“Brown Is the New Green: George Lopez and the American Dream” Review

Made in 2007, the title is misleading, especially if you only read the first part. Green has taken on a much different context in the past few years and when I skimmed the title, I was initially confused. Even when reading the title, I don’t think of a Hispanics person as a brown person, I think of me as a brown person.

It seems a lot of the video is dedicated to clips of George Lopez’s stand-up and from his show. Overall, I feel that most of these clips didn’t add much to the content, if anything, to the video. Also, the random use of special effects was distracting. Especially when it was making a person appear as a drawing, which was used, it appears, for no reason.

Despite these details, the video brings up a lot of interesting points. Right away, they point out that Hispanic is a term that was created by the US government for race classification. I don’t think this is something that most people think of. For instance, you’d be surprised at the amount of people that can’t believe that I’m Asian. Also, most people aren’t aware that if you’re from the Middle East you’re White according to the government.

Like the video points out most Hispanics identify themselves from the country they’re from and not as a Hispanic. This is the issue that the entire video seems to revolve around. How can the media market towards a “Hispanic” culture if there isn’t a really defined Hispanic culture as most people think, as well as exploring the new, emerging Hispanic culture that teenagers are creating.

To reach this, new developing culture, social media can be easily incorporated. Teenagers are a large number of social media users, and they use it daily. By reaching out through social media, people can spread the word about things that interest them, from immigration reform to connecting with their cousin in Columbia.

The same is true for any idea. With social media being as prevalent in today’s culture someone can find out about any topic that interest them, or, if they are that rare person that doesn’t use social media, the changes are someone they know will have a similar interest and inform them about it.