Streaming Heights
In the predominantly Latino Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights, a daily drama plays out between long-time residents and well-heeled newcomers. Gentrification is a phenomenon that’s shaped and reshaped cities across the country, and that tension inspired Marvin Lemus and Linda Yvette Chávez to take a closer look at the role children of immigrants raised in the United States may have on the change in their neighborhoods without realizing it.
A new word emerged from the intergenerational milieu –– “gentefication,” a mix of “gente” and “gentrification” –– and it encapsulates the messy, imperfect nature of the uniquely barrio problem.
Years ago, Lemus and Chávez first developed “Gentefied” as a web series, premiering the concept at the Sundance Film Festival. Their web series has morphed into a new series on Netflix.
“Gentefied” follows a grandfather (Joaquín Cosío) struggling to keep his Mexican restaurant afloat as neighborhood rents skyrocket. Three of his grandchildren, Erik (Joseph Julian Soria), the macho heir apparent to their grandfather’s restaurant, Ana (Karrie Martin), a talented painter with dreams of breaking into the art world, and Chris (Carlos Santos), a budding chef who struggles to find his place between his Mexican American heritage, band together to help their Pops save the long-standing restaurant.
“Gentefied” joins the recent slate of TV shows that tell our stories and/or feature talent from Latino communities, in front of and behind the camera.
The growing screen-time profile of Latinos is a feel-good story that matters as we’re spending more time than ever indoors, isolating ourselves for our own protection.
In this time of crisis, you can take comfort in the Alvarez family of “One Day at a Time,” now on Pop TV for its fourth season. Or catch up with the third-season misadventures of the teens from Netflix’s “On My Block.” On the networks, Jaina Lee Ortiz leads the “Grey’s Anatomy” spinoff “Station 19” on ABC. Jay Hernandez is the man in the driver’s seat of CBS’ reboot of “Magnum, P.I.” and America Ferrera, who’s also an executive producer on “Gentefied,” stars in her own NBC workplace sitcom, “Superstore.”
Teens and young adults can tune into the CW’s reboots of “Charmed” and “Roswell, New Mexico” to watch Melonie Diaz and Jeanine Mason play the heroines in these series that mix fantasy or sci-fi with soap opera. Even younger audiences can see two clever Latinas take on the world –– and grow up –– in Netflix’s “The Expanding Universe of Ashley Garcia” and Disney+’s “Diary of a Future President.” And there’s more on the horizon, including the third and final season of Starz’s “Vida,” premiering April 26.
All this leads to a programming landscape that features the most visible Latinos in the history of television. But it’s still only a fraction in a vast array of network, cable and streaming offerings. According to a 2019 University of California Los Angeles study on diversity in Hollywood, Latinos were just 5-7 percent of the actors on TV shows across broadcast, cable and digital platforms in the 2016-2017 TV season.
And, not all of these shows explore issues of identity as deeply as Lemus and Chávez’s “Gentefied.” The showrunners decided early on to make gentrification the focus of the show while mixing in doses of comedy and drama, exploring conflicts through different generations, and grappling with what it means to achieve the American Dream.
Lemus and Chávez took time out recently to speak with palabra. about what they hope viewers will discover in “Gentefied,” some of the personal histories that inspired the series, and the Hollywood lessons they learned along the way.
Their answers were edited for space and clarity.
Since we’re talking about “Gentefied” after your February 21 premiere, what has the reception been like in the last few weeks, in light of the recent national crisis?
Marvin Lemus: We've been seeing a lot of different tweets and Instagram posts from people who are staying home or self-quarantining and watching the show for the second time or maybe some for the first time. It's a bittersweet feeling. This is crazy that this is all happening in the world but that we're able to have something that's making people feel good. It’s a really special feeling. We're helping people find a little escape in all this madness.
Linda Yvette Chávez: I think the first time we saw the show on one of the top 10 shows you should be watching right now that was such a beautiful thing to hear. That something we've put so much love and heart into could then come in and give people love and hope during this time. It's hard to describe how beautiful that feels, to know that people are able to have some relief from all of this from something we created.
It’s an affirmation of your hard work. You’ve been developing “Gentefied” since it was an idea for a web series years ago. What was the journey like, from that start to becoming a Netflix series?
Lemus: Linda and I are perfectionists. I think the hardest part was trying to figure out how to make the digital series into a binge-able TV show because the video series was an anthology, and every episode was a different character. We didn't want to do a true anthology. We wanted to make something that made you keep coming back for more and that will leave you wanting to watch another episode.
Chávez: We got back from Sundance three years ago, and we just hopped off that plane and got right into pitching the show. We had been developing a pitch for like five months just trying to (figure out) what is the new show? What is it going to be for the characters? We reimagined the whole world and reimagined the characters that did exist before and built the whole life for them. We both have extensive backgrounds in different parts of the industry, but in terms of television, we hadn't ever pitched a narrative television series before. So that was a big thing for us to learn and to navigate with our producers. We were pretty naive … We worked really hard at this. We memorized this thing for like a million years. And to then find out by the end of the day, we had six offers out of all the people that we pitched to, (that) was insane. We didn't know that wasn't a normal thing that happens. As people were telling us how crazy this was for us, it felt like such a thing to dream and to achieve.
There's so much involved in creating a TV show and getting a show to be greenlit. Every step of the way was a new lesson in patience for both of us. Being digital creators, we were used to (the process that) we write it, we shoot it, we put it out to the world and we make it viral. You're done within a week. But then people (now) tell us okay, this may take two to three years, maybe more. That was blowing our minds ... Marvin and I have that Mexican work ethic, so we were always pushing and hustling. Anytime we heard “you have to wait,” (we thought) either we're going to do this pilot, or we're gonna go write this thing now while you guys figure that out.
We went through a lot of layers to get to the point of (getting) our writers’ room a year-and-a-half ago, and then getting to production a year ago. It's been a wild journey. We've learned so much, we've become so much wiser and we know so much about what it takes to create a show, which is why we're always talking to folks in the industry who are coming up. We love to mentor and we feel like we have this pot of gold, of information, that we feel like it's so important and necessary (to share with) those in our community who are coming up and need it.
In developing the show, what were some of the gentrification -- and gentefication -- issues you learned about by researching and talking to people living in Boyle Heights?
Lemus: We learned a lot from four years of deep research and talking to the community. I think what we've learned in the process is that there are no real answers. We wanted to explore this show from a lot of different points of view because there are a lot of questions everybody's asking. It's such a big gray area. Gentrification is violent. It’s this system that is working exactly (as) intended, which is so unfortunate because it leaves the most vulnerable at risk of displacement or being homeless. For us, that was going to be the most difficult part, trying to figure out how the show was going to help curb that? Hopefully, (we’re) leaving our audience in a place where they're asking some uncomfortable questions and figuring out how we're going to do better by our neighbors.
There has been discussion about how to set a story in a community you’re not originally from (Lemus and Chávez are from different parts of California). How did you involve Boyle Heights residents in the production?
Lemus: During the digital series, we were doing a lot of research, and we reached out to a lot of organizations and activists in the community to try to understand it. I remember one of the early calls, we could tell that an organization was giving us the standard answers that they would give to the press. At a certain point, we had to reaffirm (our questions): How does it make you feel? We want to know how it makes you feel because we're not reporters. We just want to know, this sounds so hard, how do you deal with this? We want to get to the core of the emotion and the humanity of it. Ultimately, that’s how we approached every interaction and every relationship that we built. We saw them.
Change is difficult and it's scary. How do we do this without putting those most at risk in even more vulnerable positions? We reached out to a lot of organizations -- we reached out early on. We reached out to (activist collective) Defend Boyle Heights. We reached out to other organizations, and we included them in the conversation.
Sundance at the time was more focused on having a conversation with the director, but we have this platform, (we) make sure everybody gets the mic. We were finding ways to tell the story authentically and figure out ways for the show to also give back and contribute without assuming that they needed it. We included a lot of artists in the show from the community, musicians, actors, like whoever we took in the community in every facet, whether they were on camera in the show, or doing some of the press material, like the artwork and photography. We have different Latinx photographers, some were born in Boyle Heights and others were just from SoCal, and different artists that we love and that inspire us. We're going to get to make a show for Netflix on a global scale, we're going to f__king amplify all these different artists. We're gonna make sure that everybody comes with us.
Chávez: We wanted this to be accessible, so we had our premiere in Plaza de la Raza, which is on the border of Boyle Heights. We requested that all the vendors there were from the community. It was this huge premiere, which is not something Netflix normally does, but they were so invested in doing right by the community that they brought in all these vendors like local restaurants and local businesses. They all came in and were paid to feed the people. We invited the community to the premiere as well, not only celebrities, and we invited community members, local influencers and leaders. We really tried our best. Marvin and I were (on) top of all this, and there were hundreds of people underneath us working around the clock doing incredible work for the show. But we try to always have every conversation (focus on) centering community and making that the mandate. We were so blessed to have a team from top to bottom that heard us.
The series also really digs into generational struggles, in terms of holding onto and preserving cultural identity. What were your motivations to explore those differences?
Lemus: We make it accessible because we're Mexicans who grew up poor and had really tough upbringings. But our families were always laughing. We were always cracking jokes. We learned how to be entertaining and how to get through those tough times with humor and with a lot of love and being brutally honest with each other. That is what we wanted to get across. We wanted to talk about tough issues, talk about tough questions and explore identity. But we wanted to do it in a way that honored that way we do things. (Previously,) our stories tended to be (told as) this trauma porn, these kinds of stories told through this lens of pity because a lot of times they're not being told by us. We were over it, we were sick of it. Like why are the viejitos and viejitas always so pathetic in these stories? They're very weak, but the ones in our lives are the strongest people we know? They're the funniest, they're the smartest, there's the wittiest. They're so strong and resilient and they've taught us everything. They’re our heroes. We wanted to show every character –– the artists, the business owners, everybody across the board, including the mariachi –– they're all beautiful, interesting, empathetic people who are worthy of our time and attention and of being seen as full three-dimensional people.
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Monica Castillo is a film critic and journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, NBC News, RogerEbert.com, Remezcla, The Wrap, Hyperallergic and elsewhere. She can usually be found online talking about the movies she just watched at @mcastimovies.