Most plays about the Latino/Chicano experience are fairly grounded in reality – common themes of these works include the shared struggles of Chicanos to forge a sense of identity and security in a world that does not understand or accept them, often necessitating a grim naturalism to convey these ideas. However, there is also a sense of spectacle on display in some of the best Chicano theatrical works, as the broadness and presentationalism of this approach allows for these messages to become more acute, as well as emphasize the aspects of Latino culture that are either celebrated or lampooned in popular culture. Luis Valdez’s I Don’t Have to Show You No Stinking Badges! is a trenchant satire of the way Latinos and Chicanos are portrayed in media, while Josefina Lopez’s Real Women Have Curves tells the tale of a group of Latina women trying to come to terms with their expectations and their bodies. While both works are excellent portraits of the Chicano struggle, it is Valdez’s Stinking Badges that has the greater level of spectacle to it, given its overt sitcom and media trappings.
In Stinking Badges, the real world of the characters is mixed with broad situations and stagings evocative of a TV drama; at one point, when Sonny confronts the police, the lights dim and an announcer pipes in to tell the audience that they are just a “LIVE STUDIO AUDIENCE IN THE TAPING OF [a] SHOW” (Valdez 988). The setting of the play itself is full of cameras, overtly theatrical and ‘fake’ looking flats, along with other TV equipment, contributing to a feeling of falseness that is deliberate. The stage is meant to look like the taping of a sitcom – completely fake and totally unlike reality. To that end, Valdez shows that the depictions of Latinos in this kind of media are equally false. By framing this smaller story within the bigger metanarrative of Latino depictions in popular culture, there is a greater sense of spectacle for Stinking Badges than in Real Women Have Curves.
In Real Women Have Curves, the presentation of the play itself is fairly straightforward; apart from the normal theatrical trappings of lights on/lights off, and certain bits of staging, most of the play plays out like a typical character dramedy. This is not to say that the play is not good; the script itself is wonderful, artfully and hilariously depicting the anxieties of young feminist Ana, brash Carmen, sweet Rosali and their friends Estela and Pancha. All of the characters share nuanced and comedic dialogue about their struggles trying to fit into traditional family lives, get out from under debt, and dealing with romantic problems. However, since much of the action of the play is restricted to dialogue scenes in the sewing factory, there is not much of a chance for spectacle like there is with the broader, more metatextual Stinking Badges.
In conclusion, I Don’t Have to Show You No Stinking Badges! has a greater sense of spectacle than Real Women Have Curves. Lopez’s work is subdued, funny and realistic, while Valdez paints a broad world of stereotypes and sitcom artificiality that enhances the falseness of the images he wishes to portray.
Works Cited
Lopez, Josefina. Real Women Have Curves.
Valdez, Luis. I Don’t Have to Show You No Stinking Badges! in American Drama (eds. Watt and
Richardson).
