First, I would like to thank Michelle Tellez for first alerting me to Peter Bratt's film La Mission (2009) last spring as it was playing in several festivals throughout the US.
There are so few representations of Chican@s in film that all portrayals become part of a "necessary theater" as Jorge Huerta aptly describes it. La Mission is not only a necessary theater, it is also one of the few recent portrayals of Chicano masculinity that tries to convey a complex set of identities amidst changing demographics and traditions.
In this post, I will discuss the film and its portrayal of what I label a "queer cholo" identity. Spoilers abound, so be warned.
The plot of the film centers of the relationship between Che Rivera (Benjamin Bratt) and his son Jes (Jeremy Ray Valdez) after the father realizes his son is gay. This is not a "happy and let's accept difference" movie. When I showed it to one of my classes at Whitman, there were tears in the room. Especially as the father rejected the son and wanted him to keep his identity secret and silent.
But perhaps because the father does not instantly (or one could argue fully) accept his son, the film is more true to life in its portrayal of the complex negotiations of Chicano male identities in the US.
While traditional Mexican and Chican@ culture is organized around a set of gender behaviors that allow little transgression, there is also a space for the creation of difference and alterity within everyday life. The boundaries of what is accepted at a particular time are constantly shifting and the key to navigating these lies on the specifics of performativity. Thus, in some cases, it is acceptable to be transgressive of some rules, while at others you might find yourself in terrible danger. As with all social groups, those who belong to it can aptly read the expectations and decide to behave accordingly.
In La Mission, Jes (whose full name is Jesús) knows his father would not be accepting of a gay son. The father has raised the son single-handedly and the two bond by restoring low riders and cruising in San Francisco. Che's understanding of masculinity is portrayed as influenced by hyper-masculine popular representations that emphasize men as hard-working, humble, and proper - the Chicano interpretation of the old Mexican saying that a man should be "feo, fuerte, y formal."
The audience glimpses Che's identity as displayed in his garage - a set of photos, posters, icons, and tools. His design of a special low rider for his son is classical in its portrayal of Mexican foundational myths, showing an Aztec warrior and La Virgen de Guadalupe as Tonantzin. As Jes tells his boyfriend (Max Rosenak), his father would not understand their relationship. And indeed, he does not.
After the initial confrontation between father and son over his sexuality, the film devotes its energy on Che and his confused emotions about his son. They try a truce, but the father's insistence that Jes keep his life secret is not going to work out.
At the center of the conflict is the fact that Jes is portraying a confusing identity as perceived by his father. He is gay - but he is not portraying the stereotypical "loca" or "jota" identity that can be seen in Mexican and Chican@ cultural production. Nor is he a straight acting Mexican version of Tom Hank's Philadelphia performance. He is an entirely new subjectivity and one I label as a "queer cholo."
A cholo is a term for a young Latino (often of Mexican descent) who dresses in a particular way. It is a term whose history dates back to the 16 century and it is also used to denote the indigenous in a pejorative sense in the Latin America. However, in the urban US context, it is akin to gang-banger.
The "queer cholo" identity is one that has recently emerged in two films - La Mission, and Quinceañera (2006) directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland. In both films, we are introduced to a young man who dresses in the traditional (and stereotypical) manner associated with cholos; as the film develops, we learn that this young man is in fact gay. The discovery of his sexuality - to quote a paper by Aaron Aguilar, one of my students, on Quinceañera - is portrayed in an exploitative manner that maximizes the bad boy identity associated with cholos to then subvert the viewer's preconceptions by introducing a queer sex scene. And not accidentally, the love interests in both films are portrayed by white, very affluent men.
So, the emergent subjectivity of the "queer cholo" is one that is dependent on his performance of what appears to be a heterosexual identity associated with hyper-masculinity and bad behavior. And then it is queered by the introduction of his non-normative sexuality which is only possible through the introduction of the very affluent white lover.
Ay, que complicated, no? In a conversation with the super amazing and cool scholar and writer Omar Gonzalez at the NACCS Jotería conference in Oregon, we discussed the films negation of other queer Chicano subjectivities. Are there no other gay Latinos in California? In the Mission District? In Echo Park? In L.A.? Come on!
However, it would seem that the only love interests are going to be white affluent men who are turned on by the whole exotic queer cholo aesthetic (somehow I can already imagine the cheesy soundtrack to the strip show line up). In Quinceañera, the queer character is at first identified by one of love interests as a really hot cholo wearing a wife beater. In La Mission, Jes is taken in by his boyfriend and his family because they can provide a supporting environment while his father cannot - I can almost imagine them saying, "And, he is so well spoken..." as they "rescue him" from his insensitive father.
The queer cholo subjectivity is still being negotiated on screen. In Quinceañera, the gay character ends the film single and agreeing to help his pregnant cousin raise her unborn baby - as he tells us that the child will need a father and he can assume that role. This recasting to a more traditional Mexican masculine identity - he might be gay, but now he is a respectable father figure, and he brings no date to the Quinceañera celebration, so we know he is still single - ends the film in an ambiguous note.
In La Mission, after a mediated reconciliation, Jes comes back but the father is not happy with the son's identity and because he already perceives him in one particular way, he asks that the son not bring that "stuff" home. In other words, stay in the closet, mijo - and especially there is the implication of que no te vean los vecinos.
The film then takes a deus ex machina turn when the "bad cholos" (the bad cholo being one of the primary Latino stock characters in all films about "the hood" in the US and an identity that needs to be better represented and portrayed) shoot Jes in a hate crime. (This is when there wasn't a dry eye in the house when showing the film).
As the ailing Jes is in the hospital, Che requests the help of his indigenous neighbor to come see Jes. The character (played by Edwin Hayna Brown, an elder from the Ho-Chunk nation) comes to the hospital to bless and pray over the unconscious Jes. He, of course, gets better.
This religious intervention accompanies an entire set of practices (seen in the margins for the most part in the film) that portray Chicano religiousity - I say Chicano in this case as the film is mostly about men. The film prominently features the image of La Virgen de Guadalupe and makes a special note of her relationship to Tonantzin and Aztec deities and indigenous traditions. The film's climax also centers around the syncretic relationship between Mexican Catholicism and indigenous practices as Che witnesses a día de los muertos remembrance of a fallen cholo - who of course, ironically is the one who shot his son but this narrative irony is not fully explored within the film.
The film ends with Che driving to give his son the low rider he restored for him - but the reunion is not to happen on screen and hence leaving the audience a bit ambivalent as to the future of the relationship.
So, what can be conclude about La Mission? Aside from obvious criticisms, it remains an important film. It centers on Chicano masculinity and unlike Gregory Nava's Mi Familia (1995) which was very cautious (even amidst all the homosociality within it), does reflect on sexuality and queer identities.
To end, I leave you all to ponder on the most interesting detail in the film. The low rider Che restores features La Virgen / Tonantzin and the Aztec warrior in its hood - this image is an adaptation of La Virgen and Juan Diego, but Juan Diego is played by Popocatepetl, and the figure of Iztaccihuatl is not present. So, is this a way in which the father is trying to come to terms with his son's sexuality? Leave out Iztaccihuatl and just have Popocatepetl as the symbol of masculinity but not compulsory heterosexuality? With La Virgen approving? Que piensan, queerid@s?
Go watch La Mission if you have not.
Yours, Tenured Chicana
Film website http://www.lamissionthemovie.com/
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