https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mWZG3zHh60
Even though the concept of identity is a complex one, there are many things that go into the making that can make it more understandable, more real. Through the exploring of my own Mexican-American heritage, I was able to more identify the way I feel, the way I mesh with both cultures and how this helps me be me. There are parts of me that I feel are drawn from one culture or the either, but this doesn’t mean I belong solely to one, but rather, how both cultures help form who I am, how both cultures can shape without making disparate.
How we identify or what we identify as can be a big influence to how we act. An identity is how we are defined or what is supposed to make up our overlying foundation. Sometimes, these ideas can be clashing or enclosing on a person. For me, like my edited clips from the movie directed by Gregory Nava Selena (1997), I have seen certain kinds of representations of my race in pop culture. I have typically seen these representations be drawn in a stereotypical way, but I felt that this movie did a good job explaining part of the dilemma for Mexican-Americans. Identifying as a “Mexican” with a hyphen before my birthplace has made it difficult at times to mesh with both cultures. One likes to see me painted in a certain way, and with the other I don’t feel fully acquainted.
I chose the first clip in particular, because it almost explicitly states what I believe about how Mexican-Americans have been portrayed, or expected to be portrayed in media and in real life. I decided to, like how stated in the piece “How Text Becomes Real”, “give meaning to” the piece I am changing (Jenkins). If you pay close attention, you can hear that I added the instrumental track from the song by Zayn Malik and Taylor Swift “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever.” I decided to layer this song onto the abovementioned clip because I thought the juxtaposition fairly showed how conflicting it is to be labeled as one thing, but wanting to be more than just that binary, that profile. While many see me first as one thing, I also fit into another thing and enjoy other things. So many times while living here in Utah, people have expected me to behave a certain way, know certain things, or fit a certain mold because of my hyphenated “race.” It has been at times very annoying because I have felt the need to break out of that stereotype because of how I actually live. I mean, being born in Provo and raised in Payson, Utah--a very white, middle-class environment with not much cultural diversity to draw from, people have expected me to know certain things perfectly from Mexican culture or history. While, yes, I obviously have more resources to learn from and my parents to ask, my situation is still that of my peers; I am still a young girl who has lived in Utah her whole life. That is why I also cut out part of the frame from the second clip and added images of different aspects of both American Mexican cultures that I actually live such as an interest in different sports, certain aesthetics, and entertainment. I incorporated these images in a smooth, subtle way to imply the way that I can can be different, while not specifically glaringly so. I can be interested in different things typically associated with one culture or the other, but still belong to both in some way.
Even though the concept of identity is a complex one, there are many things that go into the making that can make it more understandable, more real. Through the exploring of my own Mexican-American heritage, I was able to more identify the way I feel, the way I mesh with both cultures and how this helps me be me. There are parts of me that I feel are drawn from one culture or the either, but this doesn’t mean I belong solely to one, but rather, how both cultures help form who I am, how both cultures can shape without making disparate.
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