For many reasons, Selena feels—particularly at this moment in time—like a rushed project. Pushed out at an extremely breakneck pace (considering the way the film industry operated in the 90s), there was also an “in poor taste” quality to releasing such a stylized account of Selena Quintanilla’s life, all largely to the benefit of Jennifer Lopez’s career. In fact, even Salma Hayek, the original choice for the role, was so convinced of its rushed nature, that she decided to step back, prompting a search for the part of Selena not seen since the casting frenzy for Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind.
Opting for Lopez was met with some expected backlash. For it was seen as just another way in which Hollywood (and white people in general) seemed to lump all “brown folk” together. J. Lo is of Puerto Rican descent, while Selena was of Mexican descent. There is a distinction. Yet apparently audiences found Lopez’s portrayal so “winsome” (complete with a Pretty Woman shopping moment), that they chose to forgive this ethnic discrepancy. What was one more affront to Mexicans anyway? And even the casting of Christian Serratos in Selena: The Series remains somewhat insulting despite her Mexican heritage—for it’s pretty goddamn obvious that they selected someone who has no bodily resemblance to Selena’s curvaceous figure whatsoever. At the very least, no one could say Jennifer Lopez didn’t “pack the back” required for the role. And yet, apart from that, with Selena: The Series as a new frame of reference, Selena now comes across as hurried trash.
While the movie does its best to cover as much ground as possible leading up to Selena’s ill-omened demise, it does not have the run time necessary to go into the details that the series finally allows for. And though both projects had the participation of the Quintanilla family, a major difference with the Netflix show is the fact that Selena’s sister, Suzette, serves as the executive producer. Maybe that’s at least part of why her “character” (played by Noemi Gonzalez) is imbued with more depth than the slapdash movie that depicted her as not much more than a snack hoarder. The same goes for Selena’s brother and producer, A.B. (Gabriel Chavarria). It is the pressure on A.B. in particular that allows us to gain an entirely new appreciation for his perpetual struggle, as their patriarch, Abraham (Ricardo Chavira), constantly demands yet another hit to be churned out for yet another album. Regardless of whether A.B. is feeling “inspired” or not.
Although the depictions of Abraham in both the film and series give off the sense that he’s a “task master”—to use a euphemism—it is likely because of the seemingly unavoidable involvement of the Quintanilla family that they (therefore any account of Selena’s life) can’t really be objective about his abusive, slave driving nature in his determination to make them famous. Something the Jackson family knows all about. And, at the very least, the series acknowledges that many outsiders found Abraham’s treatment of his children, especially Selena, to be inappropriate for a child. Ultimately, this judgment from one of Selena’s teachers, Marilyn Greer, prompted Abraham to pull her out of school entirely so that they could tour without the worry of being disapproved of by peers and authority figures. It was, indeed, rather ironic that, when taking into account Abraham’s own love of being an authority, that he hated it so much in others.
That might be at least part of the reason he decided to open his own restaurant: to be his own boss. And here, too, the effects of the recession in the early 80s as spurred by Reaganomics are more than just lightly broached (as they are in the movie) in the series, with entire episodes centered on the poverty that befalls them after Abraham is forced to shut down his restaurant and sell their home. Then comes the shame of having to use food stamps (even if comically rendered). The resourcefulness that must arise time and time again—including, yes, making stage lights out of peach cans.
Beyond just the family’s poverty—the struggle to live a life on a tour bus for most of the time—there is the endless stress put upon them by Abraham, who never sees an opportunity to bask in any success, but only to take it as a sign that they need to keep pushing forward. In the movie, after performing in El Paso in 1989, the man who short-changes Abraham says, “What can I say? She’s just a woman. Tu sabes.” Sexism is addressed more frequently in these consistent, “small” ways in Selena. Even Selena’s mother insists that only men can make it in Tejano music. Maybe that’s why the show sees fit to point out from episode one, “Daydreaming,” that Abraham was expecting Selena to be a boy, with the name Marco Antonio Quintanilla already picked out. It is the woman next to them who offers the girls’ name she didn’t end up using, Selena. “Goddess of the moon” being the meaning behind it, as confirmed by Abraham. It seems a good enough omen for him to accept the moniker.
But it wouldn’t just be her name that Abraham would have a say in, so much as the course of her entire life. And yes, the Abraham in the series does feel responsible for being the one to bring Yolanda into Selena’s life in the first place. In this and so many other ways, the focus of Selena: The Series puts greater emphasis on the enmeshed closeness of her family, and how she never knew a life outside of such an existence (something Britney Spears and Billie Eilish can probably relate to). The movie, instead, favors the soap operatic (though some would try to bill it as “Shakespearean”) romance between guitarist Chris Pérez and Selena. The show takes its hours leading up to that, and when it finally arrives there, the relationship doesn’t come across as two-dimensionally as it does in biopic form.
What both narrative mediums fail to achieve is establishing any sense one might get of Selena being actual friends with Yolanda. She isn’t even tacked on into the movie until the last twenty-five minutes or so. The show, at the very least, emphasizes that her unhinged nature was brewing from the beginning. And yet, Yolanda’s presence and increasing insanity in both isn’t as built up to as it could be, but it’s even more slapped together in the movie, with Selena’s death cut to with little warning. Perhaps that has to do with the murder still being fresh at the time of the movie’s release and not wanting to overly rehash it to audiences. In the present, that narrative plot device does not hold up quite so well. Which is yet another way that Selena: The Series will better help carry on the singer’s legacy and expose subsequent generations to the full extent of her tragic story.
The timing of the show—at least its second part—feels particularly pointed, as 2021 would have marked Selena’s fiftieth birthday. It’s difficult to envision anyone who dies young at such an age, as they’re forever immortalized as this version of themselves, but one imagines Selena would have aged gracefully. And continued the same projects that galvanized her in 1995, including the clothing and makeup lines that highlighted her belief that everyone should be able to look and feel their best no matter who they are.
What each version of the story is sure to iterate for further bittersweet flair is that Selena made the announcement she wanted to start having children. Alas, the relationship between J. Lo’s Selena and Jon Seda’s Chris now comes across as uber cheeseball. Like, even literally, as a scene of them together eating pizza elucidates. Interestingly, however, the movie is what makes an important reference to the point in their relationship timeline where they confessed their feelings for each other at a Pizza Hut. It doesn’t get more “American romance” than that—Mexican heritage or not. Both the show and movie offer the account of Chris being summarily kicked off the bus by Abraham when he catches wind that they’ve been “sneaking around.”
Tellingly, because of the family’s involvement, the narrative never delves too deeply into just how far the two might have gone sexually, what with the Quintanillas’ Jehovah’s Witness background likely complicating such an exploration for reasons of “religious wholesomeness.” A facet that the film goes into by way of showing how scandalized Abraham would get whenever Selena “took her clothes off.”
Other issues that the series has illuminated with the movie is the pacing. As of now, the movie feels way too fast in comparison to the time the series is permitted to devote to every stage of the process that led Selena to her meteoric rise. Right on up to winning a Grammy, which, for whatever reason, writer-director Gregory Nava saw fit to alter in the scene featuring her acceptance speech. In his fictionalized account, Selena does thank her husband (something that didn’t happen in real life), whereas the series notes that her forgetting to thank him was emblematic of the problems that were arising in their marriage at the time.
Significantly, the running motif in each is that fan fervor can go one of two ways very quickly—and for Selena, it was always teetering between adulation and contempt. Because of her trusting, light-hearted personality, she assumed she would forever be capable of reining in any ephemeral ill will directed at her. Little did she know, derangement can’t be tamed.
Another retrospectively vexing element about the film is that the long road to finally getting to record the English crossover album is made to look like an effortless jump in Selena. In contrast, Selena: The Series reveals just how many “close calls” and endless discussions went into finally “granting” Selena the chance to fulfill her longtime dream of emulating the style of Madonna or Janet Jackson or Paula Abdul at full-tilt. Not just costume-wise, but complete with the English lyrics to match.
Abraham’s struggle to choose between CBS Records and EMI Latin is also explored in depth, with the new head of the Latin division at EMI, José Behar, ultimately persuading him because Selena y Los Dinos would be his first act on the label’s imprint, and would get more personal, tailored attention that anyone could give them over at CBS. It is this that sells Abraham at last on selecting which contract to sign. The insistence upon Selena becoming “Selena” instead of “Selena y Los Dinos,” however, serves as a beacon of things to come.
Maybe that’s why, while Selena the film opts to commence at one of the peak moments of the singer’s career (playing the Astrodome), the series chooses to open with Selena on the tour bus in Chicago, 1994. Specifically when she is about to play her first show without Los Dinos—her brother and sister—behind her. But Suzette is there to remind her that they’ll always be watching her, even if it’s just from a different part of the stage now. Unfortunately, no one was there to watch long enough to prevent Yolanda from going full-on Single Hispanic Female.
What can additionally be said for the series as well is that its final episode, “Qué Creías,” treats the murder itself with the screen time necessary to deliver the full weight of the event. Even though it is still “stylized,” it’s done more effectively as the hotel worker meticulously cleaning one of the rooms near Yolanda’s reaches the part of the process where she’s carrying the newly changed trash back to its spot, only to drop the can at the sound of a gunshot. The simplicity of this act paired with the “simplicity” of Yolanda’s own lends an unexpected poetry to how the banality of quotidian moments can be all at once yearned for when they’re they’re shifted toward the drama of an irrevocable instant. And yes, there is something inherently unjust about having to die at a Days Inn.
Unlike the movie, the series goes a little bit more into what happened in the months that followed, from A.B.’s discovery of the “Dreaming of You” tape to Suzette giving a pep talk to some elementary school kids about continuing their education and how it was something Selena strongly believed in. There is a greater feeling of “resolution,” even if not karmic justice, which can never truly be delivered as Yolanda continues to remain rotting in prison.
A final touch of symmetry that heightens some kind of “closure”—and that one-ups the pizza instances of Selena—is the running gag about how Selena always pushes her finger into the top of A.B.’s hamburger bun before he can eat it. On the road again with a new band at the end, he now takes it upon himself to do the same thing every time in Selena’s honor. Not that anyone in the Quintanilla family could ever forget her without these small rituals. Nor could any of her ever-remaining legion of fans, hopefully none of them so psychotic as Yolanda.
