Mexican singer and actress Thalía arrives for her wedding
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What does it all mean? That she, like any great star, is a blank slate on which any member of the public can write his or her own particular fantasy. Her response to the question of whether she, privately, is more like her "Marias" or the flashily dressed, seductive chanteuse, is a carefully measured one: "The public can choose how they want to see me. Some like the image of a tender girl, the poor girl of the soap operas. Others see me [as] more aggressive, strong, the way, I am sometimes on stage... I let my fans decide..."
During the late 1990s, I and many other devotees were irritated by the fact that Thalía, and a host of other extremely talented and charismatic performers, barely rated a mention in the hype that surrounded the so-called "Latin invasion" of American pop. For MTV and VH1, the "invasion" boiled down to two people: Ricky Martin and Bronx-bred actress Jennifer Lopez (with Marc Anthony running a distant third). This grated because Thalía and another talented performer, Colombian singer-songwriter Shakira, were both being groomed at the time for an "imminent" crossover to the English-speaking market by producer Emilio Estefan, husband of Gloria and Mottola's best man at the St. Pat's ceremony. Estefan has produced enormously popular albums for both women, and has continued to tout the fact that both will cantar en ingles very soon, but there have been unavoidable "delays" in getting their crossover started. In the meantime, however, fans of both younger performers have noticed that elements of their wardrobe and hairstyles, the visual styles of their music videos and other key components of their images have shown up in the MTV-friendly, English-language videos of Gloria Estefan. Curiouser and curiouser...
SO WE WIND UP BACK AT ST. PAT'S WITH Tommy and our heroine (two individuals who don't practice Catholicism, incidentally), the latter wearing a 150-pound gown with a 52-foot train (Mariah's had trailed only 26 feet), as they get married in a church filled with celebrities for whom one name only is sufficient (De Niro, Michael, Brooce, Ricky, Julio and — Danny De Vito?). In the meantime, though, the throng that stood for hours in freezing weather outside the church, blocking Fifth Avenue traffic for two full blocks, weren't there to catch a glimpse of the aforementioned superstars. Nor were they really interested in the billionaire businessman who happened to be the groom. Mottola's achievements in the music industry are, to be fair, quite impressive, but they can basically be boiled down to three key events: 1) Gifting the two music video channels with the leggy Ms. Mariah; 2) signing Michael Jackson to Sony Records for an obscene amount of money (since which time, due to various factors, Jackson's sales have declined steadily); 3) being mentioned in the first line of the wonderfully tacky disco hit "Cherchez la Femme" (1976) by Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band.
No, the fans weren't clamoring for Tommy. They were there to see their "Maria" wearing a wedding gown once more (the Pimstein novelas usually ending with Dickensian, tie-up-all-the-loose-ends wedding sequences). Their heroine has openly addressed the notion that she had became involved with Mottola to further her career: "I don't need anyone to make me," she was quoted as saying in Latina magazine. "I've already made it."
Some of the fans on the Internet discussion boards that appear on the many lavishly designed and picture-filled web sites consecrated to Ms. Sodi offered another possibility: Thalía's interest in "Don Tommy" could be better understood as a father fixation, since Ernesto Sodi's death when daughter Thalía was five years old is often cited as the formative experience of her youth. Whatever the case may be, Mottola's acrimonious split with his last wife gives many followers a feeling of unease: This time Tommy may actually succeed in caging his songbird wife, as Carey had publicly accused him of attempting to do with her.
There's a big difference this time around, though, Tommy, old boy. Last time you made your wife a star; the woman you're married to now already is one, and a pretty major one at that. Do her fans a favor, will ya, and give her career a nice nudge into crossover territory — why not let the rest of the U.S. see what's it been missing for the last decade? There are too few "Marias" in the world — and far too many achingly dull "divas" like Whitney and Gloria. We need to continue to be surprised and entertained by the young woman who once said, in a moment of joyful outrageousness, "Soy la mejor terapia contra la depresion" ("I am the best therapy for depression").