I thought that the film "A Day Without a Mexican” was an interesting and powerful way to present the issue of immigration and the racism and prejudice that exists in the United States. I think one of the most important points the film makes is how integral immigrants are to the functioning of the economy, and it seems that many Americans forget this as they are blinded their prejudice.
While this film portrays a completely fictionalized situation, I think it really speaks to US citizens who think that we should rid the country of immigrants and what a disaster it would be. Sometimes humor can be a great way to enforce a point. I think that this is the case in SNL skits where we are presented with a completely unrealistic situation that contains an important message at its core.
I also think that the “supernatural” disappearance of Latinos in the film makes an important statement about how immigrants are treated in the US. Not only are immigrants often invisible when it comes to legislation, but many times are treated inhumanely. We need to remember that immigrants are human too.
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I thought the film, conceptually, was great how it contextualized the issue of immigration and the necessity of immigrants. As stated, I also liked that the producers made the immigrants departures "supernatural," because often in American society, as citizens refer to immigrants with an array of different terms and epithets, the character is truly taken away from human beings.
I agree that the movie was made in a way that was entertaining but really got the core of an important issue. I also found it interesting to see the shorter original version of the movie and to compare the two versions. I think the short one although more "raw" was a great representation of the key points made in the longer version.
I think I'd take Garri's arguement one step further and say that the shorter version of the film was a better representation of what might happen if all "Mexicans" disappeared. I think the longer version tried to hard to have interesting sub-plots for Hollywood. I think the shorter version was wittier and I really liked the "interviews" with the Americans about how they were coping.
I also really enjoyed the movie. Maybe "enjoyed" isn't the perfect way to say it, but I felt that the fictional world the movie created was so believable it was frightening. When I was watching the movie it didn't feel phony or fictional, but I found myself thinking "well, obviously!" I am glad the point about how invisible immigrants are was brought up, because I think this concept of invisibility is crucial to understanding how power relations work. For example, yesterday was "call in gay to work day." People sometime choose to forget or ignore that people are gay. It's like the above blog says, it's a way of dehumanizing people. There could be "day without a woman" or many others. Regardless of what the issue is, I think treated people as people is crucial to stopping oppression and changing current structures of power.
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