latinos on television

Fiction, whether it be movies, television or novels, relies on a number of conventions.  Our knowledge of these conventions allows us to “willingly suspend disbelief.”  Sometimes a book or movie requires that you put your disbelief into a coma, but readers and viewers will do so if the story is good enough.

A convention specific to the novel is that a first-person narrator can recreate incidents from memory.  Nick Carraway describes the events of The Great Gatsby from the perspective of some months later, after which time no one could relate dialogue and details so exactly.  But we accept his version as factual, at least from his perspective.  (The concept of the unreliable narrator is beyond the scope of today’s rant.)

There’s another convention that drives me absolutely crazy, partly because it’s crazy-making, but equally because I’ve never heard anyone else object to it.  What’s going on out there?  Why the great silence?

Anyway, this is where the writer, or director, or producer (or actor, for all I know), or whoever makes this decision, identifies the speaker of a foreign language with the use of a word that non-speakers of that language will understand.

Allow me to illustrate.  Pick a sit-com in which there is a Spanish-speaking maid.  (This is a stereotype, but a ubiquitous one, which is what makes it a stereotype in the first place.)  Merry high jinx ensue when the teenage son asks the wrong identical twin to the prom, or Dad forgets Mom’s birthday.  But meanwhile, Consuela-from-Guatemala dispenses wise advice as she passes through with a micro-fiber dust cloth.

The phone rings.  Consuela answers it.  “Si?”  She continues her side of the conversation entirely in English.  At the end, though: “Adios.”

So now we know, if we didn’t already infer from the myriad other clues, that Consuela is a native Spanish speaker.

But “yes,” and “goodbye,” are the last words that Consuela would say in Spanish.  When you travel to France, and struggle to remember what you learned in high school, you are not going to stumble over, “Auriez-vous une chambre pour la nuit?” at the hotel reception desk, only to add “please,” in English, instead of “s’il vous plait.”

I’ve chosen Spanish and French as examples of this abominable paradox, because they’re the most commonly abused in this fashion.  Occasionally one hears “nyet” or “arigato,” but beyond that, it’s subtitle city.

What would and should happen is that Consuela says, “yes?” and “goodbye,” in English, but during the conversation we hear her ask for help in translating “malvo claro” into “light mauve.”

One might fairly protest that we have bigger problems than this in media, let alone society, but all I can do is repeat that it drives me crazy.  And someone had to speak up, be it in English, Spanish, or Xhosa.

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Donna Levin is the acclaimed author of four novels, all of which are available from Chickadee Prince Books. Her latest novel, He Could Be Another Bill Gates, is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or at the bookstore right across the street from your home. Please take a look.

Photo:Pixa-Bay.