Marisa Deren Stereotypes

Latino women in Hollywood films are often portrayed as stereotypical submissive characters. A submissive female character is usually the nurturing figure in a household - she can be found doing the interior housework, teaching the children in their homes, and doing as she is told, no matter what the task at hand is because she just wants to please the person that they deem as authority. Jennifer Lopez’s character, Marisa Ventura, in Maid in Manhattan can be read as a perpetuation of this common female stereotype; in this film she embodies a lowly and inferior female character in her both in her physical stature and her actions towards her male counterpart, Chris Marshall. By making this female protagonist a Latina Cinderella, being swept off

When Marisa’s mother hears about her daughter’s infatuation with the white politician, she is very unhappy. Marisa’s mother tells Marisa that she is ridiculous to think that Marisa could be with a man like Chris Marshall, which causes Marisa to immediately defend her right to have a relationship with him since he give her, in her mind, what she cannot obtain outside of a dream. Marisa’s mother, in this scene, is a parallel to the evil step-mother in Cinderella. The evil-stepmother believe that Cinderella was not fit for a prince since she was just a house-maid, that was all that Cinderella’s step-mother saw her step-daughter capable of. Marisa’s mother does the same by suggesting another maid job at a different hotel because she believes the same for her daughter; Marisa needs to stay in her own class group because she does not belong to the upper-class. Marisa’s happiness with Chris as a fake rich woman causes her to perpetuate the stereotype of the submissive woman by longing for her dominant male counterpart. Even after she tried to break it off with him, she still wanted him even with her job on the

This action causes Victor to invade Judy’s personal space, which robs her control of the situation and her surroundings since he is very close to her, physically. In Maid in Manhattan, Chris Marshall dominates Marisa and puts her into the submissive role when he stands dangerously close to her. Since Marisa is shorter than him, he is able to tower over her; she is left with limited personal space which results in Marisa losing control of her surroundings. Although Marisa is reacting positively by not pulling away from Chris, Judy reacts negatively by pushing Victor into the pool. Judy becomes the dominant one out of the two because she is demonstrating physical dominance. Instead of falling for him and becoming the docile female, which would cause her to perpetuate this stereotype, she calls the shots and is the dominant figure in the relationship. Judy’s negative response and demonstration of physical dominance in this film’s scene causes her to break this stereotype since she is not acting like a lowly and helpless female. This differs from Marisa since she does fall for Chris, especially when they are at the expensive benefit event together because she reacts positively to Chris’ acts of dominance towards