Representation of Latinos in Hollywood: Masculinity in Iñárritu’s Films

This paper studies the image of Latinos in the United States of Americathrough the Hollywood films production by the well-known Mexican director,AlejandroGonz?lez I??rritu. Using content analysis of the Latinos characters in the threefilms directed by him and in collaboration with screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, thepresent paper examines the masculinity frame to see whether the Latinos areportrayed positively or negatively in Hollywood movies. Semiotics in films and theCharacter theory are used as the theoretical framework. The reason for choosingthis director is to control the research for the racializationthat might exist if we picka non-Latino director. The hypothesis is that the portrayal of the main characters isa violent masculinity and a negative one. Regardless of the intentional orunintentional reasons behind it, the effect of such portrayal on the overall pictureof Latinos is a negative one in the sense that according to the representationtheory, using Goffman Character and Christian Metz’s Semiotics theories, peopletend to accept something that is repeated enough for them as the reality andtherefore act upon it.