Senorita 89 – On BBC I-Player
Spoilers
Basically The Prisoner meets The Valley Of The Dolls
Despite having no science fiction or supernatural elements this is one of the creepiest stories seen on TV. A Mexican 8 part series (subtitled throughout). It tears the lid off beauty pageants.
32 beauty queens, each one the winner of a regional heat, are invited to a two-month intensive boot camp training programme in a hotel called La Enchante deep in the Mexican jungle (so leaving of their own free will becomes impossible). This is to prepare them for the 1989 Miss Mexico pageant competition. This is no Mexico’s Next Top Model though.
These are not bimbo airheads acting from vanity and blind ambition. Just the opposite. A young post-graduate heads in with them intent on bringing out their inner intelligence so their presentation speeches at the final are not the stereotypical ‘I want World peace’ drivel,. She presents one aspiring model with a copy of Virginnia Woolfe’s Mrs Dalloway to study only to find the girl knows the book very well already. The encampment is about suppressing the free-spirited women’s intelligence, pressing them into stereotypes to maintain a Conservative tradition at a time when such pageants were going out of fashion in a feminist backlash. The camp staff have a cold utterly pitiless stance when anything goes wrong. One girl is prevented from leaving even when she learns that her sister back home has gone missing. Seeing another girl has skin blemishes they subject her to mandatory plastic surgery. As another model’s drug addiction comes to light when she nearly overdoses, they set out to maintain her habit with her and for her enough to keep her functional.
This is not about who will win the competition, as the La Enchante staff are protecting the nature of the contest itself, allowing the sponsors to abuse the models, manipulating the media, restricting contact with the outside World. While the models enter the contest thinking they seek independence and empowerment, the hosts and sponsors see them as ‘product’ and property to be used, exploited and spat out.
With a suicide and a self-defence against an attempt at rape murder of a key sponsor threatening to tear the regime apart within two episodes the brutal system really cranks itself into overdrive.
Great acting and beautiful photography – the settings as much as the models, this is impressive thoughtful and rather chilling stuff.
Arthur Chappell
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