La Reina de Flow episode 1 analysis

    As we have talked about in class, telenovelas could either be on two sides of the spectrum, traditional or realistic. La Reina de Flow falls on the more realistic side of the spectrum with some aspects of a traditonal telenovela. La Reina de flow involves narcos, music, love triangles, the FBI, revenge, family, and drama. This telenovela is all over the place, but it keeps viewers intrigued. In this blog post, I will talk about the first episode of La Reina de Flow and connect it back to what I have learned from our FYOS.

    To set things off, Charly, the antagonist, was seen at a concert performing songs that he stole from Yeimy, the protagonist. The next scene was Yeimy in a prison cell in America. Yeimy in fact is innocent and spent 17 years in prison due to Charly's fault. The audience can already see how big of an antagonist Charly is going to be throughout the series even by watching the first couple of scenes. In the next couple of scenes at the prison, we see Yiemy celebrating her birthday, but all of a sudden things turn 180 degrees and we see someone trying to poison Yiemy's drink and kill her. But who set up this hitman to kill Yeimy? it was Charly's uncle, a feared drug lord in Medellin, Colombia.! I know right! Just within the first 10 minutes of the telenovela, so many crazy and surprising things have happened. I mean it is not a telenovela without sudden twists and drama. Unfortunately, the drink that was poisoned was drunk mostly by Yiemy's best friend that she made in prison who was black and she died. In telenovelas, producers typically kill the black people off first which is rooted in the colorism that the telenovela industry has. After this depressing scene, Yiemy is approached by an FBI agent who allows her to change her identity to capture Charly's uncle, Manin, by becoming a fake music producer and getting close to Charly. 

    The next half of the first episode was a flashback from 17 years ago when Yeimy was a young teenager. Young Yeimy was introduced to us by singing a song that she wrote, clearly, Yeimy is musically talented. Yeimy as a teenager wasn't wealthy, she lived in the barrio (the hood) of Colombia and her parents slaved themselves away in trying to keep their bakery shop open. The "cinderella" aspects are applied in the second half of the first episode, I will discuss more of this later. Remember when I discuss that Charly's uncle, Manin, is a drug lord? Well, Manin's righthand man sent him to request the monthly protection dues from Yeimy's family, but Yeimy's parents refuse to pay another cent to Manin. This refusal of paying their monthly payment later resulted in Manin killing Yeimy's parents later in the episode. It is depressing, but I don't want to put much focus on this instead, I want to talk about young Charly, his best friend, Juancho, and Yeimy in this blog post. 

    Charly and Juancho have big aspirations in becoming famous artists; they even have their own group called Soul y Bass. Soul y Bass has gained some popularity in Medellin because of Charly's looks, but that all changed in a rap battle contest. Charly and Juancho lost badly due to the lack of improv of lyrics. After an embarrassing loss, Juancho suggests they should get a songwriter in their group. This is where Yeimy comes to play, Yeimy also has a desire of doing music for a living and so she constantly writes her song lyrics in a book. One day at school Charly's girlfriend steals Yeimy's songbook and starts reading out loud her lyrics in front of Charly and Juancho. It was there where Juancho found his new songwriter, Charly was hesitant at first. Charly thought that making a music video for their song is what would make them blow up. In their music video, Charly used his girlfriend and her friends with bikinis. Using those girls with bikinis was a way that the telenovela producers used a machismo mentality. It's very stereotypical for guys to lust over women and treat women like an object, essentially this is what Charly did to those women to try to gain the public's attention. Juancho on the other hand decided it was best to use Yemiy as their songwriter to go viral. It wasn't until they played Yeimy's song to a music producer in Medellin who liked Yeimy's music/ flow that changed Charly's mind and added Yeimy to the team. At first, Yeimy was hesitant to join their team because she didn't want to disappoint her mother in fulfilling her musical dreams instead of becoming a doctor. But of course, Charly's charisma and promising her that her song would make them a lot of money changed her mind. In this situation, Charly is seen as the prince. Charly is in fact wealthy( of course, his uncle is a drug lord), has a nice smile, and is handsome. While Yeimy is seen as cinderella, she is poor, still very beautiful, and pure. In every cinderella story, there is the evil stepmother. In this case, the evil stepmother is Charly's uncle who tried to kill Yeimy in the beginning scenes of the first episode.

 

    With every telenovela, there is a love story. The only love triangle presented within this first episode is Yeimy in love with Charly, but Charly is in love with his girlfriend. The other love story present is Menin, Charly's uncle, being in love with Charly's mom. We learn that Charly lost his father, but we weren't exposed to how he died in the first episode. Manin is in love with his brother's wife. He even bought her flowers and brought her plenty of groceries up to her house. I am excited to see how Manin's love for Charly's mother progresses throughout the telenovela. 

      Overall, in the first episode, we see machismo, colorism, love, and the cinderella aspects. Colorism was present when the producers killed off the first black/ darker person, machismo was shown when Charly used women as objects in his music video, love is depicted through Manin's feelings for Charly's mother, and the cinderella aspects were illustrated through Charly for being wealthy, handsome, and coming through to save Yeimy by promising her that her lyrics would make them a hit. Charly is the prince while Yeimy is the one who is needed to be "saved", poor, and beautiful. As I talked about previously in my last post, I have already watched about half of La Reina de Flow, but I haven't watched it since 3 years ago. I can't wait to start watching more again and keep on tieing it back to what we learn in the FYOS.