Final Paper- Criminality, Race, and Traffic

In my final paper I will discuss American media representations of criminal identity, and then focus on the film "Traffic" (2000) as an example of a film that attempts to create an equitable portrait of criminal and non-criminal characters across races, all the while portraying a very racialized and nationalized problem (drug trafficking from Mexico to the US). "Traffic", through its casting and the writing of its American characters as certain races very consciously tries to avoid the polarized racial criminalization that the mainstream US media has been criticized for (in that it gives us criminals and protagonists of each race represented). However, it is not a "colorblind" film- rather, it tries to accurately portray, taking race into account, the realities of this drug trade. By creating characters that openly talk about race (esp., having a white character openly address the structuralized racism that disproportionately impacts black Americans as drug consumers over white Americans), it engages a self-awareness that enables this balance.

While Traffic will be a piece I come back to repeatedly throughout the paper to focus it and give examples, I will be engaging more broadly with theories and problems of the black male criminal media stereotype, media-portrayed Latino-American identity as fluid regardless of national origin, and the racialization of "American values" (all themes of the film).

I may also explore the element of casting, especially in considering the actors playing Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, and the role of Catherine Zeta-Jones, as possibly the only racially ambiguous main character.

My primary sources include:

The film Traffic (2000)

Eberhardt, J. L. (2010). Enduring racial associations: African Americans, crime, and animal imagery. In H.R. Markus & P.M.L Moya (Eds.), Doing race: Essays for the 21^st century (pp. 439-457). New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 

Clip from the film "Crash" (2004)

My secondary sources include:

·       Calderon, J. (1992). "Hispanic" and "latino": The viability of categories for panethnic unity. Latin American Perspecticves, 19 (4), 37-44.

·     Welch, Kelly. "Black Criminal Stereotypes and Racial Profiling". Villanova University, Pennsylvania. 2007. 

Szalavitz, Maia. "Study: Whites More Likely to Abuse Drugs than Blacks". Time. Nov 7 2011. 

S

S