She went and had herself a baby
The queer movement and pregnancy that announced the return of a trope.
Earlier this month, we celebrated the one-year anniversary of my film series (and project in development), Hubba Hubba, with a screening of 2004’s Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights. The thirst trap under the spotlight was Diego Luna. In response to our screening, I’m digging into the Latin Lover trope this month. This is the last post, but for full context, please start with this first piece.
As the 1980s wound down, the cracking of the Berlin Wall signaled the end of the decades-long Cold War. Following the fall of the USSR, and the public snafu of the Iran-Contra Affair, the United States shifted its public enemy focus to Iraq, and at home, queer citizens who were dying from AIDS received further indignation from the governing conservative majority and a growing Christian right. The Reagan administration initially dismissed the epidemic, withholding WHO funding for much-needed research and protection, while villainization about the disease came early and very pointedly.
Along with straight allies and citizens dealing with the disease, public health and queer advocacy groups found strength in numbers, doubling down on their messaging that the disease wasn’t just gonna go away, and neither were LGBTQ voices. As groups organized and campaigned, the face of AIDS became harder to ignore and the existence of queerness became more public, with more faces of color at the forefront.
Rebellion and reclaimed pride showed up in music and on dance floors. Alongside the burgeoning house, Latin freestyle, and hip hop scenes — developed from young Black and brown folks — came a modernized Ballroom culture.1 Drag balls and “houses” developed in spaces across the United States, with energy that was competitive, infectious, and unapologetically queer. As dancer Luis Camacho says in the film, Strike a Pose (2016), “We carried our flamboyance as a warning.”
Historically, cultural movements started by Black, brown, or queer folks, eventually gain interest from white artists and audiences, with the sounds and sparks of a marginalized subculture appropriated and retranslated by outside forces. In the case of Ballroom and the queer culture it celebrated, that bridge to appropriation would’ve come from the biggest pop star in the world, Madonna, who was introduced to the scene from her time in New York City clubs. As she employed more Black and brown performers to choreograph and dance in her videos, notably for the song Vogue, and on tours like the massively successful Blonde Ambition run of 1990, the end of the decade offered tens of millions of audience members an eye-line to the reclaimed sex appeal of young Black and brown masculinity.
Then Madonna did the ultimate.
In 1996, the pop star announced she was having her first child, Lourdes. The father was Madonna’s then beau, Carlos Leon, a Cuban-American personal trainer.
One of pop music’s biggest provocateurs of the late 20th century went and got herself a Latin Lover.
This is when I first started paying attention to the trope.
News of Madonna’s partner was very exciting because here was Cuban guy with the world’s biggest pop star, and as an adolescent who didn’t look like at lot of my non-Latino peers, I had been struggling with my own feelings of desirability. But I was entering my teenage years during a fascinating “boom time”. With the new world of sexual health and advocacy, a victory over Cold War threats, and a pendulum swinging away from 12 years of conservative rule towards the wild run of a Clinton-era liberal United States, the energy was moving towards imperfect, but more open roads of Latino desirability in media. Queer advocacy continued to bring more Latino faces into homes with television audiences introduced to Wilson Cruz as Ricky on My So-Called Life, and Pedro Zamora, the first openly queer person with AIDS on television, appearing on the third season of MTV’s The Real World, set in San Francisco. Gerardo, Ricky Martin, Marc Anthony, and Dave Navarro became sexualized pop gods (note: my first college girlfriend told me she started dating me because I looked like Dave Navarro. I won’t share a picture of myself at that age, but maybe you can look at the picture below and tell me if you can imagine it because, somehow, THIS was the energy she was getting from me. She must’ve been disappointed with the truth — no wonder we dated for only two weeks).
As we closed in on the millennium, something started happening on-screen — the Latin Lover trope quietly inched its way back. As in 1910s to 1920s Hollywood, playing the exotic, romantic lead offered foreign and Latino actors an option to headline a film.
Eduardo Verástegui, Freddy Prinze, Jr. Benicio del Toro, and Jay Hernandez all took on variations of the role. The pinnacle of this resurgence was a franchise baton pass to Diego Luna in the sequel to the 1987 sleeper, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (2004) — perhaps the last Hollywood film to embody this trope.
As much as we’ve turned down the dial on requirements for Latino actors to enter the stage in derelict or Latin Lover character tropes, we still have so far to go. In mainstream film, AfroLatinidad and queer perspectives are terribly underrepresented. Our lead roles for Latinos are far and few between, and continue to signify a caucasian ideal. I’m hoping Gen Z can show us the way, creating the fulcrum for another pendulum swing that will make our romantic lead pool look as complex as a wildly diversified aquarium, while reclaiming the Latin Lover trope and turning it into something none of us could imagine.
🏅 this week’s staff picks🏅
🚻 Machismo and racism in Puerto Rico.
💃🏽🕺🏽 (Via an IG post) Famed Italian songwriter Bruno Lauzi got disco fever in 1981 and released the single Vecchiaccio. The songtells the story of an old man grappling with the aches of aging yet full with youthful zest — have a glimpse of Lauzi’s take on the genre in this clip from Italy’s Ric & Gian Show from 1981 (you’ll want to cruise to the 1:40 marker).
🎧 I made my way onto Biz Elli's’ last season of One Bad Mother where we talked about the “where do we go from here”-ness of wrapping up a show…or maybe not wrapping up a show.
👔👗 Anytime I see old clips of Serge Gainsbourg on French TV, my jaw drops (there’s a comment here that just says, "Daycare in France is Amazing.”).
🎥 The Baldwin boys and their 1990’s trysts with threesomes.
(Pssst, want more film recommendations? Follow me on Letterboxd)
Six months left into year and helping to organize this year’s Puerto Rican Parade and Festival in Sunset Park might be my personal highlight for 2024. Will you come and celebrate with us?
June 9 @ 5pm | 59th Street and 5th Ave, Brooklyn | 🎟️ FREE 🎟️
I’ve been asked to participate in the latest iteration of Audio Flux — where artists create three minute audio pieces based on a prompt. We will be debuting our work at this year’s Tribeca Film festival.
June 11 @ 8:30pm | SVA Theater, NYC | 🎟️ TICKETS 🎟️
I’ll be presenting at Audio Spice on June 20th, hitting us, appropriately on summer solstice. Pa’ mi gente en Nueva Yol, come by for a super warm (in the emotional sense) evening of narrative secrets and tricks in audio.
June 20 @ 7pm | Brooklyn, NY | 🎟️ RSVP 🎟️
Adios, ciao ciao, byeeeeeeeee,
Mark ✌🏼
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Ballroom culture goes all the way back to the Antebullum South.