It’s 5:30 a.m. I am here sitting in front of my computer. Thinking. Still trying to figure out what’s our damage. I just find it baffling as to why we continue to do the same thing we’ve been doing for decades and solely blaming Hollywood for our failure to launch. I have screamed to the four corners of the Earth that nothing is going to change if we keep employing the same stratagem that is clearly self-destructive: to sell poverty porn.
We keep asking for “our stories” to be told; For “our stories” to be funded. Some of them have been but they have spectacularly flopped. Experts know this. Even the very same ones asking for “our stories” to be told again and again. Why? Stop it. I am getting sick and tired of it. I am mentally, physically and spiritually drained. I’m still waiting for apathy to kick in lest I succumb to becoming the proverbial cantankerous Latino. The archetypical hothead. Don’t people in the business get sick of it? Just throw your hands up and admit that you have failed. Try again. But not with the same strategy, for the love of insanity. ¡Qué Locura!
Why do we continue to push for stories about coming to America, about our struggling neighbors, about crackheads, gangbangers, devious maids, papi chulos, the ghetto, the macho thug, the marianismo, and the rest of the stereotypical repertoire of shit that has and will continue to hold us back? Why do we do this to ourselves even when we’re 2nd and 3rd generational and not any one of those aforementioned? It’s not just Hollywood. It’s not just the studios. It’s not the just the audience. It’s us too. Why, you, as you read this, don’t act instead of letting that cognitive cacophony want to strangle me?
I have ran into all types of opportunists, idea pirates, and exploitative sociopaths who instead of investing on young innovators they straight up and blatantly suck their creativity dry. These vampires are rampant. What’s worse is that they’re usually members of our community. What’s even worse is that they’re usually pillars of our community. But that’s not surprising. That’s fucking depressing. Stop exploiting your own people, you goddamn savages.
The Latino community is not the African American community. We don’t need a Latino Tyler Perry to come and rescue us. Anyone who tells you that we need to emulate his business plan and follow his career trajectory is an idiot. Yes, he made a fortune selling a disgraceful roster of Black stereotypes to his own people. Yes, he hires a lot of his own people, but at what cost? The continuation of false narratives, dogma, and complicity in en masse suffering? Hell no!
To rub salt to that already gaping wound, there are people out there with the means to invest; To turn things around for our struggling writer/directors, actors, and content creators. The problem is that they want these artists to work on their shitty ideas instead of funding the artists’ own work that has potential to bring a huge return. I admit that it takes talent and a great deal of vision to see potential in others but not when you use that potential to bring to fruition something that hasn’t worked. It’s myopic. It’s ridiculous. It’s fucking dumb. Think business, stupid. Change your status quo.