Oh My Darling, Miguel

So... seeing Charlton Heston in brown face was quite the surprise. It reminded me again of another movie he was in, The Far Horizons, where he played Clark of Louis and Clark. His character was in love with Sacajawea. Sacajawea, coincidentally, was played by a white woman, Donna Reed, who was also in brown face. It was a cheesy movie that was obviously very historically incorrect and the fact that they didn't cast a Native American woman to play a very important Native American character irked me. I believe that is what they are doing again here. They want to represent the Mexican population but they did not cast an actual Mexican to play the lead Mexican role.

I found it interesting how people basically just had to cross the street to move from America into Mexico. I've never been to a border city but I was under the impression that it didn't work that way. When I think of the border, I think of vast desert land that Mexicans have to cross in order to get to the American border. I don't actually know how it works. But I highly doubt it is really as easy to move from country to country as it seemed in the movie. Perhaps that is how it was in the 1950s, though...

I kind of liked Suzie Vargas. She was also refreshing. She seemed intelligent and strong and didn't even have any evil qualities about her! She also seemed pretty sexual but not in a trashy way, which was very pleasing to see. She was a white woman who married a Mexican man, which in itself is pretty cool to see portrayed in an old movie (even though Charlton Heston was anything but Mexican). Then she seems to know how to stick up for herself (though going off with those guys to "skid row" was pretty silly). It also bugged me that she didn't know any Spanish and called the young Mexican man "Poncho". She assumed that the Mexican boy only wanted something sexual from her. Perhaps if she had bothered to learn Spanish, she would have known what he really meant. Even though she is married to a Mexican man, she still harbors some racist sentiment. I'm not saying that she is an evil racist, but with some of her fears and comments, it seems that the sentiment is lingering in her mind.

I'd like to focus on the colonial aspect that is mentioned in Calvo's reading and that was discussed briefly in class. It really is bizarre that white society holds the anxiety of Mexicans and Blacks being rapists of white women, since the white explorers and slave owners were the rapists of Native Americans, slaves, etc. The fact that their land was taken from them is metaphorical rape but then they were physically raped as well. And then white society holds the rape anxiety? I don't think that's fair. It's just like when a child who is feeling guilty about a bad act blames that same act on someone else. Or when an unfaithful partner starts suspecting the other of infidelity.

Luz Calvo really expands on this theory well in his article. The reversal of the bad act in popular culture. It's interesting that the anxiety is present in A Touch of Evil, while Suzie perceives that she will be raped by the Mexican boys, yet it is the white American police officer who is the real bad guy in the film. So by this, I think that Orson Welles is trying to overcome certain Mexican stereotypes. The Mexican boys do not actually rape Suzie.. they just drug her and drop her off to be framed. But Hank was the one who orchestrated the whole thing.

The movie was pretty interesting. At first, I felt that it was kind of slow. And it was hard to get over Charlton Heston in brown face. But I liked the fall of the mighty Hank Quinlan. It was sad but it was needed. His corrupt ways were finally exposed- though it was sad that his partner had to die in the process. The race relations were definitely interesting. Orson Welles did a good job.