Maria, The Porcelain Mexican or Tales of Ersatz, Collectible "Mexicans"

update
(original posting December 12, 2007)

There, floating to your right, your very own porcelain "Mexican," the fabled "Maria," from the Danbury Mint, that famed ceramic purveyor of "collectible" figurines like lil' Miss Patriot (left). One of the more curious "Mexican" artifacts and collectibles in the history of American mass culture, "Maria" appears in one of the "Seductive Hallucination" gallery-chapters in Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America (2007)--two image-heavy, quick-hit, bloggish subsection respites from the super-sized, theory-doused chapters in the rest of the book.

Since the book appeared, a wonderful graduate student/mentee of mine, Farhang Pernoon (dig his IMDB credits) went to the trouble of reading and deciphering my gnarled/gnarly footnotes in the University of Texas volume and actually ordering and shipping me one these "Mexican" facsimiles--a fetching ersatz somatic wonder that allows me to play Latino Pygmalion on cold winter nights. Think Lars and the Real Doll 'gone Mexico way.' Yikes.

Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Hanukkah shoppers can squire their own "Maria" by pointing their mouse here; Maria's "African," "Asian," and "Native," "brothers" and "sisters" can be found here.

Festivus observers will be sure to give this a pass!

I am utterly in debt to Pernoon for outing my burgeoning fetish for counterfeited "Mexicans." Holy Geppetto, Batman, I am out of here....

postscript

If anyone even thinks twice of getting me "Anna," I will eat this blog!

Apoplectic Bloggers, Apologetic, Barrister/Psychiatrist-guarded Chicana Grifters, Hannah Montana, and 15 Minutes of Infamy

I don't know why a blog that aspires to track the dodgy shenanigans of Latina/o stereotypes should turn its eye this way, but I can't seem to ignore the nefarious doings of one Priscilla Ceballos, a Tejana from Garland, Texas, who, in the sincere desire to score Hannah Montana tickets for her daughter, ghost-wrote an essay for her daughter wherein she alleged said daughter had lost her father in the Iraq war. While the blogosphere is busy tarring and feathering Señora Ceballos (nifty screengrab above), said tale becomes yet another odd Tex[t]-Mexual allegory--but this time the star at the center of the storm is a Tejana scribe, a sharp little cookie with a gift for fiction, who has written herself into a tale of woe.

You think I am exagerrating on the tar and feathering, taste a little of d-listed's screed.

The Today show feature on the escándalo is worth the price of your click if only for the shot of Ceballos flanked by her lawyer and a psychiatrist! Hijole, holy ghosts of Dombey and Son and Freud!

A good deal of Tex[t]-Mex meditates on the idea of the ersatz or "constructed," fabricated human; and from Ceballos's painted-on eyebrows and tattooed lipstick to Hannah Montana being the fabricated alter-ego of a character named Miley Stewart (played by the actress Miley Cyrus--daughter of Billy Ray "Achy Breaky Heart" Cyrus), we find ourselves awash, astray, adrift in oceans of simulacra, of delicious, well-crafted, media-fanned fakery, that Jorge Luis Borges schooled us on in "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" and Jean Baudrillard reminded us of with his "simulacra." It would be funny if Weapons of Mass Destruction, the Nazi scapegoating of Jews (and, did you know?, the flagellants 14nth century scapegoating of Jews*), and anti-immigrant bashing by neo-Klan pundits didn't work and thrive through the same logic.

There's more to write about here, but I have to think about it.... More to come.



*Lurid recreations of the same can be witnessed on the History Channel's Plague docudrama!

Essential updates from Hasta Los Gatos and Guanabee--gracias to 'Hasta for the links!