A Retrospective

15 weeks of writing 140. What have I learned? I have written five formal essays, one midterm, and one in-class essay. Seven essays. I have learned a lot from these. I actually found myself looking forward to the next essays so that I could improve.

I understand now that the topic of the essay is most important for me. If I am passionate about what I am arguing, then I have an easier time writing the paper and feel motivated to make it very good. However, when I don't really care about what I have chosen to write about, it is a very sluggish process.

When it comes to ethics and academic inquiry, I have the same opinion. It is paramount. You have to question, and you have to learn. That's our duty as citizens-- to be informed. Research is key, and through the 15 weeks of this course I have learned to utilize online sources through the USC library, as well as to navigate the book stacks of the library itself.

The blogs. What have they taught me? Firstly, I did not want to do them in the beginning of the year because I was afraid I would forget to post half the time (ironic, because this post is a day late). But, when I wrote the blog post before I began an essay, I found that I was in a clearer mindset to write, because I had dumped a lot of my ideas/ written them out and seen how they stood alone.

Writing 140 gave me a very strong backbone for writing analytical essays. This will be extremely useful for me. It already helped for my critical studies course, which requires the same caliber of essay-work. I have another critical studies course to take next year, and I'm positive that writing the essays will be much easier now that I have gone through the prices almost ten times in one semester.

I enjoyed the class. Even though it was relatively early in the morning, it was a class of beginnings and endings. Every new assignment was a fresh start, in my mind. I felt it: a new chance, a chance to apply what I learned from my previous mistakes and really, really improve. I really liked the use of visuals, especially the screenings of "To Kill a Mockingbird", and "Devil in a Blue Dress", as well as the SNL shorts.

Thank you, Professor!

Speaker Series

This year, and this semester, the writing 140 class was lucky enough to be visited by Andrew McGuire,    a man who has dedicated his life to making the world a little safer-- and a little better.
I very much enjoyed his lecture, he focused on his campaign for fire-safe cigarettes, which was born from a turn injury he himself sustained at a young age when his pajamas caught fire from a stove. First he advocated and succeeded with fire-safe pajamas, and then he turned his attention to the burn victims of cigarettes.

The following is an overview of the lecture:

A case study in advocacy with Andrew McGuire:
- Action against burn injuries (he was burned in 1952, his pajamas caught fire)
- He began the campaign for anti-flammable pajamas, which succeeded
- He wondered if cigarette-caused fires could be prevented
- There were past prevention methods, in 1931, but none were used
- “Fire-safe cigarette”: 2 bands of thicker paper so oxygen is contained, the bands cause it to “self-extinguish”
- 1976 he began to work on the cigarette issue
 - 1979: tobacco industries → the idea was to force them to make fire-proof cigarettes - McGuire did research, went to Center for Investigative Reporting in 1975 and presented the issue, they did research into it
- 1979: letters sent to 6 major cigarette companies asking if they would BY CHOICE make safer cigarettes - There was no reply….
- Fire-safe cigarettes were needed because there were many deaths due to cigarette-caused fires in homes (setting couch on fire when someone fell asleep smoking)
- 1982: Henry Waxman held the 1st hearing on the bill
- The tobacco industry began to fight the campaign for fireproof cigarettes. They began “AstroTurf campaign” → fake studies and evidence - The tobacco industry also gave money and grants to firemen and fire service organizations so that they could have them on their side
- 1979 to the present: Lawsuits were filed that the tobacco companies were responsible for cigarette-caused fires and deaths because they HAD the option to make them fire-safe and were choosing not to
- 2003: 1st time tobacco company settled → gave money for a case, in which a girl was burned by cigarette - Fire-safe legislation was passed in all 50 states (cigarettes HAD to be fire-safe or COULD NOT be sold)
- This was passed after 18 years of fighting
- 1984: 1st compromise by the tobacco industry, said they would allow a bill (the Cigarette safety act) to go through congress IF tests were done to determine if fire-safe cigarettes are technically and economically feasible. This took four years, and the answer was YES
- How to determine if the cigarette is fire-safe: a test was developed (1991-1993)
- Now it’s the law to have fire-safe cigarettes in the USA, all countries in Europe (he’s currently working on China) - Result: 70% reduction of cigarette-caused fires (LOWEST NUMBER EVER) - FSC: fire safety compliant, this is on the side of every cigarette box
- Cigarette companies had made payoffs to families to not go public with burn accusations (they know that the families will always win when a child’s involved)
- McGuire’s tools for advocacy:
o Survivor voices (crucial)
o Use of media
o Network of colleagues (people who trust what you are saying)
o National, state, and local coalitions
o Experts (people who deal with the issue and its effects)
o Work honestly and outwork and outthink the opposition
o Change strategy when necessary o Look for mentors who have “been there”
o If the advocacy cause is right, you will eventually prevail
o No cause is too small or too big
o Passion drives everything
o Defeats are temporary

The last part of the lecture was definitely the most inspiring for me...

I really appreciated, and I told his this in person after the lecture, seeing a man who was driven by moral action and ran himself in a purely ethical fashion. It made me feel hopeful, and it made me want to help his cause, or advocate for something myself.

He's right. No cause is to big or too small. Passion drives everything. And defeats are temporary. And... if your cause if right, then you will eventually prevail...

Ethics of Rhetorical Situation

What role, if any, does an audience play in the ethics of a rhetorical situation?

I'm not sure how much an audience plays a role in the ethics of such situations. It is popular belief that the majority of people don't know anything until they hear it from the news, which means in that case, that the audience's role is to listen to the newscaster. Thus, it is their role, also, to decide which side they are on. Thus, the newscasters or the newspaper writers have a job: convince the audience.

As far as the ethics... newscaster and news journalists have a duty to tell people the truth, because they know they are the main source for information the population has. However, in order to get ahead of each other, they will tend to fudge numbers or use fallacies, such as ad hominem. Such tendencies are not ethical, people, by definition, a fallacy is unethical, because it is a deception, or deviation from the matter at hand.

Bad Faith Argumentation?

Illegal immigration is a very difficult subject to tackle.
I say difficult, because, as a college freshman from Los Angeles I have found that
1. The issue is always debated
2. There's no easy explanation (and I've asked around a lot to try and find one to no avail)
3. It's always current (which goes back to #1)

I mean to say that illegal immigration is not black and white. There are many factors to consider, such as...

1. Children born in the USA from illegal immigrated parents
2. Healthcare for illegal immigrants
3. Jail? Judicial system?
4. The danger of crossing the border
5. The rise in unaccompanied children making the journey to the USA to reunite with their parents

On April 19, "The New York Times" published an article (here) called "A 12-Year-Old's Trek of Despair Ends in a Noose at the Border".

The article discussed Noemi Álvarez Quillay, a young girl from Ecuador who was trying to get to her parents in the Bronx.

The article really shows the horrors and dangers of border-crossing, especially for young children.

I wonder how many people would be okay with open borders, although that will not happen. In Los Angeles, I wonder how life would be if all the immigrants went away for a day? Would "Americans" really be okay with that?

I found an article on "The Foundry" (link) that discusses the DREAM act in relation to military service.

The article reads:

"Here’s a disturbing new idea from some members of Congress: Trade instant citizenship to illegal immigrants if they’ll agree to serve in the U.S. military. Serving in the military is a high calling and a privilege—certainly not something to be treated as a bargaining chip in immigration politics. Yet these congressmen are trying to sneak this provision into the larger National Defense Authorization Act, which lays out the budget for the Department of Defense. What’s more, the immigrants in question would be those who are brought to the U.S. as children—often called DREAMers (after the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act)."

Basically, the writer, Amy Payne, is against this act, because she thinks it would encourage illegal immigration because it would give minors a way to stay in the country without much hassle.

On another note, quickly, let's talk about the Dream Act.
On the official website for the act (here), it has a list of qualifications undocumented immigrants must have in other to be eligible for help:


Must have entered the United States before the age of 16 (i.e. 15 and younger)
Must have been present in the United States for at least five (5) consecutive years prior to enactment of the bill
Must have graduated from a United States high school, or have obtained a GED, or have been accepted into an institution of higher education (i.e. college/university)
Must be between the ages of 12 and 35 at the time of application
Must have good moral character

Here's the thing... just like how "Stop and Frisk" allows the police to stop and search people of "suspicious nature", and the question is, define suspicious nature.....

How is "good moral character" defined, and what stereotypes does the Act buy into...

Perhaps I can connect the film "A Better Life" into this whole scenario.

Also, it would be important to connect the relational dimension to this argument, as heavily discussed by Dr. Keeling in lecture.

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

This past weekend was the LA Times Festival of Books, hosted at USC! I attended the festival on both Saturday and Sunday.

SATURDAY

I spent Saturday looking around at all the booths. I picked up some things at the Hi De Ho Comics book stand, and also at a secondhand books booth. At this booth I found very interesting literature, including a book which directly references a topic discussed in the General Education class: Exploring Ethnicity through Film:

This book's character: Fu-Manchu, was described by Professor Kara Keeling as a character who embodies the worse stereotypes of Asian people in the first half of the 20th century. He was characterized as the "unassimiable other". The stereotype was that Asians are always foreign to the USA, and that this "foreign-ness" is an intrinsic part of them.

The counterpoint is that the history of Asian immigration shows that Asians have been in the USA for a very long time.

After meandering through these books, I went and watched a panel of three writers, Francesca Lia Block, John Boyne, Jonathan Auxier, and Ransom Riggs. Here is a clip of Riggs reading from his new book:

SUNDAY

On Sunday I attended two speaker series. The first was a conversation between Ransom Riggs and Daniel Handler, the author of "A Series of Unfortunate Events" under the pen name "Lemony Snicket". I found the whole conversation very amusing, and it was all in all a good time. The place (Bovard) was packed.  I was sitting in about the middle, so this was the best picture I could get (Handler on the left). 

The second speaker series was of T.C. Boyle, author of "The Tortilla Curtain", a book I had read and very much enjoyed in 11th grade. He read aloud two of his short stories and also offered some insight into his creative process. I'll paraphrase something he said. "People say write what you know. I say, write what you don't know, and learn something."

Then, I ended my tour of the festival at a book stand that was selling everything for very cheap. When I arrived, the manager was yelling repeatedly, "Everything must go! Everything half off the price on the orange sticker!" 

Quite unbeatable deals...

I didn't buy these books, but I thought they were funny:

These are the books I ended up buying:

All in all, a successful weekend!

Conventions of Film Noir

Film Noir captures the grittiness behind the façade of assumed utopic society. The films of Noir, which were borne from the novels by authors such as Raymond Chandler, are dark impressions in which man is deemed immoral from the get-go. Our main character has deep problems, usually a unagreeable past, yet he pursues the “bad guy”, or exposes the “crime ring”. Does he do it for the money? Maybe he does it to impress a girl. In very few cases, out main character, who faces adversity, solves a crime out of pure goodness of the heart, or because he feels it is his duty. The shadow-lined streets, the neon-blinking signs of bars and motels, and the slick pavements are the world in which Noir grows. And it is in this sinister and pessimistic world that we can learn, as well. Race and class are often present in Noir, for there are the slums, where our main character lives, and then there are the mansions and Hollywood and Beverly Hills, home to the “client”, and more often than not, as in the case of Chinatown, home to the “villain”. “Villain”, in this case, rests within quotes due to the moral ambivalence of Film Noir. There is no hero, because our main character has flaws. He drinks. He talks dirty. He abuses women. He kills. But, at the same time, we admire him, we look up to him and we want him to succeed. The same goes with the “villain”. Noir relies heavily on contrasts between black and white visually, but it shies away from it literarily. Nothing is handed to the viewer. Who we think is the bad guy, in many cases, shares the viewpoint of many politicians and higher-ups in society. These men are shown as immoral, but how much more immoral than our main character?

"The mechanics of filmmaking in TOUCH OF EVIL, the play of shot and countershot, of dialogue and ambient sound, seem glutted by some strange weariness, the film’s motives and events and meanings clouded by ambiguity. Perhaps noir could simply go no further than the appallingly corrupt vision of society TOUCH OF EVIL provides" (link)

Touch of Evil, Orson Welles' last large production, is also considered the last film that marked the era of Film Noir. As the quote above explains, Touch of Evil portrays such a vile, immoral reality of the world that no film afterwards could shave competed, or exemplified the tropes of Noir as well as it did.





Let us revisit the tropes of Film Noir....

(the following is from here)
Film Noir Characteristics:
(do remember though that it is not necessary for a film to have all of the characteristics to be considered film noir).
Urban environment
Rain-soaked streets
Seedy taverns, diners, and run-down buildings
Claustrophobic interiors
Flickering street lamps
Neon signs
Scenes appear dark, as if lit for night, with many dark shadows
Oblique and vertical lines, especially in regards to lighting
Shadows
Films done in black and white
Narration, especially flash-back narration
Criminal underworld
Hopelessness
Corruption
The "heroes" tend to be morally ambiguous, alienated from society, and have a fatalistic outlook. Characters torn by psychological conflict
The femme fatale

Alright, so which do Touch of Evil embrace?
The setting is urban in most of the film, for it takes place in a border town (Mexico-USA).
Many building appear rundown, or at least they do not appear to be brand new or in the greatest condition. In fact, the whole border town, and the motel in which the lead actress stays, appear seedy.
The filming style is claustrophobic in that there are very tight shots-- Orson Welles plays Hank, the corrupt detective. To play the role, Welles put padding underneath his clothes to appear fat, and the camera, in its tight angles, helped to show this "fat".
The scenes appear dark. The subject matter of the film is dark, and the characters appear in shadows. You never know what is hiding in the dark, or what will come out of it.
The film is done in black and white, and this definitely added to the atmosphere.
There is a criminal underground. In fact, there are two rings. The first is the Mexican grime ring, and the second is by Hank himself, whose corruption runs team and has caused much death.
Yes, corruption is a big theme of the movie when it comes to Hank, the white detective who is arrogant and racist, the man who is the most immoral of all.
In this movie, the "hero", Charlton Heston (Mike Vargas is the character) does not appear morally ambivalent. He is alienated from white society, but he does not carry a pessimistic viewpoint. Instead, he seems to want to see the best in people, and he also carries a strong sense of honor and sense of duty to reveal the truth.

The issues from AMST 274 that make an appearance into the film is the relational dimension in the way that the police as an institution, by way of Hank, automatically assume certain things about Mexican people, negative, racist things. Just like in A Better Life, when the police ask the boy to take his shirt off so he can photograph his gang tattoos, only to see that the boy has none, in Touch of Evil Hank persists in making racist comments and looking down on Vargas, assuming that he has less brainpower and also assuming that he has intrinsic favoritism towards Mexicans when it comes to laying down the law.

L.A. Confidential... and what I learned from Peter Travers

The following is about Peter Travers' review of L.A. Confidential  in "Rolling Stone"
The full review can be found here...

Travers' review is not formal in its language, but instead (being that it was published in "Rolling Stone") lashes out and uses profanity to emphasis his point.

It's interesting that, today, the actors from the film are recognizable and famous (esp. Russell Crow), but at the time they were relatively unknown. As Travers writes,

"For the two Los Angeles police officers at the core of the plot, Hanson has cast Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce, who happen to be native Australians and relative unknowns. The femme fatale is Kim Basinger, who hasn't made a movie in three years or been in hailing distance of a hit since the first Batman"

Overall, Travers praises the film, noting that Chinatown and the other initial markers for L.A. Noir were followed by several wanna-bees, but most of the time, the films were bad and heavily criticized. However, Travers believes that L.A. Confidential should be remembered as an important film for L.A. Noir. He notes the fantastic contrast between the characters, and the build up that results, paving the way for a twisty-turvy film in which, as Travers writes, "Moral rot infects the characters."




Travers is able to touch on several markers of the L.A. Noir genre in a remarkably short article (roughly a page). For instance, he writes about the moral ambiguity of characters in L.A. Noir, and how an audience should not have gone into the movie expecting to see/root for a hero. It's not about that. It's a bout the grittiness of human nature. For instance, one of the cops, played by Guy Pearce (Ed), wants to get ahead, and will do so at any cost. Thus, his actions for the most part are motivated not by strong morals/ethical concern, but by the drive to be better than everyone else. Although this is not an admirable trait, it is realistic.

Travers also mentions Kim Basinger's role as the femme fatale. I looked up what this means, and wikipedia gave me the following:

"A femme fatale is a stock character of a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. She is an archetype of literature and art"

The femme fatale is also a trait of L.A. Noir. Basinger adopts this role int he film, as Travers remarks, for, just like Daphne in Devil in a Blue Dress, she uses her "feminine wiles" to get what she wants, and appears helpless and innocent, while more often than not being part of a dangerous plot.

There is also, as Travers writes, "Hollywood fixation". This seems to be a common trend in L.A. Noir: Hollywood. Los Angeles is in the title of the film, and is commonly used as the setting for Noir (i.e. Chinatown and Devil in a Blue Dress).

Travers also writes about the successful lighting executed in L.A. Confidential. He writes,

"Though the film is rich in atmosphere — cinematographer Dante Spinotti lights Ruth Myers' costumes and Jeannine Oppewall's production design to optimum effect — the emphasis is on character and on quality acting"

Dark lighting, or shadowy places, are a trope of Noir, and obviously L.A. Confidential was no exception to the rule. Lighting plays a very important role.

As a final note, here is a scene from the film that shows: femme fatale, shadowy lighting and... Russell Crowe in the film that made him famous...

Django: violence and racial issues

I found that where Django Unchained was concerned, there was, and still isn't, a lack of racial responses. I found in my research a mixture of reviews. Some defended Tarantino, and other found that he went to far.
The most enlightening article, in my opinion, was this, in which the writer for the New Yorker breaks down all the problems he had with the film. Namely, they were issues of race.

For instance, he writes:

“Yes, of course, there were killers in the Old West and cruel slave masters in the South—central characters in the movie—but Tarantino juices everything into gaudy pop fantasy. I enjoyed parts of “Django Unchained” very much, but I’m surprised that anyone can take it as anything more than an enormous put-on”

I found this statement to carry water when it came to the film. Tarantino admits to following the tropes of a Western, however, I'm not quite sure why, and I don't think he is either, he made the movie in the time of slavery.

In Tarantino's own words:

"one of the tropes of Westerns and telling a story like this is you have an experienced gunfighter who meets the young cowpoke who has some mission that he has to accomplish, and it's the old, experienced gunfighter who teaches him the tricks of the trade: teaches him how to draw his gun, teaches him how to kill. Whether it be Kirk Douglas teaching young William Campbell in Man Without a Star or Brian Keith teaching Steve McQueen in Nevada Smith, or actually most of Lee Van Cleef's spaghetti Westerns that aren't with Sergio Leone -- that's kind of Van Cleef's role. Now, you go to the kung fu films -- that's always the case. There's an older guy teaching the younger guy and sending him on a vengeance journey" (full interview here)

That there is proof enough to me that Tarantino's only justification for the setting the movie in the time of slavery was to have a character (Django) who wanted and deserved revenge. He described the Western, and what he tried to do, but the people he mentioned are all white, and all remain in the trope of the Western.

Like he did in Inglorious Bastards, Tarantino once again focused his attention on horrible events, and wrote his own retelling of the past. But, I ask you... watch this following clip... can you even stomach it? Does it make you feel that he is getting his rightful revenge? Does it make a difference that none of this/something like this never happened? ... what does this accomplish?

Of course, on the flip side, the movie can simply be viewed as an "ideal past" in which a slave was rescued and able to assert his own power and kill a lot of people to get his revenge, during which he gets back his wife. So.... it can just be viewed as... entertainment?

Film Topic

I am going to write my next paper on Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained". For me, it was very difficult to find a movie to write about, due to lack of information. For instance, my original idea was to write about "American History X", but I found NO articles about the so-called "Black Negro" in that film. I also tried to find information regarding the subject of "Black Negroes and White Saviors" to "The New World", "Laurence of Arabia" and "The Matrix"... without avail. Finally, I settled on Django Unchained, because I saw it mentioned in an article on the database. Therefore, I decided to use it. I've never seen the film before, but my expectations for watching it-- based on the trailer and what other people have said-- is that it will be VERY violent, very long, and, according to Spike Lee, a very bad representation of African-American history. From what I have read so far, Django, although very capable, cannot have reached his potential without a white man. So, the white man, even though he's the "slaveowner", also becomes the "white savior". Also, in my paper (and I don't know how side-tracked this is) I want to address the reasons why Tarantino made a movie set in the time of slavery in the USA. Because, as was discussed in lecture after screening "NightJohn", filmmakers always have a reason for their setting, especially when they are set during very turmoiled times like slavery. So, why did Tarantino make a movie during this time about that time?

By the way, here's the trailer, if you want to check it out:

Un-identified

Is it possible to be completely un-indentified? Would there be advantages to this? Drawbacks?

Here's the thing. I do not believe it would be possible for someone to be un-indetified. This is because even if the individual themselves was somehow completely unable to find any sort of tie to any people whatsoever, outside forces would impose an identity on them. Be it a familiar image from the media, or existing radicalizations associated with said person, they would be identified as something by others.
Without an identity, people can not feel truly whole, but instead are floating between groups. Identities are crucial and necessary to being a person, in my opinion.

In Dick's Shoes

Theoretical situation: I am in Dick shoes, from the show "3rd Rock from the Sun", in the episode "Dick Like Me. I am completely unfamiliar with and unable to understand distinctions and divisions of race and ethnicity. How would I go about learning how to "perform"an ethnic identity?

I feel that I would go about it the way Dick did. I would read books about ethnicity and look at the pictures to see if there was a trend in the "title" of the ethnic group and the phenotypes, or facial characteristics of the people that belong to the ethnic group. Then, I suppose I would try and find people that look like me. If there were many different ethnic possibilities, or many people that I felt I looked a little bit like, I would ask people around me what they were, and ask them what they thought I was.

I don't know. It's a difficult question. I feel that any ethnicity I eventually chose to be a part of would be definition, be unnatural, and a form of self-ethnicization. Ethnicities have cultural aspects: food, dance, dress, etc. And they come with unique histories. To just decide to be part of one would mean forgoing the historical aspect of what makes an ethnicity and ethnicity, and therefor it would be very artificial.

Part II

I read all the comments on the first post, and I totally agree. I don't think that Jonathan Goldsmith portrays Latin Americans in a negative way. Instead, I now feel that he is completely neutral in relation to that ethnic group as a spokesperson. I feel that to really get this point across, it would make sense to compare him to another ad that features a white person with a Latin accent: The Frito Bandito. For, in this case, racial slurs are the focus, and the ad is obviously insulting and unfair.

Take a look yourself at Goldsmith's ad, then at the Frito Bandito (voiced my Mel Blanc, who was the voice for Speedy Gonzales and Bugs Bunny among others). You can see for yourself that Goldsmith does not offend, whereas Frito Bandito, the ad campaign for Fritos corn chips, depends on racial stereotyping for its image.

I fell that those ads can speak for themselves....


Also, I agree about his age making him unique as a spokesperson. Usually, advertisers for beer and such substances are much younger. However, having an older man take over this role, he appears as a mentor or sorts, a man who has traveled the world and knows a lot and can be trusted.

The Most Interesting Man in the World

"The Most Interesting Man in the World" is an ad campaign created in 2007 by the marketing firm Euro RSCG (now Havas Worldwide) for Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma Brewery.

"Suave, sophisticated and entirely fictional; a man's man, an amalgamation of Hemingway, 007 and Salvador Dali, with a touch of Chuck Norris."(source) His tag lines are: " I don't always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis." And, "Stay thirsty, my friends."

"Beer commercials are usually targeted at young men, and this is another side to the genius of this particular campaign. Not only does it appeal to young women as well as men, but even for the intended audience of young males these ads stand out from the rest. The Most Interesting Man in the World is superbly confident, obviously successful and a clearly a role model." (source)

Euro RSCG commented the following on the campaign:

"Here was the opportunity for Dos Equis: as a brand with an unusual, original and underground status, it could become an outward sign that its drinker was decidedly not average. Dos Equis could become the symbol of a life more interesting. And we would share this truth through The Most Interesting Man in the World."(source)

He is that man we aspire to be.

So... who is he anyways?

He is Jonathan Goldsmith, a Jewish New York born man in his seventies. The accent he imitates from an old friend, the late Argentinian actor Fernando Lamas.

Could this be a form of "brown face?" What are the implications of a white man pretending to be South American in origin? Are there any?



I believe so. Just as by wearing "black face" in the 1927 talkie "The Jazz Singer", Al Jolson only added to the damaging racial prejudice at the time, I believe that Goldsmith, in presenting the South American as a womanizing entitled millionaire, is damaging as well.

Or, perhaps it's not so much that the image he presents is negative (to be the Devil's advocate), but that in general, taking on a spokesperson role of a different ethnicity isn't right to begin with.

Euro RSCG could have hired an actual South American to play the role. The did not. Why? What does this say about the company? Did they themselves have certain predisposed notions that South Americans could not embody such a role?

Whatever their reasoning, the campaign caught on, and Dos Equis got immensely popular. Euro RSCG posted on their webpage:

"Full year case sales are up 20% and total dollar sales are up 33.7% vs. YAG - significantly exceeding the 2.7% category growth rate (Nielsen). Sales in TV markets are outpacing sales in non-TV markets, 21.1% and 15.7%, respectively. Velocity gains for the Dos Equis franchise are 45% and an incredible 85% for lager, which is featured in the campaign."(source)

At museums, he’s allowed to touch the art. . . . His blood smells like cologne. . . . Sharks have a week dedicated to him. . . . He once had an awkward moment, just to see how it feels. . . . The police often question him, just because they find him interesting. . . . He can parallel park-- a train. . . .