Gentefied: A truthful telling of being a Latinx in the US
Finally, shows are coming out that actually place Latinx characters in more realistic struggles of what it’s like to live in the US. One Day at a Time covered a good amount of ground on the topic, but it definitely had more of a traditional sitcom feel to it, with static sets and a laugh track. Gentified is a more modern telling of the Latinx story, and in this post I will cover the meaning behind the plot.
What I watched:
Gentefied follows cousins Ana, Erik, and Chris who are in their mid-20’s living in the traditionally Latinx neighborhood of Boyle Heights. Ana struggles to be recognized as an artist, Erik faces being a soon to be dad with his off-again-on-again girlfriend Lidia, and Erik aspires to become a famous chef. Their grandfather, Casimiro, owns a taco shop that is under pressure from the rising rents caused by gentrification. The three cousins face their own challenges to achieve their goals, but come together to help their grandfather make changes to the taco shop and keep it relevant in today’s ever changing world. By the end of the season, they all have to make a choice about what they value most: their goals, or their culture.
What I saw:
To really get a picture of what is going on you have to look at each cousin’s individual story, as each story covers a different part of the wide spectrum that is Latin American culture.
Let’s start with Ana. In the beginning we see she is very much a humble artist that makes her art for the sake of art itself. When Ana’s disapproving mother (more on her later) throws away her art supplies, she makes a post asking her followers to bring her some in exchange for any painting they would like for her to do because as she herself put it “ my immigrant roots won’t let me take anything for free.” But after she gets noticed by a white patron named Tim, she finds herself doing anything to keep the money flowing. Even if that meant ignoring the values and wishes of an elderly Latina who owns a convenience store by painting a giant mural of two luchadores kissing.
This causes the store to lose business, but her patron doesn’t seem to care since he owns the building. Ana feels guilty since she never even considered what the shop owner wanted. However, this doesn’t let her stop her from continuing to follow Tim’s money to other projects and eventually, her own gallery showing. Ana’s girlfriend Yessika realized what was happening to Ana before Ana did, and broke up with her. Throughout her journey Ana lost her roots of why she made art in the first place: to tell her story and the story of the community she cares about.
Erik story covers a very common one in Latinx culture; starting a family. The difference is that this story is more modern because his baby momma is college educated and still has goals she wants to accomplish. Lidia is distant with Erik at first because he doesn’t have any clear goal for himself, he only thinks of his grandfather and the needs of the shop. This highlights one of the strongest values in Latinx culture of putting family first. Erik fights with his cousin Chris a lot because Chris tries to balance between his goals and what the family needs, while Erik does not hesitate to put his grandfather or the family shop first.
However, Erik slowly begins to learn that his baby and Lidia are the family he should care about the most. I love how the show creators use Erik’s love of books to read up on parenting and other family dynamics rather than making him act all machista. So when Lidia is given a good job opportunity at Stanford University (aka, hella far from LA), he has matured enough to respect her decision to leave. And once his baby is born, he realizes he doesn’t want to be apart from his family and decides to go with her.
And then there is the “coconut,” Chris. His story is all about the Latin American expression “ni de aquí ni de alla” (neither from here nor there). He works as a cook for a very famous (white) chef, alongside other Latinos. Since he isn’t fluent in Spanish and doesn’t get some references to Latin American musicians, the other cooks question whether he is actually Latino or is he just American. It doesn’t help that he went to culinary business school, which left him with a Eurocentric palate. The other cooks give him a hilarious series of trials to figure out if he is Latino, which include juggling a soccer ball, identifying different Mexican candies while tasting them blindfolded, and his ability to do the famous mariachi grito. Unfortunately at the end of the test his coworkers find that he is not, in fact, Latino.
But the ruling from the other cooks doesn’t stop their boss from making racist remarks towards Chris and his fellow cooks. No matter how “white” Chris may be in the eyes of his coworkers, the rest of the world has no problem treating him like a Mexican. Chris is then given a chance to earn more Mexican cred when he shuts down their boss’ racist remarks with not just words, but in the way every Latinx person has ever thought of when they face an ignorant white man; with his fists. This comes at the cost of his opportunity to get a recommendation from his chef to go to a famous culinary apprenticeship in France. This also gives Chris a chance to redeem himself further by helping his grandfather, Casimiro aka Pop, make changes to recipe and decor to help the shop get new customers. This also brings him and Erik closer together, since Erik is trying to keep the shop going as part of the family tradition.
Latinx tradition and the changes the culture is going through is manifested through Pop. He has kept the same menu, same prices, with the same staffing and has faced challenges of the rising rents and drop in customers as the neighborhood gets gentrified. These newcomers have a different palate for food and music, and the traditions no longer seem to have a place in this globalized culture of modern day society. Chris’ a new recipe, while good, does not land well with the regular customers. However, Pop adds back in some Latinx flavor to it and finds a way to blend the best of both worlds. He is also inspired to give it a try by his old friend and new love interest, who has embraced the changing times and has a thriving brujería.
One weak point of the show comes with the story from Ana’s girlfriend, Yessika’s protesting of Pop’s updated taco shop. Yessika works at a non-profit and is an advocate against all the gentrification happening in her neighborhood of Boyle Heights. She sees the changes Chris and Erik are doing to the shop as another symptom of gentrification, with her argument being that the shop shouldn’t try to bring in customers outside of the neighborhood. the biggest flaw I see in her argument is that she is treating the taco shop as if it is a new business owned by a (white) outsider trying to cater to other outsiders. I disagree, in that Pop had been there for years, and made a big effort to have traditional flavoring, just with a new twist. I feel like the creators were just trying to have a reason to bring a rift between Ana and Yessika.
Gentefied as a show does a really good job with world building, which is surprising given that the show is realistic fiction so you think it wouldn’t be necessary. They accomplish this world building by having two side characters, Javier the mariachi, and Ana’s mom Beatriz, get an episode each to go further into their story. Javier is initially portrayed as a regular who is just trying to get free tacos. Then they go into his story that playing traditional mariachi songs no longer gives him enough to make a living, and that his wife and daughter went to stay with with her family because they could not afford an apartment with enough room for all of them. This is why he is trying to save money any chance he can. Eventually, he ends up moving away to Bakersfield for a job opportunity and more affordable housing.
As for Beatriz, she is introduced as someone who is hard on Ana and discourages her daughter from pursuing her dreams. Then we see her story of working as a maquiladora where the workers are not allowed to go for bathroom breaks, water, and take work home with them without getting paid. All the stress she carried from work bled into home, and only realizes just how much it has effected her when Ana reminds her that she immigrated to the US to give her children a better life and to pursue their own dreams. She is able to stand up to her boss by using the classic tactic of making some changes seem like it was his idea.
Those two stories help those outside of Latin American culture to have better idea of the kind of world Latinx people are living in.
In conclusion:
After being envious of the Black and Asian communities for their modern comedies of Black-ish and Fresh Off the Boat respectively, Latinx people finally have a modern comedy of our own. The show features an all Latinx cast, with varying skin tones and socio-economic status and the stories behind them. I highly recommend this show, not only for other Latinx people to feel validated, but so those who are curious or an ally of Latinx struggles would get a really eye opening experience on just how diverse our culture really is.