This critique will examine the song “Livin' La Vida Loca,” by Ricky Martin, through the lens of psychoanalysis. The song depicts a Latina girl who supposedly lives a crazy life and recounts the way she lives her life and what she does to the man who pursues her.
In order to take a deeper look into this song, I will be using psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis looks at the manifest content in order to determine the latent meanings of that content, according to Appignanesi. This analysis can be used to reveal information about the author as well as to determine the appeal of a text to its audience. In this critique, I will examine both of these and show how the two meanings relate.
The first meaning that is found when you analyze the manifest content in the song pertains to Ricky Martin’s sexuality. In the song, the woman is described in relation to superstition, addiction, and “a bullet to your brain.” Ricky says that she will “make you” do any number of ridiculous or unsafe things and that she “took my money” and “must’ve slipped me a sleeping pill." From these depictions, it would seem that Ricky does not appear to have a high opinion of women.
Stepping outside of the text briefly, we find that Ricky is “a fortunate homosexual man." Then, it is not difficult to connect his negative portrayal of women to this fact about his sexuality. While he may not dislike women outright, he is not well-equipped to discuss them sensually in the same way a heterosexual man would. However, even knowing this, he still produced the song, which leads to my next point.
By using psychoanalysis to investigate Martin’s audience, we can see how he was influenced to produce the song in spite of his personal sexual preferences. “Livin' La Vida Loca” fits nicely into the genre of wild romance. The woman is in charge to an extent and not only is able to make the man do things that he might not otherwise do, but also is willing to do some seemingly crazy things herself.
This fierceness and independence makes her a fiery character that is popular among the majority of heterosexual men. These sorts of men like women who will put up a fight when they are pursued romantically. They feel like this independent spirit makes the pursuit worthwhile. Based on this information, we see that Ricky Martin capitalized on these pursuit-focused emotions by creating a character which would entice men to pursue her.
In other words, as revealed by the latent meanings of the manifest content in “Livin' La Vida Loca,” even though Ricky Martin’s sexuality prevented him from engaging with the song’s material to a certain degree, he produced the song anyway in order to appease his audience of primarily heterosexual men.
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