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I Don't Have to Show You No Stinking Badges

erra Madre playing creates a multiple point of reference. Buddy villa sits in front of the television set, drifting off to sleep as he watches the movie.

David Savran describes the play as taking on "the political and existential implications of acting, both in theatre and society" (Savran 17). The play depicts a Chicano family that has been fully assimilated into the suburban world of southern California. The Villas are middle-class and aspire after the same sorts of consumer goods as others in this society. Of course, this middle-class existence is seen from the first as if it were not quite real, and this is emphasized by the fact that the living room is actually depicted as a television set, with the trappings of a television studio surrounding it. Valdez makes this clear in the directions at the front of the play, but even in those directions there is a duality which suggests how the audience will view the play and how members of the audience are to understand that meaning. First, Valdez describes the world of the Villas as if that world were entirely real and entirely reflective of the southern California middle-class world:

The scene is a comfortable, middle-class, suburban tract home in Southern California. . . The entire scene has a comfortable, lived-in quality, particularly the den which is certainly the most lived-in room in the house (Valdez 156).

Such a scene places the family in a well-to-do context while at the same time removing them from the kinds of settings usually associated with Chicanos in media depictions, the poorer, lower-class neighborhoods of gangs and poverty. Immediately, the audience may question how this family achieved this level of comfort, a level associated with Anglo society to a much greater degree.

Second, though, Valdez undercuts all the assumptions one might make about this scene with his next direction:

The entire set sits within the confines of a TV studio. The...

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I Don't Have to Show You No Stinking Badges. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 06:27, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1707970.html