As a teenager I can vaguely remember watching the George Lopez Show. This show is about a Chicano who works in a factory in Los Angeles and the trials and tribulations he and his family face. What was most memorable about the show was the use of Spanish, English, and Spanglish. This was not a regular occurrence as most shows can be considered Eurocentric. Upon examining an episode, I began to see the many stereotypes portrayed/perpetuated about what it is to be a Chicano living in the US. This episode in particular, and I am sure many other episodes, show the Latino as disrespectful, lazy, dumb, incompetent, joker who does not care for his health or the law.
The episode I chose to dissect goes by the name “George Helps Ernie See the Cellu-light”. This punny title sums up the episode nicely. Ernie is put into a predicament when he crashes the forklift at the factory. Ernie had recently gained weight. This increase in weight gave Ernie a bigger belly which obstructed the steering wheel on the forklift and led to him comically/ironically ram into the factory’s vending machine. After this occurrence George’s boss threatens to fire Ernie and only allows him to stay employed on the condition that he lose weight.
While the plot plays out there are many stereotypes portrayed/perpetuated throughout the scenes. Georges mother works at the factory where George is a Manager. This does not stop him from disrespecting his mother calling her “lazy” and a “bat” among other insults. In the opening scene he sees his employee/friend sleeping when he should be working, feeding the stereotype that Latinos are lazy. Ernie is also portrayed as an incompetent worker when he clumsily wrecks the forklift. Ernie exhibits poor self control determined by the amount of weight he has allowed himself to gain. George, although he is portrayed as a hard-working man who worked himself from the bottom to the top, he still answers to a white man who is of higher rank within the company. The way in which that white man speaks really contrasts the way all the other Latino’s speak in the series; while he speaks with good pronunciation and no accent the Latino characters speak comically broken English and George stumbles multiple times on words. It almost seems that every word spoken by the Latino actors is meant to be comedic.
I understand that this show is meant to be a comedy but it seems as though most of the comedy is based off of the many character flaws found in the Latino characters. This is all well and good but when there is a lack of representation of Latinos in television and the only thing you see about Latinos in television programming is how all these characters are flawed in some way, those images become imprinted into the American psyche. What is even worse than that is when Latino viewers begin to believe the programming and accept it as reality.
George Lopez Show: “George Helps Ernie see the Cellu-light”
I enjoyed this show, I agree some of the stereotypes were perpetuated but I chalked it up to comedy. The target audience was Latino, i don’t think the non-latino demographic made the show a success, perhaps a small group. After all Sandra Bullock was George Lopez “White Savior”. Jk. His comedy is all self deprecating humor, some Latinos can relate. I thought your blog held an interesting point of view. Your well thought analysis had me second guessing myself. I can see how the contents of the show can be taken negatively, but Seinfeld’s show was about “Nothing” and it was huge success. He played into stereotypes as well. It is one of my favorite shows, his group got caught up in many questionable situations but it worked, maybe due to “white Gaze” I never saw Jerry and Crew any different other than funny. I put George Lopez and his show in the same bracket with Seinfeld.