Preview

James Shamus's Use Of Gang Violence In Sin Nombre

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1010 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
James Shamus's Use Of Gang Violence In Sin Nombre
Apart from a single reference to the gang’s presence in Los Angeles, there is no mention of the MS-13’s origins in southern California, and the U.S. government’s role in facilitating its emergence and spread. Salvadoran migrants, whose very residence there was owed to U.S. support for El Salvador’s brutal military-oligarchy alliance, created the gang in the 1980s as a form of self-protection. U.S. deportations of members helped to internationalize the gang, which now has a strong presence in many Central American countries, and in southern Mexico.

Given the focus of the film, it is perhaps far too much to expect Sin Nombre to address such matters. But it begs the question of what the filmmaker is trying to accomplish by focusing on gang violence and its intersection with the Central American migrant passage through Mexico. It is in this area where Sin Nombre proves
…show more content…

A question-and-answer session with Fukunaga and Focus Features CEO, James Shamus, following a recent showing of the film at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY, helped to shed some light onto the production- and marketing-related thinking surrounding the film. Shamus somewhat cryptically called the film “radically political” (suggesting that it was so in a progressive sense), and praised the fact that it gives voice to people rarely heard in feature films — Latinos. He also gushed about how the film is bringing large numbers of Latinos into art-house theaters, evidence of its cross-over appeal.

Fukunaga indirectly took issue with Shamus’s suggestion that Sin Nombre was political. “I didn’t write it as a political film,” the filmmaker asserted. “I wasn’t trying to change anyone’s mind.” Instead, he stated that he wanted viewers to have an “experience”


You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Summary Of Sonavabitche

    • 173 Words
    • 1 Page

    In the story Sonavabitche it Situates work within the limits of the nation, identity and discipline a purpose to read it from pedagogy, as an act of crossing traffic across disciplines, nations and identities. Borders separate together, define, make a difference and have similarity, but also produce interstitial spaces, spaces which open new relationships. They can be obeyed, crossed, imagined, reinvented, destroyed and released, Protected and tortured. Our northern border is littered with events that mark as a highly contentious area hundreds of Mexicans waiting "to cross to the other side", urban overcrowding displayed in communities, anti-immigration reforms, building walls, countless deaths in the desert, drug trafficking, maquiladora growth,…

    • 173 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    By casting a straight-passing, white male as his lead, the consensus is that Emmerich erases the diversity in the crowd that rioted against police with heels and stones on that monumental day, thus losing much of the historical significance. The assistant director of the Michigan State LGBT Resource Center, Alex Lange, and film studies professor, David Bering-Porter, could not be reached for comment at this time.…

    • 419 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Many turned to crime in El Barrio as a result of peer pressure, family issues, and other situations that steered them to the underground economy of selling crack. Philippe showed this by examining the success of the Italian Americans and Mafia who ran the streets prior to the migration of the Puerto Ricans. that combined with the social restrictions put on those who live in the neighborhood gave way for youth to fall captive to this predictament. Cultural Reproduction is also a highly noted theory in which he uses. In regards to crack one boy said "everybody is doing it...it is impossible to keep away from it because it is practically thrown at you". The glorification of underground crime helps to "promote and encourage" the youth which is a recycling for future crime. Political economy comes the fore as well. Marx stated "the political economy regards the Proletarian...like a horse, he must receive enough to enable him to work. It does not consider him, during the time when he is not working, as a human being". This is exemplified in Philippe describing the background of the Puerto Rican Jibaros and how they along with other groups came to America (land of the free) to escape the poverty in their land only to land in even dire circumstances. The U.S. political agenda in Puerto Rico which causes the resistance of the…

    • 969 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    which is insularity in a Mexican barrio, reconsiders the reassurances of religious belief, and finds…

    • 1438 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    El Norte Symbolism

    • 764 Words
    • 4 Pages

    El Norte, a 1983 film directed by Gregory Nava, depicts the life of two indigenous teenagers who flee their native country, Guatemala, in search for a better life in America. The reason for fleeing is due to the ethnic and political oppression of the Guatemalan Civil War. The film builds up a strong connection shared between Enrique and Rosa, one of genuine feeling and fierce emotion. This connection is foregrounded by the exaggerated style and is often compared to adulterated relations among Hispanics. Such a differentiation is proposed to underline the strain on the social connection created by the financial aspects of migration. In both Enrique’s and Rosa’s hopes of pursuing the “American Dream”, their fantasies of a better life are both…

    • 764 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Walkout movie

    • 637 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The film is a story during the 1960s about the Chicano students of East Los Angeles that protested about the academic prejudice and dire school conditions. In the film, it starts off by showing how the Mexican American culture is being completely ignored throughout the lectures of history in American schools. The students read about the wars that the Americans fought, when the teacher suddenly points out that it never once mentions Mexican Americans being part of that history. This shows how the majority of Americans, the school board of America, does not want to teach nor have an interest in the culture of the country that once used to be part of Mexico. The schools try blank out the Mexican Americans out of history as if they were never there in the first place. It’s like the instructor of the Chicano students says, “If it wasn’t in the papers, it didn’t happen.”…

    • 637 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    How does Catholicism and the state influence the upbringing of youth in Mexico according to the film? Anyone who watches this short film can see the obvious influence the state’s schools have on the upbringing and everyday life of Mexican youth. The film starts off with Lucio and his assumed siblings marching-- pretending to bear the Mexican…

    • 344 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sin Nombre

    • 620 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The film 'Sin Nombre' showed the life of a teenage girl from Honduras and the gang life of a male Willy in Mexico that are both trying to find a better life. The film shows that being apart of the gang was being apart of a…

    • 620 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Sin Nombre

    • 2050 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Sin Nombre, loosely translated as “without name”, is an independent film released in 2009 under the skillful direction of Cary Fukunaga. Fukunaga, a film graduate from New York University, also attended a French university and carries a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of California at Santa Cruz. During his studies and New York University, he made a short film titled Victoria Para Chino, a film about a group of immigrants who died in a refrigerated trailer when immigrating to America; The inspiration behind Sin Nombre came from that short film. In his first major production, Fukunaga continued his interest in the topic of immigration, and came up with the creation of Sin Nombre. The film follows both a young gangster of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, Casper, and young girl from Honduras, Sayra, on their difficult journey to America. Fukunaga’s overall reason for the film was to express the hardships Central American people face on their journey to America, in hopes that people could see immigration from a different light. The film is directed mainly towards citizens of America, Central America, and Mexico although it can spread to any area with controversial opinions of immigration. The constraints of the film include time, as the film lasted just 96 minutes, rating, the limited budget of an independent film, the dangerous filming locations in Central America and Mexico, and language— the film is spoken completely in spanish with english subtitles. These constraints were overcome, and the film went on to be nominated for 22 awards, winning 12 of those including multiple awards at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009, perhaps the most prestigious awards in the independent film world. Fukunaga bravely delivers the powerful and eye-opening story of the journey experienced by Central Americans immigrating to America: One that has previously been pushed behind the curtains in today’s society. Fukunaga delivers his argument that immigrants should…

    • 2050 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    he film is about a Mexican film crew (with director Sebastián) arriving at Cochabamba, Bolivia to shoot a post-colonial film on Christopher Columbus’s early conquest to the New World, the violence of these early colonizers in their search for gold over the local communities and the subsequent indigenous resistance. While hiring the Cochabambans as actors for their movie, the film crew finds itself suddenly in a similar kind of colonial/imperial…

    • 71 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Toritilla Curtain

    • 1449 Words
    • 6 Pages

    T. Coraghessan Boyle writes a magnificent story of how racism and discrimination affects the lives of people living in a privileged society. He reinforces that a prosperous community such as Topanga Canyon (Los Angeles) has ecological instability between its inhabitants and illegal foreigners. The Tortilla Curtain focuses on two separate cultures, the white and financially stable race, and the poor, undocumented immigrants of Mexico. Although they both reside in the land of the free, the white race reigns supremacy while the lighted-colored citizens south of the boarder struggle for equal rights and survival.…

    • 1449 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Mission Play and La Fiesta are certainly testimonies to the disgraceful nature of whites in Los Angeles. However, his work lacks a Mexican perspective. The majority of his sources come from Anglo newspapers and attitudes, whereas the Mexican views are considerably missing. It would have given his work more edge if his readers could assess the Mexican outlook on the violation and destruction of their…

    • 719 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The movie, “Sin Nombre” directed by, Cary Fukunaga, is about the story of a young man, by the name of Willy, living in Mexico, whom is a member of the gang known as “MS”. This film makes its audience familiar with the struggles of the journey for immigrants trying to make it to America. Willy’s commitment for the gang turns redundant when one of the other gang members murders his girlfriend. A series of events occur in conclusion to the murder of his girlfriend, which forces Willy to flee the country.…

    • 950 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Invisible Man Diversity

    • 2471 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Denise Hawkins, dated June 16, 2007, features a program that is now known as the “William H. Cosby Future Filmmakers Workshop”. The program accepts only about ten percent of the applicants and is free to the students that are accepted. It offers fifteen students twelve weeks of intensive training during which students are exposed to all aspects of filmmaking. Programs of this nature are few. Yet, the Motion Picture Association boasts of the 2.5 million jobs, thirteen billion dollars in income, and an average salary for production employee of over $74,000.00 as of 2007. Through these type programs young filmmakers of color will develop the knowledge and expertise to make a difference. I also recognize that when producers of color or others, create movies that include diverse casts, we must be willing to support them and to see them. We must embrace the Kwanzaa principle of Ujamaa, by backing what we create and buying what we produce. We have to support in word and in action: reject the “bootleg” copy, buy the ticket, see the flick and then tell others about it. We have made strides in this nation when it comes to race relations; small but steady strides. For the betterment of society at large and…

    • 2471 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Mohammad A. Mousav, S. S. (2013, January 10). Representation of Latinos in Hollywood: Masculinity in Iñárritu’s Films. International Journal of women 's research Volume 2, number 1.…

    • 2078 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays