Breaking News! Bombastic, Hypocritical and Loathesome, California Gubernatorial Canidate Whitman Hits New Low!

More on this from DAILY INTEL

Damn Pot Smokin' Mesicans!

Thanks to Gustavo Arellano for tipping me to this post...

Superman Saves The Barrio For the United Farmworkers Union: Cesar Chavez's Buddy in Tights!

original posting: 9/26/07

Growing up in Laredo, ensconced in my room with Snoopy posters and UT Longhorn banners, I always thrilled to the wonders of Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson's Superman stories for DC comics. Little did I know that one of these wonders--January 1972, issue 247--featured the Man of Steel as a defender of Mexican Farm Workers. Small World.

A former student of mine and regular Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog contributor, Professor Marc García-Martinez, of Hancock College, writes in with this comic book, blast-from-the-past, skinny:

At the end of the tumultuous 60’s decade TIME magazine featured Cesar Chavez on its famous cover and a timely story on “The Grapes of Wrath, 1969: Mexican-Americans on the March.”

At the beginning of 1980 National Geographic, that distinguished magazine devoted to all things natural and cultural, featured an honest piece on “Mexican-Americans: A People on the Move.”

Somewhere in between, circa 1972, DC comics contributed its own unique brand of homage to La Raza by presenting an peculiar tale in its Superman No. 247 that could have justly been called “Mexican-Americans: Idle Farm Workers on Attack.”

Featuring in the relative climax of the story an assortment of Mexican-[ergo geographically-laborious-American] farm workers in California’s central valley, the story is an ironic and curious little portrait of the Mexican, that seems to cut too close to the spineless, indolent, leech-off-the-government for aid portrayals we’ve seen all too often lately.

This is some strange verbal-visual caca here, carnal…perhaps inadvertent. Let’s chat about this some more!

En la lucha,

Marc

García-Martinez also forwarded cool scans from the story; I would appreciate it if anyone has issue 272, as it is, oddly, missing from my collection. I'll offer a free copy of Tex[t]-Mex to the first person to email me at memo@sdsu.edu to let me know you are willing to loan or give me this prized issue!
























update

Professor García-Martinez just gave me the headsup on a Mexico City, Spanish-language edition of this story! I just bought it off ebay. Abrazos a mi amigo en Hancock College.

ESPN-Style XICANosmosis! USC, Mark Sanchez, Mexico, Football, and "America"

OCWeekly's got a great feature on USC's starting quarterback this year, the one and only Mark Sanchez! Click the quarterback for the full story!

Speedy Gonzales's Gringo Nemesis? "Rapid Dave" from Family Guy

update

The link in the original post below on the "Padre de Familia" episode of Family Guy went dead; Hulu, however is there to the rescue with a despicable outtake that is as reprehensible as it is understandable given the "climate" for Mexicans in America these days;



here's another segment from the same episode only available on AdultSwim:

and here, lastly, a comedic summary of what makes this "comedy" possible:



ORIGINAL POSTING: 11/22/07


Fox's Family Guy, "funny TV for young facists," recently featured a satirical episode on patriotism and immigrants. The entire episode is available here courtesy of hulu and aol. Speedy Gonzales's replacement, "Rapid Dave," makes his appearance at the 6:44 point of the video if you want to fast-forward. This animated feature, entitled "Padre de Familia," and written by Seth MacFarlane and David Zuckerman along with Kirker Butler, and directed by Pete Michels, features both fine meditations on stereotypes and base reproductions on the same--viz, the Jewish Porn movie gag (at 5:33). It never fails to amaze me how elements of popular culture evolve with the fluidity of an Ovidian metamorphosis! Brace yourself if you watch the whole episode however! The Mary Poppins sequence, replete with corpses and vomiting, is not worth the price of admission. Neither is the "Mexican" piñata/abortion clinic sequence (watch for the leafblower cameo), which is worthy of Mengele on a bad day.

The Frito Bandito, Pencil Erasers, Memory

Is it possible for the bandit trope of the Mexican to be innocuous? Perhaps, but always already* simultaneous with this notion of innocence lurks the spectre of a 'darker' past, a swarthier potentiality. That said, I will pass on my Ethnic Studies instincts and share this YouTube video of a Frito-Lay corporation Frito Bandito television ad from the 60s out of sheer nostalgia--me and my sister Josie used to fight over the prizes in cereal boxes and here, tortilla chip 6-packs. The only thing sinister in this commercial is the memory of hermanita getting to the box first!




*Gracias Derrida!

Zorro in Hell | Culture Clash in LA!

I caught the La Jolla Playhouse version of Culture Clash's ZORRO IN HELL last year and it knocked my socks off. Now the trinamic trio of Latino Three Stooges is heating up the boards in LA with a revised and updated staging of their heady comic meditation on California stereotypes. Check it out if you get the chance. Here's a somewhat severe LAWEEKLY review of the show; the LATIMES gives more love here.