{"id":21273,"date":"2010-04-14T10:04:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-14T15:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=21273"},"modified":"2013-12-15T03:30:27","modified_gmt":"2013-12-15T08:30:27","slug":"speedy-gonzales-is-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/04\/14\/speedy-gonzales-is-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Speedy Gonzales is Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Racialicious<\/a>, Arturo R. Garc\u00eda lodges a complaint against the modern makeover of Speedy Gonzales<\/a> which is, apparently, underway.\u00a0 Actor and Comedian George Lopez is scheduled to voice the character in a feature cartoon.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Starting in 1955, Speedy was a recurring character in Warner Brothers cartoons.\u00a0 Dubbed “The Fastest Mouse in all of Mexico,” Speedy wore a sombrero and spoke in broken English.\u00a0 In the cartoon below, he helps other Mexican mice steal cheese from across the Mexico\/U.S. border guarded by a “Gringo cat” (Sylvester):<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Lopez’s wife is on record<\/a> saying that the new Speedy will not be the same racist caricature, but instead a Mexican boy who “…comes from a family that works in a very meticulous setting, and he\u2019s a little too fast for what they do.”\u00a0 But Garc\u00eda isn’t convinced.\u00a0 He writes:<\/p>\n

The thing is, it\u2019s not just about Speedy, but about the universe he inhabited. If this new film strays from the original Andale! Andale!<\/em> schtick, critics will decry that the character was neutered by \u201cthe PC Patrol.\u201d If it doesn\u2019t, the couple has resurrected a very problematic cartoon character (two, if Slowpoke Rodriguez<\/a> is also brought back.) What would be the next step \u2013 the return of Heckle & Jeckle?<\/a> Is bringing back an \u201cestablished brand\u201d like this really a better option than creating an original character and building something positive from the ground up?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He also points out that Lopez’s success has rested largely on his own reproduction of racist stereotypes (of the whites-and-Latinos-are-so-different-hahaha! and Latinos-are-so-Latino-hahaha! varieties). For example:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Yeah… so I can’t imagine that that guy would ever <\/em>participate in a project stereotyping Latinos.<\/p>\n

I guess we’ll have to wait and see but, like Garc\u00eda, I’m skeptical.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Racialicious, Arturo R. Garc\u00eda lodges a complaint against the modern makeover of Speedy Gonzales which is, apparently, underway.\u00a0 Actor and Comedian George Lopez is scheduled to voice the character in a feature cartoon. Starting in 1955, Speedy was a recurring character in Warner Brothers cartoons.\u00a0 Dubbed “The Fastest Mouse in all of Mexico,” Speedy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[223,343,283,285,1754,23705],"class_list":["post-21273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-childrenyouth","tag-tvmovies","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-latinos","tag-vintage-stuff"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21273"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60307,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21273\/revisions\/60307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}