In the opening scene of Fantasmas’ first episode, “Cookies and Spaghetti,” Julio (Julio Torres) is having a nightmare about filling out an online application that asks, among other things, what his occupation is. In response, he simply fills in his name: Julio. (It’s a whole thing later on in the episode that his job is, quite simply, “being Julio.”) The screen automatically reacts to that in red capital letters that chide, “INVALID OCCUPATION.” When Julio then tries to fill out his address as “my water tower,” the screen also spits back, “ADDRESS NOT FOUND.” When he tries to submit the form, it immediately tells him, “REJECTED.” All the while, he’s been dressed in a Pierrot-meets-jester sort of ensemble topped with what amounts to a dunce hat. Every time he fills one of the questions out, he then tries to open a window that ends up not existing behind one of the curtains he pulls back. The symbolism is instantly obvious: Julio (and those like him) is being literally boxed out of society because they can’t quite fit into any specific, “prepopulated” box.
That symbolism continues in Julio’s waking life, when he goes to Crayola to offer his consulting services. Accordingly, he tells the three suits in front of them they need to make a crayon that is clear. One of the suits responds, “But clear isn’t a color.” Julio counters, “If it isn’t a color, then what do you call this?… The space between us.” The same suit replies, “If a crayon is a clear wax and it leaves no discernible color behind, what’s the use?” Another suit chimes in, “It cannot be done! Why are you doing this? Why do you need this?” “It’s already done.” Julio then looks to his glass of water for backup to say, “Look at this glass of water over here. It’s defiantly clear. Some things aren’t one of the normal colors or play by the rules of the rainbow.” When the meeting is over and one of the suits walks him out, he tells Julio, “If we were to move forward with clear Crayola, what would we call it?” Julio responds, “Call it Fantasmas. It means ‘ghosts.’” Even that renders the executive confused as he then asks why it would be plural instead of singular. Julio has no answer that would satisfy such a “logical” mind. Thus, he pretends to go along with “Fantasma” as the title card for the show comes up and an “S” is then added to the end of the word after a momentary pause.
And it is a pointed title, for a large core of the show speaks to how many people in this world are forced to become “ghosts” when they either can’t or simply refuse to bend to what society demands of them. This includes, at the top of the list, having a sizable paper trail that proves both your existence and your longstanding ability to pay for things. In the U.S., the one certainly can’t exist without the other. Something that Torres has grappled with not just when he was dealing with visa-oriented paperwork after graduating from college, but also as a result of his newfound success. For, even now, Torres resents the idea that you have to have a credit card in order to build the credit that helps prove your existence. As he told Indiewire, “I do not have a credit card, and have always had trouble [renting an apartment] because of it. That’s the impetus for the whole [storyline]. Although I made the money to have the kind of apartment that I was applying for, I was rejected, even though I was willing to basically pay a year’s rent upfront. They were like, ‘No, we went with an applicant who had,’ and I quote, ‘overqualified guarantors.’ Wink, they have really rich parents.” The automatic assumption, especially in New York, that those without a credit history or a lot of money can “just” get help from their parents is also addressed in Fantasmas.
This moment arises when, Edwin (Bernardo Velasco), a food deliverer who can’t bring Julio’s order to him in a timely fashion because every form of transportation requires proof of existence (obvious shade at the updated version of the MTA’s MetroCard, OMNY, a “tap-and-go” system that requires a debit or credit card), ends up talking to Gina (Greta Titelman), another recurring character in the series. Having recently been dumped by her sugar daddy, Gina sits on a bench sobbing. Edwin, almost as desperate as she is, decides to ask her, of all people, to explain to him what proof of existence is, and how to get it.
She shrugs, “You just go to the app, and you put in your social and your credit score—” Edwin tells her, “I don’t have that.” “Don’t have what?” “Any of that.” Gina then brightens, “Well, can you use your parents? You know, I had to use my parents’ address after Charles dumped me.” Edwin is confused about the suggestion, wondering, “What do my parents have to do with it?” After all, unlike many white folks, it doesn’t come as an automatic given that one can turn to their parents for financial support. Thus, Gina proves herself to be the very sort of cliché that gives white women a bad name. Even so, she explains the same thing to Edwin that Julio’s been told by his manager, of sorts, Vanesja (Martine)—who is technically just supposed be a performance artist performing as his manager. Which is: sometimes, “exceptions” are made if someone is, like, “a thing” a.k.a. famous enough. Here, too, Torres makes a commentary on how fame has become the sole pursuit of many people growing up (and even after they’re theoretically “grown”), without having an actual focus in mind. In other words, they don’t care what they’re famous for, they just want to be famous (even if it’s “famous for being famous”). After all, it makes you an “exception” to every rule.
In real life, though, Torres hasn’t found that to be entirely true, also telling Indiewire of his post-fame apartment-renting experience, “It’s not about getting the money that you’re asking for, it’s about the kind of person that you’re renting to. You’re measuring people by not only how much money they have, but how long they’ve had that money for and how equipped they are to win this race. The idea that everyone’s born with a clean slate is false. And so, I was very interested in exploring that [in Fantasmas].”
The show version of Julio’s ongoing struggles with finding an apartment (the one he’s currently in is slated to become a “General Mills Café and Residencies”) harken back to Lily Allen singing, “It’s just the bureaucrats who won’t give me a mortgage/It’s very funny ’cause I got your fuckin’ money/And I’m never gonna get it just ’cause of my bad credit/Oh well, I guess I mustn’t grumble/I suppose it’s just the way the cookie crumbles.” This said on 2006’s “Everything’s Just Wonderful.” A phrase Julio has a harder and harder time telling himself as the walls start to more than just figuratively close in. Still, he remains defiant about not capitulating to getting his proof of existence card. No matter how “easy” it’s supposed to be. As he tells his usual cab driver, Chester (Tomas Matos), who also doesn’t have one, “I don’t have it because I don’t want it.” It’s become a matter of principle now, a way to say “fuck you” to a system that has never made it easy for him—or anyone like him—to get by.
Even when he tries to eradicate himself as an actual body (in one of many acts of desperation related to not being able to find an apartment without proof of existence), Vicky (Sydnee Washington), the employee at New Solutions Incorporated, inquires with genuine shock, “How do you have an apartment? I mean, how do you take out a loan? They’re gonna be asking for it as soon as you’re on the subway.” Julio automatically tunes out these questions—so accustomed to dissociating in scenarios where he’s bombarded with stressful queries related to “getting real” and living a normie lifestyle—and focuses in on a commercial that’s playing on the TV in the background (it’s here that Denise the Toilet Dresser [Aidy Bryant] gets her moment to shine).
The pressure that even casual strangers put on Julio to “get with it” and surrender to proof of existence (and everything that such a surrender actually entails) goes back to the aforementioned recurring dream. In it, Julio would have to leave the room (you know, the one with no windows in it) in order to get fresh air. The problem is, outside, it’s freezing cold, which is why everyone passing by is wearing an “unremarkable black puffer coat.” Julio can see that if he, too, wants to join the others in freshness, he would have to wear one of the same puffer coats. And there just so happens to be one within his grasp that literally has his name on it. All he has to do is walk out, take the jacket and put it on.
But to put it on would mean becoming one of them. One of those “proof of existence” people. He sums up the dream by saying, “The only way I would be able to leave [the room] is by compromising somehow.” And this is the dilemma that every artistic person (or, also in Torres’ case, every U.S. immigrant) is faced with sooner or later. Often cropping up repeatedly if they never succeed in finding a way to dodge it. To become an “exception.”
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