Note: I originally intended to post this earlier but did not get around to it before my trip, and am posting it now because otherwise I probably never will.
LOLA is the hottest new telenovela (soap opera) in Santiago. It is about Lalo Padilla, a womanizer who doesn't realize the enormity of the mistake he makes when he dumps one of his many girlfriends, Romina. Romina happens to know a witch who has the power to turn Lalo into a woman. Lalo goes to bed, nervous about the big presentation he has to make at work the next day. His best friend, Grace, who happens to be in love with him, tucks him into bed and then returns to her own apartment. When Lalo wakes up in the morning, he notices that something is wrong almost immediately when he attempts to go to the bathroom (though it takes him a few minutes to figure out exactly what is wrong). Grace comes into the apartment and is surprised to see a crazy woman wandering around in Lalo's pajamas. After telling Grace things that only Lalo would know, Lalo convinces Grace that despite the female form, he actually is Lalo. Grace loans Lalo women's clothing and Lalo rushes off to work. Lalo's boss, understandably, is very confused. Thinking on his feet, Lalo explains that he is Lola Padilla, Lalo's cousin, and that Lalo had to take an emergency trip to Germany to help his dad. Lola tells the boss that s/he is the only one who has the passwords to the computer with the presentation and convinces him to let her give the presentation. The presentation is a success, but Lalo's best friend at work, Gaston, is resentful. Another coworker, Diego, thinks that Lola is hot and tries to flirt with her (Diego is also by far the most attractive male in the show, and is played by a relatively famous Chilean actor, Gonzalo Valenzuela). Understandably, this does not go over very well. And that's just the first episode. It gets much more complicated from there.
"Lola" is a Chilean adaptation of a similar Argentinian show.
Fabia explained to me this morning (when we were still in Puerto Montt on the trip) that most Chileans cannot grasp the fact that the character Lola is actually a man. Despite the fact that the character walks, talks, and thinks like a man, Chileans think that a woman is always a woman. Hopefully this show can, despite its complete hilarity, raise some level of awareness about trans sexuality. It does, however, have another point which is probably more obvious to Chileans. Chile, like other Latin American countries, has a machista culture, which means male-dominated. This means that there has been historically very little respect for women. Lalo/Lola is very much a machista character, and I suspect that he will be able to turn back into a man after he learns to respect women. This will probably be a very good message for Chilean men to learn.
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4 comments:
what message?
"be careful, or your testicles may be cursed off"?
=P
More like women need to be treated with more respect, and that being a machista womanizer isn't awesome.
(And technically his testicles weren't cursed off. They were transformed into ovaries.)
There was one scene in which Lola and Grace were talking, and Lola said something about how s/he was great to women in terms of sex. When Grace asked, well what about the morning after, Lola said, "Afterwards doesn't matter." And Grace replied, "No, afterwards doesn't serve you any purpose," by which basically she meant that no wonder Lalo got turned into a woman if he had that kind of attitude.
Given that a lot of Chileans have difficulty accepting the fact that Lola is actually a man (I really don't know how anyone can follow the show without that basic assumption, but oh well), it may be difficult for them to recognize how and why s/he becomes more tolerant of women.
so which will come first in Chile...
tolerance of transsexuals, homosexuals, and everything in between?
or better treatment of women?
i don't think you should "tolerate" a woman -- that just sounds like you pretend they don't exist still...you gotta accept them and praise em =)
Valid point. Tolerant may not have been the best word. I would think that Chileans will accept homosexuals before transexuals just because it's an easier concept to understand. So far it appears that people are gradually becoming more accepting of gays (not necessarily of lesbians, however) and of equality of women. In middle and upper classes working and independent women are relatively accepted (though men are still supposed to be dominant). Sadly, there have been a number of cases of pregnant women killed by ex-boyfriends or husbands because the men refused to be dumped by women. They actually have a term for it: femicidio (femicide).
But we still aren't all that much better than Chile- they beat us to first woman president in the Americas (partly because Chilean men wanted to prove that they weren't machista).
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