#Angel Vasquez-Evangelista

[stephandseb]

Week of October 28th

We found 3 pieces of media we want to investigate with queer characters. These include

One Day at a Time: Elena Alvarez

Pose: Blanca Rodriguez-Evangelista and Angel Vasquez-Evangelista

Glee: Santana Lopez

The class readings we want to link to our project are:

JP Brammer, “The Lack of Latino Representation in Film is Deeper than Negligence” -- talking about how what we see on screen affects not only the community that is represented (or excluded), but also how other groups view a certain community (in this case, queer latines). We also want to talk about why it is important to have more queer latino representation in the media and what we can do to improve this issue.

Charles Ramírez Berg, “Stereotypes in Film" -- talking about the various elements and techniques that shape an image of a character and how it can contribute to the image of an ethnic group as a whole. We can use this reading to outline the various elements we see in our chosen pieces of media and how they portray each character.

[theodorebasmanov]

I’ve watched the third episode of the first season of “Pose”. It’s a Christmas episode – about all the Christmas stuff – presents, special events, family dinners and so on. Electra gets a huge change in her life – she’s offered “reassignment surgery” – to use a simpler language – vaginoplasty, but she needs money, so she and some of the members of her house rob some Christmas charity and while promising her girls presents, she pays all the money for her surgery. We get to see some much less pleasant events at the hospital. Pray Tell (Billy Porter’s character) visits his boyfriend and the dance teacher visits one of her best students. (Spoilers!) The next morning the student dies. This affects Damon almost directly because when he’s late to the dance lesson, he receives a tongue-lashing and gets kicked out until Blanca talks to the teacher again and then prohibits Damon going to the balls until he succeeds in his dance class and even though he’s furious at first, he agrees with her after all. Angel is pretty good at the dance floor and gets a prize on the Christmas ball, but isn’t that happy with her love life – Stan bought her a flat and promised to spend time with her and even come for at least an hour for Christmas. He even buys her a present… But then he doesn’t come and gives both presents to his wife after his boss came to his house while he was out, told his wife that Stan has a lover and tried to seduce her (but wasn’t successful in it), so on the Christmas morning Stan and his wife (her name is Patty) fight, but then he reveals both presents and tells that his boss isn’t the most honest person in the world (obviously) they reconcile. Angel, however, waited for him for almost the whole evening, but then joined her house and they had a nice family dinner everybody got the presents they wanted. The ending was very touching.

[makeitagoodoneeh]

POSE SPOILERS (season 2 finale)

I'm not going to do a read more or anything because it aired at least over a year ago but scroll if you want

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I fucking KNEW ANGEL WAS GOING TO PROPOSE I KNEW it

[laylalgbtqheadcanons]

Angel Vasquez-Evangelista from Pose (2018) is trans! (Canon)

[theodorebasmanov]

I’ve watched the second episode of the first season of “Pose”. So, balls continue and so do the competitions continue too and our young house (Spoilers!) wins two times in a row and are very proud of it. Then one guy called Ricky invites Damon on a date and they walk on the pier, kiss and dance together, however, when Ricky starts touching Damon’s ass and Damon says he’s not ready Ricky backs up and agrees to go on another date. Unfortunately (or not), Damon’s dancing teacher offers him to go to a ballet at the same time and Damon decides that dancing is more important than love life. Damon crying in the ballet is just such a mood I also cry at the theatre a lot. Anyway, Ricky waits for him in vain and when Damon tries to talk to him later and apologize Ricky says that everything is over. However, next time Damon invites him to go to the theatre together Ricky agrees. Discrimination of transgender gay women of colour in a gay bar. That’s what happens to Blanca and she tries to fight against it and even skips a ball for that. Police, seriously?! White young gays call police on a trans woman?! Because Blanca didn’t show up on the ball and Electra (The leader of the house Blanca left in the first episode.) gets her out of prison. Angel continues her weird relationship with Stan, who finds her in some sex club… I’ve read about such a place in “Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides. Where sex workers (mostly those considered “odd” as here – a transgender woman, or in the book where it also was a transgender woman and an intersexual person) are in glass boxes and entertain clients, who can watch, but not touch. Stan is pretty possessive over her and says that she loves her because she’s the only real person in his life. She offers her to buy her a place of her own. Funny thing is that he actually does! He asks for a bonus at work and his understanding boss (sarcasm) gives it to him on two conditions – telling the truth about his lover and working weekends when required. So, he buys a dishwasher for his wife and a flat for Angel. The ending with classical music and the montage was just perfect! (The dance itself, however, was the wrong one, because it was «In the Hall of the Mountain King» by Grieg and I’m not sure if ballet on this music even exists… Okay, I’ve checked, it does, but it looks nothing like we saw on stage at the end.)

[theodorebasmanov]

I decided to take a pause between the two seasons of “Moominvalley” and watch the first season of some series I was going to watch for a long time, so I’ve watched the first episode of the first season of “Pose”. What I didn’t expect it to be more than an hour long. Remember that I don’t know anything about Vogue – I’ve seen it in “Saturday Church”, I know it’s closely connected to queer culture in general, but nothing else. So, it’s a series about black and mostly queer vogue dancers in New-York in the eighties and their problems on and outside of the dance floor. The main character (well, one of them) is a (spoilers!) HIV positive woman, who left a House (vogue dancing group) and decided to create her own - Blanca. She took there all the “outcasts” – a gay seventeen-years-old guy, whose parents kicked him out, she found on the street and who has nowhere else to go - Damon; a transgender sex worker (I’m not here for that discourse today, so I’ll be using this term) woman, who also left the same house as she - Angel; another homeless guy, who decided to join, after they’ve lost a dancing competition with her previous House - Esteban. Blanca made some rules for her house and the first one – education, so she made Damon go the dance school, even after he was late with the application and the class was full, she persuaded the teacher to give him a second chance. Angel is also in some kind of strange relationship with Stan Bowes an Irish-Italian yuppie who works for Trump. Trump? Seriously? I mean the broadcast started in 2018, so it was already pretty ironic at the time. By the way, I finally saw Billy “Mr Very Cool Hat” Porter in an actual movie, not on the red carpet and it’s very nice.