1. Mi Vida Loca My Crazy Life
Allison Anders

2. Mi Vida Loca Its strengths
Best mainstream film on Chicano gangs
Its attention to details of everyday life
Its faithful rendition of the style, stance, posture, gestures, the mannerisms and speech of so many Homegirls (ala American Me)
Used an authentic location, using authentic characters

3. Its Strengths
Authentic nicknames such as Blue Eyes, Giggles, Whisper, Sad Girl and Mousey
Emphasis on sisterhood and survival as independent and single women—female solidarity
Does not glamorize violence, shows its tragic human consequences
Welcomed community members into the film (Salt of the Earth-Bread and Roses)

4. The Criticisms
Confirmation of negative stereotypes of Chicanas as welfare dependents
Its nihilism, (belief that all values are baseless, extreme pessimism, no beliefs, no loyalties—F. Nietsche) its downbeat resolution
Plays “on every stereotype ‘mainstream’ America thinks about urban gang life”—Rosa Arrieta
It depicts teenagers without ambition, “drifting downward into chaos and dead-end lives—Susan Gerhard, “True Colors,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, August 3, 1994

5. Rosalinda Fregoso The Critique
Homegirls don’t get pregnant from the same guy—they have more respect than that
A Homeboy does not obsess over a lowrider truck at the expense of his kids
Rival gangs fight over turf, never over a car
Anders got the “form” of gang culture—not the “substance”

6. Fregoso continued
Unrequited love—comes from Anders’ own story—transferred this to the affair between La Blue Eyes and El Duran
The lowrider truck segment was an invention by another screenwriter (Kurt Voss)
The part about two homegirls becoming pregnant from the same guy is taken from a story her daughter heard on the streets

7. Fregoso, continued
Left untold is the elaborate support network of mothers, grandmothers, aunts who visit them in jail, bail them out, help deliver, feed and take care of their babies
The battle between Chicano gangs is over the control of turf and scarce economic resources, not over lowrider trucks