Long Live QUEEN!

I saw an early screening of the latest on-screen collaboration with Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, Rudo y Cursi. I'll post a link to my review when my editor publishes it next week. In short, if there were ever a film to spend $10 it would be this one! If you didn't know who is behind this film here's a rundown:

writer & director: Carlos Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También)
Producers: Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men)
Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams)
Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth)

You MUST go see this film!

But this is not a post about the film, it's more so a post about how shocked and eerie it was to see Diego Luna with a mustache. My shock and nostalgia was because Luna looks just like a young Freddie Mercury! Check these photos out!

Here is Diego Luna, photo credit to Sony Pictures and CineCineCine.com. Not convinced? Check this photo out of Luna.





Here is Freddie Mercury, musician and co-founder of the band Queen, photo credit MuchMusic & StarPulse.com.

Some may wonder why this is so eerie and nostalgic, well perhaps it's because you are not familiar with Queen or Freddie Mercury. They were amazing! Some of the most fantastic performances, lyrics, entertainment was created by the band. Part of this performance was playing with the idea of gender, masculinity, and blurring what one must look like to be a man. Plus, Mercury, as a man of Color, gay, out, and HIV positive (although not out about his status until the day before his death).

I caught a documentary of Freddie Mercury on the Logo Channel earlier in April while visiting my family. Mercury leaves us with an amazing legacy of his work and how he has uses his craft as a form of activism.

Rumors have it that a new film about Mercury is in the works and that Johnny Depp is said to play him. I'd argue for Luna to play him, although I wouldn't mind either of the two, and chances are Depp draws a larger audience than Luna. Nonetheless, seeing Luna in the film took me back to the days when music was like this where the call-and-response gives me chills!:

She's A Dancehall Queen For Life

I'm known to be an independent in more than one way, but most especially on the dance floor. I'll dance best believe I'll dance. But I don't want you telling me what to do with my body. So partner dancing where a "man" leads me is not going to happen unless I want it to happen. As a result, I LOVE dancehall. I can do what I want to do with my body and be all glittered up and fake eye lashed out and still be a member of the community and taken seriously! It's a performance that I personally love. When I go to a dancehall, I am in a form of drag, an exaggerated image/representation of what I believe my Caribbean female body can be presented as and I am in control of that image. I control the gaze.

One of my favorite movies EVER is Dancehall Queen. It is one of the first films that I saw that discusses Caribbean women's work. It demonstrates how working class and working poor women and mothers make choices, and it recognizes how dancing is a form of work. It shares how complex and important dancehall is to a community and culture. Plus, the leading female character is strong, has convictions, is complicated, and preservers. When was the last time we saw a Black Caribbean women in such a role?

In any event, I love watching some dancehall videos, especially the ones where women are hired because they can DANCE versus just hop around and throw their asses in the air against a semi-erect or twitching biological male's pelvis. That's why I really appreciated Sean Paul's earlier videos. I love how Sean Paul knows his dance skills are limited (or he chooses not to dance that much) so he 1. hires people who know how to dance, 2. he hires women that look like REAL women and 3. the women can dance. The dancing and the performance are at the center, at least from the lens I use to watch the videos. The women are strong, powerful, and are given space to demonstrate all their strength and abilities. The dance floor becomes a space for sharing creativity and exchanging aspects of power. After all, there are some "battles" in some of the videos on the dance floor.

So, what's dancehall got to do with sexuality? You tell me. I think sex is powerful and strong, just like the women dancing in the video. What do you think?