Back in 2013, Eduardo Medina-Mora, then Mexican Ambassador to the United States, took the extraordinary action of publicly denouncing Hollywood's film industry and its 'racist' stereotypes of Mexicans. 'Mexicans on the silver screen are usually portrayed as poor and uneducated at best, corrupt and violent at worst,' he said, declaring such representations 'not only racist, but wrong'.
He used Mexican actor Demián Bichir as an example, pointing out that after his move to America Bichir has played a gardener (A Better Life), a corrupt Tijuana mayor (Weeds) and a drug dealer (Savages).
Hollywood is fascinated with the violent world of drug cartels, and Denis Villeneuve's Sicario, released in Australia late last month, is no exception. Sicario has many of the characters Medina-Mora was concerned about, including corrupt police and drug dealers — though, to its credit, it's the first fiction film since Steven Stodebergh's Traffic (2000) to look closely at America's misguided attempts to quell the cartels.
Unfortunately for Mexico's image, the horrific violence perpetrated during the near decade-long Drug War is easy pickings for Hollywood, who present it as a simple equation: Mexican drug dealers bad, America good. We see it time and time again, and often to exploitative lengths.
In the 2013 comedy We Are the Millers, Jason Sudakis' character David Miller is sent to Mexico to score a large sum of marijuana, only to come up against Mexican drug dealers. Hijinks ensue, the Mexicans are thwarted, and Miller, the drug mule, gets home scot-free.
In 2013's The Last Stand, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays the sheriff of a small border town who is America's last hope at stopping an escaped cartel leader crossing the border back into Mexico.
2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) involved the FF team bringing down a cartel leader. In Savages (2012) a harmless, easygoing American pot dealer's girlfriend is kidnapped by a cartel. In both The Counselor (2013) and Sabotage (2014) audiences are shown the dangers of ripping off cartels.
Hollywood need not deny the violence cartels have perpetrated upon one another, members of the public, police and military. But to almost exclusively engage with Mexico in terms of this violence provides a badly limited perspective on that country. Hollywood does something similar when it goes to Africa and tells only stories of warlords and child soldiers. To do so brings nothing to the conversation, but merely exploits tragic situations for the benefit of laughs and action.
Sicario doesn't pretend to know how the US should deal