I sat down to watch the film version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights” on HBO Max two weeks ago just hoping to be entertained, totally unprepared for the lesson in racism that I was about to receive.
I loved the show on stage and was most curious to see how Miranda, writer Quiara Alegria Hudes and director Jon M. Chu changed the story for the film, because you know Broadway shows are always changed for the movies.
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Fortunately, “In the Heights” is a delightful, tuneful and inventively staged film about the residents of the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan on a typical but eventful sweltering summer weekend. The streets are filled with music and people burst into rhythmic hip-hop and salsa singing and dancing at the click of a heel or the turning of a fire hydrant.
It is over the top in places with its own style that blends reality and fantasy, but it is wonderful to see such a lavish musical about Latinx characters with backgrounds in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and other countries. These are not people we often see in mainstream movies.
Even as I focused on some of the plot changes, I was apparently missing a much bigger picture.
It only took a day or two before Miranda and his colleagues were under attack for colorism, for featuring only light-skinned Latin actors in principal roles rather than depicting the wider spectrum of skin tones, including Afro-Latinx actors.
Colorism is defined as a prejudice by people of the same ethnic or racial group against those with dark skin tone. I hate to admit that Iwasn’t paying attention to skin tones because I was caught up in the story, songs and dancing.
I guess I owe these critics a debt for making me see things in a different way, as I should, though we’re thankfully a long way from the days when actors of colorwere often covered in makeup that made them look darker.
I would have thought people would celebrate that a Hollywood studio spent $55 million on a musical about Latinx characters.
Miranda, who turned the white Founding Fathers into an array of Latin and Black people in “Hamilton,”offered an apology saying he and his colleagues fell short in trying to “paint a mosaic of this community.” Chu told an interviewer that he had lessons to learn on the issue.
We could have a heated debate on the issue and cancel culture,but I wonder if the real problem is that “In the Heights” is an outlier. There just aren’t enough such stories being told on screen in whatever style. That means this musical, at least to some observers, bears the weight of the world, which is an impossible load for any film.
I raised the question with Michael Mendez, who played the main character of Usnavi in the Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe’s wonderful 2017 production. He was as surprised as me about the debate over the film, which he had seen twice before we spoke.
Consider that he never thought he’d get to play the role. He describes himself as a Black Dominican of mixed-race background. He’s darker than Miranda, who originated the role on stage and therefore set a standard for future productions, and Anthony Ramos, who plays Usnavi so vividly on screen.
Mendez said he saw the film once just to revel in a project that he knew and loved so well, and a second time after he heard about the criticism. “I never thought of colorism the first time. I was stuck in nostalgia,” he said.
He understands the issues on a personal level because he never thought he would get to play Usnavi, assuming that most theaters would cast lighter-skinned actors. Because of this new conversation, “I know I can have a shot at another regional theater at being Usnavi.I thought my only shot was at WBTT because we’re a Black theater. We are a world Black theater,” he said.
But he hates the idea, as do I, that some will reject the movie because of the issue. “To cancel this movie overall would be to sling dung,” Mendez said.
He suggested instead that we should “create another project where we can expand the spectrum of what it is to be Latinx.”
It’s hard to judge the film’s success at the box office because the studio decided during the pandemic to release it simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max, which surely cut down on its initial grosses. But hopefully, the number of streaming viewers will give a lift to the idea that audiences are eager for more, to better represent everyone.
I may watch this film again with a different eye, andhope that doesn’t fully take away from the experience.
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