Queerness, Gentrification And Cultural Genocide In The Film La Mission

Queerness, Gentrification and Cultural Genocide in the film La Mission

This is an essay I wrote as part of my pursuit of an Ethnic Studies degree at Cal State East Bay during the Fall Quarter 2017. This will be part of a series of essay posts from my classes at the end of my school quarters. This and all of my essays were written under my legal name, Dennis Camargo.

In the film La Mission, the audience is introduced to Che, a former prisoner and alcoholic, and his son Jes, a student just about to graduate high school. The plot of the film focuses on the tumultuous relationship between Che and Jes after Jes was inadvertently outed as a gay man by his father stumbling across photos of Jes in a gay club. In the film there is an underlying tone of Che interpreting male homosexuality as a force of consumerism and gentrification in La Mission, the area of San Francisco where the film takes place. Che is unable to reconcile his son’s queerness, therefore branding his son as a race trader and being complicit in the cultural genocide of a historically Mexican district of San Francisco.

Very early in the film, the audience is met with Che’s fears of La Mission falling victim to gentrification like many other parts of San Francisco. Che confronts his neighbor Lena, who has filed a complaint against Che with their landlord for blocking the sidewalk with his lowrider. The audience sees Che’s defensiveness against this complaint as encroachment of seemingly God-given right as a Mexican man to exert his dominance and symbols of masculinity in his Azatlan, the mythical homeland of Aztecs and by extension Mexican culture. He states “…after all you hipster types are tired of slummin’ it, I’m still going to be here,” to Lena, a black woman who personifies a typical hipster/gentrifier complete with fixed gear bicycle and an interest in New Age beliefs (00:10:15). Despite her race, her hipster interests are typified as white behavior and therefore is an extension of the cultural genocide of La Mission district. While her lifestyle is not necessarily queer, it is accepting of queerness which opens the door for more white culture to smother the hypermasculine, hyper heterosexual Chicano culture of La Mission.

Che has a very complex interpretation of his son’s queerness because of his history as a convict, his addiction to alcohol and the association of gay culture with alcohol, whiteness and consumerism. Che’s few associations with gayness are exemplified with the line “Is that why he’s manhandling you like you’re some Mexican bitch?,” (00:27:05) when he confronts Jes with the photographic evidence of is encounter with his white boyfriend. Another instance is an ad for here!, a gay-oriented on demand television channel being advertised on the busses he drives (00:40:26). These two instances can be interpreted as colonial, capitalist gentrifiers of his Azatlan, making Jes la Malinche, a historical figure vilified by Mexican people for selling out the Native Mexicans to the Spanish (Garsd). On a very tangential note, his association with queerness and clubbing, therefore alcohol use, can be seen as a white drug adulterating a perfect Aztec life, as there tremendous pride in Aztec identity among those who pride themselves as Chicano. This adulteration can be tied to the trope of Native Americans struggling with alcohol abuse.  

Conclusively, while Che’s interpretation of queerness and white hipsterdom gentrifying traditional black and brown neighborhoods is not necessarily incorrect, he fails to see the nuances of being queer. Queers of color can be equally weary of gentrification and cultural genocide of historically black and brown areas and are willing to protect la raza from falling victim to capitalism. Understanding of the intersectionality of being brown and queer will help in the effort against gentrification. 

Citations

La Mission, www.amazon.com/Mission-Benjamin-Bratt/dp/B003ZZ4H6K/ ref=sr_1_1? ie=UTF8&qid=1509596248&sr=8-1&keywords=la%2Bmission&dpID=513tWYMpb7L&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch.

Garsd, Jasmine. “Despite Similarities, Pocahontas Gets Love, Malinche Gets Hate. Why?” NPR, NPR, 25 Nov. 2015, www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/11/25/457256340/despite-similarities-pocahontas-gets-love-malinche-gets-hate-why.