Friz Freleng, Warner Bros., Speedy Gonzales, Slowpoke Rodriguez and "Mexican Boarders" (1962)

updated 03/07/16     updated 02/28/14     updated: 9/30/14     reposting: 9/15/09     original posting 3/31/07 

It is May or June 1962, and as I frolic in my crib, 6 months old, at my house on Hendricks Avenue, things are happening at The Tivoli Theatre (opposite) in downtown Laredo. There, screening for the first time, is the latest animated short feature out of the genius hands of a crazy cohort of driven, twisted imagineers at Warner Bros. studios.

"Mexican Boarders," directed by Friz Freleng, with Hawley Pratt, and written by John Dunn, tells the story of a visit to Speedy Gonzales by his cousin, Slowpoke Rodriguez.

I am writing about it here on the Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog as it throws a wrench (perhaps heaves an ACME bomb is better, it is Warner Brothers cartoons I'm writing about) at a key chapter of my University of Texas book, chapter 3, which has the unfortunate distinction of sporting the longest title I've ever published: "Chapter Three. Autopsy of a Rat: Sundry Parables of Warner Brothers Studios, Jewish American Animators, Speedy Gonzales, Freddy López, and Other Chicano/Latino Marionettes Prancing about Our First World Visual Emporium; Parable Cameos by Jacques Derrida; and, a Dirty Joke."

What's remarkable about "Mexican Boarders" is the mise en scène, that old war-horse French term from film criticism that speaks to the setting, background and tableau, if not the "actors" themselves. For in this 1962 classic, Speedy Gonzales is living the highlife in an upper-class Mexican town, "in the fine [bourgeois] hacienda of José Álvaro Meléndez." Most other Speedy shorts from the 60s feature Speedy and his cohorts living in trash ("Cannery Woe," 1961) or falling out of cantinas ("Tabasco Road," 1957)--and the bulk of my argument on Speedy, Autopsy of a Rat, keys on this. "Mexican Boarders" is different. Here, as you can see to your left, Speedy lives the life of a Patrón, in his "Casa de Gonzales." This Speedy is what we call in Laredo, Texas in our licentious and salacious patois, a high sosiégate, which literally means high calm-down, and figuratively means "high get-over-your-own-damn-self" and sounds like "high society."

So this bourgie ratón lives the good life, stealing cheese and such from Sylvester, who is so run down in "Mexican Boarders," that he has to resort to amphetamines to get him through his days.

That's when the key plot twist in this fable occurs and Speedy's country mouse cousin Slowpoke Rodriguez arrives to visit--he is slow-talking, more heavily accented than Speedy (his voice provided not by Mel Blanc, Warner's heralded man of a thousand voices, but by Tom Holland). All the sight gags revolve around Speedy saving his slow, country bumpkin cousin, from Sylvester owing to said bumpkin's obsessive compulsive drive for more food--"Ahhmm, steeeeel hawwwwwwwngreeee" becomes his Godot-like mantra. One particularly cool sight gag fuses the cubist sensibility of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso.

But what is most striking about "Mexican Boarders" is the intellectual capacity of Slowpoke Rodriguez. Freleng et al capitalize on his largely American audiences expectations not only of a "Mexican," but of a rustic "peon" from the country--an urban/agricultural antagonism that transcends even nationalistic biases. For this slow-talking, slow-moving mouse is nobody's fool. Let him speak for himself: "maybe Slowpoke is pretty slow downstairs in the feet, but he is pretty fast upstairs in the cabeza.” Stopped by Speedy from emerging one evening to feed his ever-present appetite, Slowpoke demures for a second, only to confess resignedly to his perplexed cousin, "it's a far, far, better thing I do than if I starve."

Striking. Freleng ventriloquizes his animated Mexican as a Sydney Cartonesque, Dickens-alluding literati; moreover, in the next scene, Rodriguez emerges as a Svengali-like mesmerist (no, I am not exaggerating!) who converts Sylvester into a fan-bearing lackey.



This ironic and surreptitious re-figuration of the "Mexican" as cunning, mesmerizing subject--not to mention the Machiavellian potentiality embedded in this animated marionette will have to be documented in the second edition of Tex[t]-Mex.


Here's a streaming version of Mexican Boarders via DailyMotion:

09 - Mexican Boarders by ALEXAGORDON28771 

 Here are some recent images I dredged up on a google image search:

A Warner Brothers' animation character style sheet from 1992

source

A next-generation 3-d version of Slowpoke:

source

Mexy Excitement (and Latina/o Hijinks) Your Way Cometh, Adrian College, Michigan, and the Midwest!!!!! The MEXTASY Exhibition September 2013

Streaming video updates below | August 25, 2013

The rumors I started are true--nurturing my wanderlusting Tejano fetish for the American Midwest (where even Cleveland or Columbus shimmer on the horizon of my consciousness like Reykjavic or Paris do for others), I have set my sights again on Michigan (sorry Ann Arbor, no Wolverine desmadres this time) and the balmy climes of Adrian at a college there called, you guessed it, Adrian College. Located near the financially infamous (of late) Motor City of Detroit, Adrian is known for fences. That's right! Fences--and whilst this gives your border-rat textmex blogger some pause (especially with the all the neo-fascist fervor for border walls these days), I am going to hold my tongue for the moment as the fine liberal arts college is also know for something much more important--social justice.

Here's wikipedia on Adrian: "In the late 19th century through early 20th century Adrian was known as the 'fence capital of the world,' when J. Wallace Page invented the first successful wire fence. Throughout this period, Adrian was one of the first fencing manufacturers in the world and its fences were shipped as far as New York, Berlin, Asia, and Africa." Working in Adrian's favor is the denouement of this microhistory where J. Wallace Page's company  sponsors "the highly successful Page Fence Giants Black baseball team." But Adrian is also known for Adrian College, according to USA TODAY, the "#1 Up-and-Coming College in the Midwest" and I am thrilled to bring my Tejano/Califas-drenched exhibition and lectures to Adrian's shores! The other great thing about Adrian College? It's a thriving abolitionist-era institution of higher ed!

So how will it go down? Adrian College's Shipman Library has installed the full Mextasy exhibit (Mextasy: Seductive Hallucinations of Latina/o Mannequins Prowling the American Unconscious) in its Heritage Room on the main Adrian College campus. The exhibition will be housed there from August 26 to September 13, 2013. Students and the community can see the exhibit anytime the library is open with Shipman Library regular hours running Monday through Thursday, 8am-1pm; Friday, 8am-5pm; Saturdays, 10am-5pm; and Sundays from 12pm-11pm.

more below the posterlink 

Get your own signed, numbered poster print here at the Mextasy semiotic shack!

There will be two major media-rich presentations associated with the Mextasy extravaganza. There will be a community lecture entitled  "Compulsively Desirable, Utterly Loathsome: Mexican and Latina/o Bodies in the 21st Century" on Wednesday, September 11, 2013, in Jones 110, 7:00pm–8:00pm. And there will be a campus lecture as well Thursday, September 12, 2013, entitled "Disrupting the Optical Hegemony of Stereotypes Now: Tex[t]-Mex, Eyegiene, and the Visual Dynamics of a Technosexual Tomorrow" in a room to be announced, 12:00pm–1pm.  A big gracias goes out to the Mextasy event sponsors: The Office of the Vice President and Dean of Academic Affairs, Modern Languages and Cultures, Collegium II, ALPHA/Fin-Com, Institute for Ethics, Student Life, Multicultural Programs, Department of English, and the Institute for Creativity. 

An even bigger thank you and abrazo goes out to Professor Aïda Valenzuela, without whose imagination, vision, and drive, this event would never have happened!

EXTRAS

-------------------------------------

a video and a cartoon for the Adrian College Lectures!

1. Humphrey Bogart and Alfonso Bedoya light up the screen in a scene from TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRES

2. Classic SPEEDY GONZALES antics from CANNERY WOE

 

click image for the streaming page

last promo posters--as with most images here, click to enlarge

The Voting Was Close, But the Tally is IN!!!! Phyllis Schlafly Beats Out Paula Deen for July 2013, Tex[t]-Mex Gallerblog PENDEJA of the Month

No doubt there will be demands for a recount, what with the proclivity of Deen to put her foot in her mouth so many times, but our old nemesis Phyllis Schlafly is just such an old school pendeja that we had to give the woman her due! For more, read here off SLATE...

Pues No Ganó el Candidato Latino en Massachusetts

!Que Pena! I guess the state of Massachusetts will maintain a Democratic Senator. No Scott Brown upset this time around. Ed Markey beat out Navy Seal and all around Latino JFK-esque charmer Gabriel Gomez.

More Oral-Aural Bigotry camouflaged as humor: El Panzón Cabrón, and all-around Tosser, Rush Limbaugh plays "Feliz Navidad" to the wanting and lazy "Hispanic Community" who voted for President Obama.

Limbaugh, in his quintessentially sick and sad way, attempted to make sense of our national election earlier this week that heavily favored progressive philosophy. In doing so, he naturally waxed bumptiously that Republicans did not lose, rather Hispanics won in their stalwart efforts to sustain their welfare way of life: "Conservatism, in my humble opinion, did not lose last night.  It's just very difficult to beat Santa Claus.  It is practically impossible to beat Santa Claus.  People are not going to vote against Santa Claus, especially if the alternative is being your own Santa Claus….I'm sorry.  In a country of children where the option is Santa Claus or work, what wins?"

Today, El Panzón Cabrón, and all-around Tosser continued on air by playing "Feliz Navidad" in a nod to all those Hispanic voters of Obama——our nation's greedy little children seeking free handouts and who are no doubt celebrating an early Christmas:

from the MediaMatters for America webpage

Amazingly Cool Documentary on Latinos Post-Katrina in New Orleans | Arthur Saenz and David Zlutnick

Tell Me What You Think of These New Prototype Adverts!

Recently, some very cool new viral marketers hit me up and asked me to share their wares! I like their vibe, their visual aesthetic (think next-generation Cuarón), and more. Here are the videos: let me know what you think of them:

XAVI


ALEX


ELLIE

Shocking Revelations Regarding Latina/o Targeted Media! They dig güeros/güeras even MORE than yankOUTLETS

Latinas/os In and OUT of the American Eye

Richard Montoya, NPR, Latino Superheroes and More!

Gracias gracias to regular instigator David O. García for sending in the link to this cool NPR thingie with Richard Montoya of Culture Clash fame! Hit the image above for the tale of the tape!

Chon Noriega on TCM

... great interview with the Chon-man here.

Of War and "War": 'Low Rider' and Black/Mexican Tensions

The Memín Pinguin blow-up shows that African American and Latino community tensions are on the rise nationally--all the more reason to remember this Raza anthem and the band, ironically called "War," that made it possible:

Rita Moreno and Rex Reed, A Cultural Studies Duet

A blast from the past! As I am trapped on this hotbed of peculiar islanders called England, I am far away from the tools that make the Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog a go-to site for nourishing tidbits of Latino/a-stained culture. As such, you guessed it!, reruns!

original posting: Thursday | January 25, 2007

Who would have thought that the veritable grandfather of celebrity-blogging, Rex Reed, would have the cultural studies skills to parse the depths of Latina semiotic complexity and notoriety, But I guess if Gene Shalit can be outed as a pre-Derridean seer (viz p.44, Tex[t]-Mex), then why can't Reed (film fetishist and would-be kleptomaniac) join the ranks of Art Aldama, Rosa Linda Fregoso, and Chon Noriega as knowing arbiters of the Latino visual culture?

This link does double service as our Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog has done a woefully poor job warehousing untoward representations of Puertorriqueños, Dominicanos, and our other and various Latino/a hermanos y hermanas. Reed's take on Moreno begins to redress this pernicious imbalance.

The San Diego Reader's Barbarella on Tex[t]-Mex