The program began when Nickelodeon decided to come up with a strategy of increasing the presence of Latin@ actors and creators in television. They wanted to create a character who came across as multicultural and appealed to kids who were raised in bilingual households. Originally Dora was going to be Mexican American, but after deliberation the creators decided to make her from an undefined region of Latin America in order to expand her appeal. One of the creators, Valerie Walsh, stated that they wanted to create a character who was an "alternative to Barbie and the blond, princess myth often hammered into young girls. Each episode includes Spanish. Different characters speak a different amount of Spanish; there are some who only speak in Spanish. There is also a varying level of accents. Dora speaks English with a typical English accent. She does have somewhat of an accent when she speaks Spanish, an accent is even more clear when her grandmother speaks. The majority of human characters are moderately tan, have brown-dark brown hair and brown eyes. There are also characters, who are animals or objects, that know Spanish or come across as somewhat Latin@. For example, the "Fiesta Trio", a snail, frog and a grasshopper, play mariachi-style music when Dora and her friends are successful in completing a task. One important element of the show is that the voice actors are all or mainly of Latin@ decent. Not only is the show reaching out to Latin@s on a face level, but they are actually making an effort to employ them.
Camille's Comments:
I grew up in one of the many Barbie eras. While I loved the dolls, they failed to represent the majority of women. Trying to combat that "perfect American" appeal is admirable. Dora definitely shows progress but there still are some issues. In some sense making Dora's country of origin unknown is a good thing. However, without this, it forms a generic sense of what it means to be Latin@. Because there are so many countries which fall under this category, there are differences between the people. The show illustrates people of different levels of acculturation with clothing but the majority of people are a light tan, with brown hair and brown eyes. In realty, Latin@s come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. The show lacks at being able to depict the many variations of Latin@s. The use of mariachi language is good in that in can either expose children to a new type of music or allow them to hear something on television similar to what they would hear at home.
It is great that they have employed many Latin@ artists for this project, but the creators are Anglo-American. It would be even better if at least part of the creative time was of Latin@ decent so that the show could be more authentic and the Latin@ could assist in projecting the kind of images Latin@ viewers would want to see.
