We all love to watch movies. Watching movies helps you to de-stress, laugh, cry, and scream of fear. But have you noticed that most of the films portray some nationalities or countries in a certain way?
Let's start with a clear example. The movie Colombiana is about a little girl from Colombia named Cataleya, who has to escape to the United States because her father was a hitman. Later, there she is trained by her uncle to become an assassin.
In the movie, they portray Colombia as a country full of danger and assassins in every street. This movie was famous in the US and Europe, giving room maybe for people to be afraid of traveling here or thinking that we are all murderers.
In many other movies, they relate Colombia also with drugs.
Another example is how they portray Asian characters. Most of them are nerds, villains, or experts in martial fights. For example, in Breakfast at Tiffanys, (1961), where Mickey Rooney plays a bucktoothed, slant-eyed Mr. Yunioshi. Which is also an example of Yellowface, because Mickey is not Asian.
Latinos are seen as sexy and in many cases dumb. Latinas are most of the time called "Spicy Latinas" and men as a "Latin Lover".
Even though nowadays this is not as frequent as it used to be years before, there are still many movies that create wrong stereotypes towards many countries and nationalities. We need to make a change and respect everyone's culture and ethnicity.
By Manuela Orozco, Step 10.
