#alma lopez

glee paint project

Week 14 • Looking at situations from two different perspectives

Alma López

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Queer

DOB: Born 1966

Ethnicity: Mexican - Chicana

Anyway, I’m stuck in a loop and thought you might have an opinion on that particular performance as it relates to Santana’s family life? Maybe you don’t, but if you do I’d be interested in hearing it!

Oh same, always. And I always have opinions on everything Santana says, does and sings 😌

I'm always on the fence about Mr/Dr Lopez and the general Lopez family dynamic myself. Like yeah, we never see him and Lights Out has a few hints at a more strained relationship, but do I think Glee was just lazy and didn't bother casting him and that's why he wasn't at the wedding for example? Yeah. And even things like him being a doctor were mentioned exactly once, and who knows is the writers even remembered that half as well as the fandom does. I doubt they did. So most of what we have is At the Ballet. Gorgeous beautiful performance btw and deserves more credit. The vocals, the dress, the Pezberry long note? Exquisite.

I'm with you because I'd love the angst and it is the most we have to go on, but I also kinda don't want the lyrics to be entirely representative, to be literal? Like yeah I love angst, but do I want her dad to be like that? :/ My personal interpretation is to not take the words Santana's singing literally but to keep in mind, like, the general vibe of it. Like you say, the context is about ballet being an escape and Santana remembering a time, the first time, when performing was a happy place. So stands to reason it'd be a happy place and escape from something, right?

The way I like to think about At the Ballet and negotiate it with Santana's family life is to take the general feeling it conveys. I also like to think it might be a case of the unreliable narrator? With good reason, because Santana is expressing childhood memories where how she felt might not have 100% reflected reality but was valid nonetheless because that's just how she felt. So what I mean is that maybe Dr Lopez never cheated on Maribel and wasn't as cold and generally a shitty dad as the song would imply. But maybe he was a bit distant. Maybe he didn't know how to best express to Santana, or Maribel for that matter, that he cared about them. Maybe he studied/worked a lot and maybe he wasn't too emotionally open and vulnerable. No surprise, if Alma was indeed Santana's paternal grandmother. That would fit with how I headcanon him anyway.

So I think it's possible for the lyrics not to be taken literally but, simultaneously, for the general feelings to be taken seriously. Maybe he cared more than came across to Santana and I think that matters in the long run because they could have a better relationship once she's an adult. But it also doesn't change the fact that, growing up, Santana didn't exactly feel close to him and that “I was such a tomboy and it really pissed my dad off” comment doesn’t bode well. I’d like to imagine Dr Lopez as someone who wanted to but didn’t know how to even try with his daughter. I think there’s a theme of noncomformity with the Lopez family - how could there not be, what with Santana’s story being a fundamentally queer one.

It’s apparent in the way Alma rejects Santana, not even for being a lesbian as such but for not repressing it. The sin is in the scandal. So I’m side-tracking a bit but I think Dr Lopez didn’t want his daughter to be all that different, to be the Other, as a misguided attempt to protect her from the world and it resulted in a distance between the two. Maybe even in Santana feeling like she couldn’t be herself at home. And then there’s an interesting tension there because it also resulted in ballet and dancing, which Santana says made her feel “not different”. So it reinforces that conformity her family wanted for her, but it’s also an early creative outlet that made her feel safe and like she was a part of something. And that very thing is what later makes Glee special and leads her to become more herself, more open and vulnerable.

But going back to the Lopez family, maybe the parts of the song about her parents’ relationship could also express that Maribel embraced Santana’s nonconformity more from the beginning, as it’s implied during the Breadstix Goodbye scene. And I could see convos about that between the parents coming off to a child in a way that’s expressed in the song. Like her dad thought he was above her mom, stuff like that. It’s not necessarily what happened but kids overhear arguments and misinterpret them all the time, or internalize them in ways that don’t reflect reality. All of this is pure speculation based on the song and what I think of the Lopez family dynamic, of course. Just trying to fit into the non-existent Glee canon. But the bottom line is that I wouldn’t take At the Ballett literally but do think there’s an emotional truth to it. Even if Dr Lopez wasn’t actually like that, it’s how he came across to his daughter and that stuff matters, no matter his intentions.

How it came to be

Todd Anderson and Maribel Lopez are Blaine and Santana’s parents. Santana and Maribel lived with Alma Lopez until Santana was 7. When Blaine was 5, his parents got a divorce. He and his (half) brother Cooper were split living between Pamela Anderson and Todd. Todd and Maribel started dating shortly after the divorce and got married when Blaine was 7 (and Santana age 8). Maribel and Santana moved in with Todd a bit before they got married. Cooper mostly lived at Pam’s house and rarely visited Todd since he was about to move to California anyways. Blaine, on the other hand, was still staying with Todd one week and Pam the next. When Blaine was 10, Pam got a traveling job that made her much busier so Blaine started living only at Todd’s house and he visited Pamela every other weekend (as long as she wasn’t busy). 

Santana’s relationship with Todd and Maribel

Santana is very close with both Todd and Maribel. Todd warmed his way right to her heart when Maribel first introduced them. My exact headcanon (minus the only-child part) for Todd and Santana’s relationship is from this tumblr post by @thebitchtownexpress: 

“I know we never see Santana’s dad, and because of the lines she got in ‘At the Ballet’, a lot of people think that he sucks. I disagree- I actually think she has a  decent dad. In ‘Funk’ when Sue quits the Cheerios, Mr. Schue finds her crying in the hallway and you can hear her say ‘Daddy’ twice as if she wanted her dad. I think the likely scenario is that he was working a lot, and maybe wasn’t as affectionate as she would have liked him to be, and missed out on a lot of her life, but I imagine him as being funny and I also think he instilled a really hard work ethic in her (more on that later). Also, in 4x20 when Santana is talking about how Abuela signed her up for ballet classes because she was such a tomboy ‘and it really pissed my dad off’, I like to think that what she meant was that it pissed her dad off that Abuela signed her up for ballet because he liked her being a tomboy. She’s an only child and I think they bonded over sports and more traditionally masculine things.” 

Santana and Maribel are obviously very close and I believe they always have been ever since Maribel stopped having to work as much when she moved in with Todd (Santana was raised by Alma in Lima Heights and only close to Alma before they moved in since Maribel was a single mother that worked two jobs. Even though Todd, being a doctor and Maribel’s boyfriend, would’ve happily helped her out financially, Maribel would only accept so much.)

Blaine’s relationship with Todd and Maribel

Blaine was not close with Todd or Maribel. Todd and Blaine always have lacked a mutual understanding of each other. It started in Blaine’s early childhood since Todd couldn’t quite grasp the fact that just because Blaine had autism didn’t mean he was some sort of unattainable being. Todd never knew how to act around Blaine and as a result, they never got close. Todd and Blaine’s interactions did nothing but upset Blaine and cause more distance between them so Todd avoided being alone with Blaine. 

When Maribel came into the picture she tried building a relationship with Blaine. But Blaine wanted nothing to do with his father’s new significant other. He was still left with a lot of resentment from his parents getting a divorce. To compensate for their lack of a relationship with him, Todd and Maribel often let Blaine do whatever. 

When Blaine came out as transgender, they had no idea what to do. They didn’t feel enough like his parents to really do anything about it but accept him and set him up with a gender therapist. Even though they had a lot of conflicting thoughts and did not believe in being transgender (at first), the last thing they wanted was to push him any further away. They didn’t understand Blaine even more than before but they really did try. Blaine didn’t seem to want anything to do with them though. They listened and respected him as he announced his name as ‘Blaine’ and allowed the social transition to happen, and they threw money at him and let him start testosterone at 14. 

However, they did not offer any emotional support to him in that difficult time (or any of his difficult times like Sadie Hawkins where they didn’t know how to be there for him and threw money at him to board at Dalton. ‘Shooting Star’ was the one time Blaine had his father’s emotional support and Pamela was there leading the way there) and they didn’t protect Blaine from any of their family’s transphobia (but they did allow Blaine leave the house anytime family was around and he was never forced to go to family get-togethers. They sort of didn’t want him to go since their whole family disapproved of their decision to let him transition). 

When Todd asked Blaine to build a car with him, he only did it to get closer to him. He assumed ‘now’ that Blaine was a boy he wanted to do ‘masculine’ things and he bonded with Santana with things like that so he thought it would better their relationship. He wasn’t even aware of the fact that Blaine was gay since when Blaine mentioned it one day (before storming off to his room angrily over something his parents had said) his disunderstanding mind thought gay meant transgender. 

When he did find out Blaine was gay though, it left him way too confused to even try to understand Blaine anymore. He didn’t get how someone could be both gay and transgender. He avoided any alone time with Blaine like the plague and never discussed anything deeper than football or school with him, or it would end in a fight. Maribel was also very confused by Blaine and left all of the mothering up to his distant mother, Pamela. Maribel didn’t move past the 'dreadful step-mother' phase with Blaine until well after his teenage years. Blaine and Todd’s relationship is still chalked full of misunderstandings and miscommunication to this day. 

Blaine and Santana’s relationship 

Blaine and Santana have a very sibling-y relationship. As kids, they weren't very close since they only saw each other every other week and Blaine wanted nothing to do with her. Santana, who had previously been excited and nervous about getting a sibling, was sort of disappointed. At first she hated the thought of having a sibling until her mother warmed her up to the idea. She then figured having a sibling was like having a built-in best friend (which Santana never had before). 

Even though Blaine gave her the cold shoulder, Santana was told it was still her job to protect him. She and Blaine were both bullied, and Santana would scare away Blaine’s bullies at the end of the day when she went to find him to go home. She protected him as much as she could because she understood how much it sucked to be made fun of and she knew she needed to defend her little sibling (even if they weren't all-the-way siblings in her mind; at least not yet). Once Blaine started completely living in his father’s house, Santana and Blaine developed more of the average sibling relationship. 

They started bickering a lot (Blaine was the 'moody' one of the household, but he was also dealing with a lot of shit), they weren't afraid to give each other plenty of sass, and they annoyed the absolute fuck out of each other, but through all of that they did care for each other. When Blaine came out as transgender, Santana hugged him and made it her mission to never ever misgender him. It was the most support Blaine got through that time and he deeply appreciated it. They were always kind of an indirect support system to each other. They didn't tell each other a lot of personal stuff and when they hung out or bickered or anything it was a distraction from their problems. They had the ability to make the world seem a little less lonely for each other. With that, they also had the ability to genuinely get to each other and make a bad day worse or add on to the weight on each other's shoulders. It all depended on what they were feeling. 

At Mckinley, Blaine and Santana initially didn't tell anybody they were siblings to protect Santana’s reputation that she had done so much to build. Being a bowtie-wearing, gay theatre kid's sister wouldn’t really help it. After she finally came to a point with being comfortable with herself (after being cruelly outed), she and Blaine still didn't really tell anyone they were siblings. It wasn't necessarily a secret, like if someone would’ve ever asked one of them about it they would tell the truth, but it felt like a private family thing. Something that not everybody needed to know.