ChicaMarya

I finally saw “Bobby” last night thanks to my Netflix subscription.  I can understand the criticisms that having a cast of stars could be distracting.  What I found distracting was the lack of demographics.  Estevez’s film had a good number of Latinos and Mexicans featured in the kitchen, a smaller smattering of African Americans and absolutely no Asian Americans.  Come on, this was in Los Angeles, one of the few places in the USA which already had a large Asian Amercian population!!

Shame on you Emilio for ignoring this group, one that built the railroads in this nation, a group that sacrificed for their country and which found their civil liberties taken away just 24 years prior to Bobby Kennedy’s murder.  Then again, for me, the star studded cast is a reminder that this is Hollywood, not real life.  Mexican kitchen help has some   dialogue toward conveying their situtation and a little of US history about US acquistion of Mexican lands, and uses the term “Latino” once but that is all.  For the most part, the handing of ethnic subcultures is superficial.  I suppose if Estevez wasn’t Mexican in heritage, it might have been even more wanting.  Still, Asian Americans and Native Americans have been living in California (it was Indian land before, remember??) minimally at the turn of the 1900’s.  Yet Bobby, with its historical background, would have a view believe Asian Americans and First Nation people did not exist in Los Angeles, that African Americans had largely “made it” and all Mexicans worked kitchens.  Bobby left me disappointed at this mix, with the sad irony that Kennedy’s speeches had so much more substance than the film’s depiction of those of whom he spoke of and for.