Alexander Varderi
Dir. David Planell/ Spain 2009/107 min.
Although many Spanish families that adopt children of other ethnic groups manage to positively incorporate them into their environment, it is no less true that doubts, regarding the acceptance of the adoptee and their insertion into society, play a fundamental role when deciding take this step or back out once the child has entered the new home. In this sense, the urgency of giving back what has not been understood has a multiple and forceful expression in the film "La verga" by David Planell, based on the story of Manu, an 8-year-old Peruvian boy who has already been returned in the past to the Madrid reception center by prospective parents who did not know how to approach him. Communication problems, integration, self-esteem and adjustment of the little one join the personal ones of Lucía and Pepe, the prospective parents, showing the family difficulties, in this double negotiation of the affections between the inner self and the other, to show a hidden racism under the political correctness of a young and progressive couple.
The material and immaterial borders between Manu and his possible parents have a greater complexity, product of the preconceptions towards what is not familiar and therefore subject to suspicion. "Lucía, the Peruvian steals from us," says Pepe, when he can't find a watch, immediately blaming Rosa, the employee in charge of taking care of Manu. “What good is it that she is Peruvian. She doesn't even sing her songs from her country, ”continues Pepe, reducing Rosa's behavior parameters towards Manu to the cultural stereotype, and thereby justifying her supposed failure to counteract the child's rebellion and hostility.
Pepe's inexperience in dealing with Manu's intrinsic problems is due to a lack of knowledge of the psychological consequences that being a victim of rejection has on the boy, both from the biological mother and from the adoptive parents, in addition to the difficulties to be accepted socially. “They hit him with gum on his head,” Lucía informs her husband when the boy becomes a victim of bullying. This, as a precursor to the problems of marginalization of the group if upon reaching 18 years of age, as happens to many young immigrants without papers who have not yet been able to leave shelters and protection centers, he also finds himself suddenly alone and in the street. Well, exclusion and racism are certainly the causes of many of these adolescents, abandoned by their immigrant parents at birth or arriving in the country when they were minors, entering the network of gangs, in this case Latinas —“with that look from Latin King that he has put on”, Pepe censures Manu for not having cut his hair as he would like -, establishing himself in Spain since the migratory surge of the new millennium.
As in the rest of Europe, the difficulty of the average Spaniard in accepting multiculturalism stems from a homogeneous nationalism resulting from historical colonialism, which perceives the colonized from a position of power and favors a cultural fundamentalism determined to preserve a habitat uncontaminated by the other. , as seen in the film. In fact, Manu's presence inside the house is especially concentrated in his room, generating from it a chaos that spreads to the rest and twitches the prospective father, displacing him.
The scene of the fishbowl that the boy has in his room —an obsession for Pepe, who complains that he does not feed the fish and that is why they are “losing weight”— illustrates this need to preserve the purity of the space; because by accidentally breaking into a discussion about bullying at school, the drama is obliterated by Pepe's urgency to save the fish, after which he scolds the boy without stopping to reflect on the reasons for a rebellion where said bullying has a fundamental paper. What's more, Pepe shifts his attention to himself and to “the scare”, in her words, that caused the episode, looking to Lucía for support, which she considered unnecessary given the trifle of the accident. "I've been about to slap him twice," he also stresses before her to justify her startled state, in addition to pointing out that she is going to return him to the reception center because "we don't get hold of him."
This reaction is intended to make Lucía an accomplice in making a decision whose responsibility is solely hers, since she is willing to open up the space and maintain an open attitude that allows her to break the shell where the boy is also hiding, trying to isolate himself from open or hidden aggression, product of an ethnocentrism so widespread that it is considered normal, because it reacts against the "threats" that the existence of the other has on the group. Subverting it, to eradicate it in her husband and to get her to accept Manu unconditionally is her goal, even when the relationship suffers, as it will.
Here the director will divert the plot knot towards the interaction between Lucía and Pepe, leaving Manu in the background. The camera will then privilege the close-ups and the game of shot-reverse shot of the couple, seeking to capture the nuances of their emotional problems to the detriment of the most urgent, that is, the migration issue and the suppression of the child's self.
In fact, there will be no attempt to articulate any discourse that verbalizes the lack of adaptation of an infant, weakened by abandonment in a strange environment and to a certain extent incompatible, given the clumsiness to establish a communication channel, especially in regards to prospective father regards. “We will have to find you a house”, he will say to the fish, in an ironic wink from the director to the unconsciousness of the average Spaniard towards everything that is outside his radius of action, where multiculturalism has per se a very secondary place before the drama product of its most transcendental problems. Indeed, there will be a home for the fish but not for Manu, at least not permanently. And the one that will be in Pepe and Lucía's will be altered by his unstable behavior, despite her attempts to create a safe environment for the two men in the house.
"We can't", Pepe will clarify, when Lucía, more sincere, tells him that the problem lies in that "we don't want to", making it a random impossibility for him to feel powerless to make the effort to cross into the world of the child. “You are afraid of your son!” She will also throw him in the face, trying to shake off a narcissism and a certain paranoia that make her see the boy as a "threat" and come from the colonizing past, geared to the general indifference of Spanish society towards the migratory phenomenon. The latter, given its recentness and the small percentage that it still occupies, when compared with that of other European nations. "We are not the Red Cross, we are not Saint Angelina Jolie", Pepe will continue, however, placing the responsibility of dealing with situations exogenous to their closest reality in the institutional and allegorical, thus avoiding participating in the necessary collective change that the country must do to integrate immigrant groups, even if it is difficult for them to recognize and accept it.
The drafting of clear policies regarding the integration of migratory groups is essential to alter the prejudiced perception of many Spaniards, regarding the issue of interracial adoption. With reference to this, it is interesting to observe that the exponential rise of the extreme right in the Peninsula is due especially to the xenophobic and racist discourse of political leaders determined to manipulate consciences, stirring up hatred and dividing instead of uniting; because the common good here first involves preserving all the privileges to which the white man is entitled, above women and the other components of the population pyramid. Something that is not exclusive to Spain, since its intolerance runs through the geographies and is exacerbated in the countries of Eastern Europe, whose history of ethnic cleansing and massacres of groups considered inferior is long and dark, such behavior augurs a growing radicalization of ethnocentrism in the old continent in the years to come.
It is not surprising then that the general profile of the Vox voter in the 2019 general elections coincided with that of Pepe who, even though he intends to follow Lucía in the "adventure" of adopting a Peruvian child, cannot overcome atavisms, nor the animosities towards those described as usurpers of the place that the "authentic" Spaniards consider theirs in their own right.
The mass exoduses of the new millennium, never seen on this scale in the past, have caused destination countries to close their borders, or at least make it difficult for those fleeing wars, economic debacles and tyrannies to enter and settle. These unstoppable displacements have forever altered the global map, which requires a world cultural change that unfortunately finds increasing resistance, at a historical crossroads where social polarization and radicalization make it impossible to have a constructive dialogue with which to seek solutions to the joint.
This is so since departures depend fundamentally on profound internal changes in the structures of the nations from where the largest number of migrants leave; a practically impossible task, since its leaders have no interest in carrying it out. What's more, many of the governments, most of them authoritarian, make use of the migration factor to blackmail the receiving nations in order to obtain perks and continue with their dark agendas.
"How am I going to be able to take care of this child if I don't know how to find the reproductive system of amphibians", Pepe continues justifying himself in the film "La shame", unconscious within his small universe of external horror, shortly before embracing Lucía crying, who suddenly sees himself with two children in his hands seeking comfort and protection. And at this point, it is interesting to note that, of the two, Manu handles his situation of real helplessness with more aplomb than Pepe, who, unable to assume his role as pater familias, leaves Rosa the responsibility of convincing the child to go to the dentist. "You get along with him," he will express as an excuse, then going to the kitchen to check that the broth is sweet, since he added sugar instead of salt, Rosa having changed the places of each one without realizing it. This annoyance once again takes the place of really serious problems and is reiterated from suspicion in the next scene, when he leaves money under the bed to see if he can take it, and when confronted by her, she tells him that he will find the bill on the table at night.
Accepting a priori the guilt of the other led by the racial stereotype, is one of the parameters on which collective intolerance is based, and comes from the fallacy of believing oneself part of a self-sufficient culture, whose privileges include deciding who is innocent or guilty, according to their ethnic origin and position in the population pyramid. A reality that the protagonist puts into practice by attributing to Rosa the disappearance of her father's watch, and transforming Manu into the cause of her anxieties and fears. “It's him or us,” she affirms emphatically, when a social worker is about to arrive to assess whether they will be the appropriate adoptive parents.
The scene of the interview reveals the ills of the social services system, in terms of the selection process of adoptive parents, in the figure of the person who arrives: a young woman overwhelmed with work and wanting to finish as soon as possible to get to the appointment. following. "I already have enough with what I have", she will conclude, adding her personal troubles to a report where, in principle, she does not consider Pepe and Lucía suitable for adoption, after a series of questions in which little is clarified and much is obscured. "If you don't like your job, don't do it," Lucía will reply, seeing the random and superficial nature of an evaluation made without deep knowledge of them and their relationship with Manu, as she is a substitute who has just taken the case due to illness from whom had carried it up to then.
The dynamics that the assistant establishes with the couple lack professionalism, essential to carry out such a delicate matter, where the well-being of a child suffering rejection due to his immigrant origin is at stake. And although the young woman acts with good intentions, the bureaucratic demands of a system in crisis also do not allow her to dedicate the time and effort necessary to deal with the complexity of the problem, especially when she is her first contact with the interviewees. This will leave the final result of the evaluation open, noting that the prospective parents still have a chance to legally adopt the boy, if they correct some communication problems between them, and in the case of Pepe, moderate his explosive character.
On Manu's side, the experience of having found his biological mother —who is none other than Rosa, even though it remains up in the air if he has truly realized it— has not been satisfactory, since the dependencies and economic difficulties of this prevent him from giving the son the necessary care. The fact that he is working in Pepe and Lucía's house, without them knowing who he really is, also inscribes the resolution of many important issues within the film. "New life, new rules without lies", Pepe will propose, opening, he too, the door to the secrets of a couple that fear and shame had prevented them from facing. “You are so ashamed of being lost that you don't ask for help”, he expresses, a little to himself, and a little to rectify a behavior that is not in keeping with what Lucía and Manu expect of him.
The final scene, where Lucía and Pepe go out to release the fish in a nearby pond to the soundtrack of a Peruvian lullaby, speaks of the desire to renew relations and establishes an intercultural bridge, the strength of which will depend on the behavior of all parties. variables involved in an environment of uncertainties. Although, when Manu returned Pepe the watch he had appropriated and hugged Lucía, the boy's will to share that new life where the three of them could form a true family is reaffirmed. Something that Spain must take into account in the coming years, since the massive displacements towards Europe, with the consequent increase in abandoned childhood, will continue to increase as long as intolerance and authoritarianism continue to take over nations.