Chicanos With Moolah Doing Everything They Can With Their SuperPowers to Ingrain Specific "Mexican" Stereotypes

I am a huge fan of Tarantino and Rodriguez--but you've got to admit that the subversive agit prop semiotics of the original Spy Kids is not fueling his cinematic furnace these days! I know, color me pedantic Mother Superior, but you KNOW I have a point! At some point, faced with the pleasure of making cinema and the responsibility that comes with having been tapped as an outpost of Chicano-ness in Lala-land, you've got to find a way to make it work--elsewise, Robert Rodriguez becomes like Richard Rodriguez in Hunger of Memory, the scene where he, in a scene of academic/existential malpractice, counsels Chicano undergraduates AWAY from academe. Ok, it's not really the same thing, but close. That piece is archived here. Meanwhile, Robert's got lots of other things on his mind as he conjures the bloody contours of Machete.