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Latina comedian Cristela Alonzo, in character for her new TV show, Cristela, which debuts this week. Photo courtesy of LPN News.

Edward James Olmos wants us to watch Cristela

Edward James Olmos wants me to watch the TV show, Cristela — and I don't know how I feel about it. Of course, he wasn't nudging me specifically, he was nudging…

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Edward James Olmos wants me to watch the TV show, Cristela — and I don't know how I feel about it. 

Of course, he wasn't nudging me specifically, he was nudging all Latinos to watch the program. "Cristela stars a real woman . . . a real, funny woman . . . a real, funny Latina," Olmos writes in column for the LPN news service. "That Latina is Cristela Alonzo, a new, brilliant, comic voice in the United States, who lights up the screen with her keen sense of timing. Loosely based on her unique American story, Alonzo also co-wrote the pilot, bringing cultural sensitivity to a show about Latinos. ... (it) shows us like we are—a mixed bag of peoples, backgrounds and opinions."

Olmos isn't the only Latino stoking up interest in Cristela. My inbox this week also included an email from Las Comadres para Las Americas (an organization that focuses attention on Latino authors via a national Latino bookclub) urging me to watch: "if you can't tape or watch, consider turning on the TV and leaving it on, even if you are not in the room, so that you can be counted amongst the millions of us who will be watching to support our gente!" wrote Nora de Hoyos Comstock, Las Comadres' founder, president and CEO.

Olmos is practically Latino Hollywood royalty — on film he can be seen in Stand and Deliver, Bladerunner, Zoot Suit and Selena, and on TV  in Battlestar Galactica and Miami Vice, among many other credits — but he also devotes a lot of energy to advocating for a wider Latino representation in arts and literature. Hoyos Comstock's organization by its very nature foregrounds Latino creators, something Hoyos Comstock augments through conferences and publications. That they would both make an effort to encourage Latinos to support this show speaks volumes about the general lack of representation of Latinos and the overall typecasting of those Latinos who do get screen time. But even more, it draws attention to the fact that there are few Latinos writing for TV — which is, in my view, why the Latino and Latina roles we do see so often rely on gross stereotype (and make me cringe).

Media is focusing more attention on the vast — and vastly underserved — Latino TV viewing market. The upcoming season has a number of shows in addition to Cristela that have Latino casts or take their impetus from wildly successful Latin American telenovelas (a recipe that made Ugly Betty a success for a few seasons).

Still, I approach this new "interest" in us Latinos with very guarded optimism. I'll watch Cristela, and hope to like it. I'll hope to write about it proudly — something I haven't been able to with Devious Maids (a show which Eva Longoria produces) or anything, to date, associated with Sofia Vergara. And because hope springs eternal, I'll catch the "new wave" of Latinidad on TV — but only if it takes me somewhere worth the ride.

 

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