ANALYSIS OF PARTS OF THE SONG OF THE ‘GREAT MEN’
> The Great Male
In the hospital room
At 9:43 Simón was born
Is the summer of ’56
The pride of Don Andrés, for being male
In the first stanza of the work is in a hospital, a space that within the theory of Michel Foucault represents a machinery that operates depending on the biopoder and biopolitics, and it is the body the receiver of the control and regulation mechanisms. It is then the birth of Simon an event that begins in a hospital, and since his sex is known through the parts of his body, the image of masculinity is printed and the duty of masculinity, and being a man, your body corresponds to a certain gender and a certain desire. The image of masculinity is closely related in a first instance by the body (the zoe) that at birth must begin to recreate a performance or role that is taught by the father and the mother. In principle, masculinity is thought as absolute, or a series of stereotypical features that are not differentiated by different categories such as class, culture, among others, however, it looks like masculinities approach an ideal of gender. Men are taught to adopt a series of roles and ideals framed in a collection of behaviors and attitudes that in some cases are favored and pressed, and others that are ignored or hard punished.
There is a hegemonic behavior within the masculinities that forces men to acquire a role of heterosexual in society. Within the imaginary of masculinity, from some perspectives it is seen as a manifestation of the Zoe, understood as the life of living beings or naked life, of the biology of man or that are attitudes and behaviors learned and socially reinforced by ideas and ideas andStereotypes. It is also common in Latin America to find a tendency to associate masculinity with heterosexuality and homosexuality with the feminine and liabilities. According to Agamben’s reading, the male is a mask with a certain role and social identity that seeks to be recognized by others and that builds a personality pattern.
He was raised like the others
With a hard hand, severely
He never thought
When you grow you are going to study
The same pod as your dad, listen to it well
You will have to be a great man
It is perhaps in this part of the song where Simon’s father is seen in a discursivelybehaviors that have a molding purpose that corresponds to a gender role marked by masculinity. In the great framework and variety of the exercise of paternity in Latin America it is possibleThe incompetence of child care is possible to observe how a dominant authority figure emerges that seeks to educate from an affective distancing.
It is then the punishment a corrective mechanism that acts on the body with violence, since the expression "with a hard hand" refers to a state in which it is necessary to use physical and/or psychological force to discipline or prevent behaviors that, to itstime, they must go in accordance with a pattern or model to follow that for this case it is the male embodied in Simon’s same father. It is therefore necessary.
The studies and the extensive literature of masculinities in Latin America in principle departed from the idea of the dichotomy of the genre, that is to say that the question focused on doing a search for masculinity in contrast to the feminine and is often anchored toConcepts of authority, tradition and competence present in the roles of the masculine, which in general terms provides the beginning of an analysis but does not go to the singularities of the cases and the diversity of socially inhabiting ways of living. However, when approaching paternity, he mentions that it is one of the highest forms of responsibility, regardless of whether it is an absent or present figure, it is the most important part in the experience of men, as long as it is natural because it is a sign ofThe virility of men, domestic as it is the place where the necessary values for the roles of the public sphere, and transcendental are instilled because it ensures the continuity of life.
Abroad went Simon
Far from home, he forgot that sermon
Change the way of walking
He used a skirt, lipstick, and a carteron
People tell the father one day
He went to visit him without warning
What error
And a woman spoke to her when she passed
Hi told him, how dad, how are you doing?
You don’t know me I’m Simon
Simon, your son, the great man
In this part of Willie Colon’s work, he introduces himself to Simon’s life. After having lived a difficult childhood he manages to leave home to start building his life, and it is like a transvestite that manages to assume a new role in society. The gender, understood from a social construction, which in turn is normative, and being in a regime where there is what is "normal" and everything that opens the spectrum of the gender is cataloged as the abnormal. However, outside the discourse of normality there are other perspectives that allow a more successful understanding of transvestism, and it is the element of discontinuity that does not focus on the definition or categorization and that according to Judith Butler must be denatured to get out of practicestereotyped and see the constant repetition of acts that are and not legitimized.
Transvestism has always been thought from marginality, and in Latin America, transvestism and homosexuality are two elements that go hand in, which allows to find a broader spectrum of what it means to be transvestite, since some transvestites are recognized as women, others as homosexuals who are like women but who are not feminine, however they find that they build their subjectivity in reference toThe feminine.
It is the transvestite Simon, the incarnation of a mask or role linked to an identity, and if it goes to the definition of the word transvestite, we see that it is a genre performance of what is cataloged as femininity, it is found in thebarrier of being and the other and manifests itself in the denaturation of the genres or a deconstruction of normality within the binary, but created an effect of "reality" reproducing the roles of others.
In Willie Colón’s song it is possible to identify that Simon is a transvestite who seeksA game of meanings.
However, for the perceptual of his father, this transformation could be considered anomalous and full of behaviors that are not within heterosexual normality. Words such as normal, nature, morality, decency and sin are part of the critical collection of what contradicts the normative and is even classified as a psychiatric pathology of gender identity, which only evidences the state of superiority of a patriarchal structure that does notAccept the different forms of social roles. It is perhaps ironically that Simon in the last phrase reminds Andrés that he is his son, the great man, resorting to the same word game with which he was disciplined, but with a different meaning where a new one could be interpretedPosture from resistance to models imposed by the father.
Nature cannot be corrected
Stick that is born folded, never its strance
Nature cannot be corrected
Stick that is born folded, never its strance
Nature cannot be corrected
Stick that is born folded, never its strance
This part of the work is perhaps the most controversial. The choir repeats again and again at the bottom of the song a series of sayings that allude to popular speaking and that personifies society. In the social context, in an attempt to reflect on the situation of Andrés and Simón there is a mood to understand the situation of the father and son relationship, however, the ambiguity of the sayings shows that despite the attempt to show the circumstances inThose that are framed by the discourses of the body and gender of the work, is a criticism that is still associated with the macho discourse. The phrase "cannot be corrected to nature" introduces again in the narrative of the natural, where it perhaps an allusion that nature is perfect, pristine, and wise, and that you should not try to correct it. This is a point where you can reflect on what is corrected, a word that implicitly loads a negative value judgment and seeks to modify "for better" the situation in which Simon is, but which in turn reminds usthat Simon is part of nature.
The ambiguity previously expressed is more accentuated when the song repeats several times the phrase “Palo that is born bent, never its strain trunk”, and of the multiple interpretations it can have, highlights the popular wisdom of the saying where the customs or bad habits learnedIn childhood they can no longer be changed or modified. Under the perfection and imperfection duality, the fundamental narrative of the work revolves, and it is also necessary to infer that the criticism that is made to Latin American machismo is carried out from the same position of power.
It was carried away from what people say
His father never spoke to him
I abandon it forever
In this section of the work, it identifies how the virility of Simon’s father at stake, if paternity is one of the maxims of masculinities in Latin America, there is an abandonment as the figure of Simon does not correspond to the education instilled in chargeby the father. There is a system failure and the reflected virility fails, it is also a place of resistance, where Simon is also able to reveal himself against male hegemony. The construction of an authoritarian model, which was seen in the second stanza of the song is collapsed by non -communication.
In the hospital room
Simon died of a strange disease
Is the summer of ’86
To the patient of the bed 10 nobody cried
Simon Simon
Simon
Reaching the end of the song, the final scene of Simon’s life shows as death because of a strange disease, associated with HIV. Simon then becomes the representation of a sick body that, already within the exclusion spaces in which he was, his life from the beginning was exposed to death without memory. A naked life that does not deserve to be remembered, a body that is only Zoe, which is not inscribed in the BIOS and that is in liminality. The 1980s is perhaps where the sick associated with HIV manifests, an epidemic that in the world social imaginary is related to the homosexual and that continues to be part of contemporary narratives.
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