Filed under: American, TV | Tags: Acting, Adrián Lastra, Bambú Productions, crying, Diego, Gran Hotel, Pedro Alonso, Pedro Infantes, Spanish TV, tears, tears of joy, TV, Velvet, weaponized tears
Disculpe, pero – I cannot stop watching Spanish television shows during this pandemic. This is the third time, I know, but I’m on my fourth Bambú show and watching it (and the others) has made me think about something I had never really considered before.
It was during the finale of Season 2 of Velvet (a show about a high fashion couture store in Madrid in the 50s) that I thought, “watching that character cry is one of my favorite things onscreen. I could watch that guy cry for five more hours.” And that reminded me of how much I enjoyed the crying of another man in another show by the same production company, Gran Hotel. These creators show men crying in a way I have never seen in American media.
I’ll start with my favorite crying man and the one who inspired me to think about this. On Velvet, Pedro is often the comic relief of the show. He’s a man who cannot stop talking, especially about the woman he loves, to absolutely everyone – strangers on the train, his boss, anyone who will listen. It’s very funny and a little ridiculous, but heartfelt. And this character also cries fairly often – almost always from joy. We don’t really see him crying from sadness or despair. He cries, tears streaming down his face, from love and affection. He cries with love for his son, for his friends and for the woman for whom he pines. I find it quite beautiful and I do not think I’ve ever seen such a thing on American TV. I’ve seen it in real life, I’m grateful to say. But on screen? Never before.
Anyway – the tears that really made me think about this were not Pedro’s love-sick tears. They were his tears of empathy. Pedro (played by Adrián Lastra, by the way. I shouldn’t ignore the extraordinary skill of this actor in this.) expressed his sympathy to an older man who had lost the woman he loved and Pedro’s eyes filled with tears and so did mine and damned if we didn’t all cry together. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. Two men crying together is apparently my jam. Attn. American media producers: I think you can start to make a dent in your toxic masculinity machine by putting more crying men on your screens!
Which brings me to the other crying man – the one from Gran Hotel. Unlike Pedro on Velvet who is pure clumsy goodness, Diego on Gran Hotel is the bad guy. We know he’s bad from the minute we meet him. He’s manipulative and dangerous and from the start we are worried about the female lead who is being compelled to marry him. He is trouble with a capital T. And, as the show goes on, he turns out to be a crier. He cries about genuinely difficult stuff. He cries over his troubled personal history and over his feelings for Alicia, the female lead. In fact, I think it is only when he is with Alicia that we see him cry. He sometimes seems to be genuinely distressed and sometimes seems to be using his emotions to manipulate her. I found it really extraordinary to watch a villain authentically cry. I feel like I’ve seen villains perform tears before – usually in a mocking way like, “Boo hoo hoo, Batman. I’ll get you later.” But I have never seen a bad guy use his own real tears as a weapon in his arsenal. I found it extraordinarily compelling. Because Diego’s tears are successful at shifting the tone of the room he’s in, in the fiction – but also in my response as an audience member. He evokes my sympathy, too, even though I’ve seen all the bad things he’s done. He shifts the needle, if only for a moment and makes us sympathize with him. I’ve heard about women weaponizing tears (and seen it demonstrated in Amy Cooper) but I’m not sure (again except with Amy Cooper) I ever really saw how that worked. But with Diego, I understand how he’s weaponized his tears, just like he’s weaponizing everything else. I’ve never felt such a contradictory set of responses to a (really terrible) villain getting their just deserts before. I was mostly cheering but also feeling sorry for him. It is masterful both from a writing side – and from a performance perspective. (Again, the actor should get so much applause. Thank you, Pedro Alonso.)
Thinking about this range of men crying within a small sample size of Spanish TV produced by Bambú Productions, I realized how limited my experience of this in American performance has been. We fetishize tears here, of course. Actors who cry (and snot!) win awards – so it’s not that we never see men cry. But the context is so much wider for crying than what ends up on American screens. I feel like there’s a door to open here. There’s a way to both expand our emotional vocabulary onscreen and, because things that happen on our screens impact our lives, it might spread out into our world, too.
I feel like a world where more men might be allowed to be like Pedro and cry for joy and for love and for empathy would be a better world, one in which I might be able to stop watching Spanish TV exclusively.
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Songs for the Struggling Artist 
I loved this blog post. And yes, if American men (and women) were brought up that it’s ok to cry and that it’s not “weak,” it would be a better and healthier world!
Comment by Virginia February 21, 2021 @ 6:45 pm