One of my clearest memories from childhood is being in the car outside of my mom’s friend’s trailer and listening to “Dreaming Of You” by Selena on the radio. It was some time after her death, maybe a year or so. I recall a voice talking about the Shakespearean manner in which she died—at age 23, killed by her obsessive fan club president. I can’t remember who, exactly, was speaking. It could’ve been my mother, or possibly the radio host. The parts that I can hear most vividly are words like.
I didn’t grow up with Selena. I grew up with Selena the legend. She died when I was 5 years old, too young to have many memories of her from when she was alive. It wasn’t until after that day in the car, listening to the radio, that I began to immerse myself in all things Selena. I had every CD, every cassette tape. My Filipina mother, ever the karaoke queen, queued up her greatest hits whenever it was my turn to sing.
But beyond bringing our cultura to the masses, the movie was—at its core—a vehicle for propelling the myth of Selena forward at a rapid clip. Produced in close collaboration with the Quintanilla family, the biopic was released on March 21, 1997, just 10 days shy of the second anniversary of her death.
Yet for all the film manages to achieve—namely bestowing Selena, posthumously, the global fame she was on track to attain before she was killed—her story remains, fundamentally, a tragedy. The end of the movie, when Selena’s family learns that she’s died at the hospital, still hits like a punch to every major organ all at once. With each rewatch, the loss is as palpable as ever.
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