Sunday Funnies in the Age of the Coronavirus: La Cucaracha

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I have a new class this Fall 2020 at SDSU called Comics and History: The Virus Eye/I. As part of that class I am uploading select dispatches on contemporary comic strips--today I did one on Lalo Alcaraz and Junco Cancho's La Cucaracha.   Check it out below:

Virgil Ross Animation Style Sheet: Warner Brothers's Speedy Gonzales!

The auction price for this priceless Speedy Gonzalez artifact got too rich for my blood--I think as of now, Sunday morning August 9, 2020, the price is around $150.00.

Still, a piece of American history--in particular, an American history focused on the production of ethnic American archetypes and stereotypes. And, a piece of the backstory of how 20th century animated masterpieces were forged.

More on the image from Heritage Auctions below and a reminder that I (literally) wrote the book on Speedy Gonzales--the key central chapter of Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucination of the "Mexican" in America is focused on "the fastest mouse in all Mexico." Check it out here: https://amzn.to/2DrIouU

From Heritage Auctions page, https://comics.ha.com/itm/animation-art/production-drawing/virgil-ross-speedy-gonzales-model-sheet-drawing-original-art-warner-brothers-c-1990s-/a/122032-13740.s

Virgil Ross - Speedy Gonzales "Model Sheet" Drawing Original Art (Warner Brothers, c. 1990s).
He's "the fastest mouse in all Mexico" -- Speedy Gonzales! 

"He was developed by Friz Freleng and animator Hawley Pratt; his official debut short, Speedy Gonzales (1955), was an Academy Award winner. One of the animators on that historic short was Virgil Ross, who drew this wonderful 16 field model sheet-style illustration with seven full-figure images of Speedy. Virgil Ross (1907-1996) was a long-time Warner Brothers animator who worked in the Bob Clampett, Tex Avery, and Friz Freleng Units. He was famous for his action and dance sequences, as well as his facial expressions. Mr. Ross began releasing hand-painted Limited Edition cels of progressions of his famous Looney Tunes scenes as part of the "Masters Collection" for the Warner Brothers Studio Stores and animation galleries. He began making personal appearances where he created one-of-a-kind drawings of the Looney Tunes characters as well as other cartoons he worked on for other studios. He received the prestigious Winsor McCay Award in 1988. Image sizes on this signed illustration range from 4.5" to 5.5". Fine condition."

The Solution to Annoying Latinx Stereotypes? Talking #BrownTV

A Review of Recent Postings Focused on Talking #BrownTV, a New Cultural Studies Book Focused on Latinxers on TV and Beyond!

From the ridiculous to the sublime... a compendium of #BrownTV postings from Facebook: https://t.co/b7pYvUtA6o pic.twitter.com/UoFOZRyeab

— William Nericcio (@eyegiene) August 6, 2020

Shia LeBeouf: Xicanx-Identified Ally or Gringo in Brownface! Let the Discussion Begin ... #mextasy #textmex

@longdrivesouth, the great writer Daniel Hernandez, has a great new feature in the @latimes on Shia LeBouf's new Xicanx gangster flick The Tax Collector ... very cool piece!https://t.co/5IzZbwiCmv pic.twitter.com/LlZvHfrZvp

— William Nericcio (@eyegiene) August 6, 2020

The Mother of Invention in This Case was a Bell & Howell 16mm Movie Projector or the Short Happy Story of How a Comparatist Latin Americanist Ended Up Doing Film Studies ... #textmex #mextasy #BrownTV #eyegiene #eyegasm

#textmex + #eyegiene Repost: The Voracious Eyes of Carmen Mondregón / Nahui Olin

Some of you know I have been writing a follow-up book to Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America--it's called Eyegiene: Permutations of Subjectivity in the Televisual Age of Sex and Race and is under contract with my friends over the University of Texas Press. Someday, I might even finish the beast.

In the interim, I have been publishing advanced snippets of the book as a regular contributor to Josh Glenn's Hilobrow.com cultural studies site. What appears below originally appeared, slightly truncated, on that site--you can see it here: Below appears the Director's cut edition, warts and all.

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The Voracious Eyes of 

Carmen Mondregón / Nahui Olin

William Nericcio

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On 8, July 1893, Nahui Olin, barrels onto the planet as María del Carmen Mondragón Valseca —eyes, in Europe and Latin America and across the planet, will never be the same again.  

An artist, artists’ model, painter, poet, and all-around Mexican bohemian, Olin is born into a Mexican industrialist family of privilege (la familia Mondrágon manufactured rifles and ammo). The money does some good, as Olin is educated in Mexico and France with an intellectual and arts regime focused on the arts. 

Soon her circle includes a Euro arts league of usual suspects including Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse; the same goes down on her return to Mexico, with Olin falling in with the crème de la crème of the Mexican burgeoning arts scene. 

Soon she’s modeling for Diego Rivera and Tina Modotti, hanging with José Vasconcelos, father of “La Raza Cosmica,” and composing poetry with Gerardo Murillo, the one and only Dr. Atl, a writer and painter whose Mexican circle (he’s sort of DF-style Gertrude Stein) fired the palettes of 20th century Mexican muralists.   

Olin is Madonna, pre-Madonna, a pre-cursor herself to celebrity/artist fusions like Lady Gaga—no meat frock for Nahui Olin, but she did wear the first miniskirt in Mexico! 

Olin is yet another American original, a bon vivant artist-lover whose work, predictably, as a model, as an object of art, at times overshadows her efforts as a poet, painter, and photographer--paging Meret Oppenheim. In her wake, Mexico reacts as most of the world does to strong sexy shamanic female forces shameless in speech and actions, with the Mexican popular press scandalously framing her as a witch/madwoman—these are trite, predictable responses to an aesthetic hurricane prone to nudity and random sexual co-conspirators but they did their damage as her legacy is largely anonymous! 

Olin’s work as a poet is worth a second look, her two major works being Óptica cerebral, poemas dinámicos (Brainy Optics, Dynamic Poems) and Calinement je suis dedans (Tender, I am inside). Her paintings, raw, bursting with color, are worth a second peek as well, Olin revealed as the seeming mother of Big-Eye paintings (someone tell Tim Burton or Margaret and Walter Keane).

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As your own eyes wander from her work as a painter (Autorretrato en los jardines de versalles, Self-portrait in the Versailles Gardens) to that of a model (here in a haunting capture by Edward Weston), one is struck by the dance of optics at work in Olin’s work. As if infected by retinally-conveyed viruses borne of the cameras and canvases that captured her unique power, Olin’s own aesthetic destiny moves to the rhythm of this optic beat: eyes themselves grow larger than life in her haunting, uncanny paintings.

SDSU Department of English and Comparative Literature Hosts a Public Zoom Lecture Featuring Professors Frederick Aldama and William Nericcio Speaking on #BrownTV Their New Book with the Ohio State University Press

Talking #BrownTV Now Part of a Midwest Retailer's Training Department Manual! Aldama and Nericcio Run Amok

My Friend Frederick Luis Aldama Has A New Children's Literature Classic You Have to Get Your Hands On! Breaking News: Chupacabra Charilie Breaks Children Out of ICE Cages! News at 11...

My review of CHUPACABRA CHARLIE by @ProfessorLatinx for @ohiostatepress ...

Pick up a copy here https://t.co/IuKUQfrnz3#mextasy #kidlit

A chupacabra breaking kids out of ICE cages? Magic! pic.twitter.com/f0vkRnwvIG

— William Nericcio (@eyegiene) June 28, 2020

click to make HUGE!

Breaking News From the Sports Desk! Talking #BrownTV

And in breaking news from our 1970s sports desk, more Talking #BrownTV shilling afoot!

Now on sale @Bookshop_Org Bookshop https://t.co/BKXRUDgJqy

or via @ohiostatepress https://t.co/mbleDTFubI

or via AMZ: https://t.co/qCrHs0cXRO ...

or Kindle: https://t.co/1uS93PMg50 pic.twitter.com/IvkZ02DT2v

— talking #browntv (@browntv12) June 26, 2020

Frederick Luis Aldama and William A. Nericcio's TALKING #BrownTV on Chris Gonzalez's Podcast! HOSPITABLE IMAGINATIONS!

Be sure to give THIS just breaking HOSPITABLE IMAGINATIONS podcast—with @eyegiene & @ProfessorLatinx by @chrsgnzlz on TALKING #BrownTV —a listen!

Direct podcast linkazo: https://t.co/pFNeYf7JXd

#browntv via AMZ: https://t.co/qCrHs0cXRO or Kindle: https://t.co/1uS93PMg50 pic.twitter.com/XyCyPlzJoL

— talking #browntv (@browntv12) June 23, 2020

Remembering Ruben Salazar: Chicano Victim of Police Violence

Police violence against journalists recalls Ruben Salazar death - Los Angeles Times ⁦@CSUF_LCI⁩ ⁦@thedailytitan⁩ ⁦@VoiceofOC⁩ https://t.co/TqJT7nZkuZ

— Alexandro José Gradilla (@ajgradilla) June 20, 2020

Extraordinary Schoolhouse Rocks-style Animated Video on Slavery, Juneteenth, and More -- by the Roots via Black-ish and Boingboing.com

The Roots teach a 'Schoolhouse Rock!'-style lesson on slavery https://t.co/gWz1q9bjXl #blm #BlackLivesMatter

— William Nericcio (@eyegiene) June 19, 2020

What are you talking about!? That picture was taken a few weeks ago || New adventures in #browntv book shilling!!!