Why did you feel that showing La Bamba was more important, lets say, than showing Zoot Suit?
Noriega: Actually, I wanted to show both but La Bamba was the one we were able to show. Zoot Suit is great and I wish we could have shown that but there were a few films like that where we weren’t able to show. Maybe at some future point? It certainly deserves much more visibility than it gets. Guillén: I notice thematically that through several of the categories there’s a focus on youth and gang culture; either negative portrayals of gang members or portrayals of youth trying to escape gang culture. Are these films truly reflective of Latino youth? Noriega: It’s reflective of Hollywood following what’s in the news but also participating in a certain shift in how they look at youth that occurs from the 1950s onward. It really has to do with a lot of what happened after the Second World War in terms of legally creating the category of the juvenile delinquent. Understanding that category as one that’s legally constructed provides an opportunity for the State to come in and say to familie
