I am so aware that this issue of mine is such a jingoist thing, and I am also keenly aware that I've written about it before in a different scenario, but the more we become aware of how culturally blind Hollywood is, the more they underscore their cultural stupidity.
Last year I bitched when Jimmy Smits, a superb actor on his own, was chosen to play the lead part in the CBS drama Cane. The article received a lot of comments, most of which took the focus to different points. My historical issue last year was that Jimmy Smits is a great actor, but not what your typical Cuban sugar magnate would have looked liked in the racist Cuban society of the late 1950s and the Cuban-American refugee wave of the early 1960s.
CBS picked Smits, a brilliant actor, I guess based on their perception of what a Cuban looks like (Smits is not of Cuban ancestry — his father, Cornelis Smits, was a Surinamese immigrant from Dutch Guiana, and his mother, Emilina, is Puerto Rican).
This is what the person that Smits' Cane character was loosely based upon really looks like...
That is him and his also Cuban wife to the left... but because, like a lot of Cubans, he looks too "Anglo" and not enough of what Hollywood (and CBS) want all of us to think that Latinos should all look like, they hired a terrific, Emmy-winning Surinamese actor who fits the sterotypical image of what Hollywood thinks Cubans should look like, to play the lead part.
Latinos are a culturally, racially, and ethnically diverse group of people, and we're not all made from one mold, as Hollywood wants you to think.
So that was then, and here's what has me all spun up in a tempest in my demitasse.
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Article comments
1 - Jean Phillipe
I hear you about the Cuban accent thing, I am a Haitian actor and my pedantic hell is when they hire some dude with a Jamiaican accent or Nigerian accent to play Haitian, an accent I could deliver easily, even though the role is always a demeaning voodoo priest or a drug dealer, I want the role, work is work. Also, Smits, in my humble opinion, is one of the most outstanding hispanic actors working today, with all due respect to Javier Bardem and Benicio Del Toro. Garcia is good but Smits, phony cuban accent aside, is incredible as Miguel Prado and should win an Emmy if those awards folks would do their job. But then again, I 've watched them ignore all those great actors from "The Wire" arguably one of the best shows ever on HBO.
2 - jeff lindsay
believe me, i know.
I hear it from all my friends.
but it's getting better -- first season, i actually heard, "get in the truck, you big conyo."
3 - Tomás
The real question is...why does "Hollywood" always feel that when they have to introduce a Latino character or Latino-themed show it HAS to be a Cuban or Puertorican?
4 - alpe
I'm sure the text talked about something else besides hammering home how "superb" and "brilliant" Jimmy Smits is - if only I could remember it... ;-)
Seriously though, @Jean Philipe: What do you think of the 'genuineness' of the Haitian in "Heroes"?
5 - SKU
Can any of you understand how uncomfortable Americans are when faced with blatant Latino racism? You grade your own children by color... Cubanos are blanco? BS.
In most parts of my country we cannot tell Cubans from PRS from Mexis from shit on the ground. And yet now thanks to Spain and our lack of will as a nation to secure our borders - we get to the enjoy the benefits of the racist latino caste system. How can we as Americans look ourselves in the face?