Feb
26
QUE VIVA MEXICO
Posted by: Brian | February 26, 2009 | Comments Off on QUE VIVA MEXICO
When I started watching the film I thought it was a documentary. As the film progressed I realized it was actually a number of short stories or episodes of some sort. When I was watching it seemed like I was listening to a lecture or presentation on life of Mexico by people who went there for some time, did research, and wanted to show something different. It obviously does not present Mexico as it really is, as it leaves a number of important details behind, and just shows the obvious and most notorious parts of it. At a point it seemed like they were sort of promoting Mexico as an exotic place. The first half of the film specially, it looked like commercials, as it showed fruits and people dancing with no real narrative. I understand how this movie can have so many flaws in their overall objective of representing Mexico because it is foreign and from a really different culture. However, if they really wanted to represent Mexico, then they shouldn’t have just focused on such external events or stereotypical Mexicaness. I think the movie did not achieve its purpose, weather it was to entertain or to depict Mexico as it is. This makes me interested in what other cultures actually see Mexico as, or used to see it as. No real life in the city was shown either, and the richness in culture was just mentioned through images. Despite this, I think that it is not that bad because if they wanted to show this to Russia, they would have thought Mexico was a place so different from theirs that they would want to visit it or know more about it. It certainly gives an exotic impression of it. It is really interesting how Mexico is portrayed so differently in the view of Mexicans than in the view of foreigners. It was obvious that they were going to differ, but I didn’t know it was going to be to this extent. Mexicans concentrate more on social issues and how the culture is shaped contrary to the foreign films.
