Oh, the Humanity
Outsider art, insider war, cyberspace and Selena
A DIFFERENT SORT OF WESTERN MONUMENT, AND one much better known, is the subject of Lourdes
Portillo's Corpus: A Home Movie for Selena. Coming as it does under the auspices of public TV's P.O.V. series, and not of Behind the Music, it is concerned less with the tabloid details of the assassinated singer's life than with her transformative effect on her community -- in the local, the racial and to some extent the musical sense. Corpus stands for Corpus Christi, her hometown, but also for the power of saintly relics -- no little time is spent at the gravesite, interviewing pilgrims -- and for the way in which Selena's success made glamorous the Latina body. (One woman, not a fan, buys a Selena keychain because it was "the first time I saw a Chicana on a keychain that wasn't the Virgin of Guadelupe.") Portillo (Oscar-nominated for the 1985 Las Madres: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo) had never heard of Selena before her death, and her film is animated by an ingenuous curiosity: "Home movie" is apt, not only for that reason, and for the actual home movies it incorporates, and for the fact that a community is a family as well, but also for its patchwork juxtapositions of scenes and voices (family and fans, deep thinkers, a drag queen, and numerous young aspirants to what might be called Selena: The Next Generation). Corpus flits quickly from post to post, yet it gets across not only the outlines of the life and the range of influence, but something of the size of the talent, and of the tragedy.
Corpus: A Home Movie for Selena | KCET | Tuesday, July 13, 10 p.m
The Hunley | TNT Premieres Sunday, July 11, 8 p.m.
The Living Museum
HBO | Various times through July 29
Home Page | HBO Signature | Various times through July 29
Mary Jane Colter: House Made of Dawn | KCET | Thursday, July 22, 10 p.m. | Sunday, July 25, midnight
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