Watching Lupe Vélez While Thinking About the Latina Body Politic

While I am totally thrilled with the production values of Tex[t]-Mex, my book with the University of Texas Press, there's no denying that being able to screen video clips would make the book even better. For example, the Lupe Vélez chapter of the book attempts to restore some sacred, uncanny, reverberation to the tortured corpse of one of Hollywood's most infamous celebrity suicides. Vélez's tragedy is rendered more poignant when you watch her at her peak. RIP, Lupita! Te quiero mucho.

Jimmy Kimmel, Ken Burns, Mexicans, World War II, and PBS Revisionism

UPDATE

The link in the posting below no longer goes to the archived Kimmel/Ken Burns parody video--stereotype chroniclers may however, want to scroll through a take a peek at the series of my tocayo Guillermo skits Kimmel is now running.



You don't usually go to Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC for progressive and dynamic pieces of schtick that speak to the nuances of Ethnic American discourse, but give credit where credit is due! Kimmel and staff's video take on Ken Burns's blindness/revisionism when it comes to Latinos and World War II is worth a peek or two. It somehow manages to simultaneously invoke, and hence, reinforce, stereotypes, but also prognosticate and lampoon Burns's heart/vision when it comes to Mexican Americans and war, all at the same time.

A tip of the Textmex sombrero goes out to our carnal at UCSD literature, the one and only Jorge Mariscal for the link! Mariscal's recent piece for Counterpunch is outstanding.

This Week! A Borders Bookstore Reading | God Help Us! Chicanos Invade Corporate America! Can a Wal-Mart Reading Be Far Behind?

As the ghosts of Cesar Chavez, Rita Hayworth, Lupe Vélez, and Charlton Heston (in brown face like in Touch of Evil, and yes! I know the NRA-shill is not dead yet) wag their fingers at me disapprovingly, I am here to announce my May 17, 2007 reading at the San Diego Mission Valley Borders megastore. May the tortured souls of small, independent bookstores past (The Blue Door, San Diego; Anna's Open Books, Laredo) forgive this mercenary act of filthy lucre-laden commerce!

East Coast Partying Jardineros

Run on over to the Obscene Machine Blog for an update on "Mexican" theme parties gone very very very wrong. Abrazos to Steven W. Bender for the tip!

KUSI Appearance for Tex[t]-Mex!

Still more curious? I have sold my soul to the devils of mainstream television by soliciting an interview and agreeing to appear on the KUSI morning show, Tuesday, May 15, 2007, at 7:20am! If I am lucky (I was not!), a video posting will be rendered to immortalize this moment in Tex[t]-Mex history! Regardless of how I do when confronted by my assigned interviewer (I have promised to leave my Che Guevara t-shirt at home and have all the radical potentiality of a brown loaf of Wonder bread), I am in the debt of e493 student, SDSU 2007 graduate, and KUSI morning assistant Cindy Rodriguez Ellingson and KUSI morning producer Aida Soria for setting up this morning TV tryste!

Surgeon General Lou Dobbs and the Specter of Pathological Mexicans

Apparently, Mexican-fearing, CNN-talking-head, (and I do mean HEAD, as in cabezón) Lou Dobbs has gone utterly bonkers--all those years on his knees sucking the gas of Corporate CEOs must have left more than just lesions on his soul. The latest rage? Dobbs, a Mexican-American marrying, Mexican suegros harboring yerno, is going around spreading (talk about needing some hygiene) the word that undocumented Mexican immigrants are befouling the clean medical lands of America with leprosy and other diseases from their varmint-ridden bodies.

Dubious?

Check out this thread forwarded by ace reporter Josephine Veronica Nericcio, our North Hollywood industry mole.

Media Matters is hot down on Dobb's sources as well.

and, lastly, in living color, from San Diego, the home of some of our nation's most heated Mexican loathers, Dobbs's key Mexican Leprosy outbreak science correspondent, Dr. Madeleine Cosman:



The "Dr" in Cosman's title, and not just by the way, is for a PhD in Literature from Columbia. (credit!)

Cavemen, Chicanos, Situation Comedies, Warner Brothers, ABC and other Lunatics from Showbiz

The proverbial shit is hitting the Latino Cultural Studies Fan tonight as the George Lopez Show was cancelled off ABC for a pilot featuring the GEICO.COM caveman. No joke! In other Latino/a ethnic mannequin news, America Ferrera, ABC's UGLY BETTY had her teeth insured. Comments on all this madness soon! I promise!

Here's a quick shot at Lopez (probably not safe for play in your cubicle unless you are using noise-damping headphones), and, his, er, replacement.





Not to play Mengele with the clipboard and the calipers, but am I the only one that has noticed that these "cavemen" are more closely modeled on the physiognomy of a hodgepodge of Aborigines than "cavemen" proper--Neanderthal? Cro-Magnon? It strikes me that there is more than you need there for an Ethnic Studies conference panel that should not waste the time of anyone.



UPDATE 9:22am 5/15/2007
The LATimes is online now with the story.

Strangers No Longer | The Perfect Exposure Gallery

The very same day a Virgin Airlines 747 drops me on the tarmac for two months of fun and academics in jolly old London, a gallery in Los Angeles is going to open its cool new exhibit on the Immigration Rallies of 2006. My half-brother Guillermo Nericcio García even contributed a poem for the event that you can see there lurking to your left. Here's the press release for the LA event:

The Perfect Exposure Gallery presents Strangers No Longer, a photographic account of the immigration rallies that took place throughout the United States in the spring of 2006. The rallies, which brought together people from all walks of life and many diverse cultures, shone a spotlight on the country's broken immigration system and called on our nation's leaders to prioritize addressing this urgent issue. To commemorate the first anniversary of this historic event, The Perfect Exposure Gallery would like to share these bold images with the world, to help keep the dream alive and at the forefront of civic consciousness.

About the Photographers
J. Emilio Flores, Javier Manzano, Javier Bautista, Adrian Sanchez-Gonzalez and Armando Arorizo are accomplished photojournalists whose works are published in: The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, La Opinion, Hoy, Agencia EFE, and numerous magazines will collaborate in this exhibit.


Curated by
Aurelio Jose Barrera, Adolfo Guzman Lopez, Angelica Salas and Armando Arorizo

Opening Reception: Thursday, May 24, 2007 5-9pm
at The Perfect Exposure Gallery
3519 West Sixth Street
Los Angeles, CA 90020
Located in the historic Chapman Park Studio Building
Between Alexandria and Normandie

Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Friday
11am - 5pm
Saturday
11am - 4pm
Monday - Closed

Here are San Diego's B-Side Players with their own gifted take on this early 21st century reality:

"Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucination of the "Mexican" in America" Invades Latin America!

Enlace, the Spanish-language supplement to The San Diego Union Tribune ("Where Right is Right"), has just come out with a feature on Tex[t]-Mex. Couple this story with my recent appearance on Despierta San Diego on our local Univision affiliate, and my humble attempts to rechart the cultural space of the Americas proceeds apace!

Edward James Olmos, The Man with a Broom and Soul

LAWeekly's got a nice profile of Chicano wunderkind Edward James Olmos.

When I get interviewed for Tex[t]-Mex, I invariably get asked to hold forth on the state of the nation when it comes to Latina/o stereotypes--what's in the cards for the 21st century "ethnic mannequins" in Hollywood.

With activist/artists like Eddie J, the future looks bright, with something like hope breaking out over the horizon.

The Legacies of XicanOSMOSIS and Latina/o Eyegiene

There is a certain schizophrenic aesthetic afoot amidst the pages of Tex[t]-Mex. While the book attends to the evolution of certain semantic traces--the way "Mexicans" figure as a kind of shorthand for sexuality in American pop culture--it is also very much focused on semiotic tendencies and aberrations: in particular, visual monstrosities or "ethnic mannequins" that pass for Mexicans in U.S. mass culture. The last movements of the book identify a process of xicanOSMOSIS found at the semiotic/semantic crossroads, the word/image verge of Mexico and the U.S.--the term, a hard-wrought, annoying-for-some neologism, fuses the dna of Osmosis, from the biological sciences, with Xicano/a, a purposed, agit-prop, spelling-supplementation holdover from the 1970s Chicana/o movimiento.



XicanOSMOSIS is not hard to grasp; in the book, I use it as a description for characterizing what happens when the visual and literary cultures of Mexico and U.S. fuse in the melting pot of the Americas--Gilbert Hernandez's rendition of the life of Frida Kahlo is the example foregrounded in the book.

All this preamble to direct you to the amazing archival/aesthetic work of Enrique Soto Eguibar from Mexico. His site, at zonezero.com, is well worth the price (free!) of admission. Soto Eguibar's eye, fitted with an almost steroid-infused sense of irony chronicles a flaneur's take on the streets of Mexico and combines it with an artist photographer's gifts of composition.

My favorite!?



Rough Translation: "Only MY chicharones (fried pork rinds) will make a sound around here" which can be rendered as "the buck stops here" or "I rule this roost!"

Naked "Mexicans" | Spencer Tunick

If you are seeking to denude your stereotype-laden synapses with some new vision of Mexico and Mexicans, then look no farther than the semiotically innovative, clothes-eschewing eye of Spencer Tunick--a man whose penchant for nude mobs knows no bounds! Tunick's site is here.

What color are you?


UPDATE

A video of the event has now surfaced!

David Segal, Uncle Ben, Aunt Jemima, and the Evolution of Stereotypes

Washington Post and Slate reporter David Segal has an amazing meditation on stereotypes that appears at Slate.com and NPR. Of particular note given their cameos in Tex[t]-Mex, are his findings on the recent doings of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben.



Particularly bothersome among Segal's gallery of seductive hallucinations? A Mexican bandito in need of, hold for it, deodorant!!!!! Holy dirty "Mexicans," Batman!



My thanx to publicity maven Allison Dolan for bringing this story to my greedy eyes!

Stylistic Varnish? Or, the Future of Information Culture?

With a massive tip of the sombrero to the folks at drawn.ca for the headsup on this curious, dynamic, and diverting youtube video.

Lalo Alcaraz | Arch Irony | Chicano Voltaire

Just brilliant.