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Mi Vida Loca My Crazy Life

Mi Vida Loca My Crazy Life. Allison Anders. Mi Vida Loca Its strengths. Best mainstream film on Chicano gangs Its attention to details of everyday life Its faithful rendition of the style, stance, posture, gestures, the mannerisms and speech of so many Homegirls (ala American Me)

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Mi Vida Loca My Crazy Life

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  1. Mi Vida LocaMy Crazy Life Allison Anders

  2. Mi Vida LocaIts strengths • Best mainstream film on Chicano gangs • Its attention to details of everyday life • Its faithful rendition of the style, stance, posture, gestures, the mannerisms and speech of so many Homegirls (ala American Me) • Used an authentic location, using authentic characters

  3. Its Strengths • Authentic nicknames such as Blue Eyes, Giggles, Whisper, Sad Girl and Mousey • Emphasis on sisterhood and survival as independent and single women—female solidarity • Does not glamorize violence, shows its tragic human consequences • Welcomed community members into the film (Salt of the Earth-Bread and Roses)

  4. The Criticisms • Confirmation of negative stereotypes of Chicanas as welfare dependents • Its nihilism, (belief that all values are baseless, extreme pessimism, no beliefs, no loyalties—F. Nietsche) its downbeat resolution • Plays “on every stereotype ‘mainstream’ America thinks about urban gang life”—Rosa Arrieta • It depicts teenagers without ambition, “drifting downward into chaos and dead-end lives—Susan Gerhard, “True Colors,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, August 3, 1994

  5. Rosalinda FregosoThe Critique • Homegirls don’t get pregnant from the same guy—they have more respect than that • A Homeboy does not obsess over a lowrider truck at the expense of his kids • Rival gangs fight over turf, never over a car • Anders got the “form” of gang culture—not the “substance”

  6. Fregosocontinued • Unrequited love—comes from Anders’ own story—transferred this to the affair between La Blue Eyes and El Duran • The lowrider truck segment was an invention by another screenwriter (Kurt Voss) • The part about two homegirls becoming pregnant from the same guy is taken from a story her daughter heard on the streets

  7. Fregoso, continued • Left untold is the elaborate support network of mothers, grandmothers, aunts who visit them in jail, bail them out, help deliver, feed and take care of their babies • The battle between Chicano gangs is over the control of turf and scarce economic resources, not over lowrider trucks

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