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Essay On Zoot Suit

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Zoot Suit, a movie directed by Luis Valdez, is a movie set in the 1940’s in Los Angeles. The film is basically a play that is reenacting the unfair trial of a group of Chicanos. Zoot suit represents the outfits and style that Chicano’s were wearing back in that era. These “Zoot suits” were negatively portrayed and the police related those who wore them as gang members and violent criminals. This was simply not true, but due this form of stereotyping it led to a very wrongful arrest, which is what this film is recreating. The zoot suit film educates the audience, specifically Mexican Americans, about the discrimination and unfair treatment that their people had to go through. The Zoot Suit film helps the Mexican American communities become aware of the past discrimination that many Chicano’s had to deal with in the 1940’s. First of all the film is created around a true story that happened in that time known as the Sleepy Lagoons Murder Trials. Which involved a man by the name of Hank Leyvas. In the film the play recreates the scenario leading up to the trial, it follows of group of young …show more content…
Not only are they judged because they are Mexican Americans, but they are not given a fair chance. The trial includes a lot of misconduct from the opposing lawyer as well the judge who allows it. At one point the four men on trial had to stand up at any time that their names were called out, because according to them the jury could get them confused very easily. Aside from this awful and humiliating, the men were also forced to look very dirty and rugged, they were not allowed to clean up before the trial. The judged felt that the jury needed to see the men in this form to better represent the “kind of people” they were. This was completely unnecessary and made the men looked like they were some poor low lives, when reality that was from the

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