified for a higher position. At this point of the film it feels as though she doubts herself in the abilities she possesses because she has grown accustomed to the maid lifestyle. When Marisa snaps at her friend for sending in the application, this could be taken as a challenge to the submissive stereotype. Usually a submissive character wouldn’t snap if something is not going his or her way. They would be angry but these kinds of characters tend to just continue on with their lives and not fight back to get their way. However, Stephanie explains in an encouraging monologue that Marisa is more than capable of this job and convinces Marisa not to revoke the application. If Marisa were to revoke the application, then she would be challenging the submissive stereotype because she would be too determined to get the application back, regardless of her friend’s encouraging speech. Marisa is also seen as a submissive female through her interaction and relationship with senator-to-be, Chris Marshall.
It appears that he is only interested in Marisa because of the pseudo-wealthy persona she accidentally creates after her second encounter with him. He first meets her in the bathroom in her maid uniform and this first encounter would typically use a “love at first sight” dynamic to bring these two main characters together, which is found in most fairy tales. Instead, Chris ignores her and does not give her a second look. Marisa’s maid outfit and Latina appearance make her invisible to the white wealthier politician. However, after he mistakenly takes her for a richer Mediterranean woman by believing that she is staying in an expensive suite and seeing her dressed in a five-thousand dollar outfit, he seems to have a larger interest in her. The change of dress causes her to become more exotic, which still others her because she is mistaken for something more foreign than a Latina. In addition to initially making wealth an unattainable dream in this Latina’s life, she is perpetuating the submissive stereotype by depending on her fake riches, a tool Marisa uses to appear to be on the same economic level as Chris, to keep the attention of the man she believes that she loves. However, after getting caught in the lie by a security camera and losing her job, her mother believes that this type of lifestyle is wrong and tries to be the voice of reason.
Marisa’s mother, while only shown for a short while in this film, also contributes to Marisa’s perpetuation of the submissive female stereotype by trying to be the voice of reason.

When Marisa’s mother hears about her daughter’s infatuation with the white politician, she is very unhappy. Marisa’s mother tells Marisa that she is ridiculous to think that Marisa could be with a man like Chris Marshall, which causes Marisa to immediately defend her right to have a relationship with him since he give her, in her mind, what she cannot obtain outside of a dream. Marisa’s mother, in this scene, is a parallel to the evil step-mother in Cinderella. The evil-stepmother believe that Cinderella was not fit for a prince since she was just a house-maid, that was all that Cinderella’s step-mother saw her step-daughter capable of. Marisa’s mother does the same by suggesting another maid job at a different hotel because she believes the same for her daughter; Marisa needs to stay in her own class group because she does not belong to the upper-class. Marisa’s happiness with Chris as a fake rich woman causes her to perpetuate the stereotype of the submissive woman by longing for her dominant male counterpart. Even after she tried to break it off with him, she still wanted him even with her job on the

line.
Marisa’s manager position at the end of the movie is only given to her after making her relationship with Chris Marshall official and public. She is unable to attain this job on her own since she had to marry a man with a better education and more wealth to achieve this dream of hers. Marisa’s character perpetuates the submissive stereotype since she needs Chris in order to succeed. Diana I. Rios and Xae Alicia Reyes state, “This movie supports the social mythology of “rags to riches,” leading evidence that such is reasonably attainable and that a woman can and should use a superior man to do this” (95). In other words, Rios and Reyes are saying that this film parallels the story of Cinderella since Marisa needed a male who surpassed her in knowledge and wealth to be able to have a higher position in her line of work. She is in a lower economic class and need the richer white man to be successful, which means that as a Latina she is unable to leave the life of serving other unless she submits to the alleged authority of the white male. However, other contemporary films, such as Raising Victor Vargas, reject the submissive female stereotype by using Judy, a dominant female character.
In Raising Victor Vargas, the character of Judy breaks the submissive stereotype when she takes advantage of Victor’s lustful desire to have her as his girlfriend by using their pseudo-relationship status as a tool to keep the other lustful males away. She also breaks the submissive female stereotype through her demonstration of physical dominance to an already overbearingly dominant male character. Since Judy is reversing typical gender roles by becoming the dominant one in their pseudo-relationship, Victor’s embodiment of the Latin lover stereotype does not have an impact on her. She enforces these dominant traits more effectively than Victor, whose character embodies a stereotype that supposed to be inherently dominant. He portrays several traits that causes someone to read his character as a Latin lover, a stereotype Charles Ramírez-Berg has said to exhibit, “...eroticism, exoticism, tenderness tinged with violence and danger, all adding up to the romantic promise that, sexually, things could very well get out of control” (76). As a result, Ramírez-Berg insists that this male-based character is meant to be the dominant figure in a heteronormative relationship by exhibiting brute force and taking control away from his female counterparts. Yet, his attempts at dominating Judy do not yield positive results. However, this is not the case when looking at Victor and Judy’s relationship, which differs from Marisa and Chris’ relationship.
When Victor tries to seduce Judy, by sitting dangerously close to her, he is asserting himself as the dominant figure.

This action causes Victor to invade Judy’s personal space, which robs her control of the situation and her surroundings since he is very close to her, physically. In Maid in Manhattan, Chris Marshall dominates Marisa and puts her into the submissive role when he stands dangerously close to her. Since Marisa is shorter than him, he is able to tower over her; she is left with limited personal space which results in Marisa losing control of her surroundings. Although Marisa is reacting positively by not pulling away from Chris, Judy reacts negatively by pushing Victor into the pool. Judy becomes the dominant one out of the two because she is demonstrating physical dominance. Instead of falling for him and becoming the docile female, which would cause her to perpetuate this stereotype, she calls the shots and is the dominant figure in the relationship. Judy’s negative response and demonstration of physical dominance in this film’s scene causes her to break this stereotype since she is not acting like a lowly and helpless female. This differs from Marisa since she does fall for Chris, especially when they are at the expensive benefit event together because she reacts positively to Chris’ acts of dominance towards

her.
While they are at the event, Chris tries to stay as close to Marisa as possible and she does not pull away. They even share a dance together to the song Fall Again by Glenn Lewis. This song is a romantic piece that talks about falling in love again “when we first met”. This is ironic since the first time Chris and Marisa met, she was completely invisible to him. This is indirectly perpetuating the submissive female stereotype since Chris does not remember their first encounter but is still keeps falling more and more in love with Marisa as in her rich Mediterranean persona. Later when Marisa is trying to leave and is constantly trying to make Marisa stay. He makes her feel guilty by saying that she is running away from something that she wants, demonstrating more dominance towards her. Marisa then tries to explain to him what the truth is and he does not let her speak. Instead, he suddenly kisses her and takes her away to a hotel room. Since Chris was able to easily seduce Marisa, she is further perpetuating the submissive female stereotype by not pulling away from the kiss, Chris’ move to get Marisa to stay with him. However, without the difference is power dynamics between these two movies, Latinas would only be portrayed in one format.
Raising Victor Vargas and Maid in Manhattan use female characters to show how they respond to a male character exerting dominance towards them. While one reacts positively to this and the other reacts negatively, both women show complication of this stereotype. Judy’s dominant character portrayal empowers other women to stand up for themselves and shows that they can live just fine without a man. Peter Sollet, director of Raising Victor Vargas, uses Judy’s dominance to challenge the Latin lover stereotype, which is a stereotype that is more obvious when in use and people tend to not react positively to it off-screen. However, Wayne Wang, director of Maid in Manhattan, directly contrasts by having Marisa fall for her “prince charming” to get out of the poverty that she is in. Chris’s more subtle dominance towards Marisa is found to be more acceptable since their relationship can be read as Chris helping her achieve the “American Dream.” Regardless of the subtle dominance the Chris uses towards Marisa, this relationship still shows that a Latina cannot achieve the “American Dream” on her own without the help of a white and rich partner.