Charles M. Tatum - Chicano Popular Culture: Que Hable el Pueblo

The Study of Popular Culture

We are immersed in popular culture during most of our waking hours. It is on radio, television, our computers and smart phones when we access the Internet, and streets and highways in the form of advertisements and billboards. It is in newspapers, movie theaters, supermarkets, and shopping malls. It is at music concerts and sports events as well as religious festivals and celebrations. It is found throughout our homes in the kitchen, the playroom, and a teenagers bedroom as posters of rock groups, actors, and sports heroes. Madonna, Michael Jordan, Steve Harvey, Lady Gaga, Tom Brady, LeBron James, Amy Schumer, Salma Hayek, Stephen Curry, Antonio Banderas, Manuel Puig, Casey Affleck, Stephen Colbert, and Jennifer Lpez are all subjects of popular culture. In short, we experience popular culture with all of our senses almost every day of our lives.

Why is it important to study popular culture? One answer is that the popular culture that surrounds us can tell us a great deal about ourselvesour traditions, roots, history, economics, political life, prejudices, values, and attitudes. This is especially true when we examine popular culture analyticallythat is, when we pause long enough to study it in a historical context. Such study can tell us much not only about the larger society we live in but also about age groups, men and women, regions of the country, and ethnic groups. In this book, you will learn that Chicano popular culture is sometimes very different from and sometimes quite similar to the popular culture of other U.S. racial and ethnic minorities and that of mainstream Anglo society. By studying Chicano popular culture, you will have a wide-open window of opportunity to learn about the uniqueness of the fastest-growing U.S. minority population.

Labels and Terms

In the chapters that follow, you will encounter a variety of terms of identification: Mexican, Mexican national, American of Mexican descent,and its Spanish equivalent mexicano. The use of this term reflects the presence in the United States of large numbersalmost 35 percent of all Americans of Mexican descentof documented and undocumented immigrants from Mexico as well as the persistence of ongoing immigration from that country. Mexican culture continues to have a strong presence in the Southwest and, increasingly, elsewhere across the United States.

Others self-identify as Latino or Hispanic, which are very broad and inclusive terms that refer to Americans of Mexican, Central American, South American, and even Spanish descent. These last two terms will be used from time to time in the following pages to characterize, for example, a popular culture form, trend, or celebration that includes Americans of Mexican descent but is not restricted to this group. Although you will not find the following current and preferred written forms in this book, you should be familiar with them because you will run across them in some of the Suggested Readings: Chicanx, Latinx, and Chican@.

It is important to note that all of the above terms of self-identification are responsive to social context, generation, and regional idiosyncrasy. For example, in my classes at the University of Arizona in Tucson on Chicano literature, when I query students about their preferred term of self-identification, typical responses include Mexican American, Chicano/a, Mexicano/a, and Mexican, but rarely Latino/a and Hispanic. The self-identification terms might vary in a comparable class at Arizona State University in Tempe, a scant two-hour drive from Tucson, and in the largely Hispanic neighborhoods in Tucson and Phoenix depending on the generation and social status of the individuals. In short, the use of terms of self-identification are very flexible and fluid and can change gradually over time.