5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Speedy Gonzales of Zoot-Suit Derrideanism, August 26, 2009
This review is from: Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America (Paperback)
The irony of William Nericcio's psychoanalysis (schizoanalysis?) of apparitions of The Mexican in the dream life of American culture is that Nericcio himself embodies---even as he appropriates and subverts---the stereotype of the Spanglish-speekeeng Trickster figure, tunneling under the heavily fortified borders between discursive zones. He's the Speedy Gonzales of zoot-suit Derrideanism. Better yet, he's the Mil Máscaras of critical theory, a masked semiotic wrestler pummeling multiple meanings out of the flotsam tossed up by our disposable culture.
Drawing on post-colonial theory, Chicano/a studies, a deep knowledge of American history, a scary mastery of continental theory, and an undisguised delight in the retinal pleasures and greasy seductions of junk culture, Nericcio spins us around to face our image of The Mexican, and in so doing reveals it for the cultural mirror it really is, a funhouse reflection of Anglo America's anxieties and fantasies about the Other. Ask not for whom the Taco Bell tolls, Lou Dobbs; it tolls for ustedes.
Text{e}-Mex crackles with a manic energy and an antic wit that are rare in academic writing, most of which tends toward soul-crushing ponderousness. Like the French philosophers who've clearly influenced his work, Nericcio tosses off oracular pronouncements without op. cits or apology and rejoices in wordplay. At the same time, his willingness to open the throttle on the passions that animate his arguments and take his rhetoric to telenovela heights of soap-operatic excess, pushing the envelope of his tropes and intertextual riffs into the ultra baroque, seems (to this gabacho, at least) profoundly Mexican. Here he is decrypting a "startling gringo artifact"---packaging for a toy called the Sparkling Clay Factory, featuring a hysterically Anglo boy and girl: "Check out these cute gringo kids from my private collection of `ethnic' types (in particular, look closely at the boy on the right, who has been digitally processed so much that his `skin' takes on the texture of a Pixar-born(e) computer-generated-image offspring of a CGI wet dream by the in vitro-cloned hybrid child of Mengele, Geppetto, and John Lasseter)." He deadpans, "I am still trying to figure out what planet the depicted organisms on this torn box cover come from."
If you're the sort of cultural border-jumper and theory-porn junkie who thinks Zizek would make the perfect guest host for Gustavo Arellano's hilarious, brilliant newspaper column "!Ask a Mexican¡"; if you fantasize about staging Foucault's essay "The Masked Philosopher" as an off-broadway production starring lucha libre stars; if the next two items in your Netflix queue are Derrida and Wrestling Women versus the Aztec Mummy, Text{e}-Mex is your answered prayer.
But don't say I didn't warn you: Early on, Nericcio warns us that he's an unreliable tour guide---("ok, remember that your author is a recovering Catholic Tejano---idealism and the apocalypse lurk around every paragraph")---and, like all the best intellects who run through the world like a Tijuana switchblade, he goes meta, stepping outside his own analytical paradigm to interrogate that, as well. "The germ of this book was a vendetta I had for an animated Mexican mouse by the name of Speedy Gonzales; but, in the end, I had to let the anger go," he writes, in the book's introductory chapter." Tellingly, he quotes Baudrillard, the always ironic John the Baptist in our Desert of the Real: "Baudrillard...says: `It is always a false problem to want to restore the truth beneath the simulacrum.' Look behind Speedy or beneath Freddy Lopez and one will not find Mexican-hating illustrators or Latino-loathing puppeteers...More often than not, one will find someone working sine dolo malo, `without fault, without an intent of evil...'" Text{e}-Mex is a cross between the red pill that gives Neo an ontological migraine in The Matrix and the worm at the bottom of the mezcal bottle. Nericcio shows you just how deep the bottle goes.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
a Chicano deconstructionist, as entertaining as the American culture industry, January 24, 2008
This review is from: Tex[t]-Mex: Seductive Hallucinations of the "Mexican" in America (Paperback)
Nericcio spent a long time creating this work which he began in 1989. Unless I misread him, he's attempted a movie in book form, but I think what we really have here is a psychological expose of an author who was weaned in Laredo on comic books, TV and American media, and ultimately trained in semiotics and postmodern philosophy.
The subjects he choses to 'deconstruct' include the Welles's movie TOUCH OF EVIL, Welles's Mexican wife Rita Hayworth, Speedy Gonazalez, Richard Rodriguez, Lupe Velez, and as I said, himself. He does not take himself seriously, and while this 'cast of characters' he choses sound suspect, this is serious work, and the effort shows. He's clearly had a lot of fun pulling this one out of the sombrero.
The goal here is a postmodern scene-by-scene 'movie' with script that explores the racism against Mexicans in American media based on 'sex-starved' cartoon mice, Hollywood dye-jobs to get that gringa look, name changes, self-hatred, cultural conditioning, art, commentaries by Rodriguez examining his hatred for Mexico, etc.
Touch of Evil is one my favorites and Nericcio's perspective gave me much to chew on, especially after chewing on fries and drinking a beer at Nepenthe a few weeks a go, and coming to the conclusion that this spot that Welles shared with Rita was a "poorman's" dream-version of a castle Orson never built while Hearst was once 70 miles south on Hwy 1, busy on his fixer-upper. No lusty and lawless bordertowns for these gents.
And Nepenthe now? A hallucination in itself with a row of Mexicano cooks grilling up crappy food while tourists show up to check out the view--which is mostly of each other.
My only critique of the book is that it, by default and based on its format, becomes a part of the American culture industry: that's entertainment 'Chicano style' but geared to grad critical theory students... willing to pay the price of admission.
I'd like to read a similar work like this but by a Mexican author who does the same 'movie' about--and against--Mexican media.
Addendum Feb 7, 08:
I just watched the 2000 edition of TOUCH OF EVIL and re-read this author's analysis. I have a different take, which is far more psycho-analytical.
Recall that this film was made in 1957 when mixed-race marriages, especially those portrayed on the silver screen, were far fewer in number than now. I think that Welles was actually using Heston and Leigh to represent himself and Rita Hayworth, a mixed race couple. That in itself would've been enough of a shocker for white-bread America in a 1958 theater. Not to mention the 'half-breed' daughter this union produced.
If Nericcio is correct that Welles was a Mexican/Latino wannabe, then it makes sense that he'd hire Heston as his stand in-- rather than a Mexican-- to PLAY a Mexican covered in brown shoe polish, who can't speak proper Spanish and who's newly married to the lily-white Leigh (who represents the white-washed Rita H. and who has a very strong personality). The genius of chosing Heston is obvious: in 1957, America would definitely need a familiar and 'trustworthy' 'Mexican' they could 'believe' in(!) I don't know of ANY Mexican who could play this part for a specifically 1958 American audience, and garner the sympathy Welles was seeking.
This analysis is also supported by the massively egotistical Welles playing Kane at various stages of his life in CITIZEN.
But in T.O.E., Orson is too huge to 'play himself' as Vargas, and opts for Heston to (almost comically) portray the innocent, handsome 'missionary' with a sense of justice-- the man Orson used to be in the early forties. Vargas, by the way, is the only ethical male character in the film. He represents the 'good' countered by the fat, bloated, lawless and evil American: Quinlan. I think Welles was simply showing his '58 audience the ugly American in all of his racist glory, something they did not want to see, or admit. On ethics, see also the scene where Vargas symbollically 'locks up' the three white lawmen in an elevator with bars, a space Vargas refuses to enter. An empowered Mexican sticking it to 'the Man.' THAT sounds like a sympathetic OW, at least to me.
Nericcio's attempt to find evidence that Welles was capturing his real 'self' (the racist Quinlan) in the film is probably wrong. Nericcio dug up some quote by OW's biographer proving his racism. This is based on the use of the term 'half-breed' by OW when refering to an American Indian car driver. And OW refering to Rita H as a 'gypsy'. This is a stretch.
More Freud:
The rape of Leigh in the movie may represent the rape of Rita H by her father in real life, which was mentioned by Nericcio in another chapter. It may be that Quinlan murders Uncle Joe Grandi (who was filmed licking his lips when he was finished sending Leigh a 'hands-off my brother' message) because he could symbolize Rita's father. It's very possible Orson would've liked to knock-off Rita's father --if he'd the chance. Uncle Grandi, the 'big daddy' who would LIKE to get his hands on Leigh, instead sends his gang to gang-bang Mrs Vargas in space HE owns --a motel.
On Orson's misogynism: In a foot note, Nericcio takes a shot at OW's scene in which a bottle of acid thrown by a hood at Vargas ends up sizzling a poster of "Zita" on the wall behind Vargas. 'Zita', the stripper who was killed in the opening car bomb scene, is, in my opionion, 'Rita', O.W.'s ex-wife for around 10 years by 1957. A symbolic killing of his ex?
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