I'M BAAAAACK
And I wanna talk about another moment Afro-Latinx representation fell short, but this time with a children's movie (yep...just yep)
HELLO MY ANGELS!
Once again, I want to apologize for disappearing on all of you. Between moving to a new city, dealing with a less-than-ideal business management situation and very slowly re-entering the dating scene, I have been BUSY. That being said, I just wanted to take a quick second to talk to you all about a movie on Netflix that I was really hoping to love but ended up being disappointed by.
Vivo
Warning. There are spoilers but nothing that you won’t see within the first 10 minutes of the movie.
To give a gentle synopsis, this is the movie about a kinkajou named Vivo (voiced by Lin Manuel-Miranda) who befriends an elderly Afro-Cuban musician named Andres. Andres wrote a song for the love of his life, Marta, who moved away to Miami to become a very successful singer and he got the chance to sing with her again, but he dies before he’s able to. Vivo takes on the mission to give Marta the song that he wrote for her. Vivo befriends Andres’ niece, Gabi, and together they make their way to Florida to try and fulfill Andres’ dying wish.
That’s the synopsis. It all sounds well and good and perfect for a kids movie but here’s where I run into my issue. The movie starts off in Cuba with a very diverse ensemble of characters (looking back, most of them were background characters). But I was optimistic! Finally, a movie about a Latin country that gives space for Afro-Latinx people to have character development (or, in the very least, lines). But in the first 10 minutes, Andres dies.
At this point I was not completely over the movie; I still had hope. I mean, UP was movie that killed off it’s only lady character and I am still obsessed with it. As you move through the movie you discover that Gabi lost her dad before the movie began. And that was when I was like “Wait a minute, so now we have two dead Black men? There better be some living Black characters in this movie with lines.”
The short story is “kind of”. There was one little Black girl who had one line (maybe two), no character development and that was it. Yep. That was it. Sure, Gabi is canonically half-Black but they gave her very few Black features. Until I saw the picture of her late father, I had no idea. Yes, I understand the the diaspora is wide and colonization makes things complicated when it comes to race in the Caribbean and Latin America. I get it. But a mixed girl drawn to be less Black-looking cannot be the one Black character who lives and has more than 2 lines. That should not be the bar for representation in a movie about Cuban culture (a country with a HUGE Black population). It feels like In The Heights all over again.
Basically, I don’t like children’s movies killing off their only obviously Black characters for an emotional stepping stone, especially when there are no other Black characters who are important to the story. I can tell that this movie was made for two reasons
because Lin was in it
to show some aspects of Cuban culture
I think both of these things could have existed with using Black death as a jumping point for a children’s movie. Sure, none of the movie mentioned Blackness or politics explicitly, but I still find it uncomfortable that the creators were so comfortable with their choice. The beginning set up this movie to be something totally different than what it was and I ended the movie feeling disappointed. Not because I hated it, but because it was more of the same poor choices.
If you have seen the movie, please let me know your thoughts! If you haven’t seen the movie…maybe don’t?
I’ll be back with more hot takes and I’ll probably start reviewing some Black owned wines from local vendors near me :) I already have a bottle of a Black owned pinot from California that I’m oh so very excited to crack into. But more about that later!
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