110 DIANE ACCARIA ZAVALA region's private self by transforming our self-identity. The film becomes an exploration of Caribbean peoples' historical, ideological and cultural problems within its political relation with the United States. It demonstrates the way in which Hollywood successfully attempted to explain that relationship and, given the fact that Puerto Rico is still one of the few remaining colonies, we see how much of the film's surviving rhetoric still proves to be successful today. The discourse this film dispels, while it trailblazed the way for dozens of box-office successors that would follow its hit-formula spiel, provokes our attention as it contributes to so many remaining misconceptions and misrepresentations yet being made. As Lester Friedman has argued: Although great works of art transcend their age, all works of art are products of their time. ... [I]t reveals aspects of both its maker and its reader. What affects a society necessarily influences its citizens; ethnic culture, in terms of both consent and descent, remains part of a person's private and public identity. No creative endeavor can occur in a cultural vacuum. (32-33)2 The "Reel" Business of Empire The ambitious and creative group that made The Americano happen-Anita Loos, John Emerson, and D.W. Griffith, along with the political / ideological backdrop it fed upon, have it easily emerge as an important propagandistic tool for its time. Anita Loos, a native San Diegan, the daughter of R. Beers Loos, a famous newspaperman at the close of the nineteenth century, is particularly interesting for our purpose here, as she links the enterprise of movies with that of journalism (Williams 1).3 She was a child actress, playing on the stage and in early films, and at an early age, she began contributing articles to various periodicals. By the age of twenty, Loos was a professional journalist and screenwriter, and her career would produce more than sixty silent films, some in collaboration with Emerson, her film-director husband. Many remember Loos for her novel-turned-blockbuster-film -Gentleman Prefer Blondes. She was always distinguished for her witty dialogue and creation of heroes and heroines who made their way in life, either by "gold- 2 Friedman and other film scholars in his book ascribe themselves to Fredric Jameson's call in The Political Unconscious for the (re)textualization of early texts, to expose their ideological context (NY: Cornell UP 1981). Assuming that texts are symptomatic of social reality, especially those that enjoyed commercial and critical success are particularly revealing of critical moments of national histories. Sumiko Higashi writes: "Despite the primacy accorded class, Jameson's project of (re)textualization to expose the ideological context opens possibilities for readings of film as texts registering the repression of ethnic groups and women" (Friedman 119). 3 This essay and further information on Loos are available at .