All posts tagged: love

Living with symbols: Frida’s things against all things Fridamania

These days Frida Kahlo’s face is on many a “things.” Her stern mien is plastered on store windows, embroidered into colorful pillows, stamped on fridge magnets. Mexico City is the epicenter of “Fridamania” that invaded museum gift shops since the artist’s revival in the 80s. Resolved to squeeze the artist’s legacy to the last peso, Mexico’s tourist industry parades her on books, mugs, sneakers, and baby bottles. From luxury stores to street markets, one can buy Frida earrings to match Frida shirts and take pictures next to an amateur copy of a Frida self-portrait. In the city reputed to house more museums than any city in the world La Casa Azul (the Blue House), boasts the longest lines. The museum is the house where she was born and where she lived with her husband Diego Rivera until her death in 1954. Even though Kahlo’s paintings were well received during her lifetime, the most she charged for a painting was $4,000 pesos (about $1,000 USD) in 1947 for The Two Fridas, one of her masterpieces. Soon after …

My First Spanish Lesson in Mexico City: Difunto

Difunto. It means deceased or plainly dead. I am aware that this is not the most pleasant word to learn while traveling. Besides, my Spanish is pretty good and I already knew this literal definition. It’s the metaphorical definition as used in Mexican slang is what I learned on my first week in Mexico City that I am focusing on here. Just bear with me. My Spanish teacher during my days in La Roma and the woman who is credited with teaching me “difunto” was Eva, my AirBnB host. Eva is a woman in her early 50s and lives in the first floor apartment of an old building with neighbors she describes as “traditional.” Eva is by no means a traditional woman. She makes kambucha and kefir, composts her organic waste, and has a turtle living in the back patio. Teamed up with her neighbors she greets by saying “hola, vecina,” she created a little garden by the sidewalk. Eva spends her days doing all kinds of community projects in the neighborhood she loves. Her …

Love as Understood through Mexican Telenovelas, Turkish Movies, and Colombian Chickenshit

Sometime in the last decade Turkey became the world’s second largest exporter of television shows, particularly soap operas. According to a report Turkish soap opera exports went up from only $10,000 in 2004 to $200 million in 2012. Many people I meet around the world ask if I know this or that character from a Turkish soap that I’ve never heard of. I once tried to watch the Muhteşem Yüzyıl, (The Magnificent Century) about the life of Sultan Süleyman, the greatest ruler of the Ottoman Empire. Its episodes, which often last over two hours, feature many scenes where two lovers stare at each other for minutes on end to melancholic music as palace rules prevent them from expressing their love through touching. As Turkish soaps become the talk of the world, academics argue the extent to which they increase Turkey’s soft power in the Middle East and the Balkans, where the shows have been particularly popular, though I wonder how much influence can bad actors staring at one another have even if they are popular. …