Sofia Vergara in “Griselda” (Netflix)

“The only man I feared was a woman called Griselda Blanco,” Pablo Escobar. This is how the series “Griselda” begins, directed by Andres Baez and co-written by the “Narcos” team, which gave Griselda great popularity before it was released at the end of last January on the “Netflix” platform and ensured it took the throne of the most popular drama. Watch so far.

The series “Griselda” begins at a moment of complete chaos in the life of its heroine, a woman who worked in crime for years and shared her husband’s life of drugs and gangs before she decided to kill him and flee with her three children from Colombia to Miami, USA, in the late 1970s.

In Miami, she turns to an old friend who left her miserable life behind her, and Griselda tries to start a new life away from her criminal past. She works as a receptionist, but at the same time she decides to sell a kilogram of cocaine that she succeeded in smuggling to secure a better life for her children, but things do not go according to her plans. But she is hampered and in trouble, and from a fall to a blow to an insult, Griselda returns to the life she knows, where there is crime and drugs.

Feminism to justify violence

Although the work is primarily about the drug mafia and Griselda, who bore the nickname “Black Widow” because she killed her three husbands, and was responsible - according to police reports - for nearly 200 murders, all of this may not have begun had it not been for the humiliation and marginalization she suffered, according to the novel. Series makers.

“In every room I enter, I am just a woman,” Griselda says during the episodes. She has always been treated poorly because she is a woman. No one took her seriously or accepted her within the world of crime, which provoked her and pushed her to take revenge and prove herself, and most importantly, make everyone who underestimated her pay the price.

From one crime to another, Griselda turned into a monster that only knows mercy with her children or when she deals with others as a mother, which highlighted a fragile human side to her that only mothers with weak hearts towards their children know.

Confirming that what happened with Griselda was a general trend towards women, the same thing happened with Detective John, who works for the Miami police, as her colleagues used to mock her and diminish her role to satisfy their vanity, accommodate their shortcomings, or as a form of humor.

Just like Griselda, June fought the stereotype about her, worked hard, and was credited with bringing down the Colombian criminal with the giant empire. Although the two achieved what they sought, she did not find happiness with either of them on her way.

Both women were completely destroyed by the system surrounding them, although Griselda's arrogance and influence increased her devastation and loss of everything, not only her money and business, but also her children.

The series may seem feminist - which is what the series' creators intended - not only because it is currently popular, but because it embodies the condition of many women in Western societies in the 1970s in general, and in the drug world in particular, where male control dominated the scene.

According to the statements of the makers of the series “Griselda”, they were also keen to present their classic message about the drug drama, which includes a gradual rise, then the greatest success, followed by a resounding catastrophic collapse.

"I'm not just a pretty woman"

The public has known Colombian actress Sofia Vergara for 11 years as a comedic actress through her participation in the series “Modern Family,” which showed her as a beautiful, superficial woman. Looking at the issue closely, we realize that Hollywood also dealt superficially and masculinely with Vergara throughout her career, deliberately restricting her to the role of the clumsy sexy, and like Griselda, she rebelled against the stereotype and decided to present her best artistic role, for which she will certainly be nominated for the most important awards, if not win them.

Vergara did her best to imitate the character, changing her voice and the way she walked, installing a prosthetic nose and yellow teeth, and a lot of makeup that changed her features. Although she seemed completely far from the formal features of Griselda, who was not that ugly, it seemed that she wanted the audience to forget that they were in front of an attractive woman, and they only saw her as the leader of the cocaine mafia.

Vergara excelled in acting, and captured the character's various situations and age stages. However, when she was asked about the secret behind the creators' choice of her for the role, she attributed it to her being Colombian. As for her skill in the role, she attributed it to the fact that she had lived in that atmosphere before, because of her brother, who worked in the drug trade and lived through the experience of misery, loss, and grief. Most importantly, she knows how Colombian women can become strong and recreate themselves from the ashes.

In addition to Vergara, everyone excelled in their roles, although the dominant presence was always Martin Rodriguez, who played the role of “Riffy,” who has a wild and chaotic personality.

The work was not only distinguished by the quality of acting, but also by the costumes, decorations, soundtrack, and details that highlighted the features of the seventies in America, but at the same time, it was full of corpses, blood, and brutal killing.

All of this has brought us before an interesting dramatic work with a fast escalating pace that is not suitable for the weak-hearted, but it is ideal for lovers of short works and those who hate boredom, who will soon enjoy watching, but it will not remain in their permanent memory, or they will want to rewatch it after a while.

Between reality and imagination

In contrast to the "Narcos" series, which was predominantly documentary, and despite "Griselda" belonging to the biographical drama, it came closer to a fictional drama based on a true story, where imagination comes into contact with reality from time to time. By following the true story of the Godmother of Colombia, we find events that do not match what actually happened, the simplest of which is the reason behind Griselda fleeing to Miami with her children.

This is what prompted her son Michael to file a lawsuit against Netflix, demanding that it be banned from showing the series, on the one hand, because the events did not tell the truth, or explain the human side of his mother, which offends the family, and on the other hand, to use information he provided during interviews without his permission, or give him financial compensation for it. .

"Griselda" is a short American drama of 6 episodes related to the world of crime and drugs, starring Sofia Vergara, Martin Rodriguez, Vanessa Ferlito, Alberto Guerra, and José Zuniga. The events revolve around a woman who controlled the cocaine trade market in the late 1970s between Colombia, Miami, New York and California, allowing her to earn $80 million a month, before she was arrested by the police in the mid-1980s.

Source: Al Jazeera