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

Help Visualize the End of Mexican Stereotypes! (Or, at least, their Deconstruction)!!!! New Eyegasmic Desmadres Available NOW at the Eyegiene/Mextasy Tictail Shop!

click the image below and be instantly teleported!

Son of Kong Mexican Movie Lobby Cards, via Heritage Auctions

click to make mucho mas grande...




source

Treasure Trove of "Mexican" Tourist Advertisements | via vintageadbrowser.com

You can find more here using their fine search engine...

The Guardian, Enrique Peña Nieto, and the Buying of the Mexican Election

UPDATED: Carlos Fuentes Has Died

I am just processing the news that one of my dearest mentors, the great Mexican author and public intellectual Carlos Fuentes, has passed away--the latest links will be appearing here.

During the 1980s, I worked as a research and graduate teaching assistant for Carlos at Cornell University--it was there that we formed a friendship and a collaboration that changed my life forever. I have documented some of this here on the Tex[t]-Mex Galleryblog in these postings.

Among the many amazing and magical things that happened during the incredible semester (including the never-to-be-forgotten memory of dancing alongside Carlos at a Latina/o party, downtown Ithaca, at an American Legion Hall {picture it!}), was that I made a lifelong friendship with the talented American playwright, Oliver Mayer--now an Associate Professor in Theatre @ USC.  He and talked the other day about our friendship with Carlos--our shared loss, sadness, and memories.  It was good to talk to Oliver; he's like the brother I never had.

In any event, Oliver posted something on his No Passport Yahoo Groups site that I would like to share it with you here:

Carlos Fuentes was my teacher and friend at Cornell in the mid 80s. He taught me so much about being a writer and being an educator. The man was ferocious with life, dashing, brilliant, curious, and constantly engaged in the politics and culture of our times. I loved him and his family--his beautiful wife and his two children, now tragically both dead before their time. The Nobel Prize should have gone to Carlos many times over. Another artist would have shut down or grown bitter, but Carlos always chose the higher road in his work. His prize is his body of writing, his enormous artistic compassion, and the legion of young artists who learned from his example -- not only as a writer but as a man.

Love, Oliver

Oliver Mayer
Associate Professor
USC School of Theatre
Faculty Master
Parkside International Residential College
Affiliated Faculty: Dept of American Studies and Ethnicity
olivermayer.com

* * *

A posting of Fuentes family pictures has appeared here.

* * *

Here's a recent BBC Mundo piece and streaming interview with Fuentes from December 2011--the streaming video appears below the imagelink.

The Bluest Eye, Mexico-style... | Racism in the Americas

FROM THE ORIGINAL YOUTUBE POSTING:

Este video fue realizado por 11.11 Cambio Social como parte de la campaña "Racismo en México". Se hizo un trabajo de investigación con niños y niñas mexicanos/as, replicando el experimento con niños/as y muñecos diseñado por Kenneth y Mammie Clark en los años treinta en EUA, que se ha llevado a cabo en varios países del mundo.

Aquí se muestra parte de los resultados y los niños y las niñas que aparecen en este video reflejan las respuestas de la mayoría de niños/as que fueron entrevistados/as.

Dada la complejidad de la temática, se realizó un Taller de Racismo con los/as niños/as y que participaron y sus familias, para generar un espacio de reflexión y contención de las emociones generadas en este intercambio.

Twitter: @RacismoenMexico
Facebook: www.facebook.com/norazas
Más información: racismo.mexico@gmail.com

Thanks to MALAS superstar graduate student, Mali Hinesly, for bringing this to my eyes!

Pedro Infante is in the [white] House! (...sort of): A quick post on Aural-Sonic Miscegenations!

Came upon this LP record quite by accident on Google images. You'll appreciate it for its decidedly odd Leave it to Beaver meets La Bamba undertones. Needless to say, there must be a copy still out there...I'll check Amoeba Music in San Francisco and get back to you. Until then, soak in all the cross-cultural, racial harmony, and curiously caucasoidal vibes this anomalous little artifact seems to emit!

Aural Histories! Mexican Trains via BOINGBOING.NET

A Visual Chaser of Pleasantness

To scare away all the bad going on the world these days. Here's a cool advertising gimmick in Mexico, from the Ogilvy & Mather Agency.

Who doesn't love Hotwheels? Via The LatinAmericanist.

The Photographic Spoils of War: Seymour M. Hersh on New Revelations Regarding U.S. Soldiers and War Photography

Tex[t]-Mex luridly (and, I pray, lucidly) chronicles the consequences of war photography on U.S./Mexico relations in the 20th and 21st-century; the introduction, drawing madly on the work of Paul Vanderwood in Border Fury, documents how post-card vendors, the tweeters of their day, followed U.S. expeditionary force troops through northern Mexico as they attempted to apprehend Pancho Villa (unsuccessfully).  Along the way, these troops--led by some interesting, newly minted officers out of West Point: George Patton, Douglas MacArthur--routinely posed for shots with Mexican cadavers (some they had shot, others they had hung, others they stumbled upon in their mad dash across Veracruz, Tamaulipas, and beyond).

And now, 2011, it's happening again. In Afghanistan. Seymour M. Hersh is on it in his new piece for The New Yorker.  Click the image opposite for a photographic/war odyssey it takes the likes of  Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes, and Paul Virilio to parse.

Compare W. H. Horne's photo (1916) from a period postcard (El Paso?) with the one in the Hersh story:

source

The original Der Spiegel image-post is here (NSFYS*)



*NSFYS: Likely not safe for your soul




UPDATE: more horrid photos from ROLLING STONE.

Barbie and Ken Go Mexican Native! From 1964

Narcocinema on the BBC: The Evolving Face of Mexico on the World Stage

direct link {BBC World News America}

Sensacional! Cool Book on Mexican Graphics

Thanks to my new friend, graphic design prof Leila Hernandez, for tipping my eyes to this cool collection of Mexstatic beauty! Its title? Sensacional!: Mexican Street Graphics

The Agony and the [Mex]tasy: Feliz Cumpleaños México! September 16, 2010, 200 Years Young

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Mexico in the throes of its worst domestic violence since the early 20th century--but there are no Villas or Zapatas afoot, more like Capone and Madoff running the show from Nuevo Laredo to Saltillo and beyond. Mexico at the brink of a renaiassance--a world class, first world embodiment of cultural invention and fusion: from Lucha Libre to futbol to Sabado Gigante to Univision, Mexico, the fountain of next-generation visual culture--del Toro, Cuaron, and Iñarritu, the three horsemen of the cinematic apocalypse.

So happy bicentennial, Mexico--buena suerte! May mala Fortuna turn away from you in the near future, in our newish century.

The show I am opening along the Rio Grande river in McAllen in two weeks, Mextasy, is dedicated to the old motherland and my peculiar fatherland. Mextasy is more than a representation of ecstasy about or for Mexico; it is about the sensuous tracings Mexican culture leaves on both sides of the border. More existential state than archive, Mextasy speaks to the living organism of Mexicanicity as it osmotically moves between the bodies of Mexico and the United States--an overt and covert delicious miasma that arouses as it excites, excites as it provokes.

¡Que viva Mexico!, within and without its borders.

Mexico! Infected!!!!!

Perfect, if the idea of "Mexico" was not already contaminated by the race-hate-besmirched climate of USA circa 2010, now Hollywood is piling on with Monsters. I have got to see this movie! Thanks to Tucson-based brainiac Laura G. Gutiérrez, author of Performing Mexicanidad: Vendidas y Cabareteras on the Transnational Stage for the linkaso. Here's the trailer:

National Camera by Roberto Tejada

...just ran across National Camera: Photography and Mexico's Image Environment on Amazon--will do a posting after I snag a copy and review it...