Defining Family Via Hollywood

One of the most prominent issues in most Hollywood films today is that of self-identity through family orientation and how to work with one’s self while developing through this time. As a movie that articulates itself through relationships and reactions with different breeds of people, Spanglish is one of the greatest examples of self-identity through family. The movie is structured around a Mexican mother who flees Mexico with her daughter in search of a better life in America . The duo lives in and work for a wealthy, but visibly unstable, family. One of the most heartfelt and eye-opening parts of the whole movie is the comparison between how the Mexican mother treats her daughter, and how the American mother treats her daughter. This interaction highlights the difference in culture, which is the essence of the movie, but it also illuminates the theme of family interactions defining self in doing so.

The daughter of the wealthy woman is young, possibly twelve or thirteen, and is a little heavy-set in comparison with her exercise fiend of a mother. Obviously as a budding young woman with an unstable home life, she is dealing with identity an issue which is fueled, if not fired, by the judgmental mother. After coming home from a shopping spree for her daughter, it is quickly concluded that the daughter is too heavy for the sizes her mom has picked out and she is left with the clothes and disappointment. Observing all of this, the Mexican mother makes a few alterations and the daughter throws on the clothes to make her mother happy, only to see that her mother is only happy that she is losing weight (which any mother who has been paying attention would note that no change has been made), not that she looks beautiful in the clothes. This causes a complex to develop got the young girl in the misleading belief that beauty is in shape and nothing else. If her mother cannot accept her for who she is, then how can she even begin to like herself and make a conscious decision about her identity.

In regards to other great works of literature such as the characters in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, the movie cannot depict emotions as verbally or obviously as the narration provides in a novel. However, it is through the actions and repeated disappointment that show how dependent each character is on their family’s approval. Because the relationship is one of mother vs. young daughter in Spanglish, most things are materialistic bonds between the two, making it very obvious when there are disapprovals. The disapproval between the mother and daughter is physically seen when the daughter begins to weep after the mother berates her for her weight issues. Although the bond may be one that disgusts a lot of viewers, it is an obvious one with clear emotions and feelings from known sources. The stark difference between As I Lay Dying and Spanglish is in that very sense that interactions are not known and the relationship between the mother and daughter pair is not physically heard or seen, but must be inferred by what the narration says.

In Faulkner’s work, the narrations do not have the characters verbally interacting too much, but is written with a stream-of-consciousness so the materialistic crises are surpassed by the emotional issues. So much of the novel is situated around the emotions that the characters may or may not portray through their brief narration, and much is left to the reader to decide. Addie and Dewey Dell do not once interact verbally or physically throughout the whole novel and most of Dewey Dell’s narrations are focused on self as opposed to her mothers casket or body like the others. This self-obsession is the key to the relationship between the two because Addie’s one narration is all about herself and her dissatisfaction with the world she created for herself. Addie so much disliked her routine that she had an affair with another man which resulted in an illegitimate child. As Dewey Dell admits to the reader, she is pregnant out of wedlock and her goal for the whole trip is to get an abortion. This issue with sex and fertility is one that only comes up between the two females which gives the reader the idea that their relationship is one of shared mistakes. Each time Dewey Dell goes into detail about her night with Lafe it resembles Addie’s passionate night with Whitfield. This link is what exposes the two and makes them a mother daughter pair, much like the duo in Spanglish.

Because Spanglish is a Hollywood film it has those moments where it is not a work of literature, but a story to be told just to have a happy ending. However, though fairytale it may be at some times, it still has the elements in creating a relationship between two members of a dysfunctional family trying to find themselves and in doing so create a new correlation.