JUMP CUT
A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA

2. All quotations from Latino are dialogue transcripts by me.

3. The film's representation of the U.S. army is also gendered in very obvious terms. When furious with Eddie, Marlena once calls him "Mr. Macho Green Beret." The male society of the U.S. military contrasts with the feminine-dominated private life of Eddie, strongly associated with his mother and Marlena, but also the community of the Sandinistas, where women, too, make war because they want to protect their community. On the gendering of the Mexican-American soldier's experience see also Mariscál: "The drive to assimilate through military service is exacerbated by one of the most pernicious legacies of Mexican culture: warrior patriotism. The idea that masculine behavior must include a readiness to die for 'la patria' is powerful in Mexican nationalist ideology. When transferred to the Chicano context it is especially dangerous since the Mexican male's rhetorical claim that he is willing to die anytime anywhere becomes a fatal reality once it is linked to U.S. imperialist projects." (27)

4. Compare this to an earlier scene in the film when, arriving at the Contra camp, Eddie and Ruben counter a white major's flippant remark about "spic country" with a good-natured repartee, i.e. gloss over the racism of the remark.

5. Released in 1984, this song by Little Steven (Steven Van Zandt) also takes a critical look at the U.S. role in the world during the early 1980s.

7. Compare the corresponding passage in Anthony Swofford's autobiography: "'Black. White. Mexican. Vietnamese. Navajo. The Marine Corps does not care! [...] You are now green! You are light green or dark green. You are not black or white or brown or yellow or red. Do you understand me, recruits?'" (28f.).

8. For the statistics of the ethnic composition of the U.S. military see the relevant sections in the U.S. national statistics:
http://www2.census.gov/prod2/statcomp/documents/ (accessed 9/3/2006).[return to page 2 of essay]

9. More recently, Only the Brave (2005 ) has attempted to do the same for the forgotten contribution of Japanese-Americans volunteers during World War II.

10. See for instance the discussion of the film by Robert Burgoyne.

11. For a similar judgment see the review by Elizabeth Valenzuela : "the real purpose of Windtalkers was clearly to create a vehicle for yet more white stars."

12. For treatments of the status of Mexican-Americans in the U.S. Forces see B.V. Olguín. His survey of Mexican-American war narratives (fiction, autobiographies, biographies), from the Texas-Mexican War to Gulf War I, shows how such narratives have always negotiated a complex and ambiguous identity, including positions that see service in the U.S. army as a means of assimilation and integration as well as anti-hegemonic adoptions of sympathy with 'Third-World' enemies. Olguín argues for a differentiated and gender-sensitive reading of these war narratives that pays attention to the "variable status of war in Mexican-American history and culture" and reveals "that US wars demand, and may even enable, broader diachronic and more complex remappings of Mexican-American identity and ideology" (84). Olguín also provides a useful survey of extant criticism in the area. A seminal publication of texts by and about Chicanos and Chicanas in the Vietnam war is George Mariscál's collection Aztlán and Viet Nam.

13. The film is, among others, the subject of the BBC documentary "Look Out Haskell, it's real!" The Making of Medium Cool (2001). See Paul Cronin’s article on this documentary and on Wexler’s work. For a more in-depth discussion see the chapter on Medium Cool in The Subject of Documentary by Michael Renov.

14. For a list see the entry on Wexler in http://www.cinematographers.nl/PaginasCoPh/wexlerhaskell.htm.

15. For instance, at the beginning of the film Marlena tell Eddie that most of her family are still in Managua, but later her father's funeral (we do not learn until then that the father actively supported the Sandinistas) takes place in El Porvenir, the cooperative which is also Luis' home and the setting for the film's final attack.[return to page 3 of essay]