Popular Culture Review Vol. 15, No. 2 | Page 86

82 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