Movie Review: In the Heights

This past weekend I watched In the Heights. When I first saw the trailer I was super excited for the film because I had seen Hamilton on Disney + (which I will be eternally grateful for because I have yet to see the Broadway in person.) I was also excited because Stephanie Beatriz is in the movie, and I love her as Rosa Diaz in the sitcom Brooklyn 99.

So last night I watched it, and the dancing and singing were absolutely amazing. My friends and I found ourselves bobbing our heads and snapping to the music, and my heart warmed when I watched how Usnavi and Vanessa’s love for each other develops through the film. Even though I myself am not Latinx, I have friends with similar stories to Nina’s. In the film there is a character named Nina who went to Stanford and dropped out because she encountered racist microaggressions from people at the university and was made to feel like she didn’t belong there. When Nina is at a restaurant with her dad she tells him that at an event she attended a lady thought Nina was one of the servers and handed her a dish to take back to the kitchen. This is a common microaggression against students of color who are at predominantly white universities and in predominantly white spaces. In the film Nina performs a number called “Breathe,” and in this number she talks about how everyone in her community has big hopes for her and tells her she will go far in life, but after burning out from the racism and stress she encountered in college, she feels like she let everyone in her community down. It honestly gave me chills, but it’s an all too common experience for first-generation BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) students. I also learned a lot listening to my undocumented peers and it encouraged me to read more books by authors who are undocumented immigrants and/ or authors who write about the experiences of undocumented immigrants.

I really loved the film, especially Anthony Ramos’ portrayal of Usnavi, and the beautiful choreography and rapping (I also had forgotten that Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote In the Heights before he wrote Hamilton, I thought he had written Hamilton and then In the Heights. My bad.) I also love how Usnavi learns that he can create value right in the Washington Heights community where he’s at even though he has big dreams at the beginning to leave for Puerto Rico.

And at the same time, I want to acknowledge the problem of colorism in the film. Before I watched the film I heard a little bit about the backlash against the film, but it wasn’t until after I watched it that I started reading up more on it. In a Vox piece by Jasmine Haywood titled “In the Heights exemplified the ugly colorism I’ve experienced in Latinx communities”, she explains that while the film was lauded at the beginning for portraying Latinx actors in leading roles, it did a bad job of showing the actual diversity within the Latinx communities of Washington Heights, particularly of the Afro-Latinx communities who reside there. In the film most of the Latinx actors who play main characters are light-skinned and white-passing, while the Afro-Latinx people who have dark skin in the film play background roles such as dancers and hair salon workers. Jasmine, who is Afro-Puerto Rican and from New York state, further explains that the film does not adequately portray the diversity of Washington Heights. In reality, Washington Heights is historically a Dominican community and nearly half of the residents of Washington Heights are Dominican. Moreover, many Dominican people identify as Black Latinx, and as Haywood adds, much of Dominican culture has its roots in the African diaspora.

Haywood then gives historical context about why a lot of Afro-Latinx folks encounter discrimination within the Latinx community, and it goes back to European colonization and slavery, which touted that phenotypic features of white European people–fair skin, straight hair, narrow nose, or light eyes–are superior and should be privileged over Afro-centric features. This has led over many years to dark-skinned people lightening their skin with skin lightening creams and using other methods to alter their bodies, and this deeply toxic systemic colorism has manifested over the years in cinema with dark-skinned BIPOC folks being passed over for crucial roles and light-skinned BIPOC folks getting those roles. A key example of this is the film West Side Story. Natalie Wood was a white actress playing the leading role, a Puerto Rican woman named Maria. Rita Moreno, who is actually Puerto Rican, plays Anita, a supporting role. Another example is when Zoe Saldana, a light-skinned Black actress, had to darken her skin to play Nina Simone in the 2016 biographical film Nina. These are just a few examples though. Haywood also points out (which I didn’t know until reading her piece) that the film omits a scene in the original stage play in which Nina’s father expresses prejudice against her boyfriend Benny because he is Black. Omitting this scene left out room for a discussion around the complicated anti-Blackness within Latino families. Haywood also points out that John M. Chu, who directed the film, did the same thing when he directed Crazy Rich Asians; Singapore is more racially diverse than the film depicts it to be, and in the movie most of the East Asian actors in leading roles are lighter-skinned. At the end of her piece, Haywood concludes that while she was glad to see the music, culture and food of Latinx communities being well represented, she was disappointed that the film did not take the opportunity it had to represent Afro-Latinx folks within the Latinx communities of Washington Heights, and that more needs to be done particularly in the wake of more recent awareness of anti-Blackness. Monica Castillo, in a review of the film for NPR, recognizes that while she loved the film and resonated strongly with the characters, she is a white Latina and hasn’t experienced the same kind of erasure that Afro Latinx and Indigenous folks have faced, and recognizes that this erasure of Afro Latinx folks has been going on for far too long and should be better addressed.

Right after the backlash, Lin-Manuel Miranda apologized, explaining that he wrote In the Heights because he didn’t see Latinx folks like himself being represented on screen, but he had also been listening to people and keeping up with conversations around the lack of Afro-Latinx representation in the film. He apologized to everyone on Twitter and thanked everyone for having these conversations about the film’s colorism, and promised to keep learning and doing better in his future projects to honor the diversity of the Latinx community. The full apology can be found in this NPR article.

While I can’t say much more on this topic, like Lin-Manuel Miranda I have learned a lot from the conversations around colorism in In the Heights, and I am also going to keep learning from these conversations. Lin’s sensitivity and awareness of the issue of colorism, and his willingness to do better, also encouraged me as someone who is interested in social justice conversations and is always figuring out how I can do better.

Here is the In the Heights trailer:

In the Heights. 2021. Directed by Jon M. Chu. Based on the stage musical of the same name by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegria Hudes. Rated PG-13 for some language and suggestive references.