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Popular Culture Review
Rarely discussed in press reports and critiques of the Homies is the fact
that some of the characters carry significant messages pertaining to the
consequences of negative lifestyles and/or the importance and rewards of
education, employment, and personal development despite challenging events
and circumstances. Case in point: the character Smokey is deathly ill with
cancer after years of cigarette abuse and promotes an anti-smoking message.
Another character, Mr. Raza, is an activist in the Chicano community, has a
significant level of higher education, and sees this as a means of creating and
maintaining cultural pride, one of many means to overcome the social ills that
beset his community.^® Their biographies are not just stereotypes, and embedded
therein is the authentic story of real people living real lives—a point missed by
critics.
As a whole, the Homies kinship visually maps out a specific
community or segment of the larger Chicano culture, telling a tale of life in an
urban barrio. The Web site introduces these characters and their community as a
reaction to the destitution, oppression, and social problems that mark their urban
landscape. Their cultural network provides a support system amidst these
negative elements, a network which allows them to overcome a variety of
obstacles and provides for empowerment.
Gonzales granted his high school doodles and comic strip characters
three-dimensional life and gave voice to an underrepresented and misunderstood
segment of the population. His is a voice that can dispel myths perpetuated by
the mainstream media and the accompanying “culture of fear” that has been
generated as a result of one-dimensional depictions of members of the Hispanic
community living in the barrio. Additionally, to disregard these narratives as
legitimate is a failure to acknowledge fixtures in most urban barrios across the
country: poverty, violence, drug use, and various social ills are realities that
members of these communities face through their own experiences or the
experiences of those around them, be it family members or fiiends.^®
While his figurines have been criticized as stereotypical, it is actually
the projection of stereotypes that have been woven by the media and reproduced
by members of the larger society when they discuss these characters that should
be noted. Carefully examining the Homies reveals a multifaceted social
narrative which strengthens their place as identity representations that have been
forged at the hands of someone in touch with the source of his culture. This is
not to imply that they a re benign in their latent messages; the next section will
look at one of the many underlying messages.
Vatos will be Vatos
The Homies figurines, through their physical depictions and
biographical descriptions, “do gender”^^ in accordance with the definitions of
hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity^^ that are characteristic of a
patriarchal system.^^ Contemporary sociology focuses on the intersections of