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Latino Youth Talk About the Real 'O.C.'
Young residents of Santa Ana, Calif. -- according to a new survey
the most hardscrabble city in America -- say the Fox network hit "The
O.C." gets Orange County all wrong.
By Gustavo Arellano, Pacific News Service
SANTA ANA, Calif. - October 11, 2004 - As the television show,
"Beverly Hills, 90210," did to its namesake locale in the early 1990s,
the Fox Network hit, "The O.C.," is doing to Orange County, Calif.:
transforming this region from mere municipality into a pop-culture buzz
term so popular that USA Today last year crowned Orange County the "new
capital of cool."
But talk to Latino youth living in Santa Ana, Orange County's seat and
largest city, and you'll quickly learn that the bronzed, beauty-packed
wonderland depicted on "The O.C." is nothing more than a glamorous lie.
"It really doesn't reflect anything about the Orange County I know,"
says Luís Sarmiento, a 17-year-old who teaches Mexican folk music at the
Centro Cultural de México, a Santa Ana-based community space squeezed in
between an upholstery store and an auto body shop. "It doesn't tell me
anything valuable about where I'm from."
"The show sucks," chimes in Roxana Guajardo, 16, another Centro Cultural
volunteer. She wears the postmodern Chicana outfit of a shawl,
indigenous pigtails and Chuck Taylor low-top sneakers. Roxana says she
watched the show for about 30 minutes once before switching it off in
disgust. "It was just rich white people with pathetic problems --
nothing real. No minorities -- not even Latina housemaids! I'm sure it's
still the same."
As the freeway flows, Santa Ana is only 15 minutes away from Newport
Beach, the setting for "The O.C." But the two cities might as well exist
a continent away. While "The O.C." accurately depicts Newport Beach as a
town of wealthy (median income: $58,813) conservative (Republicans
outnumber Democrats nearly 4-1) whites (85 percent of Newport Beach's
population), the show never ventures from this coastal community. When
characters mention other county cities, they do so in disparaging tones.
One character, for example, can't believe a friend attended a rock
concert in Anaheim.
Yet, with a population of 81,000, Newport Beach constitutes only 3
percent of Orange County's 3 million souls.
Though other Orange County neighborhoods match Newport Beach for gaudy
excess, a far more accurate representation of the county is within Santa
Ana's borders.
Founded in 1886, Santa Ana has changed within the past 30 years from a
small, working-class white and black suburb into a bustling mini-opolis
of about 372,000 people, according to 2000 U.S. Census figures (some
consider the number a severe undercount, and put the population, which
may be 25 percent undocumented, at 500,000). More than 75 percent of the
population is Latino, making it the most-Latino big city in the United
States. It has the second-largest number of foreign-born residents of
any U.S. city, the lowest median age (26) and the highest percentage of
Spanish speakers. Its average household of 4.6 people is greater than
that of any American city with a population larger than 50,000.
This cocktail of statistics, coupled with deteriorating schools and an
uncaring city government, led researchers at the State University of New
York's Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government last month to deem
Santa Ana as the toughest city in the country to live in.
Similarly, Orange County as a whole has also dramatically changed in the
past three decades, from its long-held national stereotype as a bastion
of Goldwater Republicanism into a vibrant, diverse area. The cities of
Garden Grove, Fountain Valley and Westminster host Little Saigon, the
economic and cultural heartbeat of the largest Vietnamese expatriate
community in the world. Anaheim, home of Disneyland, features Little
Gaza, a Middle Eastern district where Arabic-language signs outnumber
those in English. Even affluent, master-planned Irvine now contains
Chinese and Persian enclaves.
Recently, the U.S. Census determined that Orange County is now
officially a minority-majority region -- whites now make up less that
half of the total population.
But none of this diversity appears on "The O.C.," and Centro Cultural
board member Adriana Alba-Sánchez, 26, isn't holding her breath for the
real Orange County to appear on television.
"Sadly, people want to make (minorities in Orange County) invisible,"
says Alba-Sánchez, who grew up in Santa Ana and works in the city as a
social worker. "We're rupturing as a population, but no one ever talks
about us. If you go to a nice restaurant in Newport Beach, look into the
kitchen and you'll listen to Mexican music playing. Latinos are the ones
that create that "O.C." lifestyle, but they're not attractive for TV
material.
"When it comes down to it, people just don't want to think about Latinos
operating in the community."
"Everyone is getting the wrong idea about Orange County," says Yasmin
Juárez, a 19-year-old student at the University of California, Irvine,
and a lifelong Santa Ana resident. "I was recently in Houston, and when
people found out where me and my friends were from, they started making
fun of us. 'It must be nice living in the O.C.,' they said. 'Must be
hard living in a big house.'"
At this point, a siren screams outside the Centro Cultural as police
cars speed down the street. A Latino family lugs grocery bags -- mother,
two children, and a baby stroller all carry their share. Men in work
clothes peddle tiredly on bikes.
Juárez pauses, then continues. "The thing is, we were in the 'bad'
section of Houston. And it looked just like the O.C. I know."
PNS contributor Gustavo Arellano (GArellano@ocweekly.com)
is a staff writer with OC Weekly, where he covers Santa Ana in his
"Notes from the Banana Republic" column. |
