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El machismo mata, Reportaje de Jordi évole https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdjTFdbm0IA

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prostitución, whore’s glory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhgpTrgLYt4

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Eldiario.es da una muestra sobre los micromachismos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co_z_GbjbHY 

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Pelo Malo (2013)

Pelo Malo

Pelo Malo (2013) es una película de producción venezolana que narra la represión que sufre un niño (Júnior) por querer encajar dentro de la normativa social y que es representada a través de su cabello. El filme comienza con una escena muy particular que muestra al muchacho desnudo en una bañera, flotando y meneando la cabeza –su pelo se siente como si fuera normal (“blanco”, liso), tiene movimiento y en cierta manera, esto engloba el deseo del joven de querer ser como los demás (un deseo de renacer), seguir un canon de belleza que es luego mostrado a través de su mejor amiga. 

Es esa niña, contraria a todo canon de belleza pero que aspira a ser una Miss, una princesa, la que contribuye a entender esa sociedad en la que viven como una en la cual la belleza es tanto una fuente de poder, como una forma de esclavitud de herencia occidental. La considero esclavitud pues no es más que el reflejo de una realidad en la que la variabilidad racial es menor y se tiende a ocultar: el ejemplo más claro es la consideración de Júnior de que su pelo es malo y necesita ser liso. Además esa forma de violencia –la belleza- es incluso un arma de contradicción ante una realidad tan dura como es una violación: “a ti no te van a violar porque no te ves bonita” le dice un niño al otro, normalizando y convirtiendo en un halago esa violencia física.  No obstante, el ser bonito o bonita significa una oportunidad de salir de la pobreza, según son influenciados los niños a través de los concursos de belleza que ven diariamente en la televisión. Ser una princesa o un cantante podrían mejorar sus vidas y tienen que hacer todo lo que sea posible, ya sea obtener el dinero para una foto o crearse una nueva identidad para la misma. Pelo Malo gira en torno a la confección de una (de tantas) identidad en relación con la sociedad en la que se mueve el protagonista. Los roles de género que se muestran, no son sólo además muy estereotipados, sino que muestran la reprobación que causa el no ajustarse a los mismos. Sin embargo, se sabe que la identidad no es algo estable ni fijo, que está cogido como por pinzas e influenciado por lo que nos rodea. Es la escena en la que los dos amigos juegan utilizando el cielo como escenario donde se puede observar lo delicado del género:

Tal como se presenta, es reflejo de la debilidad de lo normativo, de su fuerza y su peligrosidad al ser impuesta (como es el efecto que tiene el tiroteo que se escucha en el preciso momento del juego). Los niños sienten temor del tiroteo, pero aún así lo consideran algo normal –algo a lo que no hay que enfrentarse. Esto es una buena reflexión respecto a la situación alienada que vive el muchacho por, aparentemente, no representar o encarnar los valores de su género: es un niño que quiere ser un hombre, pero en su entorno, un hombre debe ser un macho y él prefiere jugar con niñas, bailar, cantar y ser coqueto. La única persona de toda la película a la que parece no importarle eso es a otra persona alienada, su abuela, que quizás por su edad e intereses propios, acepta y estimula el libre desarrollo de la personalidad de su nieto (Júnior) con una simple acción: alisarle el pelo.  No tengo dudas que la cuestión de la propia libertad del niño emerja con el nuevo peinado, aunque considero que la exposición del antes y el después –al más puro estilo de Victor Victoria (1982)-refleja las expectativas y atributos de género , además de racial en el caso de Júnior. Otro paralelismo importante es el del cantante Belga Stromae en su videoclip de la canción Tous les mêmes, donde luce un peinado y atuendo que representaría tanto lo masculino como lo femenino, resaltando las cualidades (y defectos) de ambos. En relación con la película, es interesante una de las estrofas finales que cuestiona la insensatez de la elección por belleza y el género, algo que respondería al insulto de la amiga de Júnior cuando le increpa que nadie le querrá porque no es bonito y el rechazo por parte de su madre. La complejidad de la relación madre (soltera) e hijo en esta pelicula es crucial para entender el sufrimiento o trastorno  que padece el protagonista en el transcurso de la película. La madre parece estar configurada por lo tradicional, lo aceptable en la sociedad, y por lo marginal, lo inapropiado; sin embargo a su comportamiento se podrían atribuir factores como el temor a la alienación total en su trocito de sociedad, el impacto de los valores culturales y la supervivencia. Esto último creo que es clave para entender el desprecio que muestra hacia los intereses y comportamientos de su hijo, no voy a justificar su crueldad hacia el pequeño pero sus acciones parecen ser medidas correctivas para evitar que su hijo se convierta en un avasallado o paria social. Recurrir a un médico para sanar a su hijo, forzarlo a presenciar una escena sexual heterosexual y la sugerencia de abandono por no aceptar al niño tal como él quiere ser no son más que estrategias desesperadas de una madre en una situación límite en un entorno devorador.

La violencia en su estado más totalitario es la representada por la maquinilla eléctrica, limitante, represora y muy probablemente, el detonante de un posible trastorno en la adultez de Júnior. Con una escena final brutal, se le muestra al espectador una escena cotidiana de la vida colegial: un patio de recreo repleto de niños recitando un himno, todos uniformados y siguiendo la norma. Por otro lado, Júnior, con la cabeza rapada, frustrado y perdido en su propio trauma identitario.

Algo así como el limón que se pudre por dentro.

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To live in the Borderlands means...

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Thank you Lisa, I used to hate you during my childhood until I realised you were absolutely fucking right.

I miss the old Simpsons so much

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Chicano Literature: “Eleven”

"What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are—underneath the year that makes you eleven.

Like some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part of you that’s still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three.

Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven years old is. You don’t feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even moths before you say Eleven when they ask you. And you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost twelve. That’s the way it is".

                                                                            - Sandra Cisneros

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for all the bilingual hotties out there

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Graphic (queer) Irony

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El valle de los avasallados.

"Tengo que vencer mi miedo. Para vencer el miedo, hace falta verlo, oírlo, olerlo. Para ver el miedo, hace falta estar a solas con él. Cuando pierdo de vista mi miedo, es como si perdiera el conocimiento". - Réjean Ducharme.

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Mommy (2014)

The young Canadian director Xavier Dolan, directed this movie about Steve a troubled fifteen-year-old boy and his relationship with his mother, Diane.

The movie narrates an episode of their lives, when Steve is not allowed to remain in the reformatory he has been till the action takes place and his mother decides to take care of him in spite of his uncontrollable changes of mood. He is described to have some mental problems that cause him to act violently and in a sudden way, though apparently he is a sweet, loving boy.

Both, his mother and him could be considered to be a bit vulgar, due the way they dress and talk, which demonstrates the clash of social classes and the struggle to fit in by the two characters. As in Léolo, Steve adores his mother and performs freely (well, as much as society lets him do so). However, he is not able to behave in a normal way, as much as his mother wishes to, so he is not someone that can be handled easily. Indeed, it seems that the death of his father contributed to his ‘illness’ and, eventually, made his mother turn into both figures: the motherly and the fatherly one -which really frustrates her. Family roles seem to be alienated in this movie, none of the characters behave as they are supposed to do. For instance, Steve and Diane act more like friends than like mother and son, even though they love each other deeply; then their neighbour, Kyla, is completely oblivious to her duties as a mother.

Then, the relationship between identity and people in this movie is that, identity is sometimes made upon needs and for the self-benefit; and other times is just reduced to the mere need to fit in -not risking anything. However, the movie also provides the idea that there are people who is not meant to belong to the place they are forced to be, so the ending of a life through suicide is considered a way of identification. An assertive identity, not accepted by many.

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Water (2005)

Water is a Canadian movie that belongs to a trilogy: Earth, Fire and Water, all of them directed by Deepa Mehta. This movie deals with India’s widows, how they must live and the consequences of not following the norms that rule their society, all seen throught the life of a young girl that becomes a widow shortly after she is married to an old man.

This movie portrays how identity is forced in cultures that do not accept equality and open-mindedness within its members. On the one hand, there is Chuyia (a seven-year-old girl) who is taken to the house where all widow women must live in a state of almost poverty. Widows are considered to be elementes of bad karma, so they have to be dressed in white (a symbolic way of identification as pure, basic -not able to behave as the rest of society) as well as having to shave their heads. When the girl arrives, she does not understand anything of what has happened and will happen to her, and this infuriates some of the older women there. They, somehow, say that without a husband she is worthless. Most of them admit that it is not fair, but do not rebel against their situation and intend to keep these values through Chuyia. However, there are two women at the house that do not fit there: the first one  Kalyani, who is used as a prostitute for the welfare of the community given her beauty; and  Shakuntala, a woman whose way of thinking is influenced by Gandhi’s ideals. The character of Kalyani is quite relevant, for she is extremely beautiful and full of life, although, she is marginalised from the rest. She has been left to live isolated from the rest, even when she is the one that brings money for the women of the house. Soon, she became friends with Chuyia and acts like her big sister whereas Shakuntala behaves in a motherly way, worrying about Chuyia’s own good.

As soon as Chuyia becomes part of these women’s lives, it can be observed how their struggle of being themselves in a society that does not allow that begins. First there is Shakuntala’s questioning of the unfairness that is associated to a widow’s life and her consequent desire of not letting Chuyia live that life. Then, there is Kalyana, who falls for an upper class man and whose self-imposed shame for being a widow and a prostitue, leads her to tragic outcome. So, in brief, this movie portrays the difficulties of being forced to live according to a set of norms with no room for equality or fairness, especially for women. Identity and self are not the same in this movie, women portray -perform- an identity (established by their surroundings) and they keep a self that wants to break free from those social norms that oppress them. There is no place for those who do not want to live under a sexist regime for what can be summarised as follows:

Widows have three choices:

1. Burn with their husbands when he is cremated. 2. Live the rest of her life unmarried and deprived. 3. If the family allows for it, marry her husband’s younger brother.

Is that fair?

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Léolo (1992)

This is my place, in the Mile-end neighbourhood in Montreal, Canada.

Everybody thinks I’m French-Canadian.

Because I dream, that is not what I am.

Those who trust only their own truth, call me Leo Lozeau.

They say he is my father, but I know I’m not his son.

Because this man is crazy, and because I am not

Because I dream, I am not.

                                                           -Léolo.

Léolo, an unique movie that tells the story of a boy that does not want to be confined to his familiy’s growing madness. Léo refuses to be associated with his father, whom he blames for imposing his ‘mad’ beliefs into every single member of his family. Instead, he prefers to think that his father was an italian man who -indirectly- impregnated his mom. 

In addition, Léo seeks for comfort in the only book that has ever been at his home: “L'avalée des avalés” by Réjean Ducharme. I must confess that I have tried to read this book twice, but I have not been able to finish it, it is a quite complicated (troubled -I would add) novel, though those parts I have been able to understand were absolutely brilliant.

It is really interesting that the book he reads is written in French, dealing with the suffering of a French-speaking girl whereas he denies his “Frenchness” and tries to impersonate an Italian boy in order to escape from his own reality. Apparently, his family is also discriminated for being French-speaking, as can be seen in the scene where Léo and his brother face a bully when they do not do as he pleases. Again, this is added to Léo’s desire of belonging somewhere else, and Italy does not seem a bad place to belong to. This is the reason why he is madly in love with his neighbour, Bianca, who has an Italian name but speaks French. This may be a hint for Bianca’s supossed treason towards Léo. 

There are just two people in the film, whose identity does not bother Léo. One is the ‘Word Tamer’, a sort of collectionist of fragments found in the trash of people (photos, letters); and the other is his mother. These are the only people he respects as they are, no matter their origins or their actions. Indeed, he does not blame his mother for allowing his father’s insistence on making his family do things that are considered to be for mad people only. He just simply cannot hate her. He admires the ‘Word Tamer’, an intellectual, who has got a great knowledge of the world -showing somehow that he has been influenced by so many people, so many identities. Besides, when both of them, Léo and the ‘Word Tamer’ are introduced in the film, it is at night, both wearing flashlights on their heads while a Spanish song plays in the background. Ironically, the song playing is “Misa Criolla”, that is actually a musical version of a Spanish Church’s service. I would say that this is meant to portray Léo’s features as a martyr, as an isolated character whose chances for finding a way or place to really belong to, where all shattered: mainly by his father and his teacher. 

Eventually, Léo is not able to fulfill his desire of being himself, he does not find someone who understands him or something that would make him feel like he is in the right place, so he gives up. His defeat is marked as the end of a dreamed life, he is confined to his solitude now within his family’s normality. Then, his identity is reduced to ashes, for he has been forced to the point of mental harm to behave in the way his whole family was expected to. He was tried different performances, but in the end, he just preferred to perform for himself in the cold, cold ground as Tom Waits sings: he will not dream anymore.

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Identity within a Multicultural Space

“I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each "I," every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you'll have to swallow a world.

                                                    —Salman Rushide (Midnight Children).

The role of identity is considered to be something purely unique, reduced to a single person and its country of origin. However, this idea has been proved to be wrong, given the fact that any identity –or personal identity— is or has not always been fixed, it’s a changing thing that evolves as a person grows older and encounters different cultures. Then, I would say that any identity is based on two things: social norms and performances. Social norms determine the way a person should behave, so what people usually do is a performance –they act according to what is considered normal or proper within a community.  This is the reason why we face cultural shocks: we tend to think that our ‘normal’ is worldwide known, when the truth is that every region possesses its own ‘normal’- so, this is a challenge for the human mind. The lack of an established global set of norms provides the human race with diversity, which should enrich every single one of us, however, not everyone is able to be this sympathetic with other people’s behaviours and that is when the cultural shock occurs. When someone embraces other people’s differences, this person is unconsciously acquiring some of the other person’s identity traces: like the way of thinking, behaviours or habits and also clothing style could be included in here. The more someone relates to different groups of people, the more open-minded he or she will be, then he/she will have a personality –an identity based upon the different people and places that have been influential in his or her life. 

So, what happens in places that are characterised by having a great multicultural base? Are this people more open-minded? Is there a coherent mixing of cultures? Well, I would like to answer yes to all these question, but the truth is that cannot be a general statement. General acceptance of other cultures within an “established” one, as in the case of the United States, is no common. Indeed, I would say that it is a very hypocritical country just for denying the fact that it is a country based on immigration, then they cannot claim one unique culture and identity as the proper one. Anyway, then we have Canada, a bilingual (though not everyone is bilingual) country also build up by immigrants, though it seems that me that their national identity is based more upon fair treatment for everyone (including those who belong to  minorities: ethnic, sexual, etc.). 

In order to explore this concept of identity within a multicultural point of view I’ll be using three different Canadians movies: Léolo (1992), Mommy (2014) and Water (2005).

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canadianstereotypes:

If you’re feeling blue, take a look at this

                                 well, that says some things about Americans...