DANCE OF THE 41: FILM REVIEW
One of the earliest scenes of David Pablos’ The Dance of the 41 features a conversation with protagonist Ignacio de la Torre y Mier (Alfonso Herrera) and his friends at a gay club. Referencing his marriage to his wife Amada (Mabel Cadena), he says, “Some [husbandly] duties are more difficult than others.” In Pablos’ Netflix feature film, the double life of a fictional aspiring Mexican politician pressured by heteronormative constraints is placed in the context of the real-life scandal from which the film takes its name.
The Dance of the 41 occurred in 1901 in Mexico City when police raided a clandestine party and arrested all the men present for immoral conduct. The party was hosted by a secret society consisting of many of Mexico’s most powerful gay men, and most famously, 19 of the men arrested were wearing women’s clothing. Officially, 41 men were arrested and made to sweep the streets in their gowns as punishment before being sent to jail and work camps. Following the raid, rumors quickly spread that Ignacio was the 42nd attendee of this ball and was spared because of his marriage to President Porfirio Díaz’s daughter Amada. This event became infamous in Mexican culture, with the number 41 representing homosexuality. Even today, the military does not have a 41st battalion, buildings often skip the 41st floor, some men skip their 41st birthday for fear of “turning” homosexual, and children who play schoolyard games that involve counting have to skip 41 by saying “pass” or “not me.” Through a fictional retelling of the Dance of the 41, Pablos reclaims that harrowing event by reminding us that such an event serves not to be made fun of in the schoolyard, but is rather a painful part of a long history of public shaming and persecution of homosexual communities in Mexican society and the world at large. In a world still very much dominated by homophobic attitudes, Dance of the 41 poignantly points a finger at the ways these attitudes and fears of homosexuality have incited so much unnecessary violence and hatred.
The Dance of the 41 opens with the marriage of Ignacio to Amada (Mabel Cadena). As the film progresses, Cadena and Herrera brilliantly explore the tension between Amada, who knows she is being exploited for political gain, and Ignacio, who is attempting to kickstart his political career while hiding his involvement in a secret society of homosexual men and his growing attraction to Evaristo Rivas (Emiliano Zurita). As Amada fights to be recognized for her worth and womanhood in her marriage and society at large, she fights Ignacio for power and attempts to restore traditional order to their marriage when she learns about his affair with Evaristo and feels the ever-growing sting of the public eye on their relationship.
As they battle for power, Amada and Ignacio demonstrate the tragedy of their situation with tact. In early scenes, the pain felt by the illegitimate mixed-race Amada, who sought acceptance in society through marriage, is beautifully shown in scenes of Amada lying to her friends as they laugh about her marriage and the looks of disgust she gets with her husband in an opera house.
Pablos refuses to paint Amada as a pure villain — rather, he uses her as a tool to demonstrate the far-reaching impacts of homophobic attitudes on everyone’s life. Amada, like Ignacio, is fighting to make the most out of her situation and leverage her marriage for acceptance. In doing so, she attempts to suppress her husband’s homosexuality and abandons all attempts to love him for a desperate need to control him to save herself. She oversteps traditional lines of power when she digs through her husband's mail and invites his lover over for dinner in order to demonstrate that she is the one who holds the power in their relationship. Lines such as, “I may not know how to play the piano, but I bet you don’t know another woman who can clean, load, and fire a rifle” remind the viewer that Amada is by no means a conventional woman of high society, try as she might. In this sense, Ignacio contributes to her oppression by reminding her of her inadequacies as a spouse and neglecting her. He refuses to love her in ways that she needs and makes it clear to her and everyone around her that he only values her for her connections. Pablos uses their toxic and mutually harmful dynamic to remind the viewer that simply because you belong to one oppressed group doesn’t mean you can’t oppress another. Ignacio uses his privilege as a white male in Mexico to oppress his mixed-race spouse, and she weaponizes heteronormativity and her connection to the President to oppress Ignacio in the home and beyond. Amada and Ignacio are both intensely oppressed by their system of governance, but while Amada finds a way to leverage it to her advantage, Ignacio ends up crushed by it.
The Dance of the 41 hit Netflix right before Pride Month and serves as a powerful reminder to us that gay rights have been fought for tooth and nail around the world. Pride and existence as a queer person have always been a form of protest. Seeing the way the wealthiest and most privileged people in Mexican society were so cruelly punished for their existence as gay men makes one wonder about the fates of those who weren’t wealthy political figures. While progress has been made across the world, it’s come at a cost. Four weeks ago, the United States hit a record for transsexual deaths. Last year, Mexico saw the highest number of LGBT-related killings in 5 years. Liberation has not come equally to all members of our community, and many here — and elsewhere — face threats of violence and death simply for existing.
While the film’s fictional protagonist Ignacio was shielded by his privilege, the rest of the 41 were sentenced to jail and hard labor. The Dance of the 41 brilliantly reveals the devastation that the 41 faced when their lifestyle was exposed and their ability to live freely was permanently removed. By alternating between shots of them well-dressed in suits and shots of them being beaten on the streets by onlookers while wearing dresses as they swept as punishment, Pablos forces the viewer to look at men whose right to exist was taken away and reminds us of the price of discrimination and hate.
The Dance of the 41 emphasizes the realities and complexities around oppression. Rarely is there a simple dichotomy between oppressor and oppressed. Instead, themes of intersectionality and the weaponization of identity politics complicate the way oppressed groups interact with each other. By placing the complex characters of Ignacio and Amada at the heart of a story about homosexual oppression, Pablos reminds the viewer that oppression is a system in which there are no winners.