The Bechdel Cast - Selena with Mala Muñoz

Episode Date: January 28, 2021

Caitlin, Jamie, and special guest Mala Muñoz discuss Selena (1997). Anything for Selenas!(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @mala_munoz on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Nerves the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption. They were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks everywhere. On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right?

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Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Welcome to the Bechdel cast. My name is Jamie Loftus. My name is Caitlin Durante. And today is a much requested episode that we're excited to bring you but first it is our sacred duty our solemn duty our only duty in this lifetime to tell you what the podcast is about which we don't always

remember to do i thought you were going to say that like it's our sacred duty to to sing since we've been doing that a lot lately we have been singing quite a bit i feel like because i mean you if you've clicked on the episode you know i just it would not be you know i i can imitate a disney orchestra but i can't be selena so i yeah i mean it's best if we you know although i have heard i mean when selena songs come up at karaoke they always are the most spirited performances, whether they are good or really bad. But yes, it is our sacred duty to pod in this life. It's true.

Yeah. What is our podcast? It is a podcast where we examine movies from an intersectional feminist lens. That's true. And what we've noticed is that a lot of movies do a very bad job. Hold on. No, it's true. And we use the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point to inspire a much larger conversation.

And the Bechdel test, of course, is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test. And by our standards, because there's some different renditions of the test, but the one that we use is two people with names of any marginalized gender speak to each other about something other than a man for at least two lines of dialogue you think it would happen but you think it would happen more than it does but today is i'm really excited it has been a much requested episode that i think we've gotten another spike in requests uh recently because of the recent TV adaptation, which I also watched and I'm interested to talk about. So let's bring our guest into the mix. Yes, let's do it. She is a writer

and the co-host and co-producer of the podcast Locatora Radio. It's Mala Munoz. Hello. Hi. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm extremely excited to talk about this movie. And I mean, the Bechdel test in general, but like, even the invitation, I had never thought of this before in relation to Selena, the movie, like it had never occurred to me to apply this metric to the film. So I've never talked about this before in relation to the film um so I'm excited I'm excited too well part of it is like when we cover biopics which we haven't done a whole ton of but we've done some yeah sometimes there's kind of like just a trickier conversation around doing a biopic because it's a story about a real life person versus like a completely fictional character

so like you know sometimes like the conversations that we tend to have get a little trickier it's a story about a real life person versus like a completely fictional character. So like, you know, sometimes like the conversations that we tend to have get a little trickier when it's a biopic. But, you know, Bechdel test does apply to Selena. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it was interesting. I mean, I will I first, I guess let's talk about what our personal histories with this movie. And I guess let's extend that to Selena in general. You know, I identify as Chicana. I'm Mexican-American, born in 92 in L.A. County and raised by two Mexican-Americans. Right. My father identifies as Chicano and he's from California.

He's from Bakersfield and my mom is from L.A. Depending how you count, I'm like third or fourth generation Mexican American. And so I found Selena by way of just existing and being raised in that house. And via my kind of like pochones, I really connected with her because she's also like a second, third gen Mexican-American raised by Mexican-Americans. And she also had a very public sort of relationship with her learning of the Spanish language and her music was around. You know, the movie came out in the 90s.

She was murdered in the 90s when she was 22. And I grew up with her, you know, as a 90s she was murdered in the 90s when she was um 22 and I grew up with her you know as a 90s baby so the film is one of those movies that there are periods of time where it's just I have memories of the movie just being on like on repeat in the house you know like somebody left the dvd in and then it just keeps closing next time someone turns on the tv it's back on the movie and then when you're you're walking to the kitchen you stop and you stand because it's playing and it's just a cycle for yeah so you know very much just in my life and as an adult getting really into the sort of fandom of selena especially here in la who among us has not donned a Selena costume for Halloween or for a karaoke night,

a Selena Oakey night at East Side Love? You know what I mean? The bi-monthly like anniversaries and celebrations, the countless fan accounts and Facebook and Instagram and YouTube pages and channels about her, the Selena impersonators, the shows, the Como La Flor festival, you know, the anything for Selena's this, the, the, the, the shows the Como la Flor festival you know that

anything for Selena's this that that all of it I'm in it I go to the parties the Selena Technocumbia I love the drag Queens I have the merch um amazing it's it's all things all Selena all the time hell yeah yeah love it and she has such iconic looks that like oh yeah oh yeah replicating all the looks yeah all the high-waisted pants all the crops the red lips the the hair all of it because she was donning looks that were like they're easy for for like a a girl who looks like her or who's somewhere in that that range you know it's like we can we can wear these looks and like really rock them and they're accessible she wasn't serving k Jenner. You know, she was serving Selena Kephenia from Corpus Christi and accessible.

And that's why so many women today continue to replicate her aesthetic because it's like, Oh yeah, this is ours. We can rock this. This is easy. We do this anyways. We would have done this regardless, you know? Right. Friend of the pod, Danny Fernandez has done some incredible Selena looks over the years. Truly. Yes. Concur.

I agree. Shout out, Danny. Shout out, Danny. Another iconic Chicana. We love it. We love to see. Jamie, what about you? Your history and relationship?

I've known Selena's music since I was really young I didn't know uh any like I guess specific details of her life I kind of just knew the general overview of her life but when I was little I just remember this the other day but when I was little I did uh like ballet dance to dreaming of you and it was like a herd of little girls in pink dresses just like flailing around and so I remember learning a little bit about Selena because that would have been maybe like five years after she died I was and and then I didn't learn more about her life and kind of the fan culture around her life until kind of a couple of years ago, where another friend of the pod, Melissa Lozada Oliva, who's an incredible poet, and writes about

Selena pretty extensively. And it was just through interacting with her work and just talking with her that I learned more about Selena's life. So as far as the movie goes, I'd seen it in like bits and pieces over the years, but I hadn't really like sat with it before a couple weeks ago to get ready for this show. What about you, Caitlin? I admittedly had never seen this movie and only had a general understanding or general sense of Selena. I knew her as an icon. And I knew just the tragic story of her murder. But I didn't know a whole lot. And it wasn't until I saw this movie that I was like, Oh my gosh, she was amazing. And now I was like I I'm gonna listen to Selena songs on Spotify and so now I and I have like Como La Flor stuck in my head right at this very moment so yeah I uh in a in a short time now

have become a pretty big fan all thanks to Selena the movie and i also watched the series on netflix to kind of prepare for this episode and did a bunch of reading and yeah listen to a bunch of her music and yeah so that's uh that's kind of where i'm at yeah mala i wanted to ask you before we kind of just jump into the meat of the movie uh so i found this and Caitlin found it as well, this amazing interview you did with Vice around the time that the series was coming out. And I mean, there were certainly a lot of takes on the series. But you spoke like really in depth about where Latinx representation is at in Hollywood right now. And so I kind of wanted to start before we jump into the hyper details of the movie, just talking a little bit about that, because Selena is such, you know, such a huge figure.

But but, you know, you were saying that there should be absolutely more figures in the Latinx community represented. So I'm yeah, I just would like to kind of open that up. Yeah so I want to start by saying that I have been talking about Selena a lot recently online because of Selena the series yeah right so it brought up a lot of conversations anew and what folks in the creative space have pointed out and in in the fandom have pointed out, is that there's been a lot of activity around Selena in the past few years, the MAC Cosmetics line, the Forever 21 line, the series. I feel like more Selena impersonators

and tribute artists and bands more than ever, and a lot of activity from the fandom on the internet. So she has this enduring legacy that has had like a spike and so with the series there were so many things going on with the series and I have been putting out like IGTV videos to give my reactions and my reviews of even the promo material the trailer they put out it like in 2019 at this point and then one itself. So I've been like really kind of just digging in. And so all that to say, you know, sometimes when women criticize things and analyze things and give opinions on things like TV shows and pop culture icons, you know, I experienced a lot of

online. I'm a hater. I just am mad that they didn't cast me as Selena um I'm a relationship with my father I am a traitor to the Latinx community and I'm tearing us all down you know the list goes on yeah very chill very chill reactions to having an opinion very about a television show mind about TV about TV right so um that being said I love Selena and I recognize that when somebody like Selena a huge talent of of just boundless you know potential cut way too short I'm talking about somebody like this like she was so amazing and so talented and so gifted, but also such a professional. She was going places and an icon like her, we can expect to see her everywhere forever. Tattoos, people have Selena rooms in their houses. I've been to Selena super fan, like a house in Texas. I went down there with the podcast to like do a speaking engagement in South

Texas. And the woman who was hosting us, she took us to her house real quick and she had a Selena room, not uncommon, filled with merch. You know what I mean? Nice. Yeah. So not unlike Marilyn Monroe or Elvis Presley, you know, or Tina Turner, any icon of this status, we're going to see her on, on all kinds of products and on TV and in film and in commercials forever. It's to be expected. There's nothing wrong, wrong on some level with it. And it's almost speaks to how legendary she truly is at the same time, at the same time. There are so like few examples of her level of talent, but there are more people and more figures who possessed and possess her level of talent in the Latinx and Latin American space. And I would love to learn about them as well and see more of those figures as well and have that magnitude of,

you know, social awareness and appreciation for their work and talent as well from Black artists, from Latin America, Indigenous artists from Latin America, and U.S. Latinx artists from a lot of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. And as a Mexican American, I want to apply like a lens that complicates Mexie centrism. And that allows us to say, yes, this is great. Also, we can we want more. Right, you know, so that's, that's kind of where my take on Selena and representation, because I don't think that this is necessarily a celebration of like more representation. It's kind of a rehashing of something that we've seen. And it's not as though it's undeserved. And of course, you'd want to highlight a figure like

Selena in movies and TV and stuff. But there's just so few stories with Latinx characters in mainstream American media that we should see stories about people with more just kind of average lives who didn't rise to superstardom. Because, I mean, just so many different people with so many different experiences deserve to have their story told and you know we just need to see a wider scope of latinx stories in general yeah i mean how many different kinds of white families do you see on tv and in movies like a bajillion they make them up like they're it it is it's always so yeah to like it is like just some bare minimum shit. And it's always really frustrating, especially when it's a cultural figure who's so like, who is as amazing as Selena is. It's like, it's not knocking Selena to say that there should be more like that's, that's part of what she was fighting for. Yeah, 100%. So it's really interesting to also see how people shut down criticism.

In my experience talking about Selena recently, the number of men specifically, and including queer men, which I think is really important to talk about in fandom circles, because we all like love and appreciate a queer fan base because queer fans have the best taste. And really, it's true. Like, if you're a queer icon, it's because your fan base has taste, and you're really delivering something of high quality. And that's what gives an artist staying power and lasting power like in the pop culture space. Point blank period. If you're a diva, like you're not a diva unless you have a queer fan base. True. Yeah. Queens dressing up as you like you haven't done it. Right. So but there is can still be a toxic masculinity among queer men, among gay men in particular. And so, you know, within the Latinx space, that queer machismo exists and that queer misogyny exists. And it, for me, came out in

these ways that a number of queer men and straight men, Latinx men, Mexican American, Chicano men, telling me as a Latino community, we must uplift like everything Latin or everything Mexican or they Netflix, they're going to think that we don't know how to support each other. They're never going to give us anything ever again. I'm like, you guys are so fucking dramatic. First of all, she has the feature film, has the fucking series. And it's the number one show on Netflix. Can a bitch rant on her own Instagram page? Lord. We're all Latinos. So support all of it. And I'm like, look, you know how many motherfuckers have a Spanish surname? You think I'm in community with everybody with a Spanish last name? Absolutely not. Right.

Also, that's what you're advocating for is like more. So like, what's the problem? People are addicted to being mad. Yeah. Okay. Should we talk about the movie and recap it? Let's do it. Okay. So obviously this is a biopic about Selena Quintanilla, the iconic Tejano musician.

We open in media res to get very film school in everybody. Was that me again? Into the midst of things. Okay. I think something I don't know. I don't know Latin. Okay. But we open that way on Selena about to play the huge show that she plays at the Houston Astrodome. She's at the height of her career. It's February 1995, only about a month before she would be murdered. So we see her playing this show. And then we cut to her father, Abraham, as a young man and member of a group called Los Dinos who get screwed out of doing a gig by a racist club owner who didn't know that the Dinos were Mexican. So they go and try to play at a club where the clientele is mostly Mexican, thinking that they'll fit in, but the crowd there doesn't like the Dinos kind of like white barbershop quartet style of music. So there's a bit of backlash there.

Then we cut to 20 years later. It's 1981 now. And Abraham is now Edward James Olmos. Who we need to talk more about him on this show. Another character actor icon for the ages. The first major thing I saw him in, I think, was Battlestar Galactica. And what a...

I grew up watching Stand and Deliver from Substitute Teachers. That was my Edward James Olmos. Like anytime a teacher is sick there would be like a 22 year old substitute that's like um here's a movie about math like get inspired yeah and i loved it i was like i could i could probably recite stand and deliver from memory oh yeah at um east la community college and i don't know if they still do this they probably still do they offer this summer math program for kids called the Jaime Escalante math program and I was yeah it was it

was I mean I mean it was it was cool it's a great community resource I went to the Jaime Escalante math program every summer as a kid I was it was so like it's just yes Edward and Jaime are everywhere. That's so cool. He made math sexy. Oh, yeah. Not easy to do. Not easy to do. So true icon. I want to say, and Edward, not Edward, Jaime Escalante, I want to say he was Bolivian. Oh, let me check.

Yes. Yeah. Bolivian American educator. Yeah. Wow. God, that was like LA. LA used to feel so far away and abstract to me so I was like oh yeah it's like whatever happens in stand and deliver that's what LA is like

it's a bit of a dramatization but there are some yes okay so we got we have Edward James Olmos he now has a family including his wife marcella played by constance marie a young son ab and two daughters suzette and of course selena who i think is eight or nine when we first meet her as a child and abraham discovers that that Selena can sing very, very well. So he basically makes his family start, like, form a band with A.B. on bass, Suzette on drums, and Selena as the singer. And the kids are reluctant at first, but then they keep with it, and they start playing as Selena y los dinos at the restaurant that Abraham opens up and Selena discovers that she loves performing. Then Abraham teaches her to sing in Spanish and they have a conversation about

their identities as Mexican-Americans. But then the family restaurant has to close down after a few months because of the reagan era economic recession that was an iconic i love when they're this movie i feel like does pretty well with the fact that it's like at times a period piece but i love when in a period piece someone just like drops like a hot vocabulary word to remind you what year it is where it was like they're they're like why is the why is the restaurant closing and someone responds reaganomics i was like right it is the 80s right great line yeah it was great so the family has to move to leave their home and move into an uncle's house, which is when Abraham making only space for men in Tejano music, which is the type of music that they are now playing. And she's worried that Selena, because she's a girl, won't be able to get very far.

But then we cut to 1989 and Selena is now Jennifer Lopez. And the band is really good. And they are pretty well-established Tejano musicians with a following. And people love Selena. Then we get this fun scene where their tour bus, Big Bertha, gets stuck. And these two guys stop to help. And it fucks their car all up. But they don't even care because they love Selena so much.

And they're just like, I'm going to hang this as a shrine on the wall of my garage. Iconic. Love that scene. Then Chris Perez, played by John Sita, gets brought into the band as a guitarist. And Selena thinks he's cute because he's cute. Best favorite. he's cute because he's cute yeah best favorite john cedar as chris perez specifically is just like like in the film universe just creme de la creme for me yeah love him it's so and they're like their chemistry is so good and oh yeah you're like oh it's sometimes i'm like oh this this romance is taking up too much

space in the movie but this this one caitlin and i were both like no it's beautiful i texted jamie this morning and i was like i'm obsessed with chris and selena like their scenes are scenes that that i rewind and rewatch like you know like no i need to rewatch the scene where she tells him he's a dumb idiot after he trashes the hotel room. I must, must, must replay. Yes. It's so like, it's so it's I don't know, it should tip over into super melodrama, but it somehow doesn't where John Cena is so good.

I love when Selena goes up to him and he's like, I'm no good for you. Like, he's just like, I'm a bad boy. You boy you don't understand and she's like shut the fuck up like perfect you're not that tough I love it you're a musician you spend you've spent a lot of hours rehearsing and practicing no music Gary like please yeah oh love it so uh Selena thinks he's cute and then they flirt a little bit they go out for pizza they start to like each other and then they kiss on the bus but more like because it's danger it's bad someone, I forget which character walks in on them and is like, oh my God, I'm so sorry.

But I think it's Pete. Yeah. So they get caught. But like the real threat is getting caught by Abraham, which doesn't happen yet. Meanwhile, they get booked for a gig in Monterrey, Mexico. And there's a concern about whether or not the band who is made up of Mexican-Americans will be able to play to a Mexican crowd. This is also when we get the

trouble with Chris, where he and Selena are having to sneak around. There's that whole, you know, trashing the hotel room scene. Abraham thinks he's a punk. He's like, I'm no good for you. And she's like, shut up and kiss me. And he immediately is like, okay. And so they keep seeing each other in secret. And then it turns and then they do the gig in Mexico. And it turns out the crowds there love Selena. So now Selena and Chris have gotten closer. They are in love. They want to get married. But this is when Abraham finds out about the relationship and he fires Chris. But Selina is like, I still want to be with you. We have to get married to like show my dad that this is serious.

So they elope and Abraham finds out about it and he's really upset at first but then he comes around and then that scene where he's like hi son welcome to the family i'm just the ultimate mark of approval and of acceptance into a mexican american home welcome son did you bring your guitar? That's my favorite part. Did you bring your guitar? When the Texan accents sneak out, I love it. I love it. So good. So the band is all this while they're blowing up.

Record sales are really good. They're nominated for a Grammy. Selena starts working on a crossover English language album. Selena opens a boutique because she's always been interested in fashion design. And this is when we meet Yolanda Salvidar, who is played by Lupe Ontiveros, who handles Selena's businesses and also as the president of her fan club then we get another fun scene where selena and i'm a little unclear on this character's name she calls her reanie but then i couldn't find her on imdb as that name oh who she she goes to the mall with yeah to the dress store yeah i'm not entirely sure who that person is to selena exactly but she goes to the mall with? Yeah, the dress store. Yeah, I'm not entirely sure who that person is to Selena. Exactly. But she's in the movie from like it's on it's the the like an enduring friend

is not necessarily somebody that comes up a lot in like the fan spaces i don't see a lot of that you like the bandmates you see the family you see chris you see the backup dancers you know um and in retellings and in writings and in readings and i don't it's she's not uh somebody that in real life stands out to me however the actress that played the friend in the movie played the mother marcella in selena the series oh well i didn't pick up on that yeah yeah incredible because she's in the scene where in like they first meet chris and they're like what like watching him audition basically so like she's in a fair number of scenes meet Chris and they're watching him audition, basically. So she's in a fair number of scenes and stuff, but they don't really draw that much attention to her. So I wasn't exactly sure who she was to Selena or even what her name was.

In my notes, I referred to her as friend who's over the house a lot, which I can relate with. I was that friend. Yeah. And it's, you know, I'm sure because I they I mean it's not like she didn't have friends well I don't know I don't know but it's possible that she had there was somebody that a family member or a friend of the family or a neighbor that was there all the time or definitely possible but I don't I wish maybe this is actually a really great line of inquiry like I want to I want to know more now yeah i'd be interested because if they did add her i mean i'm always happy in i mean we'll talk about it but

like one of one of the things about this movie is i wish that we saw selena talking to women in her life who aren't just her mom a little bit more so whenever that character came in it was like oh it would be cool to know you know a little what the context for this person is because we don't see selena talking to women you know about her dreams very much so when she does it's like well who is this like yeah right yeah right in any case a friend who's over over at the house a lot and selena um go to the mall in la shortly before the grammys to buy a dress for this friend and they go into this store where a white lady is racist to them but meanwhile everyone at the mall figures out that selena is there and there are a bunch of like retail and restaurant workers and then also just shoppers who are huge fans of selena and they rush to see her and then the racist lady looks like a

fool what she deserves she very much deserves and then selena is actually, we don't want your dress and screw you. Jayla really delivers that line. It's really good. Very cathartic. Okay. So then we see them at the Grammys. Selina wins a Grammy. Things are going great until the family starts to notice some discrepancies with the finances of Selina's businesses. And they realize that Yolanda

is probably behind it, but Yolanda denies it. Then we cut back to that scene at the very beginning from the Houston Astrodome, which kind of sort of morphs into the murder of Selena by Yolanda. And Selena has been shot. She's rushed to the hospital. She dies. Her family mourns. Her fans mourn. There are vigils with huge crowds of all of Selena's supporters. And then we get a montage of footage of the real Selena Quintanilla. And that kind of closes out the movie. So that is the story. Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back to discuss. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions.

Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or, can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Santer. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it like you miss 100 percent of the shots you never take?

Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts

the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers And Bowen Yang, we've got some exciting news for you

You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well this week we're taking it to the next level The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East That's right, the queen of comedy herself Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture.

I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know, I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh, I'm really good at, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song?

Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Luge. Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it.

It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Where to begin? I guess one thing that stood out to me that i just i didn't know i didn't i knew nothing about the production history of this movie i didn't realize how soon after selena's death this movie was shot and released it was very very um quick yeah i i just

um that's just kind of a rogue observation i didn't realize it was you know basically two years after yeah because she was murdered in 95 and just thinking about what it takes to get a movie greenlit and up and running and written and cast and all these things i feel like it was almost it was like right after she was murdered they got into talks about it and they got started i would assume it appears i read that um there were a lot of like non-official biographies like in the works right after her death and the quintanilla family was just like all right we gotta if people are gonna try to make movies that might misrepresent selena's story like let's just nip this in the bud and like be a part of doing this ourselves, because Abraham Quintanilla is one of the executive producers of this movie.

So they kind of this is the one they signed off on. And there was a lot of conversations with the director, Gregory Nova. he came in and talked to many members of the family and just like basically got selena's whole life story and um then adapted it to this screenplay and this movie so yeah but i think that was kind of why it all happened so quickly because there was other productions like maybe about to like mess the story up so they were like let's let's do it right before they do it wrong yeah yeah and i i want to say it was an i want to look this up now but it was either the director gregory nava or one of the producers uh moctezuma sparsa who had a teenage daughter who at the time before selena's death was a sel Selena fan and who was really into Selena

and his daughter uh was sort of one of the the catalyst behind she went like like turning Selena's life and death into a story I don't know a fact check can be done but it's either either Esparza or Nava who had a teen daughter who was a Selena fan. And I think that's important to talk about too, because her fandom also inspired and influenced and kind of asked for the film to sort of memorialize her. And I think it is sort of, there is a sort of timeline around like a major event having to do with the celebrity

and kind of keeping that momentum going to put her story to as many people as possible and because I think on on the one hand it's like shrewd business but on the other hand it's like no she we do we do want people to know about her and what happened to her and we also want people to hear her music and what I love about the film is it's such a concert film and what I didn't realize was that growing up I was watching on VHS and DVD on you know just TV screens and a couple years ago at the I want to say the Hungarian American Cultural Center there was this event where they rented out this big

vintage theater from like what the 30s or something with the huge screen and the seats and stuff and they played Selena the movie on the big screen and the seats and stuff. And they played Selena, Selena, the movie on the big screen. And they interviewed Constance Marie and a few other people from the film. And I never realized, no, this movie was meant to be watched on the big screen as any as if you were at a concert, because you're in from the perspective of the audience for so much of it. And so much of it is recreating the sound and the space when she was performing, you know? So yeah. That's amazing. I like I also really appreciated how I don't know, I feel like in most biopics, they cut off the song. They're like, all right, you know, but they they let it go. And I feel like having the context of her passing away pretty recently is also like i don't know i mean i it

seems like almost like a healing thing as well to to be showing all of the music and like really you know meticulously recreating those scenes i was also impressed by um the fact that the family was so involved in this production and also you know you know, don't, like, they do come off as flawed characters still. I feel like that's a kind of common biopic fumble where the subjects are either, you know, at least living, if not actually involved, where sometimes they're like, well, don't mention that. But, yeah, I mean, I don't know how exactly faithful everything was here i'm sure you know a lot more than i do mala and and the the way the series portrays it is also very different

in like a different tone uh where sometimes i'm like i don't i think abraham is being very manipulative but then the tv show goes like boinging, and I'm like, oh, I'm supposed to be laughing. Yeah, astute, very astute observation, yes. Real strange. But at least, you know, in this one, you have Edward James Olmos, who I feel like gives Abraham's negative quality, they shine through in his performance which um yeah i don't know i was impressed you know two years later that there was some nuance to how the family was depicted yeah um the oh my goodness so i in in my conversations about selena and sel Selena the series uh Abraham is so important and comes up so much because I mean again like culture on a very culturally specific way like a family like Selena's family and being that she worked with her family and they spent so many hours and so many years of her life from her

most formative years starting when she was like 10 rehearsing touring and on the bus together and working and that's a lot of hours and a lot of time done with your family we're already super claustrophobic as a people and they they want they keep us in the house for as long as they possibly keep us in the womb for as long as possible and they keep us having three four generations in a house and and people stay until get married. And that's the desire and the expectation. Very normal. You know, the idea of like not being surrounded by family at all times for some of us, for a lot of us is very foreign, is very different. So on the one hand, it's like, I wonder if even applying the like the Bechdel test to

Selena specifically is even a fair metric, if it's even relevant on a very specific level, because she was murdered when she was 22. She spent so much of her life with her family. How much time did she spend alone? How much time did she spend with non-family? Yeah. Probably not that much. You know, she had to elope, like she had to elope. Right. And Abraham and two productions abraham being an official producer on selena the movie and selena the series presents himself as a complex and flawed person

oh very much so and there's a certain level of self-awareness amongst mexican dads they know that they can be a little tough and harsh and a little being very generous. They know how they are. They know, they know themselves, you know, and they'll talk about it. They own it, but we're not complicating the tension and the impact that that has. It's not enough to be self-aware sometimes. What's the impact and what's the tension? Maria Garcia is a journalist from South Texas, and she just put out a podcast called Anything for Selena. Yes. Yeah. And the second episode is all about this daughter father, Mexican American relationship and really dives into that complexity with Abraham and you hear from him and he speaks and it's,

it's amazing, honestly, to hear. That's so cool. Yeah, I listened to the first episode and I'm like really enjoying it. Yeah, I was curious about, yeah, how, I mean, starting with Abraham's character. I don't know. I mean, my feeling as far as the Bechdel test goes for this, I feel like, I don't know, it is complicated whenever it's a biopic because you're not going to like add in new characters unless that friend truly is fictional. But like you're not going to add in new characters just to have the movie pass the Bechdel test. But there were like small things where I was like, well, I wish that, you know, like Suzette's right there and her mom's right there like there's so much more mom but like she does but it felt to me like there was way more of an emphasis on the father-daughter relationship than it was on the mother-daughter relationship and maybe that you know again when you're adapting a person's whole life and like yeah you have two hours you yeah you you don't have that much time you have to kind of figure out what's maybe what are the the biggest opportunities for tension in a story and like what are the most kind of dramatic moments because those are going to be the things you want to showcase in a cinematic story but I'm still just like oh I'd like to see more interactions

with Selena and her mother even if you know the ones with Abraham or maybe more wrought with tension yeah i don't know yeah i i like to believe because we don't we never hear from marcella we never hear from mom and like notoriously historically even in um you know 90s accounts of the aftermath of selena's murder and maria garcia talks about this on her podcast as well and this sort of archival footage is brought in um from journalists and such that Marcella's just is not around and she's not public and she doesn't make statements and the same was sort of true when Selena was performing and I think one thing with the the movie being a concert film is Selena had a particular relationship to her father vis-a-vis the music you know know, didn't share with her mom. And I wonder if like, I always wonder, and again, coming from a

culturally specific place, well, if we had scenes with Selena and her mom, how much of it would be about not the music, right? And how much of it would be about Selena's specific hopes, dreams, wants, desires? How much would it be, Selena, really going to mom as a confidant to bounce off of each other, you know, and to kind of recover from their time with Abraham? Right. Which is so much of mother daughter Mexican-American dynamics is like we're venting to each other about dad, right? Or mom is, it's okay. You know how your dad is. Like, it'll be fine. Let him cool off.

And how many of those scenes, again, Abraham as producer, because Marcel is not the producer. Abraham, how many of those scenes are we going to be allowed to see? Or does he even know about? How much does he even knowledge? how much even knowledge it could have been a shit talking absolute party every single night you'd never know there that's really that's really i i never um i never picked up on the fact that it seems like in um and then on selena the series is it abraham and suzette who are involved is ab involved in the series it's it's abraham ab and suzette are all involved marcella is not so much not in an affronted titled public written about way anyways right right i

mean i will say as far as how marcella is portrayed in this movie i i do like any scene that she and selena have together i really like like the i like that she is so i mean i don't know i mean i feel like for the little screen time she has comparatively like you do kind of get a feeling for what the push and pull in her life is of like she um doesn't want to upset her husband but that doesn't stop her from telling him how she feels about stuff even though she doesn't necessarily have the final say i like that she you know is able to like speak openly with selena and be like yeah this is bullshit but let's navigate it how we can and then what's the i feel like the maybe the maybe the last like meaty scene we have with them is when selena's saying that she wants to have a baby and she like

has these so those are like i i feel like yeah it is with when selena's talking to women that you get to know her the best and when she's talking to abraham the plot is being moved forward basically yeah yeah because i love those moments where it's like uh when she talks to friend who's over a lot about um about how she's like interested in fashion and like this is a whole other side of herself that she um like wants to get into and and then when she talks to her mom she's talking more about like what her goals are personally and you know I want to get married I want to have a kid on top of a career and I really like those I just I just wish that there was like a little bit more of that I don't know I mean you only have so much time in a biopic but in those

moments I was like oh yeah she's like 20 21 22 like she's interested in a lot of different stuff she's like hasn't fully figured herself out and it's such a like an interesting phase of life to hear people talk to each other about so I just wish there was like a little bit more of it but yeah two hours yeah I will say that I think maybe and I honestly would have to go back and watch like again again like with a very fine tooth comb but i want to say maybe the only scene with only women talking to each other about another woman is this scene at selena's fashion show where yolanda is talking to the other senoras about giving selena a gift oh yeah yes yeah but it's fucked up because it's like sinister because yolanda's disingenuous and i don't think those other ladies again i'd have to go back and look and listen to how yolanda

addresses those senoras but i don't know if they're named you know um i don't want to say no unless unless and if so it was like a quick exchange i mean the things as far as the bechdel test goes i mean there were a few one of the things that made me laugh because i'm like that technically passes two lines of dialogue is when selena is uh stealing suzette's chips that passes the bechdel test we did it oh that's through stealing another sister's chip passes that works that works yeah there are definitely moments but yeah i mean as far as selena is usually talking to her mom about either her dad or chris but there are some exceptions but but usually it's dad or chris because those are kind of the two relationships that are

the engine of the movie yeah given the most focus wonder, like, this movie was written and directed by a man, Gregory Nava. And I wonder if it had been approached differently, or if a woman was telling the story, if she would have given more focus to Selena's relationships with other women in her life. I don't know food food for thought but it's it's a sort of similar um setup with the series where you have again you know cube productions abraham and ab suzette is involved as well but you know abraham is a very strong force he is in his family and he's the head of the house and he's the head of few productions and he's in charge and in control of the estate and all things selena he just yeah quite simply is and always has been and the showrunners and the the men who um you know own and founded the production studio and who who made the series you know they're men they're they're Latinx they're Latinos and I know that the writers room I I know they boast like you know a very heavy like woman and

LGBT writers room but you know we're very heavy like woman and LGBT writers room. But, you know, we're in L.A. and we hear things and people gossip and people chatted and people have are working. You know what I mean? Like people work on things and you know, good old Abraham, who is my favorite. I do love Abraham, but we all have complicated relationships with these men. And good old Abraham, I guess, reviewed the script and didn't like a lot of things and sent it back and said, rewrite it. And then they did. And now we have what we have. Right. And so I'm not shocked at all by the gender dynamics. I think it's very much to be expected. And I just, and again, and I know our dads can do a lot for us and they really want to,

they really do have the best of intentions. They want to believe that they can provide everything, that they understand everything, that they've got it covered, that they're in control, that there's an issue, they can handle it they know their kids super super well but again in a family like selena's for her to elope is no small feat it's not a minor thing to talk about it's not a just oh oh okay no that's like a huge like huge like nuclear bomb level deal like in a house like hers and a family like hers in the culture and at the time like no this is not something to just skim over and kind of forget happened there there was a there was years in tension and build up and unhappiness and and distress leading up to that decision for her

honestly because it's one of those things that like oh oh my God, I wouldn't dream of it. Dear Lord, I tell you my sanity and my life and my safety and my peace too much. Like the deal to not to go off and get married against your father's express wishes and to not have your mom and your family there. And they don't know. And it's in secret and it's not part of your religious tradition with family. And no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So I know that there are just things that our dads cannot do for us, cannot provide for us. And we'll never understand about us. I would never, I love my dad, super involved, super supportive to this day. I would

never, ever, ever want my dad to tell my life story. Are you kidding me? How? No, I'm a grown woman. He can't. And I feel similarly about Selena. She was a, she was a grown woman he can't and I feel similarly about Selena she was a she was a grown woman she was super sexy super sexy and she knew it she was a bad bitch and she knew it she was hella confident she was a sex symbol and she fucking knew it I hate hearing interviews and um descriptions from you know her living family but also from people who are who create media about her she was so sweet she about her. She was so sweet. She was so nice. She was so sweet. She was so nice. She was nice. She was real nice. She's just nice. Nice girl. Nice. Super nice girl. She's a fucking baddie. She's a bad bitch. She was a genius.

She knew it. She fucking knew it, dude. You know what I mean? She loved her man and she was all about her man. She was all about her dude. And they were sharing a bus. They were on a tiny little bus, all these people, you know, it was no, she wasn't. And again, accounts, she wasn't hiding her relationship. She, she was openly affectionate. That was her boo. That was her man. That was her dude. Like, fuck you. You know what I mean? Fuck you. And it was a big, fuck you. And she went in a loaf and she said, nope, I'm making my own decision. And for somebody who didn't have a traditional high school graduation, didn't have traditional markers of like adolescence and adulthood because she was laboring and working and earning

money and being a celeb at such a young age, I consider her eloping being her, like, this is my mark of official entry into adulthood and womanhood. And I'm taking my man's last name you know what i mean like fuck you love you guys but enough right that but that scene too like the scene where she's just telling chris like we're we're doing this and because it's like he's well aware of what the the risk is there it's like a risk to her career risk to the family risk to everything and uh i it's so i hadn't really considered i mean first of all the idea that your dad would be overseeing the biopic and the tv

series of your life absolutely horrifying and of course and it's gonna and i i never thought of it that way of like of course her like her sexuality is going to be inherently played down because her dad like it would be weird if he was like no include all the sex you want like that's weird too right so i never considered it that way that that totally and so it's like we are i don't know it makes me so curious because it's like if your family are the main people in your life and they are also the ones carrying your legacy to an extent you're you're this mythic figure because there are parts that either your family is like oh i don't like that's weird to think about like my daughter like being sexually confident i don't weird to think about, like my daughter, like being sexually confident. I don't want to think about that. Or there's just like these kind of elements that

will just become more of a miss than than who she was. That's like, damn. Yep. Yep. I got it. I have to go on a walk. Let's process. Let's process. I always need therapy after I talk about Selena every time. Always. It always sends me into spiral. But no, like I think about, look, I've been podcasting for four years. I've, me and my, like my co-host, Diosa for Locator Radio, we've gotten like Forbes features and LA Times, like, you know, write-ups and in print and Cosmo and we throw parties and my parents have been to my events and like, I've been doing this and it's, I'm doing it

at a level where I feel like it's a big deal my dad still refers to my podcast as a vlog oh my god our dads are just gonna get things wrong yeah yeah intention is not because they don't like us not because our dads are gonna get things wrong and there's so many things our dads don't fucking know Selena wasn't doing everything with her daddy. Are you kidding me? Right. Like, I mean, and you even see that in the movie that her dad co-signed that she didn't tell everything to her dad. Like, oh, yeah.

I thank you for kind of contextualizing that. I mean, it's like the movie tells you that the eloping is a fuck you. But even in the context of, yeah just how how controlled and regimented her life was of like her asserting herself in any like in any way that had an actual impact in it also like i don't know at least as far as the movie goes it's like oh she is she's like asserting herself as the breadwinner of the family too because it's like what are you going to do fire me I'm Selena you can't fire me so you're just gonna have to deal with my decision oh she's so cool yeah she's so cool she's super cool and I feel like you know we do a disservice when we don't like point these things out because I want that part of her to be remembered or at least i want us to

think about it or ask about it i want us to want to know more you know about about her internal life yeah and it's i i like i mean the same there's i don't know i mean as far as how the movie is like writes selena i i do i mean she's she is actively voicing her opinion at every step. And sometimes her opinion gets steamrolled. But that was what was happening in her life, it seemed like. But I really liked how just the way that it was written, there's really no point where she doesn't say what she's thinking about something. Even when sometimes she's trying to protect someone's feelings or trying to kind of negotiate. Yeah. Like she says what's on her mind and she chooses her,

I guess chooses her battles in terms of like when she's going to do the fuck you. But I, I don't know. I felt like a pretty well-rounded as, as far as like something your dad would sign off on a pretty like well-rounded portrait of like how active and outspoken she was even when she didn't you know win that particular battle yeah I almost feel like the proximity to her death allowed for there were enough people around who knew her and who remembered her and how she was and the way that she spoke that I don't think that they they could have I don't think it could

have been written any other way right honestly that's one of my big gripes with selena the series is we're over 20 years away from her death at this point and her murder at this point and i'm watching selena the series she has very little screen time very few lines yeah very quiet there's like an episode where they're on the bus and they keep telling her to shut up you know and i hate that fucking word now because they use it like six times yeah i remember that right i don't got they and you know and there's multiple scenes like that throughout the the series they're in a restaurant somewhere and av made some slick fucking comment about my sister can't even talk you know what do you expect from her and and it read is very bitter and is very jealous and is

very um i felt like this time around with selena the series so far away from her you know ab has his own illustrious career and i mean that in cumbia and as a producer and with the cumbia kings and he is a legend in his own right he is a very talented songwriter and and her fusion with her brother really brought their music to life however ab's also a fucking mess dude like he's a mess and he his his career he's not a legend the way that she's a legend she was the star people showed up for her she was the headliner it was her and it's always been her and it's still her so So for the series, it read very like they muted her, they toned her down in every way. And she has practically no lines. So I appreciate that in the movie. Yeah, you get a sense for her personality and her thoughts and opinions and her feelings. And I appreciate that because she wasn't a shrinking violet. She wasn't a

wallflower. You know, her dad wasn't wasn't designing her costumes and doing her choreography from her. That was from her. She was doing that. Yeah. You know, she was a creative genius. And so I'm happy that that part is there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The series. I mean, I know this is not a podcast about the series, but the series was so confusing to me. I'm like, you have all this extra time. This would be all the all of our our mini gripes here of like, oh, it would have been cool to know a little more about her dreams and a little more about this.

And it's like, all of a sudden, you have 10 hours to do that. But where was it? Yeah, why not capitalize on opportunities to showcase Selina more? But yeah, I do appreciate in the movie that we just get this well-rounded character because Selina in real life, like real life people are, are well-rounded people. Because we talk so much

on this podcast about fictional characters in movies. Fictional women are usually written to be just so flat and one-dimensional and just don't feel like real people. So, you know, I, when you adapt a real person onto the screen, and you do it well, you get those nuances of their character, and you get those, all those dimensions, because you see, you see Selena being sexy, you see her being playful, you see her being smart, you see her being a very talented musician you see her learning and growing just like the whole what you experience in life as a person you know we see her go through and one of the things I especially liked about the character and I anytime there's a hetero romance in a movie I'm usually just like my default is just like okay this again but like i loved the way the romance develops in this movie because like you actually see like the common ground that they share and like you see

them flirting in like a cute way the scene when they're at like eating pizza together and like he's like trying to be all tough with his hot sauce it's like a sort of cringe but it's so cute it's cute and then he's like dumping like chalula all over his pizza and then she's just like okay good luck with that like i know that's gonna go horribly for you and it does and then they just like laugh about it and they're, I just like, yeah, the whole the whole relationship. I just liked how they chose to approach that. And just like, and especially because you see Selena, and I'm not exactly sure if this how accurate this was to her real life. But like, she's kind of the one to initiate that relationship. Like she's the one who like kind of approaches him and says like,

oh, hey, your haircut's really nice. And hey, do you want to go get some pizza with me? And like, she's kind of calling the shots in a way that you don't often see women doing in media. It's all about like, oh, women have, you know, are expected to just sort of like sit idly by while the man pursues them. And I like yeah go get it Selena like I loved that I love it I love it because she she you know and again she was the star and was already established in a name and I think that genuinely Chris Perez was intimidated entering into the family and entering into the band you know I think that genuinely and she was the princess and the queen you know and the apple of everybody's eye the center of attention and I not that genuinely, and she was the princess and the queen, you know, and the apple of everybody's eye, the center of attention.

And I, not that Chris Perez is like, you know, doesn't have a backbone or, or didn't approach her or didn't shoot his shot. Because I also believe that, you know, they, they, they notice each other. I think she knew that that was her man's like, you know, at first sight day one, she's like, Nope, that's, that's all me. That's my boo. That's it. That's my man move

out of the way let me go get him but yeah i i do believe that that was probably true of her real life dynamic with him that i i was having the same like kind of brain because every because you know it's like oh every movie's gonna you know shoehorn in a hetero romance but that's like it's not shoehorned in it it like that relationship if it works the way i mean also it obviously worked in real life but like the way it's written is so cool and it's like why don't people just write relationships like this more frequently where like the relationship means more to her than just this like abstract and like i'm a straight lady so i have to want to get married right now like that's not what that relationship meant to her exclusively like she did want to marry him but it also was

like that relationship was like how she was kind of taking control of her life a little bit and like he was supportive and he wasn't like I mean it's it seemed like there were people in Selena's family and in her life who were kind of like threatened by her being the center of attention and Chris wasn't and he was like no I like to work with you and I'm not threatened by you being you know yourself and so it was like I don't know I guess you just don't see healthy relationships on screen a lot. Because I was like, Oh, this is a partnership where they are both like, you know, they're growing as people through I'm like getting emotional. Yeah, but they're,

they're like, they're like growing together. And you you know why they like each other. And they just compliment each other. and so and when it's written like that then I don't know I have no problem with it you're like oh this isn't just like I need to marry because of the because the movie's about to end like that's not what it is at all right it's beautiful it's beautiful and I put Selena and Chris on par. This is like some Romeo and Juliet levels of like legendary tragic romance, honestly. And here's something too, you know, it really is very telling that it's no secret that there is a super tumultuous, unhealthy dynamic

between the Quintanillas and Chris Perez. You know, that unhealthy dynamic, the keeping him at an arm's length and not wanting him to be with Selena romantically, that kind of possessiveness. Abraham talks about it in his own way and it's always been out there and it's sort of always been acknowledged,

you know, that he never trusted Chris. He never really liked Chris. He's a bum musician from the streets. I'm from the streets. I know bum musicians from the streets when I see one. Da-da-da musicians from the streets when I see one. You're young, you're beautiful, and you're rich. Of course, he's going to love you. He's going to take you away and make you stop performing. And he's going to take you from your family and all these things, right? And Chris is the ultimate gentleman and has never said anything bad about the family.

But we all know because it's a matter of a very kind of public conversation that there's been litigation. The Quintanillas are very litigious. You know, a ton of people. I mean, it was actually hilarious how many text messages I got from my friends and people who are in the creative space

in the fandom and have their own businesses. And I didn't even realize how many of them have gotten cease and desist letters from the Quintanillas for creating Selena fan merch. I mean, I'm like, I knew a certain number of people had gotten cease and desist, like Selena impersonators and tribute artists that I've seen perform and that I know,

and that I know of. But then people that I didn't even realize how far it had gone. And this is just, I'm one person in my little, you know, sphere here in LA. But Chris, having written his book, you know, Selena with Love, he wanted to do his own series about Selena. And the Kepenias have been extremely litigious with him and have shut things down and have been really not nice, historically and continuously. So it's this battle over which of the men in her life gets to tell her story and gets to control her narrative. And her dad, it's her dad and her dad

does. Yeah. Oh, that's so frustrating to hear. Cause it's, I mean, it's, it's, I mean, you, you, you can never have a full picture of a person, but it's like it sounds like chris knew a lot of parts of selena like in a lot of sides of her personality that her dad would never like you just can't right oh that makes me sad i hope that he's able to someday because same well he does say in the movie i don't know how to let you go and it's like well try a little bit yeah literally try just try try it all try a little bit for one day for one minute right make any attempt at all yeah uh let's take another quick break and then we will come right back Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden.

We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions. Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or, can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week,

we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Sanner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it like you miss 100% of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere,

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This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week, we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Catherine Han is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right, the queen of comedy herself.

Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhard in you. Oh my God. I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know.

I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person?

I got to hawk this slalom, Lugie. Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back.

Speaking of Abraham, the scenes with Abraham in this movie that i thought were pretty effective both in just like the themes of selena's life and also to contextualize i mean and i'm sure that it's maybe a little bit overly generous to him but the just contextualizing where he's coming from was i felt like it was pretty clear that to an extent he's like projecting his dreams onto his daughter which is not a a i don't know if if i were a parent that had been like oh i wasn't able to achieve my dreams so now you're going to i would not be excited to see that on screen because it doesn't it's not the best look in the world and i liked that there were a few scenes with them together where he was talking about being Mexican American and how that factored into what he wanted for Selena so I wanted to talk about those scenes and your

opinions on those scenes Mala because they were they were um as far as like Abraham Selena scenes that were like definitely stuck out to me yeah I really love all those scenes in the movie as well. Because I think that's one of the things that the movie does really, really well is delve into that very classic, very now well known conversation about bicultural identity and neither here nor there, right, neither from here nor from there, That Mexican-Americans and Chicanos have talked about, written about, and really engaged with your family got here, if your family immigrated at all, right? Or if you are one of those families that has been here for generations on generations on generations in the American Southwest. And I also do think that there is a ton of very relatable conversations where, yeah, you can see the projection happening where, you know, Abraham is like, it is very clear that this is a passion of

his. And in some of the dialogue in the movie, like in her conversation with Chris, where he's talking about how his parents wanted him to be a doctor. So he became a musician. If you were in my family and my dad would have loved you, we hated rehearsing, right? We hated rehearsing. And I keep talking about this podcast, Anything for Selena by Maria Garcia, but this brings up another piece where even as a child, Selena was doing these press junkets and she was doing interviews and Maria Garcia plays some of Selena's interviews. And she has a lot of interviews online you can watch as an adult. But even as a kid, some of her audio where people ask her, she gets asked all over the place, you know, how she feels about having performed for so many years and spending so

much of her childhood on a bus and spending so much of her childhood with her family and on stage and working. And they asked her, what do you like about performing? Why do you like it? And a very young Selena says, it's good money. And an older Selena says, no, I didn't have a traditional childhood. Yes, I did school by mail, but it was for a good reason. It was for a good cause because I was supporting my family. And so her real life interviews, you hear a lot of her talking about this as a job and working towards a greater good and doing something that is going to benefit and

support her family financially. And in the film, you have these little snippets of that as well. So I think that that's an interesting piece of it, too. Yeah. And just to zoom out a little bit and kind of just look at the grand scope of American Hollywood mainstream cinema like those conversations between Selena and Abraham there's one when she's a young girl and he's like you should learn how to sing in Spanish because you're Mexican and that's beautiful and you know never forget who you are and like just that initial conversation about identity which the groundwork is laid for that in a very early scene where Abraham is a part of Los Dinos and he's like well I like to sing doo-wop

but I can't do that in like a Tejano club because that's not the type of music they want to hear. But I can't do it at a white club because everyone's racist. So like just this like push and pull of his identity. And then like he's like, well, I want to make sure Selena like understands her roots and like is that's a part of her cultural identity and stuff like that. And then there's that scene later on in the bus where he's saying how exhausting it is to be a Mexican-American because, you know, you have to be twice as perfect as everyone else. You have to speak Spanish perfectly. You have to speak English perfectly. And just this, again, the whole push and pull of identity and the fact that that conversation gets like most mainstream American movies like don't feature a conversation like that. So just to have that be present in this movie, I was just like that was that was a very powerful thing to hear and to just have in the movie.

Yeah. Yeah. Super powerful. And it's a really good reminder without explicitly saying it. It's a reminder that like Abraham was a Mexican-American, like born in the 50s in South Texas and was growing up in a like during the times of racial segregation, like probably attended racially segregated schools. His family was probably only allowed to buy and live in certain neighborhoods. And they probably, you know, did racialized work. My dad was born in 1952 in Bakersfield, California. Segregation was still a thing. Signs on storefront windows, no dogs or Mexicans allowed. He picked cotton and grapes in the fields. He was a child laborer, you know, like multiple generations of farm workers in the family. And it's important to recognize that Selena is one generation removed from that as the daughter. So she is the product of somebody who survived that sort of very specific South Texas anti-Mexican racism, doing what she's doing and crossing over into Mexico. And it's like a reclamation, you know, and this is how we're going to be successful is by appealing to our people and

not necessarily white people. Cause it wasn't white folks filling the Houston Astrodome and buying her records and bringing her to stardom. It's there was a point being proven as well. Like, no, we can also do this by being ourselves. Yeah. Which gets talked about in the movie, too, with like her mother being like women are not successful in Tejano music like this is a male dominated genre just you know saying like I'm not so sure this is going to work out because patriarchy and like against all odds Selena transcends that and becomes a hugely popular star in that genre and also then crosses over with her english album and like appeals to a wider audience and just yeah the other the i i love i love that scene where they're

on the bus and and the scene we were just talking about and i especially love i just i don't know i feel like it's really rare to see like a scene written where different generations are interacting in kind of a realistic way because it's like the younger person is always going to be like yeah i get it but like shut up like there and i just i just i just i loved how abraham's kids are interacting with him in that scene because they clearly like they know he's right. They're taking what he's saying seriously, but they're still like, OK, but shut up. Like, I just I don't know the way that the generational divide is made clear and that that scene hit.

It was really good when she's like, good thing we have like tortillas and menudo to keep our strength up while we suffer this oppression giving him shit the way anyone gives their dad shit when he goes on about or like i don't know knowing the words to your dad's speech you can tell right like here we go again this is he's given before and i love those moments with her and AB I love those moments that they have throughout the the film where it's like okay you know how dad is like you know dad I got it I'll handle dad you know dad dad is very strong dad is a force but they also have their power and their way like as siblings or as or or in relation to their mom or in relation to each other where it's like yeah dad is big and bad but we also know which are his strings and which are his buttons

and just we know how to work with dad just chill it's fine we'll do it we'll get it done yeah and i love that yeah i wanted to ask what your thoughts because i believe you've spoken about this as well in the same article that we were referencing earlier, just the general kind of whitewashing of the casting of Selena and sort of your thoughts on the actors who have been chosen to play her. Because to be clear, even though Jennifer Lopez and the actor who's cast as Selena for the series, Christian Cerratos, they are both Latina women, there is still an element of erasure happening here. Yeah, it's been so interesting, like having this conversation, like in 2020, 2021 on the internet, because literally everyone can weigh in and that is both a terrible and wonderful thing so going back to the very real historic well-documented well-understood well-known history of racism

that her family experienced as brown people as people of color as people of mexican and which meaning for them indigenous descent right It was a fact of their reality that they were non-white racialized people and impacted by that historically. In talking about the whitewashing, that is really important to me because it's not a separate or imagined part of her story. It's very integral. And the whitewashing is very subtle and it's multifaceted because it's not just about the skin color of the actresses. It's all about the, it's also about the featurism, right? With facial features, especially Selena's like nose and lips and her indigenous features. And I hate feeling like I'm kind of like you know

breaking her up into body parts and things but this is what happens and nowhere is that more obvious than in the casting where the casting has brought us with slay series to the point where speaking of compartmentalizing and breaking her down to body parts they hired an actress that is so thin unfortunately for the character that she was attempting to realize on screen that she's wearing extremely obvious butt and hip padding you know that is super obvious and a super clown look clownish right in its appearance and it looks very weird and bad bad costume bad costume not a good one yeah and we've all rocked a selena costume and a lot of us can rock a very convincing Selena. And the butt padding is very insulting. Because I consider that part of the futurism and

part of the whitewashing. And you can see over time how you have Selena, who's someone very undeniably brown and of native descent. And then JLo has a much slimmer nose and a much smaller like button nose and she's just a wee bit lighter and then the actress now cast for selena the series her nose is even more slender and she's even uh lighter than j-lo and i acknowledge that selena was a technically you know a light brown a light-sk woman, but brown nonetheless. And again, it was brown and Mexican people who were filling the seats and going to her shows and supporting her and seeing themselves in her, not white people, not factually, actually factually. Right. And in watching like Selena, the series in real life, Selena, besides her costumes, she didn't stand out glaringly from the demographic of her crowd.

She looks like her crowd. You see now like Selena series and she looks very foreign and different from her crowd. It looks like Madonna doing her crossover tour in Mexico. You know, it looks like Reba doing her crossover tour in Mexico in some of those scenes. Right. Which is jarring and noticeable. I think that another place where whitewashing has happened with casting is with the dancing and the lack of dancing in the series. Right. movie is that they were able to find an actress and a performer in J-Lo who could execute the

dancing, the cumbia and the disco and all the other influences, you know, the Tejano influences and everything else that Selena brought into her movement. And I think that's one of the great victories and great successes of the film is casting a dancer who could execute and bring the music the style and the culture and the flavor to life um it's one of the pieces that is missing from the series yeah yeah i i know that there's been a lot written about it but it was it does seem like in general this series almost regresses from the problems that were already you know well publicized and well talked about when the movie's casting was released you know that there was pretty significant backlash when J-Lo's casting was announced in the first place for many of the reasons you described but

then instead of course correcting 25 years later making not even the same mistake, you know, kind of an escalated version of the same mistake. 100%. And what I want to push against is this notion that, well, Selena was white. I've literally seen people tweet this. I've seen people write this and like send tweet. And it's the most preposterous ahistorical ridiculous thing i have ever deigned to read in my life um because just the the lie the the inaccuracy and there's so much video photo documentation of selena it's really not up for debate it's really not that so then to see the rewriting of history well this is what she looked like and this is what this what she looked like and it's like that's not what she looks like and

it's important to remember what she looked like because we really haven't had another one since her and part of it is like we have our pop stars but they're very white looking Latin people, super white looking Latin people. And it's even as light-skinned as Selena was, that's how colorist and white supremacist Hollywood and Mexican media is that they couldn't even prop up another brown skin girl, like the real thing. You know, we keep it JLo and whiter always. And we just got a Yalitza Parisio recently, in the last few years. So the indigenous and brown representation, even within the Mexican communities for women on screen

is just not there. And it's a crying shame and it's fucked up. And I also blame the men and their involvement because I think they have very whitewashed beauty standard goggles that they look through. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, that's a problem that we talk about a lot, just kind of adhering to Western beauty standards. And Hollywood has a terrible history of whitewashing or erasing.

I mean, again, kind of zooming out a little bit as far as Latinx representation in mainstream American movies. The representation has either been non-existent or there but full of reductive stereotypes or whitewashed with, I think, pretty commonly white actors playing and like British like people from England playing Miss Catherine Zeta right yeah our favorite Mexican Penelope Cruz our other favorite Mexican yeah so just like European people playing Latinx characters, I have just a quick list here of some examples. Ben Affleck plays a real life Mexican-American man, Antonio J. Mendez in Argo. I didn't know. I didn't realize. I have not seen Argo.

Holy shit. Al Pacino plays a Puerto Rican character in Carlito's Way. Juliette Binoche plays Maria Segovia, a real-life Chilean woman in the movie The 33. Jennifer Connelly plays a real-life Salvadorian woman in The Beautiful Mind, Alicia Nash. Charlton Heston yikes plays a mexican character in touch of evil um unfortunately our king alfred melina no it has trade a real life mexican artist diego rivera of course in frida like there's a lot of these examples yeah it's just all too common and to see a

version of this happening in the casting of projects about Selena where they are erasing real life Selena's indigenous roots and features is like there's just no excuse for it and the racism in the casting and in Latin American media is like does a couple things. So it will replace like what we would refer to as a Mespisa, right? Like I would be a Mespisa, Selena would be a Mespisa, like of indigenous and European. And honestly, for many Mexicans that we don't always acknowledge or talk about, there's also a lot of Afro-indigenous and Afro-Mestizo heritage and communities out there. I've seen people tweet that Selena was white. I've also seen people tweet that Selena looks

Afro-Indigenous to them, you know, and that a light-skinned Black actress could have played Selena. And so it's extremely interesting to see the range of how we interpret her today. But what happens is the racism is such that even a light-skinned Latina, a mestiza like Selena, gets cast by non-Mexican and super white-looking people. And then you have a ton of Afro-Latinos historically acting in Hollywood.

The racism is such that they never are cast as Latino characters ever. And they're not acknowledged and celebrated as Latin Latino actors and actresses. Gina Torres is, you know, Afro-Latina actors and she has been very vocal historically about her erasure and exclusion from Latin American media spaces.

And so she plays like Black American characters. A lot of Afro-Latino actors, musicians are embraced in Black Hollywood and in playing black American, African American characters, but Latin media is again, so racist that they're not even seen or recognized at all anywhere. The space is not even present for them. Right. And so it's, this is how the whitewashing is done of real life POC. You know, they're just getting replaced with white people or being rejected from the space completely. If they cannot pass as white or they were not, you know, light enough or if they were black in real life. Mm hmm.

Oh, well. Levels. levels love i mean there was even i i saw in it it may have been from scholarly journal wikipedia but that there were white actresses in the running to play selena in in 97 like and that hollywood was like well you should you know here's jlo's not white as if that is some as as if that is a representation win like it's just so maddening but it did seem like from what I was able to find that at least at in the early stages of production there were white actresses in the running to to play Selena which is just yeah and the question that I always have and especially when we're talking about real life people you know casting is a choice a lot of people weighing on. And if we can choose to go lighter and thinner and more Euro, why can't we choose to go darker and more indigenous? Why can't we go browner? Why can't we go fuller figured? These choices are made, but it's always in the same direction. Yeah. And it's problematic. And look, there are so many Selena tribute artists who are of appropriate age. And I don't like to judge actresses based on their age,

because if you can act, you can act and you can overcome age in a lot of ways on screen. But also when you're playing like a literal 15 year old and you're 30, like things happen with that with with it on screen, just things happen with that, you know, and I have that gripe with Selena, the series and, and even with Selena, the movie, you know and um I I have that gripe with Selena the series and and even with Selena the movie you know the girls are out there the South Texas girls are out there and I want to come back to Selena was exceptionally talented but she wasn't exceptional as far as her look there's a lot of beautiful girls who look like Selena a lot of beautiful girls who look like Selena and they're out there so you know i i want that to be part of the

narrative too that these are choices that are made but not for a lack of options exactly hell yeah was there was there anything else um that either of you wanted to hit on i think that that's about everything i have i have a couple really quick things one uh we see a makeover montage but this time it's a man yes getting a makeover i love the haircutting bad scene i love it the cutting of the like punk bracelets off with like wire cutters or whatever that is excellent i love that because we always talk about you know makeover montages being reserved mostly for women and that being done to like better appeal to a man yeah um no i i feel like that yeah this for selena it's it's the total opposite where that's like one of the few areas of self expression that she gets to you know really curate for herself she doesn't need a makeover she's like

she's got the instinct like she's got the style yeah right right um i also just wanted to shout out suzette for kind of breaking barriers as a woman drummer which i wish got touched on in the movie a little bit more they do like there's a couple moments where suzette as a child is like girls don't play drums and she's like really resentful that she like got stuck with the drums until she realized she was a pioneer right um but yeah i just i i love you know women as drummers representation absolutely I agree and and being you know like a plus-size girl and they cast a plus-size actress and I appreciate that they they they were really um excellent with that casting choice I think as Suzette she was great yeah I wish she was I wish

she had more to do yeah and I loved all her overalls and her hats i loved all her looks also iconic looks that suzette is delivering we should talk about those as well and i think my final just little thing was um women eating on screen representation you have that scene where the pizza she's like i can eat a whole medium pizza by myself and i love pepperoni and i scarf doritos and that you actually see her eat and not just like talk because sometimes we'll have there'll be seen like i always think of there's something about mary where cameron diaz is like i love going to the baseball game and having a corn dog and drinking a bunch of beers she's saying this while at lunch with her girlfriends they all have salads in front of them and none of the characters even eat the salad that's like i think maybe the most um iconic

least feminist moments committed to film that is like i'm not like other girls i'm starving like the horrible horrible horrible horrible yeah right she was and i mean i think about it too she probably ate a lot because that's a lot of calories a lot of performing a lot of rehearsing yeah she's probably constantly eating love that for her hell yeah she eats the chips she steals suzette's doritos that's feminist um yeah did is there anything else you wanted to touch on mala no i think that was very thorough i think we got all i think we got all of it i feel great about what we've done here today uh well with that in mind does this movie pass the bechdel test. Yes! Yeah. Another win.

Another win. We do see, even though I wish there were more of them, we do see scenes where Selena and Suzette talk to each other about music or other things that aren't a man. Selena and her mother Marcella. Which brings us to our nipple scale,

which is our metric where we rate a movie from zero to five nipples based on an intersectional feminist examination of the movie. And based on, I wasn't quite sure where I would land. I think I needed our conversation to happen to really make me figure out what my rating was going to be. I want to rate it highly, but so many good points were brought up about there needs to be more Latinx representation in mainstream Hollywood media that is not about the same person over and over again. There just needs to be a wider scope of stories and people being explored. The white washing of Selena in the casting. But then, you know, know at the same time there's a lot of things that i think were handled really well the conversations about identity the the the relation the romantic relationship but then kind of like on the flip side of that i'm just like well i wish there hadn't been so much focus on selena's relationships with these two men in her life, her father and Chris, and that it wasn't so filtered through the lens of like Abraham Quintanilla's. I wish like we

could explore other kind of people's perspectives of her life. So it wasn't just like filtered through his kind of control and lens. So I don't know. Well'm well i think i'm gonna give it a four nipples and i will give two of them to selena i will give one to suzette and i will give one to suzette's drum set i'll go i'll go for as well i um i think that there there are certainly I mean I don't know especially I think that I'm coming from a slightly biased place having like watched the movie in a series pretty close together and greatly preferring the movie to the series but even even I mean all things considered I think that the discussion about colorism should continue to be had as it pertains to this movie and to the casting of Selena in particular, because it's like how we curate and present our icons over the course of years does make a huge, huge, huge difference. And I feel like that's, you know, just something that is always going to warrant further discussion, especially because an icon is so kind of malleable.

And and you should, you know, as time goes on, you should be getting better at representing them, not worse. But in terms of how Selena is written and kind of honored in this movie you know i'm not a selena expert but i but as far as she's presented i mean she's amazing she's like extremely motivated she is navigating her identity whether that means culturally or as a woman or just as a fucking person who wants some control over their own life and yeah i mean i i'm always going to wish that you get uh the other sides of her and um i don't know that the tellingness that her legacy is still kind of a tug of war between two male figures in her life is like i mean that's always going to be the thing right is like you just wish that she she could have lived to tell her own story.

But as far as this adaptation goes, I feel like it's you get more of a sense of her like spirit and her life and the complications of who she was. And I love it. I've watched it more times than I needed to to get ready. I watched it four times. Same thing. love it i've watched it more times than i needed to to get ready i watched it four times same thing it's just because it's a really good movie on top of everything we've talked about it's just a good ass movie so um so yeah i i'll give it four nipples uh two to selena and complete the set and then i'll give uh one to marcella and then i'll give one to friend that's at the house a lot oh she needs who was she I'll give one to Marcella and then I'll give one to a friend that's at the house a lot.

Who was she? I love it. I think I want to, I mean, because it's Selena, I want, I always want to give a perfect score, a plus five stars, you know? So just off of her name, off the strength of her name and her legacy alone made the film good because the source material was so good it's hard to fuck up excellent source material right fuck up excellent source material which is part of my gripe but the movie right like was true to the material so it was good so i want to give it five i want to give five nipples and i want to get i want to give

three nipples to selena yeah yeah i'm gonna give two nipples to selena though because i want to get five nipples and I want to get, I want to give three nipples to Selena. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna give two nipples to Selena though, because I want to give one to Marcella because she doesn't get enough. I went to Suzette and I want to honestly give a nipple to Chris Perez because I think that Chris Perez was like an advocate for her and still is and like very on her side in an empowering sort of way. Because I think he, as he, as musician could appreciate the the artist that she was and the individual that she was so I want to give Chris a little shout out because

they give him a hard time I love it Chris I mean even the way the movie shows him Chris Perez male feminist certified daddy yeah yeah well Mala thank you so much for being here this has been incredible yay this was fun thank you for having me and let me know what grows out i can't wait to hear it yeah oh my gosh yeah and come back anytime we'd love to have you back um where can people check out your stuff follow you online check out your podcast tell us everything my God. So if you want to listen to my podcast, I'm one half of Locatora Radio, a radiophonic novella, which is just a very extra way of saying a podcast, with my good friend and co-producer, Diosa Femme. So you can find Locatora Radio across streaming platforms or online. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok,

locatora underscore radio. If you want to follow me as an individual, I'm at mala underscore Munoz on all socials. And I'm also on OnlyFans. So subscribe to my OnlyFans. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Awesome.

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to close out I would just like to say bitty bitty bum bum bitty bitty bye bye bitty bitty bye bye bitty bitty bye bye hey I'm Gianna Prudente and I'm Jna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadson.

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