Críticas Magazine

Bruce Jensen

I believe he told his mother where the library is
February 26, 2008

When Javier Bardem at the Oscars on Sunday heard he’d been chosen Best Supporting Actor, the first thing he did was lean over and kiss the woman sitting beside him--his mom--on the lips. His acceptance speech was brief and charming; the Spaniard ended by using his native tongue to directly address his lovely date and the folks back home.

Host Jon Stewart, who said he took Spanish in high school, later offered viewers a translation: "I believe he told his mother where the library is."

It was funny--particularly for librarians in the audience--but also ironic: Stewart, our own icon of social commentary and veiled political wit, likely missed in Bardem’s innocent-sounding speech a pointed stab at Spain’s right wing. Paying tribute to the many actors in his family and his country, he chose to refer to their profession using a word, cómicos, that carries an explosive charge. (Read about that in Spanish if you‘re so inclined.)

The other irony is that a huge chunk of Hollywood’s population wouldn’t even need Stewart’s whimsical translation.

For a few years I lived a couple blocks from the site of the Oscars, the Kodak Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. Mind you: that’s because we were in one of the cheapest apartments in Southern California. So what’s the linguistic and cultural landscape of that magical town really like?

The 2000 census says that of those living in the ZIP code of the Kodak Theater, just about 40% were Latino. You want good pupusas, an exquisite El Salvadoran delicacy that costs you maybe a buck-fifty a plate? Head for Hollywood. But it’s not only Central Americans or Mexicans who enrich the cultural fabric of the much-maligned home of the film industry: fully 63.3% of its residents spoke a language other than English at home in 2000. And as you can see here, there’s a Spanish speaker for every English-only person in the population of ZIP code 90028, both at 36%.

So it wasn’t just because of Bardem, nor because the Best Original Screenplay went to someone named Diablo, that there was some Spanish spoken in Hollywood last Sunday.

My apologies: way too much starry-eyed movie talk today, I know. What about books, you’re screaming? Okay, okay--head on over to America Reads Spanish so you can check out what Javier Bardem and some of his fellow cómicos such as Emma Thompson and Matt Damon like to read.

Posted by Bruce Jensen on February 26, 2008 | Comments (0)