Learning to labor with Handy Manny: immigration politics and the world of work in a children's cartoon

Abstract

This article provides a textual analysis of Handy Manny, a popular Disney cartoon featuring a Latino handyman. Specifically, it explores how the debut of the television series does important ideological work that moderates a more provocative image of Latina/os that appeared less than five months earlier during “A Day without an Immigrant,” a nationwide protest against conservative immigration reform in the US that sought to amplify the importance of migrant workers to culture and economy. While Handy Manny offers a nuanced portrayal of “Hispanics” through a set of Latina/o signifiers like food, festivals, and a Spanish vocabulary, it also draws an obvious connection between ethnicity and manual work, particularly in construction, domestic, and service industries that have historically relied on Latin American migrants. As such, the cartoon promotes a saccharine image of Latina/os as “productive” potential citizens, but mostly within the confines of employment. Although Handy Manny both recognizes and participates in the “ethnicization” of labor in ways that reproduce the relations of production, it contains some disruptive possibilities that arise ironically from the same characters designed to attract young viewers and deflect serious criticism: the anthropomorphic tools.