Eva Longoria’s next film, Dora and The Lost City of Gold comes out August 9th. The movie is based on the popular kids TV shows that centers around a seven-year-old Latina who explores the jungle with her backpack and friend Boots, who happens to be a monkey. It’s a fun show if you have young kids but I love writing out that plot out because, well, I just don’t know many children under 10 that are left to fend for themselves in the jungle – for fun. Eva stars as Dora’s mom. Given the Latino/Tejano influence of both the show and the movie, Eva was asked about the importance of this film in the current American political climate. Eva said since America is made up of immigrants, it’s important to celebrate them and not condemn them.
Eva commented on how important this movie is, given the current political climate. “The thing I love most about America and the United States is it’s a country of immigrants. It’s something to be celebrated, not condemned, so for me, to see a movie like this that has such a great representation of our culture and who we are and our contributions… the contributions of Latinos… it just makes me want to celebrate and applaud something like this even more because we have to make a movie like this louder than the noise that’s being created.”
Obviously, I agree with Eva’s main point, which that life is so much richer when we embrace the world around us. But I want to speak specifically to Eva’s comment about a movie like this being amplified to compete with the hate being broadcast throughout the country. We talk about supporting films with smaller representation in Hollywood all the time, but this is another great aspect of that argument. It’s not just getting different faces on screen, which is incredibly important for all the reasons we’ve ever discussed, but we, unfortunately, have to combat all the nonsense coming from the Deplorables at present. Intensifying messages and themes that celebrate what immigrants have brought into our culture is a great way to drown out chants like, “send her back.”
Since, unfortunately, the reality is that we are not celebrating immigrants enough these days, let’s do the next best thing and protect them, like this amazing group of neighbors in Tennessee who formed a human chain to protect a family from an ICE arrest. Know your rights, know their rights and let’s all celebrate each other as much as we can.
Photo credit: WENN Photos and Instagram
Just here to say her hair looks EPIC in that top pic. The L’oreal contract is for good reason!
She’s so pretty!
Dora, la exploradora! My sister loved the cartoon.
I just wish someone could tell me why latinos and african americans are demonized so much. What is it about me, someone from latin america, that incites so much hate in the US? (and probably in other parts of the world)
Thanks to my nephew, I’ve sadly seen every Dora the Explorer lol.
Good for her, her beauty shines from within, she looks better than ever.
She really does! So happy for her! She’s always been a great advocate for Latinos.
My kids are 9 and 11 now and well past the Dora phase. But I watched an extended trailer last night and was laughing out loud at how much the movie seems to make fun of so much of itself. All kinds of things that drove the parents nuts seem to be addressed, at least that’s what it looked like from what I watched. I really hope it’s a hit, for sooooo many reasons. If my kids don’t want to see it I’m tempted to go on my own one afternoon.
Looks like a fun movie. I clicked on the link to the Newsweek article, wow. Those ICE raids are horrifying & I’m so glad that family had such great neighbors.
I clicked on it too, I hadn’t seen that story before. I wasn’t expecting it to make me cry, but I was both moved by that family’s neighbors protecting them and also horrified that that’s where we are now.
I love this and hope this sets off a chain of movies with Latino leads to come, especially with Mexican actors. We are truly unwelcome in this country, a country that we resided in until Manifest Destiny reared it’s head, and I think normalizing and celebrating our culture and people would do a lot of good, if only to show these racists and bigots that we are not going anywhere. I’m waiting on a latin “Always Be My Maybe”! So good, and normal! We need more of that.