The movie, La Bamba , released in 1987, is an American biographical film directed and written by Luis Valdez. The film follows the career and life of Chicano rock and roll star Richie Valens. The film's stars include Valens, Rosanna DeSoto, Joe Pantoliano, Esai Morales, Danielle Zerneck, and Elizabeth Pena. It also covers the impact that Valen's career brought in the lives of individuals like his girlfriend Donna Ludwig, half-brother Bob Morales, and the rest of his family members . La Bamba was included in the annual selection of twenty-five motion pictures in 2017 and added to the National film registry of the Congress's library, being considered historically, culturally, or aesthetically important. This paper reviews the movie La Bamba by examining the movie's historical and cultural accuracy.
Historically, the mid-air plane collision during the beginning of the movie took place in real life on January 31, 1957 (New York Times, 2020). According to the New York Times, seven people were killed in a plane collision as one of the planes falls in the schoolyard. The debris crashed into the Pacoima High school compound, claiming seven people's lives and injuring 75 others ( La Bamba , 1987). Most of these victims were school children. During the crash, Richie, the main actor in the movie, lost his best friend. As a result, he feared flying with an airplane even though he was not in school during the crash since he attended his grandfather's funeral.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Richie Valens, a normal teenage boy, becomes a rock and roll superstar. He meets and falls in love with Donna Ludwig, a fellow high school student. He wrote a hit song for his lover Donna, but their love encountered an obstacle when Donna's father realizes that his daughter is in love with a Mexican. The film shows the father having an issue with his daughter dating a Mexican-American. As a result, it causes friction between the two lovers. The incident reflects the history of racism against Mexican-Americans. Between 1848 and 1926, more than 232 Mexican-Americans were killed through mob violence in Texa (NBC News, 2020) . Some of them were killed by the Texas rangers. Considering that the film came into release in 1987, the film came at the exact time when the Americans of Mexican origin were facing racial discrimination hindering the social interaction with other Americans, as evident in the love relationship between Richie and Donna, which turns out to be a problem when Donna's father realized the existence of the relationship.
Bob is a representative of cultural authenticity in the film. He Speaks Spanish in addition to being in touch with his indigenous Mexican cultural roots. However, the problem arises whereby Chicano’s are restricted from Social Mobility. Like Bob, he resisted incorporation into the dominant culture for the individuals who have managed to retain their particular cultural and ethnic beliefs and values ( La Bamba , 1987) . The more an individual is assimilated into a culture, the greater the possibility of social mobility, just like in Richie's case.
Furthermore, La Bamba has managed to reconfigure the Chicano cultural identity. The only space for "Chicanismo" and the cultural vitality in the movie lies on the margins in which the film represents marginality through Bob's position as a space of social pathology and deviance. The cultural nationalism's positive feature is that movement intellectuals dugs the history and constructed and reconstructed Mexican cultural memories of struggle and resistance to help develop a strong group identity that would protect them from racism and oppression (Moreno Figueroa & Saldívar Tanaka, 2015). However, their retelling of stories helps reconstruct Chicano identity in a fashion that causes a lot of energy and strength, as the site of crisis and pathology. Since cultural identity is not handed down as essences, the remaining task of identity politics can reconstruct subjectivities to empower people as creative subjects of history.
The film also represents the cultural importance of family. Director Luis Valdez has spent much time in the film writing, showing the tense relationship between Bob and his younger brother Richie. As Richie becomes famous through his music career, in which he becomes a rock and roll superstar at a young age, Bob begins to resent home, providing the movie with the most powerful and heartbreaking scenes. In one of the scenes, Bob won an important art contest that helps the upcoming cartoonists. However, he decides to throw away his prize since, in his mind, he feels that his mother does not seem to care enough about his win ( La Bamba, 1987 ). He then resorts to heavy drinking, and at a particular point, he yelled in a drunken rage before his mother, claiming that he wants to see his daughter. Referring to the child, he begets with Ritchie's First girlfriend.
At some points of the film, both Rosie and Valen's mother showcase gender roles that women's primary duty is to cook and clean. However, as opposed to the traditional family culture, the movie shows Valen's mother going to work. Instead, women were supposed to stay at home and take care of the children. This film came at the right time when there was a need for a change in the way women were viewed in society. Instead of staying at home for the house chores, it is also important for them to look for jobs and get earnings for the families' upkeep. A culture that needed to change at the time the movie was released. Hence the movie was important for cultural change.
In conclusion, La Bamba is a movie full of episodes that reveals historical and cultural importance since it was released when there was a need for a culture change. The film represents Mexican-American culture and history, including how they faced racial segregation within America.
References
Moreno Figueroa, M., & Saldívar Tanaka, E. (2015). ‘We Are Not Racists, We Are Mexicans’: Privilege, Nationalism and Post-Race Ideology in Mexico. Critical Sociology , 42 (4-5), 515-533. https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920515591296
NBC News. (2020). 'La Bamba' at 30: the movie's director and actor Esai Morales look back at the groundbreaking film . NBC News. Retrieved December 2 2020, from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/la-bamba-30-director-luis-valdez-esai-morales-talk-about-n786916.
New York Times. (2020). 7 Die as Planes Collide and One Falls in Schoolyard; PLANES COLLIDE, SCHOOL YARD HIT Roar Alerts Students 'Everything on Fire' Witness Describes Crash (Published 1957) . Nytimes.com. Retrieved December 2 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/1957/02/01/archives/7-die-as-planes-collide-and-one-falls-in-schoolyard-planes-collide.html .
Taylor Hackford. (1987). La bamba [Film].
