Generalization #1: Well-established, employed gay people tend to have a fair chunk of disposable income. Obviously, they are frequently childless and can do whatever the hell they please with their money. This is not new news. Generalization #2: Minority groups tend to congregate in older sections of cities in which the accomodations may be a little more run-down but certainly do not lack character. This is also not new news. But when these two generalizations intersect, I feel like I want to take sides--and feel pitifully ill-equipped to do so. And this is the question that Quinceanera begs.
In this movie, we see some white gay people move into a traditionally hispanic neighborhood and pour money into revamping some beautiful old properties and then, proceed to jack up the rent so that the people who've populated the area for generations are run out of their homes. On one hand, it's a shame to see these old beautiful neighborhoods fall into slums, but on the other? Well, that's obviously troubling. I've seen this kinda thing happen in Tucson-- there are sure a lotta white folks fixing up the Barrio Viejo real pretty. And here in Nashville, well, East Nashville is now so trendy, with all those restored bungalows and snappy eateries like Cafe Margot and The Family Wash that East Nashville's traditionally blue-collar African American demographic is being priced out of its own market. It's a tough question. Bringing money into these neighborhoods revitalizes them in a way that does everything from improving local public schools to providing walking-distanced organic grocery stores to local denizens but, man, what happens to the displaced?
And the really interesting thing is that this trend is setting the stage for a weird conflict between affluent white-- frequently gay--people and the communities of some racial minorities. I'm hesitant to talk about whether or not it's harder to be a gay racial minority than a white one-- and for that, I'd refer to Byron Hurt's documentary Beyond Beats and Rhymes: A Hip-Hop Head Weighs in on Manhood in Rap Music (this movie is pure genius-- I highly, highly, highly reccommend it. It's slated to be shown on PBS sometime next year but, it's rounding the film festival circuit now-- and if you get a chance, don't miss it.). But I think tensions certainly exist on that front. And it turns a situation which is, at its heart, all about socio-economic strata and class structure into a situation that pits racism against homophobia. I mean, how hard would it be to ask, which is the worse social disease? It's an impossible conundrum.
So this, among others, is the question posed in Quinceanera. The movie offers a pretty gentle treatment of both sides. Even though its central character is Magdalena,a Mexican-American pregnant teenage girl, and the audience's sympathies ostensibly lie with her, it was written and directed by a pair of homos who were inspired to make this film when asked to film their neighbor's daughter's Quinceanera party and they could not tell this story without implicating themselves. And the fact that the gay couple in the film goes to great lengths to creepily fetishize and exoticize Magdalena's gay cholo cousin doesn't help their case. And then there's the lesbian couple who fixed up another apartment in the neighborhood with travertine tile and skylights and then want to charge $1600 for 800 square feet (and to think! It's in LA, not DC... no sour grapes here!). But, in the end, the gay guys are moved upon the discovery Magdalena's uncle shrine he's built in the back yard (after they evicted him, and he subsequently died) and Magdalena is able to cut a deal with the lesbians so that her uncle can afford to live in the travertine palace. The writers are obviously invested in softening their own image-- and the effect? Well, tensions never come to a head.
Is that good? I don't know. Ideally, situations would indeed work themselves out in this fashion-- communities begin to accomodate assorted socio-economic and racial groups so as to finally, once and for all, end the de facto segregation of our American cities. But then is that actually ideal? Wouldn't we then sacrifice the idiosyncratic color of these various neighborhoods? The flavor that makes them interesting? The cultural solidarity that gives them integrity? So this movie doesn't really takes a side and neither can I. I suppose I'm more inclined to invest my sympathies with those who have more paltry financial resources than those who have their oyster-like world of choice staring them in the face. But then, I am, of course, finding myself more firmly implanted in the latter group-- and if I had the money, hell yes, I'd find a cute little house in an older neighborhood, gut it, install one hell of a kitchen, and then try to live happily ever after. I mean, do I want to live in White Flight Central (i.e. the ever-alluring, pre-fab, manicured, cultural prairie of American suburbia)? Oh, how tedious! In the end, I do no better committing my loyalties than does this movie-- and I think that may be the most logical course of action.
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