As I read the article about ethnic fetishes and nostalgia, I remembered the Old El Paso commercials for the soft shell tacos. I remember these well because of how much they offended my mother and I when we first saw them. I had seen them on television probably during some sitcom, but my mom saw them on a Spanish-language television channel. I found it really weird that this product was being advertised on that channel because most Mexican families do not even eat the hard shell tacos.
Anyway, what offended me was that the man sticking a nail into the table was seen as really dumb. The little boy is the one who invented a flat bottom taco so that it doesn’t tip over. After the genius invention, they had a fiesta.... Yes a fiesta, not a party or get-together, for a flat-bottomed taco. The genius also had to be categorized as “Mexican style” genius. What this tells me is that Mexican genius has to do with creating a taco that stands up. That is definitely offensive to someone, like myself, who works hard to fight off Mexican stereotypes of being unintelligent or uneducated.
These commercials portray a large Mexican family eating tacos and having a fiesta. This commercial may be trying to sell ethnic food and trying to authenticate it by having a “real” Mexican family endorse it. They’re even speaking real Spanish! These commercials play into some stereotypes of Mexicans eating tacos, having large families, and fiestas. For my mother and I, these commercials do not give us a sense of nostalgia.
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