The idea has been advanced that contemporary film and literature, including John Sayles' film Lone Star and Cormac McCarthy's novel, All the Pretty Horses, question racial constructions and offer new ways of representing the relationship between race and sex in American culture. Drawing upon the ideas advanced by a number of different theorists and the aforementioned film and novel, it will be argued herein that despite changes in the way that American culture approaches the relationship between race and sex, non-Anglo men and women continue to be characterized as the "exotic other." Indeed, Limon (1, 89) seems to make this suggestion himself in his description of the impact made on popular culture by the Tejano star, Selena.
As long ago as early television's hit situation comedy, I Love Lucy, a Cuban male was presented as an extremely sexually desirable husband for a prototypically American woman. Gustavo Perez Firmat (1, 219) points out that Lucille Ball in this comedy attempted on many occasions to "Americanize" her Cuban husband, but that "Lucy loves Ricky because he is not American. When she calls him her 'Cuban dreamboat,' as she sometimes does, she intends the phrase without any irony whatsoever." Lucy's love for Ricky is very much the centerpiece of this comedy in which the Cuban "other" loves an American woman precisely because she is American û suggesting that what attracts Lucy to Ricky and Ricky to Lucy is their cultural differences and not their similarities (Firmat, 1, 38).
Lucy's attempt to "Americanize" Ricky includes having an English language coach "teach" Ricky to speak "proper" English. As Firmat (1, 38) notes, however, it is the language coach whose accent changes û he adopts Ricky's Spanish/Cuban accent, suggesting that the inherent "power" of the male Latino voice is such that it can easily overcome the English language and its speakers. Indeed, Lucy herself has been "overcome" by Ricky's charis...