Favorite Characters: Blanca Evangelista (Pose)

One of the many things I enjoy about Pose is its strong central heroine in Blanca. She has the kind of ambition that seeks to pull others up along with her, and I love seeing how seriously she takes her duty as a house mother (premise spoilers.)

When we meet Blanca, she’s in a hard spot, having just learned that she’s HIV+. However, staring down the barrel of a frightening virus, she decides it’s time to go for broke and fight for what she wants. Now, at this point in her life, Blanca has already demonstrated that she’s a fighter, asserting her identity as a trans woman in the face of her family’s disapproval and society’s demonization. She made her way to New York’s ballroom scene and got herself into a house, but she got a bit stuck there, putting up with the indignity of propping up Elektra in all things and having her creative ideas alternately put down and swiped without credit. But Blanca’s diagnosis lights a fire under her ass – she breaks with Elektra and forms her own house, seeking to reframe the idea of what a house mother ought to be.

While, as a mother, Elektra expects her children to remain in grateful servitude to her, Blanca wants to better her children’s lives both in and outside of the balls. Collecting an assortment of misfit-toy young people, she goes all in on helping them put together looks for the balls and practice their voguing, but she also tries to teach them values and help them work toward their dreams. She pushes Damon to apply to dance school and encourages Angel to find a safer job than working the docks, she expects the children to be present for family dinners and won’t tolerate drugs in her house, and she demands honesty from her children. As someone who was tossed aside early in life by the people who were supposed to care for her, she works hard to create a nurturing environment where her children are protected and have their ambitions cultivated.

Part of that, for her, means serving as a role model for her children. Starting her own house is a big dream of Blanca’s, but it’s only one of them. She also wants to start her own nail salon, and when she faces discrimination in securing a space for her new business, she doesn’t back down, eager to show her children that they can’t let the world push them around. “Never give up” is a major theme of House Evangelista, and although that can seem like a corny mantra, Blanca takes it seriously. From the seemingly-small things, like standing up to the owners of a gay bar who won’t serve trans patrons, to literal life-or-death matters, like fighting for her own survival against HIV while simultaneously joining Act Up protests and fundraising for hospitals, she always swings for the fences.

Amid all that, though, Blanca is new to most of the ventures and campaigns she undertakes, and while she’s a quick study, she’s not perfect. As much as she strives to be a great mother, she doesn’t have a clear roadmap and she doesn’t always get it right. Sometimes she goes in too hard when she ought to show compassion, and she has an issue with playing favorites and making allowances for certain children that she doesn’t give others. Tough as she is, one major lesson she has to learn is that it’s not enough to simply fight tenaciously for herself and others – there are some things she can’t do alone, and learning to ask for help when she needs it is another important value she can model for her children. I’ve really enjoyed watching Blanca these first two seasons, sometimes kicking ass and taking names, sometimes getting in over her head, and I look forward to seeing where the show takes her next.

Relationship Spotlight: Pray Tell & Blanca Evangelista (Pose)

In any show about a found family, relationships are going to be critical, and there are plenty of relationships to love on Pose. But I think my favorite is probably the friendship between Blanca and Pray Tell (a few spoilers.)

Even though Pray Tell is the emcee for the balls and ostensibly meant to dole out praise and shade indiscriminately, he has a soft spot for the Evangelistas from the beginning, especially for Blanca. When Blanca doesn’t have the funds to match the high fashions of Elektra’s house, she turns to Pray Tell for some custom designs and regular advice. He’s the first person she tells about being HIV+, and when Pray Tell in turn tests positive himself, she’s the one he confides in. They share their dreams and fears with one another, their relationship woes, their ball strategies, and their plans for disrupting the systems of discrimination that are holding them back. In short, they’re friends and confidantes.

And, as friends, it’s natural that they fight. Each is both highly-opinionated and very protective of the other, and there are moments on the show when either finds themselves in a spiral of self-pity, unwilling to listen to the other’s well-meaning advice and encouragement. When they have a real knockdown dragout battle of wills, over Pray Tell’s relationship with Ricky, it gets ugly fast. As two dramatic people on a show filled with dramatic people, tempers flare quickly, and Blanca righteously rages while Pray Tell defends and accuses.

But while those clashes between them are significant, their relationship is much more frequently characterized by support. They keep one another accountable in their HIV treatments, taking turns to build one another up in low moments. Blanca frequently has Pray Tell’s back when he starts getting involved in Act Up protests and other AIDS-related causes, and he offers her counsel when she faces obstacles trying to get her own nail salon off the ground.

One thing that I really like about both characters and how they operate together is how seriously both take their responsibilities as elders. The concept of elders is important in both the Black and Latinx communities, as well as the LGBTQ community, particularly in connection with struggle – the pioneers who’ve paved the way and are trying to guide the younger generations through an environment that’s hopefully a little kinder than the one they came up in. Even though Blanca is quite a bit younger than Pray Tell and Elektra’s generation, her position as a house mother means she takes on an elder role in the community (and I suppose in a community dogged by family rejection, employment and housing discrimination, hate crimes, and now disease, people grow up fast.) Blanca and Pray Tell both look to offer protection, support, and wisdom to the younger people coming up in the balls. And that means advising them on their fashions and their voguing, yes, but it also means encouraging them to go after their dreams, setting standards for them to live by, and trying to keep them safe in a world that seems out to get them. While other house mothers seem to be in it maintain to acquire acolytes and win trophies at the balls, Blanca is in it to nurture and shepherd, and even though Pray Tell doesn’t head up a house of his own, he looks out for the young men in his circle, trying to teach them about everything from love to safety to skincare. I love whenever Pray Tell and Blanca take on a new project together to help the “children” or teach them a new lesson, because I know there’s little stopping the two of them when they put their minds together.

Pose (2018-Present)

Color me impressed at another Ryan Murphy project that, so far, has exemplified a lot of his positive qualities as a creator while sidestepping most of his less-entertaining ones. Pose has a different feel than most of Ryan Murphy’s work that I’ve consumed, and it’s heartening to see him embracing the value of voices not his own that resonate more deeply with his subject matter.

Set in the 1980s amid the height of the AIDS crisis, Pose explores the lives of the Black and brown queer community involved in New York’s ball culture. When Blanca gets out from under the thumb of Elektra, her domineering “house mother,” she sets out to start her own house, cultivating a talented group of young people to walk the balls and create a found family of her own. The flamboyant drama and rivalry of the balls are juxtaposed with the fight of this community to survive the epidemic and carve out a place for themselves in a world that doesn’t want them.

Before I get too far into things, I want to comment that, in certain respects, Pose does remind me of Glee, in moments that inevitably make me chuckle. Elektra is positioned as every inch a glamorous Black trans Sue Sylvester against Blanca’s earnest Will Schuester, House Evangelista is totally the New Directions, and whenever the judges give the scores at the balls, they follow a very Glee-ish convention of priming you for who’s going to win by always saving their scores for last. All that is totally goofy.

On the whole, though, Pose blends its camp, heart, and drama pretty well, digging into the lives of the assorted house members and (for the most part) allowing them to be full, complex people. After playing around with the Very Special Episode-style trans narratives on Glee, Murphy’s take on trans lives is much more nuanced this time around. Trans women, including trans women of color, are present both onscreen and in the writers’ room. The women on the show deal with romance drama, ball rivalries, employment discrimination, AIDS activism, family rifts, life dreams, and more, all while looking fierce and walking the balls like Amazons. In and amongst their stories are those of the Black and brown queer men who coexist with them, whose own lives are given the same multi-dimensional treatment. Season 1 features a bizarre side plot involving characters played by Evan Peters, Kata Mara, and James Van Der Beek, but by season 2, that narrative has been jettisoned in favor of letting all these characters we rarely get to see on TV remain firmly center stage.

I really enjoy sinking into the whole environment of the show. I knew very little about ball culture going in, so getting a dramatized look into that world is super cool, and the show also explores that period of the AIDS crisis in a way that maintains the grimness and tragedy without sacrificing the life – the HIV+ characters on the show, as well as those who love them, are all weighed down by the sheer volume of funerals they’re going to every year, and they get tested and look into the eyes of patients on the AIDS ward like emaciated specters of the future, but they also take part in dramatic Act Up protests and fight like hell to live their lives as long as they can.

All kinds of strong acting, mostly from actors I wasn’t familiar with before getting into this show. The one actor I did really know was Broadway’s Billy Porter (from Kinky Boots,) who plays Pray Tell, the fabulous master of ceremonies for the central ball. Porter is excellent, bringing quips and drama with equal aplomb, and the show finds multiple excuses for him to sing. I love Mj Rodriguez’s fierce, determined Blanca, who creates her family through sheer force of will and who will do anything for her children. Really, all the Evangelistas bring it – I really like Indya Moore as Angel, Ryan Jamaal Swain and Dyllon Burnside offer up a nice young romance as Damon and Ricky, and I have a soft spot for Angel Bismarck Curiel’s Lil Papi. It’s cool to be introduced to so many actors I’d never seen before and watch them shine.

Warnings

Strong thematic elements, sexual content, violence (including transphobic hate crimes,) language (including homophobic and transphobic slurs,) and drinking/smoking/drug use.