Does it matter that this character is Hispanic? No, absolutely not. For example, the TLOU2 character needing to say pendejo. Which is why portraying Hispanics in American media is handled in such an inept manner. It's a broad range from blonde hair, and blue eyes to as black as Wesley Snipes. There's also an implication here that there's only one kind of Hispanic, one that can look to "Whiteness" as an ideal, but there isn't. Yes, they're both fruit, and they both come from trees but they look, and taste different. Nor does it reflect the US Latino point of view. The existence of media featuring Hispanic characters made in Latin American countries doesn't correlate to their use in US media. It's why there's a telenovela version of Breaking Bad, a Russian version of Everybody Loves Raymond, and a Chinese version of Friends. They are made in and for that regional market, sometimes in partnership with a major studio. As I'm sure you know telenovela is just Spanish for soap opera. I actually work in New York and LA in the film industry and I'm very familiar with what you're talking about. I assumed that this is where you were going with this. Which is why we often see established characters switch race in attempts by studios to bridge the gap between the characters seen on screen and the demographics they are trying to appeal to. For example in Latin America doesn’t have any super hero’s to call its own, it simply adopts American ones, unlike black panther that was specifically created to cater to Black American audiences that have historically been excluded from media narratives and thus thought to be unable to relate to many of the characters seen on screen.
This effect is further compounded by the media imperialism of the United States that reinforces the concept of white beauty in post-colonial regions such as Lat Am. This coupled with the legacy of colonialism that made Europeaness or “whiteness” the aspirational ideal allows many Latin Americans to be able to relate to the actors they see on screen even if they don’t share the same physical attributes to them. Most high production media in Latin America is either from Hollywood or made by studios that predominantly feature European looking actors.
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