JE#1A

I remember seeing Speedy Gonzales as a kid but not watching any of the cartoons he was in. Now, before I clicked any of the links, I just had the thought that any cartoon in the media depicting a mouse as Mexican is most likely going to be racist and promote negative stereotypes and caricatures of Mexican culture. The first aspect of the episode that I noticed was a theme of colonization with Daffy Duck paying dirt cheap fees to stay in a house that Speedy and his family had lived in for generations. Then by the end of the episode we see that Speedy always has the upper hand and we are rooting for him to continually beat Daffy Duck. The audience is supposed to be in favor of Speedy so this is a positive representation of him which can be said to be a positive representation of Mexican culture. But the other articles state that while Speedy never drank or smoked and is lightning fast, he has family named Slowpoke Rodriguez and the other mice in his life are all drunks and represented as lazy. It's as if the cartoon aimed to show Speedy as being the good Mexican, as the Mexican that made it because all the other Mexicans are always by default going to be lazy poor drunks. One article showed a disclaimer that the network showed before airing Speedy saying that the cartoon is a product of its time and the stereotypes shown were wrong then and now but they're not going to change anything because that would be erasing the wrongs and pretending they never happened. Instead of taking Speedy off the air they continue to show it which still perpetuates stereotypes of Mexican culture even if it begins with a disclaimer. Having Speedy as being one of the very few representations of Mexican culture in popular media offers only a one sided story of a diverse culture full of history and diverse people.