Eva Perón

• One of the most difficult things to decide about Evita is whether or not she was a feminist. She did subjugate her own beliefs to Juan's, but I do not believe that she did that simply because he was a man, rather because she believed in what he had to say. Her indepenedence always strikes me as her most feminist aspect, but then she states that a proper woman should be at home. Maybe the problem is that I am positing my own modern view on her, when that is impossible; however, feminism did exist, but the world had not seen the Second Wave that rose in the 60s.
• One thing that I do not understand is the treatment of her body. I understand what she represented, especially to the proletariat, but I do not understand the fetishization of it. Perhaps that is my own ethnocentric view, but I find it morbid.
  
• One thing that I do believe is that Evita definitely was after the bourgeoisie. This is especially evident in her frequent criticisms of the class, as well as her assumption of the role of the charity organization that was typically reserved for high-class women. Not that I think that there is anything wrong with that, but I do agree with some of the Black Myth that if she would have toned down her rhetoric, Perón would have been more successful in Argentine politics.
  
• The Revolutionary Eva was the only version of her that I could bring myself to agree with. I believe that she herself truly identified with the proletariat, but perhaps not the extent that they believed. She seemed to view the world in Marxist terms, despite the fact that she was most assuredly not a Marxist.
  

Carmen Miranda

• Carmen Miranda is a easy to figure to categorize. Did she play up cultural stereotypes or was she simply trying to make it in a market that did not allow deviation from the norm? These are not mutually exclusive ideas; both can be true.
• I completely understand the Brazilians rejection of her. She parodied their culture and she was not even Brazilian, she was Portuguese! Imagine if "Larry the Cable Guy" (for whom I wish nothing but evil because he is guilty of the worst sin that man can commit: making people dumber than they already are) performed in Europe and was considered the an example of American culture. Even rednecks would hate him then! She also betrayed them by being a musician in Brazil, but then moving to the U.S. and doing exploitative films that betrayed her country and her identity.
  
• I do not understand how the Brazilian people could reject her, but that thousands came to her funeral. Why would they pay respects to this Malinchista? She sold out to gringos in order to make a quick buck. In my opinion, any attempt to paint her in any other light (as the movie did) is foolish at best. She was a tool of American imperialism, a tool of the Good Neighbor policy. The movie tried to show her as having some control over her roles by threatening the producers that she would drop her accent. First, I believe that this is false because although she was one of their biggest money-making stars, they could have replaced her quickly. Second, if it is true, what a phony! Adopting a fake accent in order to fit into American perceptions of what a Brazilian should speak like.
• She betrayed her gender and her race by playing sexually provocative roles, but still taking second banana to the American, usually blond, starlet. As the article stated, she was only acceptable as an object of desire, but never as a woman. She was lusted after by her opposites in movies, but never achieved commitment from her American counterparts. All that she had was her sexuality, nothing more.
• Miranda was a burlesque fool. That was the only role that she was able to play successfully. Is this a reflection on the audience's preferences or her own lack of talent and intelligence. In my opinion, it was both.
• Sorry that this is a bit more negative than other posts, but I really despise Miranda. I think it is important to study her for what she represents, but she must never be admired. She is the definition of a Malinchista.
  

Rivera-Garza and "Tales of Two Women"

Rivera-Garza

• Psychology is not a science that I put a whole lot of credit in; I believe that there are two trends currently: 1)Overdiagnose everything. Especially things such as ADHD and depression. Your kid acts out too much in class? It's because you haven't disiplined him enough. Life didn't turn out the way you thought it would? Join the club! I am not trying to discount true mental illness, such as REAL ADHD and REAL clinical depression, but in my completely uneducated and uniformed opinion, the vast majority of people are simply diagnosed with these "problems" because: 2)Psychiatrists seem to want to prescribe a pill for everything. The reason is two-fold: because medicating someone is much easier than actually treating someone and, most importantly, doctors get PAID with incentives to medicate people; they make money from it. Sorry, that kinda got a little off topic.
  
• Behaviorism has its merits, but that did not arise untill Skinner in the 40s. As evidenced by this article and Freud's writings, along with others, it illustrates the sexual bias that most men had at the time, even the intellectuals. Although Freud had some good ideas, concepts such as "penis envy" show his bias and the inherent bias in Psychology at the time. This article shows the biases as well: if a women is promiscuous then she suffers from "moral insanity", but I did not see any evidence of any men who were diagonsed with the same condition because they were promiscuous. This double-standard continues today, albeit not necessarily in psychology.
  
• I thought this article gave the women in the asylum too much credit for social change, although some of the women wrote letters and such, the article seems to imply that people did not really take them seriously.

"Tales of Two Women"

• Aha, here's an article to my liking!
• According to the rules of the Codigo Duelo, this fight did not consitute as a duel (Esperanza was unarmed). The author makes the arguement that two men fighting a duel over a women would not have been punished as severely as she was, but she was, in fact, a murder. However, I do not disagree that if a similar situation had happened to a man, the punishment surely would have been less severe.
• I wonder, although this is impossible to tell, if María was truly remorseful for their actions or if she regretted what she did due to the punisment she recieved.
  
• In my opinion, she should not have been punished so severely. Her defense was solid for the time: her honor had been called into question. Her method was the problem: she should have challenged her to a duel, rather than murdering her.