borrowing spanish to talk about love

Spanish as a way to articulate strong emotions.

During scenes where strong and passionate emotions relating to love and sex are exhibited, symbols of Latin-ness pop up, from music playing, to Spanish itself being spoken. Why? Because of the damn latin lover craze that is the story of my life. This means that Spanish is borrowed by decidedly non-Spanish/Latino/-a people in moments of pasión as a way of articulating these emotions, or maybe even as a fun role to step in to as they toy with being sexy following the lead of the world-class masters themselves.

Don't ask why I was watching an Afghan singer - it's a long story. Anyways regresando al tema, as I was listening to afghan singer Valy sing about Setara-jaan, my ears perked up when the Dari lyrics were suddenly interrupted by a low female voice. "Hola mi amor" followed by the obviously spanish (and I mean SPAIN when I say Spanish) "te echo de menos."

And this guy doesn't even respond to her in Spanish - he replies in English, which suggests he doesn't speak any Spanish (same goes for her with that accent), underscoring the fact that "spanish-ness" is just being borrowed. But why? Well the girl is lying down, and suggestively toying with a pearl necklace [Her hand obscuring part of the necklace makes it either an ambiguous tasbeh, or rosary (am I the only person who turns rosaries into a sexual symbol?)], and clearly spelling out that she is there to represent sexiness - punto. And what comes out of this symbol of sexiness? Spanish! The rest of the video is him dancing about alone. Spanish only enters the scene in an intimate moment between lovers. He is alone in his (souped up) car, she is lying down seductively. When the lovers conversation stops, so does the Spanish.

I was thinking about this when I watched Korean drama Coffee Prince. There's a scene when Eun Sae (protagonist Go Eun Chan's sister) is outside with the sexy and unfortunately dead (que descanse en paz) Lee Eon. As he goes crazy with love for her, he starts running up and down an alley. As he begins this frenzied display of emotion, what else starts to play, but Latin music.

And what about Sex and the City? Samantha's lesbian lover María is from Brasil, but she talks like a vata loca from Compton and addresses her ambiguously pan-latin friends as chica. When they get into a lovers quarrel, María displays her fiery Latin passion by throwing plates. To what? You guessed it. A soundtrack of Latin music.

What surprises me is the extent to which Latin-ness has penetrated the world as the best code through which to act out sexiness and love. I even notice Koreans letting themselves go more than usual in a salsa environment - Latin dance is a safe, and appropriate realm to be sexy - well, so is comedy.

This is one of my favourite subjects to discuss, so expect more on the matter.

La Bendita.