MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

In the mid 1990s, ABC television attempted to revive classic musicals with filmed versions of Annie, The Music Man, Once Upon a Mattress, and Bye Bye Birdie. Birdie, an American classic, combined the efforts of pop culture divas Vanessa Williams and Chynna Phillips, television and Broadway celebrity Jason Alexander, and Broadway veteran Marc Kudisch. ABC’s attempt to provide audiences with a nostalgic return to a collection of pre-Hairspray “nicest [read whitest] kids in town” proved a critical flop. Not lost in the translation, however, was the prototypical performance of Rose Alvarez, a woman who was — as described by her future mother-in-law in the original musical – “…a Mexicali rose who came over for the fruit picking season and stayed to ruin an American woman’s life.” This “Spanish Rose” representation is further complicated by the non-traditional casting of Vanessa Williams — a half Anglo, half African-American actress— in a powerful case of bi-racial casting. Thus, the performance of Rose in the film musical becomes one of negotiating race and ethnicity within the already privileged space of the American musical. This paper deconstructs the film for its inability to escape the overused and tired stereotypes of the Broadway Golden Age musical while also paying careful attention to its attempt to reconstruct “America” viewed through the lens of the “folk musical.” My analysis of the Hallmark Entertainment film will also include an investigation of the “imagined Latino community” historically absent within the musical theatre canon yet visibly reconstructed in the body of Chita Rivera. posits itself as an exploration of the intersection between commodified Americana and the neglected body of Latinidad – often forced to the fringes of televised popular culture.