As a new season of TLC’s hit reality TV show, “90 Day Fiancé” — a series depicting international marriage with over 20 spin-offs — hit the screen this week, the show continues to hold the fascination of global audiences.
In her recently-published paper, “The (Neo)colonial Sentimentality of 90 Day Fiancé and the Figure of the Heartless Filipina,” English Ph.D. candidate Alyssa Manansala GS examines how the show’s premise presents a subtext that casts suspicion upon foreign women who marry men from the United States for a green card.
In the show, international couples have 90 days, the length determined by the K-1 Fiance Visa, to decide if they get married. Among the show’s most common couple pairings are white American men and Filipina women. The paper specifically examines how the relationship between Larry Passariello and Jenny Passariello — a couple in the first season of the series — restages “the abusive colonial relation between the United States and the Philippines through the marriage institution.”
The paper contrasts the neo-colonial idea of a Filipina — a woman who has “a heart” and “care for the men in her life” — with how Jenny is depicted in the show — as “heartless” and “not sentimental,” Manansala said.
Manansala hopes to present a more nuanced picture of Larry Passariello and Jenny Passariello’s relationship. “We cannot say for certain that she is just using him (for the green card),” she said. “In fact, I feel fairly certain that she does love him.”
“Love for her as a Filipina woman from an underprivileged family is different,” she added. “Love also means weighing what a partner can do for her in terms of her material well-being (and) her livelihood.”
To analyze the relationship between Larry Passariello and Jenny Passariello, Manansala closely read several scenes across the first season. “I just found it to be very exemplary of how Filipina women and white men are represented on the show across a dozen seasons,” she said.
In one scene, Larry Passariello is reluctant to eat a lechon — a whole roasted pig that is a Filipino specialty — because he was concerned he would have “diarrhea problems” after eating it. According to Manansala, the camera pans throughout the tense scene shift the atmosphere from romantic comedy to horror, focusing on Jenny Passariello’s father’s gory cutting of the meat.
In the scene, Jenny Passariello’s “proximity to the animal suggests her own animality,” the paper reads. “Alongside Larry’s visceral disgust toward the lechon and its surroundings, it also suggests a lack of hygiene — even a morbidity that has historically been associated with the Filipino body.”
In the Philippines, it’s a common cultural norm for guests to eat the food that is served. But after much encouragement, Larry only manages a tiny bite, which Jenny’s family finds offensive. Jenny tells him that he is being rude, but pronounces the word “rude” as “road.”
This scene became virally “memed” across the internet by both U.S. and Filipino audiences, according to Manansala. “Her misuse of the English language is the punchline, rather than Larry’s social ineptitude,” Manansala said.
This reframing of the scene was initially the title for the paper, leading with the quote “You’re road,” but Manansala revised it to emphasize the connection between sentimentality and colonial rhetoric.
Manansala is planning on incorporating parts of this study into the introduction and conclusion of her dissertation, which is titled “Against Care: Deconstructing the Filipina Caregiver in Global Literature and Visual Culture.”
Manansala said that in her dissertation — which she will defend this spring — she examined Western works, Filipinx literature and visual aesthetic products where Filipina figures are depicted in a dominant light and “expected to perform certain kinds of care toward both the white colonial subject, or the Filipino nationalist figure.”
The mixture of texts Manansala brings to her project is what “sets it apart,” said Professor of English and American Studies Daniel Kim, who is also Manansala’s dissertation advisor. “It starts with this idea of a trope of this recurring stereotype, and she fills out the history that produces that.”
Manansala’s dissertation “carefully deconstructs the figure of the Filipina caregiver in a global Western(ized) imaginary,” Associate Professor of English Dixa Ramirez wrote in an email to The Herald.
“She’s always had a really solid sense of this interest in how Filipina women show up over and over again, both in American popular culture (and) in Filipino works,” Kim said.
Ivy Huang is a University News and Science & Research editor from New York City. Concentrating in English, she has a passion for literature and American history. Her favorite authors include Marilynne Robinson, Vladimir Nabokov, and Toni Morrison. Outside of writing, she enjoys playing basketball, watching documentaries, and beating her high score on Subway Surfers.
