Gustavo Arellano | Jacques Derrida | Cantinflas

repost of November 22, 2006 old school galleryblog

Someone whose probing eye riffs with the rasquache vibe (think Jacques Derrida in Cantínflas-drag) of the Tex[t]-Mex project, is Gustavo Arellano, a Swift-like Chicano satirist whose work appears in the OC Weekly and whose new book ASK A MEXICAN is just out and selling like hot tortillas on a cold Mexico City morning. Or maybe, to be totally honest, it is Tex[t]-Mex that aspires to match the funny and dead-on indictments, disclosures, jokes, political jabs and nasty revelations that make his Ask-a-Mexican column the hit it is! Nestled in the heart of Gringolandia, dodging the jibes and punches of Southern California anti-Mexican voodoo (as close as you can get to a national pastime in SoCal), Arellano's virulent semantics are enough to make a Califas skinhead pee his pants. Arellano's bon mots have come to key parts of my crusade against seductive hallucinations of "Mexicans" in America.

For my indulgent readers who have been clamoring for video on this site, I forthwith produce here via the magic of internet streaming (uncanny voodoo in its own right) illustrative samplings of the late Jacques Derrida and Cantinflas--savvy cultural innovators whose ironic melodies provide the score for much of what it is I do as a semiotically obsessed cultural worker.

First, here's my dear departed theory guru talking about writing:



Second, we turn to Cantinflas, born Mario Moreno Reyes (1911-93), and not just by the way, had a father who worked in the post office; so did I. Food for thought for Pynchon-styled conspiracy theorists!