On the Brookfield Zoo, close to Chicago, sloshing inside baggage of oxygen and water, hundreds of tadpoles await their transformation into what the Chicago Tribune has already dubbed “movie star amphibians.” Just a few months in the past, the sapo concho was certain for extinction. The native Puerto Rican toad has lengthy been endangered on the island due to habitat loss and invasive species. But fame, then fortune, discovered the concho: In January, Unhealthy Bunny launched his newest album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos, in addition to a brief movie of the identical identify, each of which characteristic a cartoon concho. After the file’s chart-topping launch, the Puerto Rican Crested Toad Conservancy obtained donations towards funding a brand new breeding heart on the island; the Brookfield Zoo’s long-standing conservation efforts additionally received a media increase. And the concho discovered followers the world over—particularly amongst individuals who see its plight as analogous to their very own, and who’ve latched on to it as an emblem of resilience.
Together with its toad envoy, Unhealthy Bunny’s sprawling DTMF challenge has, as a complete, turn out to be anthemic for these dealing with displacement worldwide. The monitor “Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii” (“What Occurred to Hawaii”), for one, is a prophetic lamentation during which Unhealthy Bunny urges Puerto Rico to not find yourself like Hawaii, referencing the cultural erosion and gentrification that has accompanied Hawaiian statehood; the music has been coated and close-read not simply by Puerto Ricans but additionally by native Hawaiians, Dominicans, Costa Ricans, and Ecuadorians, who be aware their land’s parallel struggles. “DTMF”—the album’s nostalgic title monitor, which options the refrain “I ought to’ve taken extra photos after I had you”—has been referred to as the “unofficial anthem of the Palestinian folks” and the “soundtrack for Gaza’s visible archive” by some journalists, having been used on social media to accompany movies of life in Gaza and Lebanon taken earlier than the occasions of October 7. (“I hope my folks by no means transfer away,” sings a discordant crew of voices on “DTMF,” sounding like an otherworldly band of ancestors.)
However the 13-minute Debí Tirar Más Fotos quick movie, which Unhealthy Bunny co-wrote and co-directed with the filmmaker Arí Maniel Cruz Suárez, is the DTMF challenge’s most poignant dialogue of displacement. It speaks to the cultural erasure that threatens dispossessed folks all over the place, the sensation of slowly shedding a homeland—similar to the ache of phantom limb. Unhealthy Bunny’s movie brings this idea—typically mentioned utilizing dry educational jargon—to life in a very creative method: He throws viewers right into a sensory-deprivation-tank mannequin of Puerto Rico, during which the sounds and sights that outline its tradition appear to be going extinct. Debí Tirar Más Fotos proposes that, when Puerto Rican politicians reply insufficiently and callously to ecological disasters and cater to outdoors buyers greater than locals—as Unhealthy Bunny has typically famous they do—the island loses what makes it Puerto Rico: its music, its tradition, its folks.
The movie highlights this pressure via an allegory of an outdated man and a toad. The characters are extra symbolic than particular, the sort of stand-ins that displaced folks wherever would possibly relate to. The person (performed by Jacobo Morales) is seemingly one of many few Puerto Ricans left in his anonymous neighborhood; he’s listed within the credit solely as “Señor.” His pal Concho is an anthropomorphic model of the endangered amphibian. Collectively, the movie suggests, the 2 signify the Puerto Ricans, human and nonhuman, who’re being ousted from the island by, amongst different elements, poor governance and social inequality.
Displacement isn’t a brand new topic for Unhealthy Bunny: The artist’s 2022 music “El Apagón” options the refrain “What belongs to me, they’ll preserve it to themselves,” adopted by “That is my seashore, that is my solar / That is my land, that is me.” His music video for the monitor took the type of a 22-minute documentary by the journalist Bianca Graulau; it was filled with reporting on how tax breaks have made it simple for buyers to purchase up properties, outprice locals, and develop luxurious leases throughout Puerto Rico. These critiques are undergirded by Unhealthy Bunny’s long-standing devotion to the island, which has been amplified in current appearances he’s made to advertise his newest file. Take the Puerto Rican flag he projected onto Saturday Evening Dwell’s stage in Could throughout a efficiency, or his upcoming summer season residency in San Juan, aptly titled “No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí” (“I Don’t Need to Depart Right here”).
The Debí Tirar Más Fotos quick movie, although, excels at depicting cultural upheaval: As a substitute of counting on headlines, as within the “El Apagón” music video, Unhealthy Bunny slips viewers into an off-kilter dreamscape—a Puerto Rico with barely any Puerto Ricans. Señor and Concho’s group seems to be like a abandoned Epcot model of the island. The empty streets are awash in pastel hues. When Señor strolls to the native bakery to get a deal with, he encounters solely a pair of younger English audio system consulting their telephones for instructions and a grilling, football-playing household with drawling southern accents, whose patriarch provides Señor a “get off my garden” stare. The café exudes a watered-down Caribbean vibe—it’s referred to as the Flamboyán Bakery, after Puerto Rico’s famend flame tree, and rapidly sells out of its vegan spin-off of the quesito pastry. Its menu is in English, and we seldom hear Spanish spoken amongst its workers and clientele. When Señor tries to pay in money, he’s instructed that the shop is a “cashless atmosphere.” All of this will depart the viewer feeling disoriented: Is that this actually Puerto Rico?
There’s additionally nary a reggaeton or salsa tune within the movie’s first act, which can add to the confusion. Solely English-language nation and emo-rock songs float out of the houses Señor passes. Not till the outdated man returns residence from the expensive café, two-thirds into the movie, do the longing plucks of a bolero music begin to play (a snippet of “Turista,” off Debí Tirar Mas Fotos). It scores a small, extra classical portrait of Caribbean life; Señor locations a moka pot on a fuel range, cuts up bread, and pours his cafecito into just a little inexperienced cup. After an extended, uncanny absence—and among the many total strangeness of the city—the bolero riffs land on the viewer like an emotive tidal wave, flooding the largely muted streets with sound. On the bakery, Señor appeared uncomfortable, compelled to talk halting English; at residence, together with his each day duties scored by swooning conventional tunes, he seems to be relaxed as soon as once more. His home turns into an oasis of native Puerto Rican music in a neighborhood that seems to be rapidly forgetting its tradition.
This scarce use of Caribbean music feels intentional: One of many results of gentrification, Unhealthy Bunny proposes, is silence. All through the DTMF album, Unhealthy Bunny laments what number of Puerto Ricans have been compelled to depart the island amid monetary struggles and environmental disasters comparable to Hurricane Maria; that is most notable on “Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii,” during which he notes that “nobody right here wished to depart, and people who left dream of returning.” (As of 2018, extra Puerto Ricans stay outdoors Puerto Rico than on the island; the identical is true of native Hawaiians and Palestinians of their respective lands.) The DTMF quick movie makes their absence palpable. “Did you hear that? That music!” the outdated man says to Concho, when a purple sedan drives by their entrance porch enjoying reggaeton (Unhealthy Bunny’s “Eoo”). The outdated man is moved. “You barely see that anymore,” he says of the automobile moseying previous. “I miss listening to the younger folks hanging out, the bikes—the sound of the neighborhood.” Señor and Concho, it appears, stay in a group that has turned its quantity down, now that almost all of its Puerto Rican inhabitants have left.
But Unhealthy Bunny gives up one potential method for Puerto Ricans each on and off the island—and any group dealing with comparable trials—to withstand the cultural erasure that may accompany displacement. The proposal: to joyfully tout their music and conventional symbols. It’s an concept that’s threaded via the DTMF album, which is filled with crucial lyrics comparable to “Don’t let go of the flag nor overlook the le-lo-lai” (a lyrical scat typically utilized in jíbaro music, a people style that originated within the Puerto Rican countryside). The accompanying movie ends on the same be aware, as Concho and Señor, the everymen of the island, mannequin a second of cultural delight. Concho means that his pal shake up the neighborhood’s ghostly quiet; why not drive round blaring some perreo bops?
The outdated man entertains this concept, although solely as a daydream. In his thoughts’s eye, he sees himself behind the wheel of a Jeep, the home windows down. He’s blasting Unhealthy Bunny’s music “Veldá” all through the hilly, vacant streets. It’s a triumphant, defiant vignette—an assertion that, because the outdated man tells Concho, “seguimos aquí.” We’re nonetheless right here.
