it's more than just a love fern

 

Rosa Linda Fregoso discusses what it means to create a Chicano film in her short essay "Hanging Out with the Homegirls? Allison Anders' Mi Vida Loca" and the introduction to her book The Bronze Screen Looking as Us Looking. Throughout the two pieces, she grapples with ideas of defining what it means to be a Chicano film when the act of defining Chican@ is itself difficult as "whom to consider for membership into the Chicano nation depends on one's politics and on the context of the term's usage" (The Bronze Screen Looking as Us Looking, xviii). Furthermore, she includes how, with the progression of time, the idea of what it means to be a Chicano film also changes. For example, the Chicano Power Movement had required a different set of criteria than it did at the time of her writing: "No longer was Chicano cinema defined as oppositional cinema by, for, and about Chicanos, but it came to mean films 'whose major production decisions are made by Chicanos'" (The Bronze Screen Looking as Us Looking, xvi). In her short essay, however, Fregoso points to there being shortcomings even when films are produced with the idea of bringing about awareness of an underrepresented culture. Anders' film, for example, "got the 'form' of gang culture right. What she sorely missed was its 'substance'" ("Hanging Out with the Homegirls? Allison Anders' Mi Vida Loca", 3). Thus, while Anders had seemingly set out to create something productive and good, her own agenda got in her way. She was more concerned with telling her own stories than those true to the culture of Chicanas. As such, regardless of her attempt to seek out suggestions from gang members, she ultimately failed in her project to humanize the people she was depicting. 

Arguably, attempting to create something regarding a group, culture, subculture, etc. beyond what the creator is as an individual becomes tricky as it becomes a game of tug-of-war between what they want to depict and what actually should or should not be depicted. Such examples can be found beyond Chicano films, and is often also an issue in materials regarding women. For example, Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales includes a tale from the point of view of the Wife of Bath. In her prologue, the wife describes how she's used her cunning and womanly qualities to fool old men into thinking she loves them as part of her plan to be married and gain monetary wealth. She tells stories of how she has accused the men of cheating on her, abusing her, and a slew of other atrocities which she also admits they have not done, but have rather been her own actions toward the men. In How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, a film created some 700 years later, similar actions occur. As the main female protagonist works to be broken up with quickly, she continually accuses the male protagonist of creating faults in their relationship and not trying hard enough to keep them together. As a woman, she is portrayed as sneaky and conniving, but through her own chosen depiction of herself, she comes off as overly emotional, needy, clingy, etc. Essentially, the film showcases a woman not only in a negative light, but harmful as well insofar as it fails to give even a remotely accurate look into what it means to be a woman as it falls short in recognizing the harm such a depiction can cause on the views of women culturally among the general populace and within the minds of women themselves. The female protagonist's intellectual ability, her opinions, her hobbies, and her job are ignored when she interacts with her boyfriend, thus replacing her actual abilities with that of only being able to frustrate, and occasionally satisfy, men. She becomes an example of what it is to be a "true woman" in all its stereotypical annoyances and over-the-top behaviors. Kate Hudson's character, though holding the possibility of showing a different type of woman, one who likes basketball and understands it for example, is replaced by an overdone, overused example of a woman who can't do anything without a man.