Is Ricky Ricardo Simply a Stereotype?

Though he was the most famous during the 1950's and 60's, it would be very hard to find someone these days that does not know who Ricky Ricardo is. There may be some doubt about Desi Arnaz, but no one forgets the bongo-playing husband from the I Love Lucy Show. The show was praised for the being the first sitcom to have a mixed race marriage on television as well as have a pregnant woman on screen, but there are a few aspects of the show that are not revolutionary at all. In fact, they reinforce stereotypes that most people already possessed of Latino persons and Latino men especially.

Desi Arnaz plays Ricky Ricardo, Lucille Ball's husband on I Love Lucy. On the show he was a Cuban nightclub owner that orchestrated the �Ricky Ricardo Orchestra.� Lucille Ball played the wife that stayed at home and always wanted to be in Ricky's world. Many of the plotlines of the show were of Lucy trying to be in one of Ricky's shows at his nightclub. The ethnic stereotypes came into play when it was found out that Lucy had crossed the line domesticity, as she did in every episode.

Though Arnaz was the main male figure on I Love Lucy, he was not the star of the show. The show was about Lucille Ball, and the characterization of Ricky Ricardo portrayed that. He was the �male buffoon� a type of common Latino stereotype characterized by Charles Berg. He is the exact opposite of the typical Anglo American male. 10 The most memorable line of every episode of the show was Desi's scream �Lucy, you got some �splainin' to do!� This incorporated two different characteristics of the buffoon stereotype. The first is the hot temper of Latino men. He cannot keep calm and must scream at Lucy. The second is the broken English that is displayed when he gets angry. He speaks English relatively well in the entire episode, though of course with a Cuban accent, but when he gets upset, he loses his English grammar. When Lucy finally explains what has happened and it is worse than Ricky initially expected he gets even hotter tempered and irreverently screams out swear words in Spanish. This implies that he cannot control himself and can only communicate his feelings in his native language.

Arnaz is portrayed as the opposite of the loving and understanding husband that was common in most television shows in the 1950's and 1960's. He is not reserved and calm in the face of Lucy's entire calamity, but is also just as out of control and animated.

Outside of the home, Ricky Ricardo was a bandleader and singer for his nightclub. It was very uncommon for a husband on television to have such an exotic profession. It is only believable that he holds this position because he is a Latino man and has extra passion and flavor. Lucy, not being of Latino origin, does not possess any of this and that is why it is not possible to come into Ricky's world of exotic music and dance. Lucy stays at home like a typical television housewife, but it is Ricky that is the different one, which in turn influences Lucy.