"Chola"

My friend T. told me to start watching "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" mostly because it has some kick-ass women in it, but especially Summer Glau, who was in the Firefly series and Serenity the movie. I just finished Season 1, and I'm not that impressed. The plot takes place after the second Terminator movie and revolves around Sarah Conner and her son, John, trying to stop Skynet from launching and destroying the world. Summer Glau plays Cameron, a Terminator sent from the future to protect John. The show is pretty silly, with some questionable acting, but there is some great ass-kicking and the cast is really good looking, so I can see how one might get hooked. Also, I only saw one season, so you know.



The reason I am writing this post, however, is to rant about how annoyed I am at the way the show portrays Hispanic people. There are two types of Hispanics in this show: men and women. The men are seen as double-crossing snakes who are only interested in money. Then there is the ONLY female Hispanic in the entire show, played by Sabrina Perez. She not only saves the Connors in the last episode, but acts as viewer to all of the strangeness that occurs throughout the season, especially with relation to her co-workers (the Hispanic males).

Not only does she never say ONE word, but she is listed as "Chola" in the imdb credits. "Chola," according to the urban dictionary, is a "hardcore latina gangbangers. They usually have thin, arched, angry looking tattooed-on or penciled-on eyebrows, brown or dark red lip liner, 'Monroe', eyebrow and nose piercings, tats, Converse or Nikes, flannel shirts, lots of gold jewlrey (with their name and crosses), crunchy gelled or moussed hair either down or gelled in a high perfect ponytail either straight back or gelled in a design, and they go out with cholos." Her character does wear her hair a particular way, and wears thick lip liner. There is even an "amusing" scene where she does Cameron's make up to mimic her own. But the problem is pretty obvious: the one Latina featured in this show has no voice, and is a caricature. I'm very disappointed with the show. But mad props to Sabrina Perez for getting her face out there!