Bad Guys, Good Guys

MICK "Crocodile" Dundee makes audiences laugh. His new movie, Crocodile Dundee Two, has packed movie theatres. He's Hollywood's newest good guy--an Aussie John Wayne.

And like any other good guy, Mick Dundee needs a villian. Someone ruthless, someone who shoots in cold blood. Someone who does not find good old Mick Dundee very funny.

That someone is Rico, a drug lord from the jungles of Colombia. Rico speaks in a heavy accent and lusts for revenge and power. He dresses in silk suits and has a taste--or a smell--for cocaine.

The Duke from Down Under versus the Rat from Colombia. We all know who wins. The audience rushes out of the theater, exalting the wisdom of Mick, and heads off to the nearest bar for a cold Foster's. In the purest Holly-wood tradition, the good guy walks off into the sunset with a woman at his side.

BUT what about Rico? Forget him, the audience says. He's the bad guy. He deserves everything Mick Dundee gave him.

Forget about Mick Dundee for a bit, and focus on Rico the drug lord. Why is he portrayed as a Colombian, instead of just another bad guy? Why does he have to speak with an accent that makes Ricardo Montalban sound like Lord Byron?

Because that's the way Latin Americans are, the audience says. They're supposed to deal drugs. They're supposed to commit crimes.

Rico is just the latest entry in a category that is always growing--"Stereotypical Latin Americans."

TONY Montana, the Cuban drug leader made famous by Al Pacino in Scarface, is the foremost example of Hollywood's currently favored stereotype. Montana is cold and ruthless. He sniffs everything from cocaine to slush puppies. And, of course, his accent is so thick that even a chainsaw couldn't affect it.

Then there's Paul Newman's classic Fort Apache, the Bronx. Newman, the aging cop, had to ward off a slew of crime-hungry Puerto Ricans. Commit crimes--that's what Latin Americans like to do, the audience must conclude.

Another entrant to the list is Running Scared with Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal. The crime-fighting duo takes on one gangster, who (you guessed it) is a Latin American drug dealer longing to control the Chicago drug supply.

Drug leaders, gang leaders, crime leaders, bad guys. Cocaine and a drug lord--must be a Latin American. A criminal plus a heavy accent--must be another.

WHY is the Latin American so negatively portrayed in movies these days?

The movie industry has always looked at minorities with a limited perspective. The Godfather is the prime example. Portray the Italian as a crime boss, Hollywood says, because that's what he is.

Now it's the Latin American's turn. When the movie industry limits its portayal of the Latin American, the audience observes him with this same limited perspective. This negative standpoint becomes the perspective from which the entire Latin American community is viewed. An audience sees a stereotypical Latin American character and assumes that all Latin Americans are just a bunch of drug-dealing criminals.

It is this same audience that visits Miami and thinks every Cuban living there will steal all their valuables. It is this same audience that looks at the antics of Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega and says, "That's what Latin Americans are supposed to do. We've seen this stuff in the movies."

And the result is a misunderstanding, a gross misunderstanding. Movies are just one example. But such a misunderstanding does not stop in the theater. It moves out to the streets of every major American city and to the diplomatic meetings between American ambassadors and their Latin American counterparts. America views Latin America as if it were one action-packed crime drama with lots of guns and drugs.

Forget about Latin American history and culture, America says. Forget about trying to understand this complex region by making a serious attempt to understand its people. Just give us reels and reels of Tony Montana swimming in tons of cocaine.

But it's only a movie, Hollywood says. It's not supposed to reveal anything.

Yet that is exactly what a movie does--reveal. In the case of the Latin American, a movie reveals a simple stereotype. And when such a stereotype is so consistently portrayed, it becomes almost second nature for any and every portrayal of a Latin American on the screen as well as off the screen.

Which brings us back to good ol' Mick Dundee and his nemesis Rico. If each character switched his nationality with the other, could the audience relate to a witty bushman from Colombia fighting against a drug lord from Australia?

Such a switch would be too confusing for the audience to understand.