Citizen Chicano: The Trials and Titillations of Ethnicity in the American Cinema, 1935-1962.

MOTION pictures; MASS media; MEXICAN Americans & mass media; SOCIAL problems; JUVENILE offenders; BOXING in motion pictures

This article deals with motion pictures which addressed the issue of the place of the American in the U.S. Given the nature of the social problem of American citizenship, the films had to define the internal-external paradigm as a domestic rather than international one. The social-problem films fall into three major genres: romantic melodrama; courtroom drama/juvenile delinquent and boxing films. While in general these genres provide for diverse courses of action, each of the above films has an act of violence as the inciting incident, the incident the narrative attempts to resolve.