The Analysis of The Movie "La Mission"

In the movie, La Mission, we see a variety of different men and masculinities throughout the plot. We see the men who are stereotypical Latino men, and stereotypical Bay people. The masculinity in the film is represented in roughly four ways: heterosexual cis males who are against homosexuals, men who use anger to fight against what they see as not normal, more dominant and masculine homosexuals, and the final, straughn cis males who don't care who you are as long as you have good intentions. They are represented (in the prior order) as Alex, the bully, Che the father, Jesse the main character and the uncle.

In some aspects it challenges the masculine form of ‘all about family’ in the article What It Means to be a Man?: Violence and Homophobia in Latino Masculinities On and Off Screen by M. Cristina Alcalde and how she talks about how macho can be all about family but also, abusive towards people and their family members who do not conform to their own standards. From a personal aspect, I relate violence to hypermasculinity and not the true definition of masculine so to me, it just makes Che look less masculine to me overall, so it does restrict my understandings more than broaden them.

The other aspects that we have in the film were race, sexuality and class were all there. The main focus was Latinx, gay, and low to middle class. They all contributed in major parts as those were the main themes of the movie. All of these themes and ideas are sometimes stereotypes but they also help validate the stereotypes. The protagonists face challenges when She was relying on his standards and social norms to try to decide what was the best for his son and when everyone steps in and fixes it.

The film ties in with themes of hypermasculinity, social norms, and ideas on cultural based masculinities. For example, in the reading ‘Dude, You’re a Fag ’: Adolescent Masculinity and the Fag Discourse by C. J. Pasco, we talk about the cultural/locational experiences in fighting masculinities which also ties in with Retrofitting Frontier Masculinity For Alaska’s War Against Wolves by Sine Anahita and Tamara L. Mix. In ‘Dude, You’re a Fag’ we see how it's based in Northern California like La Mission and how if someone makes a joke, they don't mean it until it's real. Once it is real, they get defensive of the term or start making it real like Alex in the movie. But like in Retrofitting Frontier Masculinity we see how there is cultural and locational bias on masculinity and how social norms with these cultures and location how masculinity is something they have to fight for and give off this persona on how they need to be.

But in some ways in the movie, we don’t see all aspects of the ‘macho’ masculinities. In the culture, we know the father has to go to work, be the head of the household, be strong and tough and how he has to keep everything in order but in La Mission, we see how Che is playing the role of mother and father. He works from home to stay around Jesse, he takes care of the neighbors and his son, he is strong and macho but when it comes to love, he is smaller and more relaxed. He has a stereotypical job but makes it a hobby with his friends. He uses the latin form of masculinity towards his friends and family but is more feminine like when it gets to the softer stuff.