Secular Saints: Performing Frida Kahlo, Carlos Gardel, Eva Perón and Selena (review)

What do a Mexican bisexual painter, an Argentine tango singer, an Argentine cabaret dancerturned-politician, and a Tex-Mex rock star have in common? According to Misemer, they are all performance artists who have had theater pieces written about them. The first attribute makes them attractive for cultural studies and the second appeals to literature students. Such crossover blending of culture and literature characterizes postmodern criticism, and each of these figures displays multiple crossover qualities.

Originally, icons were religious symbols and visual tools to educate the masses. However, these four titular "secular saints" are far from religious icons, having become more cult than cultural figures. They are responsible for fashioning their own images and in the process have become secular deities.

Using cleverly conceived chapter titles, Mesimer begins by analyzing Frida Kahlo's "Miraculous" performances. An ex-voto is a small, rustically painted "thank you note to God" as a token of a worshipper's gratitude. Kahlo appropriated the style into "sex-votos," which turned her own body and story into the main focus of her paintings. Sexual affairs with Trotsky and bisexual escapades and cross-dressing heightened her self-promotion as the center of attention.

Similarly, the other three figures are described as antithetical corruptions of religious icons—Carlos Gardel was responsible for tango crossing from an instrumental to a vocal performance by adding lyrics; Evita Perón is a Christ-like martyr who crossed over from the wrong side of the tracks to high society; and Selena was a border-crossing brown Madonna singing "crossover" Tex-Mex music in English and Spanish. As cultural icons, they were idolized by masses of people. By participating in the creation of their own cult status, they were performance specialists with star quality. Performance begets performance, and all four represent the cross-pollination of culture and art.

Their crossbreeding creates another type of performance—for they have all been cast as characters in plays and movies, prolonging their cult status and propelling them into literary immortality. The study of these theatrical writings offers the most important focus of the book, and one wishes for more interpretation of the works themselves, rather than the historical figures that inspired them. Likewise, a more detailed bibliography divided into primary and secondary sources would facilitate scholarly research; a separate, organized primary list of the plays, movies, and short subjects with publication dates for each would be tremendously helpful. There is a lot of raw material that begs for further elaboration: plays range from Las dos Fridas, Frida Kahlo: viva la vida and Arbol de la esperanza to films including Frida with Salma Hayek, El espíritu de la pintora and Frida: naturaleza viva. Plays and films about Gardel include El viejo criado, El acompañamiento, Matatangos, El día que me quieras, and Tangos: el exilio de Gardel. Eva Perón's persona is translated to the stage in Eva Perón and Eva de América. Even Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, the Tejana music star slain in 1995, already has a musical, Selena Forever, a play, Selena: la reina del Tex-Mex, and a film, Corpus: A Home Movie for Selena written about her. A wealth of dramatic works based upon these four lives has been brought to light in this volume and bears further development.

Yes, Kahlo, Gardel, Perón, and Selena are all cultural icons who have become theater subjects; yet, there is little relationship among the four—they are from different time periods, three different countries, different disciplines, and so forth. The author is hard-pressed to forge a true bond among them and grasps at straws when she states that Eva Perón is linked to Frida Kahlo because the American pop star Madonna—who played Evita in the musical of the same name— liked to collect artworks by Frida Kahlo. To quote this flawed reasoning directly, "Eventually Madonna would serve as an unusual bridge between...