Touch of Evil: Mexican Portayals

 Cameron Carmichael

Professor Wisniewski

ENGL 280 01

December 9, 2020

Touch of Evil: Mexican Portrayals

    The film Touch of Evil starts off with a bomb being placed in the trunk of a couples car, and follows that car up the road until it blows up as it crosses over the U.S/Mexican border into America. Along this journey, we follow Miguel and Susie Vargas who will play big roles in the film. Miguel is a drug enforcement officer for Mexico and begins working on the case of who planted the bomb along with Hank Quinlan, a police captain. Throughout the film, because it takes place exclusively in Mexico and the film was made in the 1950's, there are a lot of Mexican antagonists depicted in the film. Besides Quinlan and a few other corrupt cops, every other antagonist in the film is Mexican, and the stereotype is very obvious.

    The Mexican characters are portrayed very poorly, considering today's standards, in this film. They all seem to be greasers, wearing lots of leather and slicked back hair, compared to everyone else in the film who appear to be more "realistic." Considering I wasn't around during the 1950's, I have no idea if this is how people actually dressed in Mexico, but it just doesn't sit right with me how they are portrayed. Very early on in the film, shortly after the car explodes and Vargas and Quinlan meet, Susie is followed by an unnamed man, who she then asks about a hotel to stay at. Him and all of his friends surround her, trying to intimidate her because they know that she's Vargas' wife. Later on, she is staying in a hotel all by herself and run by one man, which then gets taken over by these Mexican men. They are portrayed as thugs and goons, all dressed very similarly to each other and trying to seem like threats. They manage to scare Susie and drug her so that she goes unconscious and can then be frame later on. After Vargas finds out that they had trashed Susie's room and kidnapped her, he goes to a bar and begins to scream at them about where his wife is. They all act tough at first until Vargas starts fighting all of them and they realize that they have made a mistake messing with him.

    In my opinion, if this film was made now, with the same portrayals of characters and nothing was changed, there would be a lot of issues with how the characters are. None of the characteristics of these Mexican characters are progressive compared to what we have in film now, even though we still have room for progression in the present. At the time that this film was made, it is understandable why these characters are written they way they are and dressed the way they are, but I still don't think that it is morally correct. Trying to play into the stereotype is very obvious to the viewer because people will have different experiences and know that not everyone acts in these ways particularly. I feel that if these characters were developed more and could actually stand out by themselves, then it would make them seem more interesting and compelling antagonists of the film. But they just come off as goons following the orders of their boss, who also doesn't really seem to be too much of a threat.

    Taking into consideration that this film was made so long ago, I can understand why these characters were specifically written the way that they were. This doesn't make it right, but because of how different things were back then, it makes sense. I would like to see a remake of this film made with better developed antagonists just so that they get the proper representation that they deserve and don't just fit into the mold of their stereotype. Film has come a long way from where it was during the 1950's, but there is still a ways to go.