Sofía Vergara in U.S. Media - On Representations of Latinidad

• In Event: 023 - Regular Session. Latino/as

Abstract

Comedian, actress, model, producer, and singer Sofía Vergara is best known for her role of Colombian wife to a middle aged Anglo American man in the TV series Modern Family. Vergara has been successful – she has recently been the highest paid actress in U.S. television. This paper explores the slippery readings of Sofía Vergara produced by the media lens, since the media serves as a very powerful institution that structures our views. Vergara carries with her the echo of a social memory of dozens of Latina bombshell actresses; she sits comfortably as a figure that re-enacts what USAmerican media successfully produces as Latinas—or what we consume as female Latinidad. In this presentation, I draw from Vergara’s representations, media appearances, commercials, public interviews, and related events, in order to depict her portrayal as an actress in the U.S. I also approach the paper as a critical view of the kind of story telling on her origins—Colombia, and more specifically, Barranquilla—as well as the linkages often made of her roots. This allows for a discussion of the potentiality of reading Latinidad not as an ethnicized, but as a racialized framework impacting Latinas/os in the U.S. The paper closes with an analysis of other famous Colombian singers and actors, and seeks to identify potential ways of resisting the prepackaged readings of Latinidad in media.

Author

• Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, American University