May I say, first of all, that I find it interesting watching this movie on the same day that I was reading on BBC about the U.S. intensifying border control to fight drugs.

I was really bothered by the coloring of Mexico (in a sickly yellow) and the northern cities (in blue).  It contributed to the portrayal of Mexico as dirty, corrupt, desolate, drug-ridden desert, which already I would take issue with.  And the blue was just so unnatural, it made me uncomfortable.  California was normal, I guess because it is at the intersection between U.S. and Mexico, but then that didn’t fit with the coloring of everything else.

I really liked the point that the daughter’s friend made about how black people were selling drugs because of all the white people looking for drugs… and that if a bunch of people asked white people for drugs all the time, it would be them selling.  This was one of the better moments of this film, since the portrayal of both African Americans and Mexicans in this film was quite derogatory.  Another part that was good for me was the fact that it was a spoiled over-acheiving a-student, daughter of the drug czar who was the biggest drug addict in the film.  It was refreshing, because in many films the drug addicts are poor, stuggling artists or someting in that vein… when in fact, and I can vouch -having gone to a high school with lots of rich kids with drug problems and a having a classmate, star football player die of a cocaine overdose my senior year- the rich, but secretely troubled, kids are some of the biggest consumers out there.

Those are my initial reactions/thoughts. I think that the discussion Thursday should be quite interesting.