Tex-Mex vs. Mex-Mex: Que En Los Diablos Es Un Taco Concha

Abstract

The extent to which we in the West stereotype "other" cultures is obvious from our advertising, television and cinema, let alone our supermarkets, but whereas the information and entertainment industries use cultural stereotypes as code for the undesirable "foreignness" of other cultures, the food industry works the other way, seeking to transform unfamiliar, "difficult" dishes into easily recognisable domestic staples. In the cinema we are encouraged to associate Asians with inscrutability, Italians with organised crime and Mexicans with laziness, but in supermarkets, spring rolls, lasagne and burritos become desirable consumer items. Comprehensively repackaged, they offer "elsewhere" in unthreatening form.