It’s More than Just a Bad Hair Day:
Exploring Adolescent Sexuality in Mariana Rondón’s Pelo malo/Bad Hair BY DAMON REED | Virginia Commonwealth University1
ABSTRACT Mariana Rondón’s 2013 film, Pelo Malo (Bad Hair), sensationalized the cultural landscape, as it illuminated questions of sexuality, race, age, and class as it relates to the nine-year-old child protagonist, Junior. This essay employs an intersectional, feminist, and queer lens to investigate the multifaceted forms of oppression that Junior simultaneously experiences while attempting to reconcile and develop a more profound sense of self. In many aspects of Junior’s life, the child protagonist lacks agency and is vulnerable to trauma. Despite these socio-cultural barriers, Junior must choose between self-articulation and submission to larger patriarchal institutions of authority. More specifically, the most potent symbol of Junior’s identity, in addition to his marginalization and victimization, is his hair; it represents not only his desire to be a pop singer but also marks his Afro-Latino heritage. Problematically, Junior’s yearning to find himself through his hairstyle is futile. By straightening, maintaining, or cutting his hair, he rejects one aspect of himself in favour of another, reifying an unauthentic and vexed identity. In many ways, however, Junior’s post-modern search for self holds socio-cultural currency, as the film transcends fiction into a depiction of a disconcerting, contemporary reality that few filmmakers elect to depict in their works.
Mariana Rondón’s 2013 film Pelo malo (Bad Hair) illuminates questions of sexuality, race, age, and class in the life of the nine-year-old protagonist, Junior (Samuel Lange Zambrano), against the backdrop of social, political, and economic calamity during Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s battle with cancer. This essay interrogates the multifaceted forms of oppression that Junior experiences while attempting to reconcile and develop a more profound understanding of self. From the pernicious psychological castigation of his mother due to her perception of his deviant, homosexual orientation, to the harsh reality of physical violence within his impoverished microcosm where the chilling reality of rape and gunfire unsettle even the child characters, Junior must choose between self-articulation and submission to larger patriarchal institutions of power. The most potent symbol of Junior’s identity throughout the film is his hair; it not only represents his desire to be a pop singer but also marks his Afro-Venezuelan heritage, both of which his society understands in counter-normative and even dangerous terms. Problematically, Junior’s yearning to find himself through his hairstyle is futile: by straightening, maintaining, or cutting his hair, he rejects one aspect of himself in favour of another, thereby reifying an inauthentic identity. Rondón’s neo-realist aesthetic allows viewers to engage with her film through various
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Vol.06, No.01 | Spring 2021
critical frameworks, lending itself well to sexual, racial, and political interpretations of the work. In this essay, however, I will argue that, despite its well-intentioned design as a tool of meaningful socio-cultural critique, Pelo malo’s openness to interpretation unintentionally reinforces and perpetuates many of the stereotypes and prejudices that the film is meant to undermine. Among the broader and implicit discourses performed in the film, Pelo malo is laden with references to Hugo Chávez’s regime. From prayers for the president’s health due to his terminal illness, to the political graffiti that covers walls and buildings in Caracas, to depictions of Venezuelan citizens shaving their heads in solidarity with their ailing leader on television, one cannot extricate the figure or influence of Chávez from an understanding of Rondón’s work or the Venezuelan socio-cultural landscape more broadly. It is important to note the significance of Fidel Castro’s influence on the formation of Chávez’s socialist agenda as the two became personal friends during the early stages of Chávez’s political career (Marcano and Tyszka 214–15; 220). As film critic Charles St-Georges notes, Venezuela followed the social model Castro operationalized in Cuba, which exalted the hombre nuevo (“new man”) who actively combats US cultural imperialism and perpetuates the patriarchy while making empty promises
