Showtime’s lesbian drama “The L Word” has been called groundbreaking in that it’s the first major television show with a plot centered around lesbian characters. The show introduced a Latina character last season (“Carmen”) played by Sarah Shahi. AfterEllen.com goes after the stereotypical portrayal of a Latina in L.A.:

…Carmen explains, “In the Latino culture, it’s okay if two girls dance with each other.”

Her statement, which over-generalizes by using the word “Latino”— there are countless nations and ethnic groups that can be encompassed by that term — drives the scene firmly into stereotypical territory. Indeed, Carmen’s entire family is extremely stereotypical, complete with the over-involved mother who wants nothing more than to feed the overly thin Shane and find her a boyfriend, and a gaggle of gossiping aunties to fix Shane’s hair and coo over Carmen.

The L Word — Showtime’s lesbian follow-up to the wildly popular “Queer as Folk” — can’t be expected to go much deeper than that.

As the article points out, the show is set in Los Angeles, a city where nearly half the population is Latino, and it took two seasons for them to produce a Latina character (which incidentally, is played by an Iranian-Spanish actress, Shahi). It centers around upper middle to upper class experiences. Everybody owns a house, has a great job, hangs out all day at the coffee shop.

Generally speaking, that lifestyle is not typical of Latinos in L.A. and I would guess not typical of lesbians there either.

Point is: it’s TV. It’s not deep. The “Carmen” character was written to be “every Latina” — a broad stroke of Latino culture made digestible for a largely white audience. I’m not sure why one would think that breaking ground in one area (GLBT visibility) necessarily means that you will do the same in another (Latino cultural visibility). It’s just to easy to not go there.

Via / AfterEllen.com and Hispanic Trending