that's our schools that if were just going to be pouring it in the desert i think people should be aware what they are defending. >> the uss midway is the longest serving aircraft carrier of the 20 century. the first and a three ship class of carriers that featured an armored flight back and a group of 120 planes. it was built in only 17 months, but missed action and world war ii by one week. turned into a museum in 2004 attracts over 1 trillion tourists annually. up next to continue our featured on the cities history and literary life as we talk with san diego state professor william nericcio, about his book on mexican stereotypes in popular culture. >> in my book i tell this story about, i was at the university of connecticut. i was a first-year first-year professor. i received my ph.d from cornell university.

i was like wow, i made it. i was looking through a book of cartoons and there was this cartoon, and it's in the book and it's from, i think it was a british magazine, iq magazine. -- a humor magazine. it's a sleeping mexican or sleeping spain, doesn't matter. the joke works for english people who make spanish. in panel one he's asleep outside on the street. we do, right? his alarm clock goes off. i think in panel three. so he turns it off, he goes back inside and he sleeps on his bed. [laughter] so it's like this guy is so lazy, he sleeps on the street. his alarm clock goes off. he has a big sombrero of course so you know he is latino in some way. the alarm clock goes off and he

walks and he goes to bed. something happened, and something snapped and i started to think, this really essential questionquestion, which is actuy philosophical. why do we laugh? what's the origin of the laughter? what is causing -- what the hell am i laughing at? what is that? this is the funny thing about stereotypes. they don't have anything to do with intellect. they have to do with recogniti recognition. even a monkey can recognize a square block and put it into the square hole, and humans are not that much more sophisticated. we see something we've seen before and we feel smart when we see it again. we feel like we are genius, like look, there's a sleeping mexican. i've seen that before. we will laugh. we laugh because of that recognition. there's some endorphin, some tickling in the cognitive area

of our brain where we are rewarded for recognizing something we've seen before. so the logic of stereotypes will not ever be interrupted. we can't ever say and i say this in "tex t -mex: seductive hallucinations of the "mexican" in america," my book, don't think you can eradicate them come because then you won't, you would just for yourself. what you can do is and i can let yourself. it's like chickenpox -- inoculating -- is a weak version of the disease and the navy you will be immune to that stupidity. it really is not an electric instant recognition of that what we've seen before. i see a drunk mexican before. that's not a slur. mexicans like to drink. i like to drink. i do mexican. that doesn't mean that's my essence. that's the wicked side of stereotypes, that for lazy people, which is most of us, that stereotype becomes a placeholder. let's take the most rapid stir

type of mexican witches as a voracious rapist bandit, which has been popularized by our be wicked orange skinned friend donald trump. there's a very real incident after the turn of the century were a bunch of russia invades the united states and because he's -- as a second south texas a jokester, he invaded columbus new mexico. take that, columbus. here's your european invasion the result of that wasn't very funnyfunny, right? some people got killed in columbus new mexico and the united states government sent 25,000 troops, including macarthur and poun patent her just gottent of west point to find our good friend, poncho villa. some 25,000 troops go. they never found him. they didn't catch him. but right when that was happening, there were two things

going on in the united states. vaudeville houses were closing, and motion picture houses were opening everywhere. motion picture houses showing newsreels of american soldiers in mexico with that mexicans, bandit mexicans, thieving mexicans. so that for me as a tragedy of mexican u.s. relations into the 21st century, that at the birth of the picture, at the birth of the motion picture these newsreels and postcards crystallize the image of a mexican as other, not just any other, dead dirty bandit other. so i was trained with a ph.d to write about latin american fiction. i do that book out the window. it's called the politics of solitude, alienation and the literature of the americas. i never published. it's a damn good book. it's available as the dissertation. i started writing exclusively about the construction of mexico

city in american pop culture. from speedy gonzales to touch of evilevil, orson welles film abot the border, to the mexican spitfire. it turns up in the 20th century there's a tradition of mexicans doing the equivalent of such and such, vaudeville, a kind of ethnic, and ethnic vaudeville routine that crystallizes our meaning for people in mass culture throughout the last century and this one. we can turn to robert rodriguez filmmaking with a film series. he is one of our mexican american superstars. quentin tarantino is body, hanging out, yellow, bro. great filmmaker. the first time one could argue was really progressive. it took on all the ugly scary stereotypes of the mexican

bandit danny trails, the actor to produce a film that capitalize him and twisted it. like i said you can't eliminate the stir type and what robert wanted to do was he wanted to twist it and give it a new spin. but i would even argue that for a lot of people they just don't have that nuance. danny, remains a pretty bad scary mexican like no irony. like don't get nearly with that, please. leave me in peace. the same for sophia on modern family. everybody's favorite latina. the ways you can see her as an evolutionary step past lupe as the mexican spitfire. she was like an early 20th century lucille ball. she was a huge megastore in hollywood. she was funny, she could dance,

she was mexican. and then you get sofia baggara on modern, and you think to yourself, wow, she's rich. no. i mean, in some senses she repeats all of the stereotypes. she is incredibly sexy. i don't hold that against her. she's a beautiful woman, a great actress. she's also a producer. she savvy woman lighter skin, sometimes in the book i talk about actors and the conscience they wear and the kind of help, like an animal skin. you don't know where the costume stops and the soul begins. and i think you have to do so much as latino or latina just to get on stage, just to get in front of the camera, that you don't have time to be progressive all the way. i've got bills to pay. my agent told me i have to take this show. and so i think while there is

progressprogress, there's also f backsliding to my two friends who made the border can series that was recently canceled, canceled by fox, they tried to do it. they tried to make this show that would be comedic, progressive, set on the american mexican border and they did all that. but it didn't get the show time to ewald. the first year seinfeld, you know, the timing was off, the characters were not there. sometimes we comedic team, for collaboration, he takes over a a year for them to find a way. the first year of france was the same way. the first year of louis worked, louis ck, mexican by the way. he's just a genius. they didn't give that time, they didn't give that show the time to ewald. is this funny thing in the renowned. in order to get produced, and i

can talk about this because of my own shown which i try for two years to get on, if you try to be too progressive, the audiences do not recognize you because you are not a stereotype. hence, you're not markable. stereotypes are profitable because you know that people pay to see what it seen before. like the old circus freak show, they would always clean up every year in laredo, texas, when the carnival came rent at the freak show wasn't there. people knew i'm going to see the two headed baby. i'm going to see the racist mexican, abandoned mexican, the hot latina bombshell. we've seen these before. we will pay to see them again. if you try to come up with a show that is a little bit different, that's intelligent and progressive and breaks the mold or, you will for it. you are not going to get on broadcast. the impact on ethnic communities is huge. it is internalized.

the great writer teaches us the net result of negative stereotyping is the internalization of inferiority at the level of the unconscious. it means you dream about your losing ticket means the mayor that shows you a second rate, never goes away. it's almost always already there. and so the consequences for not intervening where stereotypes appear is yet another generation of self-loathing mexicans. i first moved to san diego and there's this great newscasters whose name was leonard solorio. although, i'm leonard and i come from laredo, right? [speaking spanish] but in order to pass in san diego, i guess i do know, because when i moved to in the '90s san diego was very, very conservative.

it's just starting to fall. he had to become leonard villareal. he had immense pronounce his name in order to pass. even in the world series, i texted joe buck. hey, it's not harass. it's perez. it's not perez. since time immemorial american english-language only broad newscasters have said harass. roberto perez. and it's not perez. it's perez. i'm texting joe buck during the world series. other people are screaming about the cubs. he didn't respond. what that comes from is i need to -- they are socially with mexican. just today a student turned in some work to me and i've done a celebration here on campus. they were talking about bills

description of hispanic holiday. it's not a hispanic holiday. it's a mexican holiday. mexican becomes a pejorative in american mass culture. so the people feel they have to like i don't want to hurt his feelings, he's latino or he's hispanic. no, i'm a mexican. i'm a mexican-american. actually i mexican sicilian american. but his efforts to water down mexican nests in american context is absurd. with the largest population of immigrants in the united states. americans as mexican defender i'm also for latin, whilst for specificity as well and not apologizing for being a mexica. i want to confess the book is highly autobiographical. there are some parts about what i suffered through in the book.

it's called seductive hallucinations of the mexican in america. these seductive hallucinations are delightful because they are memorable and they are memorable because there are delightful. we are caught in that circuit. i think with the book does is try to exercise 160 years of cultural history. for anyone who likes hollywood, i think they will enjoy the book. my sister worked in hollywood. i am a big media, mass media fan. i'm not ethnic studies professor that attacks hollywood as the big evil person. it's not a black and white book. it's a book by an english professor who was basically raised by a television set, who was milk fed at the teat of the internet. and so it's very much a book for people who want to laugh about things that are serious.

i'm sorry but before me there was a whole generation of mexican american scholars who had to fight in the trenches, and they were called -- intellectuals. i ride on their shoulders. it also means we don't just have it to be black and white, brown and white. this is about the knicks. so if you read my book, read it for the pictures. you might just learn something. spirit c-span is in san diego learning more about the literacy. we are here at the central library in downtown san diego honoring doctor seuss. up next we take you to use his san diego to learn more about the life of a san diego native and iconic children's author. >> i think some of the first things that come to my when people hear the word dr. seuss