The Chicano Gods of Our American Graphic Narrative Renaissance!

An amazing online assemblage courtesy KCET's web-stories! Sublime.



debts to be paid? but of course:

EYEGIENE: Touch No Dirt, Breathe No Dirt, See No Dirt...

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Emo-haters of Latin America, Unite!?

Just a quick note of a story Daniel Hernandez first broke and that Wired News is now following regarding Emo-bashing in Mexico--this turn of events south of the U.S. border--especially with regard to the macho, gay-bashing part of the anti-EMO movement--acts here as a sort of a purge for an earlier take that ran here this month, and is curious in its own right as well.

The Wired News story is of note for Gustavo Arellano's interesting use of the term "clusterfuck" which, against all rhetorical odds, appears measured, cogent, compelling, and incisive in the story!

Not all Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog readers may be up to speed on the origins and nature of EMO, hence this fine, detailed, and lucid instructional video:

Now You Can Vivisect the Living Soul of Racial Stereotypes AND Get Your Fix of Salacious Gossip

This is CERTAINLY nothing they ever trained me for in Graduate School--nothing Jonathan Culler, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Edgar Rosenberg, W.W. Holdheim, Carlos Fuentes or Gayatri Spivak ever taught me in seminar prepared me for this!

Amazon.com, in a fit of marketing genius!, is offering humanity brand new trade paperback copies of Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucination of the "Mexican" in America AND a free subscription to US Weekly--Holy Ronco!, Batman!

When a recent Amazon.com reader reviewed my book*, he accused me of being part of the problem of the culture industry! He had no idea! No idea!

Let's see if next week, I can get BN.COM to cross promote Tex[t]-Mex with free copies of People or Martha Stewart Living--then the eternal damnation of my once Che-loving Marxist soul will be complete!

Click below for the details on this limited time offer from Jeff Bezos and those crazy cats at Amazon.com



*"My only critique of the book is that it, by default and based on its format, becomes a part of the American culture industry: that's entertainment 'Chicano style' but geared to grad critical theory students... willing to pay the price of admission. "

Veer WILL NOT be Outdone by CMA

Hot on the heels of CMA's Mexlore series, Veer is online with their sexy line of "Hispanic" flavor images for graphic designer wonks the world over--click here for some samples!

Spike Lee On Hollywood, Race, and Black Bodies in the World Economy of Cinema

Plastock! Mexlore! Mysterio! Stock Images for a New Xicanosmotic Tomorrow

CSA Images of Minneapolis, a visual treasure-trove of seminal semiotic brilliance (ocular jouissance in a jugular vein), now features a line of "Mexlore" and "Mysterio" images starring what appear to be 40s- and 50s-era pulp Latino fonnies, comic-book outtakes. I am in debt to the web-fetishists at boingboing.net for bringing this fine outfit and its funky, cool wares to my attention this morning; I am equally in debt to Kirk Demarais, for his relentless curiosity with regard to the Charles Spencer Anderson (CSA) design firm!

This is proof positive that dynamic and delicious XicanOsmotic evolution can come from the paint-brush of unibrowed Mexican geniuses AND Northern Midwest Graphic Designer Cheese-heads!

I am thinking of adopting this particular figure, featured to your right, from their "plastock" line, as an uncanny talismatic mascot for my new Eyegiene project with the Univeristy of Texas Press.

Absolut Caves to Mounting Fascist Pressure, aka SELL SELL SELL More Vodka, Comedy be Damned!

Yikes!

...an update off the AP wire...

Junot Diaz, Extraterrestrials, and Invisible Latinos

Fabulously talented USD poet Jericho Brown just checked in with a heads-up to an interview with Junot Diaz in the Chicago Tribune; here's his note:

Hey Bill, You've probably seen this interview already, but in case you hadn't, I wanted to send it your way. The info he quotes about Lauzen's work at SDSU reminded me of some of the concerns in your writing. See you soon... Jericho

The paragraphs Brown is referencing are here:

Q: Did you have any doubts about having a hero who was such an uber-nerd?

A: Yeah, well of course. But think about it. To a mainstream audience, a complex Dominican protagonist is already an extraterrestrial. I just felt that the real risk wasn't in making Oscar such an incredible fanboy. It was imagining a Dominican family as the center of the American experience.


Q: Why is that so crazy? Most of us have an immigrant experience.

A: Look, in the year 2000 they cast more extraterrestrials than Latinos in television, during the entire year. [A study by Martha M. Lauzen of San Diego State University found that in the 1998-99 television season, 3 percent of female characters in popular shows were from another world/realm, and only 1 percent were Hispanic.] So my [point is], I do think it's probably harder for a mainstream American who grows up exposed to extraterrestrials more than to Latinos to imagine the center of the universe being a fat Dominican, you know? Which is cool. That's what art is there to do. Art is there to challenge our assumptions and our organizing principles.

The whole piece is here. Equally interesting and revelatory owing to its confession of Los Bros. Hernandez influence on Diaz's work is Junot's rap with La Bloga here.


UPDATE:

Guess whose first novel just won a Pulitzer Prize! Felicidades a Junot Diaz.

Dreaming a "Mexican" Themed Future...

Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog reader William Minton-Marshall writes in to point our synapses to the Beistle Company catalogue of themed goodies. Their fine selection of "Mexican" paraphernalia is not be sniffed at or poo-pooed--and, entre nous, I share Minton-Marshall's confessed predilection for "jointed" mariachis! ¡Arriva, Arriva!

Yet Another Sordid Chapter in the History of American Racial Figuration