The purpose of my sound script in this case is to alter the viewers perception of the clip using oposite techniques as the original director. The audience here is my english 121 class and teacher, a diverse and intelligent group of people. I want to explore how we are “pre-programmed” to believe in certain stereo-types. In this clip, it is easy to judge based off of the Latino culture. As a viewer I an guilty of such premonitions. I saw the images of a young girl in a poverty stricken environment, and when combined with the voice of herself in the future as a sophisticated english speaking woman applying to Princeton University I was completely thrown off. I immediately judged that this girl must have made a dramatic transition because typically you do not see poor mexican immigrants applying to an ivy leauge university. This has caused me to wonder, does this innitial perception of the girl cause the viewer to believe that her future is doomed or going no where? If it were not for this voice-over narration to show us how she has grown, would we assume her fate be different than her life turned out to be? How do we make these automatic assumpstions? This goes back to being “pre-programmed” by society to believe certain things. In addition, there are others out there that may have gone through similar events as the narrator and can sympathize with her. It is vital to consider the social context from which the audience is viewing the film. Leaving certain things up to our immagination (which the director does in this clip) causes different reatcions and responses to the clip.

I would like to ultimately claim that in this clip from the film Spanglish, voice-over narration is used to suppress the physical location of Mexico and rather to express the idea or way of life that Mexico embodies to its audience. I wonder why this technique of addressing the Dean of Admissions at Princeton University in an essay is used at the beginning of the film? How would things have been different if this was not included, becuase it verifies to the audience that she is a very intelligent and most likely successful girl because Princeton is an amazing university with high standards of education. With that, I would like to do a sound script in the voice of a young Latino girl (representing the narrator at a young age) to compare how the viewer would perceive her “Mexico” at this age in her life as compared to her matured and developed state of mind in the future. How does the director be sure that even when the narrators voice seems “americanized” that the narrator and audience are still emmersed in all things that are “Mexico”. I believe that if there were a young Latino girl narrating, we would have a completely different and dramatic interpretation of her life. I also thought about having the mother narrate the new sound script. I would like to do this because I feel like she is always portrayed as the less intelligent one, even though she is older and should supposedly be wiser. The fact that her daughter can adapt to America better than she makes the mother appear vulnerable and inadequate. Though, despite this, she still always seems to demonstrate impecable morals throughout the clip and film. She has honor, something that can relate to the idea of “Mexico” rather than the location of it. I think it would be interesting to see it from her perspective. And i’ll just be honest, it would also be easier to speak in a mothers voice rather than a young Lation girls.

There are obviously high stakes to my claim and new soundscript…minor changes can completely destroy or alter this clip dramatically. I think that my claim is both bold and risky because it deals with stereo-types and prejudice which is a very debatable issue. I’m saying that this “americanized” voice is supressing the physical location of Mexico, almost making it seem inadequate and making America out to be the land of opportunity and perfection. I think this is important for the viewer to realize, because instead of just watching it and assuming things they should wonder why they are assuming them. The new sound script will be less obvious. The original is very “black and white”. We have a girl emmersed in Mexico who does not even speak english combined with a very intelligent and well versed American sounding woman. How will the pride of their culture still be demonstrated with this new sound script. In the original, I almost feel as if the audience is obligated to understand just because the narrator is presenting it in such a way our culture can relate to. Without this supressive and dominating American voice, how will the clip be percieved? This we will have to find out…

I don’t know what text to use for this to back up my paper, which is something I would be grateful and completely open to suggestions about 🙂 thanks!