zy, ignorant, and thieves. Quite often, American actors or actresses were made up to look like Mexicans, as was the case with Raquel Welch playing Maria Stoner in Bandolero or Natalie Wood playing Maria in West Side Story, (Reyes, 2000, 98). This was the case even in the 1960s but Melissa Johnson (1999) contends that negative and derogatory images of Mexicans were pervasive in the newsreels of the 1920s and 1930s that led to these later representations. As newsreels were often shown to U.S. audiences along with films, these newsreels had a powerful potential to influence perception of Hispanics. Along with the bandito, and comic Mexican, these news reels also feature representation of Hispanics as Latin Lovers. As Johnson (1999, p. 417) explains, ôThese early films years were the first step in the stereotyping of Latinas as blithesome creatures preoccupied with the entertainment of handsome men, along with cementing the comic and bandit male roles. By the 1930s, two new versions of male stereotypes had evolved, the caballero and the gangster. The Latin Lover tended to be lighter-skinned and aristocratic; gangsters had darker skin.ö
For Asians, media representation has also been stereotypical and negative in the U.S. for most of American history. Hemant Shah (2003, p. N1) maintains that most American films offered one of four stereotypical representations of Asians to American audiences; the ôYellow Peril,ö the ôDragon Lady,ö ôCharlie Chan,ö and ôLotus Blossom.ö Shah (2003) maintains thesd images served to reinforce the superior nature of the dominant American culture at the expense of the immigrant, foreign, or culture of the ôother.ö As Shah (2003, p. N1) asserts, ôThese images can be understood as controlling images in the sense that negative stereotypes provide justifications for social control and positive stereotypes provide normative models for Asian thought and behavior.ö In this sense, the dominant cu...