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Deconstructing the Stereotypes in Los Vendidos Through Homi Bhabha's Concept of Mimicry

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2007, 20(1), pp.123-143
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama

Yonghee Lee 1

1강원대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Lee, YongheeLos Vendidos ("The Sellouts") explores Chicanos' identity and culture through parodying and mimicking prevalent stereotypical images of Mexicans in the United States. Despite the short length of the play, El Teatro Campesino(ETC) members and Luis Valdez comically and effectively incorporate major four misrepresentations of Mexicans in order to subvert prejudices and injustices that dominant discourse has created. I have engaged Homi Bhabha's concept of mimicry, which is "almost the same, but not quite," to demonstrate how cleverly ETC and Valdez mimic dominant discourse. By performing the exact roles of their stereotypes that dominant discourse has defined and delimited about their ethnicity, Chicano characters in Los Vendidos seem to accept their destinies as the oppressed. However, at the end of the play, these characters threaten dominant society and power through the chasm of the differences between actualities and stereotypes they have been made to embody. Furthermore, the language fluency of dominant society is addressed by problematizing the concept of what commonly constitutes "appropriateness."

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.