Oscar says Ole
I think it happens when you belong to any minority. You celebrate every success and cringe at every crime. It's almost a knee jerk reaction when something bad happens, you are hoping it's not a member of your minority who did it because that just perpetuates sterotypes and resentment, even racism. But when something good happens and it's one of ours, we celebrate like he or she was related to us.
That is why last night, I got all chocked up whe Javier Bardem won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. I burst in to tears when he spoke in Spanish to his mother and his country. You would've thought I was Spanish. I'm not, I'm Puerto Rican. Remember Latinos are from different countries, we are not all the same. Unless we do something really good, so last night I was definetely Spanish.
Javier Bardem is a very famous and respected actor in Spain and so is his mom. Actually, his entire family is in the business. I've seen a few of his movies. My favorite was a Spanish tear jerker called "The Sea Inside". I cried doing the entire movie and almost cried when I had to interview him about his performance of a quadraplegic man who just wants to die.
But, as we all know, you are not a world respected actor until you win an Oscar, no matter how big you are in your country. Right or wrong, that's just the way it is.
What makes his Oscar win even more special is that it was for a role performed in English. My Benicio del Toro (I call him mine since he is Puerto Rican and went to my elementary school at some point. So as a good Puerto Rican, that makes us cousins, for me at least) won an Oscar for an amazing perfomance in Spanish (Traffic). Penelope Cruz was nominated for an Oscar for a Spanish role, as well. But Javier Bardem had the added degree of difficulty of performing in a foreign language and nailing it.
Not that I'm comparing us, but coming from a long career in Spanish, I feel I've had to prove that I could do this job just as well in English. And to this day I worry that my accent will get in the way of my perfomance or that my work is not as sharp because English is my second language. It's all in my head but it happens.
Anyway, thank you Javier Bardem for the feel good story of the day for Hispanics in the US. And thank you for being so genuine and true to yourself when you got the award.