Feminine Reality

M/LAT
Feminine Reality.


  People like to see films with a good narrative that produces the visceral desire in the viewer to want to know what happens next   and the film “And the Earth did not Swallow Him” by Severo Perez   is narrative that has this characteristic. The film has a strong oral heritage and a way of ordering events and thoughts in a coherent sequence that makes it interesting to listen to. The sequence is not strictly chronological because it includes digressions and flashbacks and foreshadowings, just as a story recounted around a campfire. But because narrative is powered by events, its goal is not essentially analytical or critical. It contains substantial realities of actual life. The film is a broad interpretation of the struggles of migrant workers, Mexican Americans, and other ethnic groups that need to find themselves in a minority culture. The film projects a stereotyped image of Mexican American women showing a distorted image of feminine reality.
  One way the film diminishes the rich personality of Mexican American women is by reducing them to an absurd characterization of good but ignorant women. Even though goodness is a desirable quality in a woman, no all Mexican American women have this quality and not all Mexican American women are ignorant and naive. As asserted by Patricia de la Fuente:
  These wives belong, as do most of the mothers, to the category of “good” women. A typical example of this characterization of the long-suffering female is the mother/wife whose main concern is the well-being of her husband, an attitude which indirectly defines the centrality of the male figure in her life and her own sense of guilt at her failure to fulfill her “obligations”. (85)




This is very true because in the film, Severo Perez, present the image of selfless women who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the children and husband. For example, in
the movie, a woman feels compassion for her husband who has been...