The riddle of Cantinflas: essays on Hispanic popular culture

296 Pages·1998·1.6 MB·English

by  Ilan Stavans

The Riddle of Cantinflas : Essays On
title:
Hispanic Popular Culture
author: Stavans, Ilan.
publisher: University of New Mexico
isbn10 | asin: 0826319254
print isbn13: 9780826319258
ebook isbn13: 9780585220826
language: English
Cantinflas,--1911- , Popular culture--Latin
subject
America, Kitsch--Latin America.
publication date: 1998
lcc: F1408.3.S73 1998eb
ddc: 306/.4
Cantinflas,--1911- , Popular culture--Latin
subject:
America, Kitsch--Latin America.
Page iii
The Riddle of Cantinflas
Essays on Hispanic Popular Culture
Ilan Stavans
University of New Mexico Press: Albuquerque
Books by Ilan Stavans in English
Fiction
The One-Handed Pianist and Other Stories
Nonfiction
Art and Anger: Essays on Politics and the Imagination Bandido The Hispanic
Condition Imagining Columbus: The Literary Voyage
Editor
The Oxford Book of Latin American Essays New World Tropical Synagogues: Short
Stories by Jewish-Latin American Writers Growing Up Latino: Memoirs and Stories
(co-edited with Harold Augenbraum)
Translation
Sentimental Songs by Felipe Alfau
The essays in this collection first appeared, in somewhat different form, in the
following publications: "Santa Selena" in The New Republic; "Hanukkah: A Brief
Reminiscence" in Sí Magazine; "Unmasking Marcos," "The Riddle of Cantinflas," and
"How Hispanics Became Brown'' in Transition; "Frida and Benita: Unparalleled Lives"
as the preface to Benita Galeana (Latin American Literary Review Press, 1994);
"Carlos Fuentes in His Labyrinth," "Strawberry and Chocolate," and "Laura Esquivel's
Second Act" in In These Times; "José Guadalupe Posada" in the Journal of Decorative
and Propaganda Arts; "Sandra Cisneros: Form Over Content" in Academic Questions
"Borderland: A Letter" in Review: Latin American Literature and Arts; "Appeal of the
False Quixote" in La pluma y la máscara (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1993) and, in
English translation, in The Bloomsbury Review; "Like a Bride" and "A Kiss to This
Land" in the 1995 catalogue of the Boston Jewish Film Festival; "Sam Spade,
Vez," "Señora Rodríguez's Purse," "Tinísima," "Like Water for Chocolate,"
Nickel," "Rosario Ferré's Macondo," "Autumn of the Matriarch," and "Melodrama
cubana" in The Nation.
© 1990, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 by Ilan Stavans.
All rights reserved.
First edition
First edition
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stavans, Ilan
The riddle of Cantinflas: essays on Hispanic popular culture / Ilan Stavans.1st ed.
p. cm. Includes index.
ISBN 0-8263-1860-6 (cloth), ISBN 0-8263-1925-4 (paper)
1. Popular cultureLatin America. 2. KitschLatin America. 3. Cantinflas, 1911- . I. Title.
F1408.3.S73 1998
306´.098dc21
97-39726
CIP
Page v
Contents
Illustrations vi
Preface vii
1. Santa Selena 3
2. Hanukkah: A Brief Reminiscence 10
3. Unmasking Marcos 13
4. Sam Spade, otra vez 25
5. The Riddle of Cantinflas 31
6. Frida and Benita: Unparalleled Lives 53
7. Carlos Fuentes in His Labyrinth 57
8. José Guadalupe Posada: A Profile 63
9. Señora Rodríguez's Purse 76
10. Sandra Cisneros: Form Over Content 81
11. Tinísima 89
12. Films 94
13. Laura Esquivel's Second Act 109
14. Borderland: A Letter 114
15. Buffalo Nickel 117
16. Appeal of the False Quixote 122
17. Rosario Ferré's Macondo 125
18. Autumn of the Matriarch 129
19. How Hispanics Became Brown 135
20. Melodrama á la cubana 148
Index 153
Page vi
Illustrations
Day of the Dead remembrance of Selena 2
Subcomandante Marcos 14
Zapatista Action Figures, San Cristóbal, Chiapas, Mexico 17
Miguel Covarrubias, Cantinflas, ca. 1937 30
Dolores Camarillo "Fraustita" and Cantinflas, from Ahí 43
está el detalle
Poster of Ahi está el detalle 44
José Guadalupe Posada, ¡Caso raro! Una mujer que dio a 65
luz tres niños y cuatro animales
José Guadalupe Posada, Esta es de Don Quijote la 67
primera, la sin par, la gigante calavera
Tina Modotti, El machete 88
Still from Like a Bride 99
Publicity photo from A Kiss to This Land 101
Poster of A Kiss to This Land 102
Cover of Como agua para Chocolate 111
Page vii
Preface
Kitsch is king in the Hispanic world. Nothing is original and all things
are their own parody. I say this not in a condescending tone:
counterfeit is beautiful. The region is hypnotizing in its artificiality;
everything in it is bogus: the Roman alphabet is, in and of itself, an
extraneous import, and so life must be lived in translation; likewise,
democracy, condoms, Aristotle, TV soaps, clocks, blackness, money,
violins, Satan, and antibiotics are all foreign idols. No wonder its
citizens aren't skilled at producing but at reproducing.
In fact, kitsch, as a concept, must be fully and painstakingly redefined
so as to capture its immense possibilities south of the Rio Grande.
Clement Greenberg believed it to be a counterpoint to bohemian art.
"Where there is an avant-garde," he would argue, "generally we also
find a rearguard . . . that thing to which Germans give the wonderful
name of Kitsch: popular, commercial art and literature with their
chromeotypes, magazine covers, illustrations, ads, slick and pulp
fiction, Hollywood movies, etc., etc." Walter Benjamin saw it as the
automatic attempt to turn a one into a many, of making uniqueness
into multiplicity. But these views apply solely to Europe and the
United States, where kitsch, "that gigantic apparition," is a mass-made
product. In the modern Latin American orbit, though, it encompasses
much more: high-and low-brow culture and middle-brow as well; the
masses and the elite; the unique and the duplicatedin short, the entire
culture. Everything in the region is slick, everything a postcard,
everything a never-ending et cetera, including, of course, those
manifestations striving to be pure and authentic at heart and designed
to repel all foreign influences. What is its population without these
foreign influences?

Page viii
All this leads one to conclude that the triumphant entrance of kitsch
into history did not come about, as Greenberg falsely believed, with
the rapid population growth that affected the industrialized nations in
the first third of our century. Nor was it born, as Benjamin misstated
in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," when
photography became a fashion in France and Germany. Instead, the
origins of kitsch are to be found elsewhere; they are a product of the
Spanish mediocrity, of its frivolity. Yes, honor to whom honor is due.
If Spain can pride itself of any solid contribution to Western
civilization, it is precisely that derivativeness, that hand-me-downness
practiced from generation to generation light years before the Xerox
machine was even invented. Only within its national borders is the art
of copying, of imitating, a national sport, and it is apparent in all
epochs, from the massively produced chivalry novels that
accompanied the Iberian conquistadors in the colonization of the so-
called New World, to Pedro Almodóvar's fashionable cursilería.
Kitsch, in Western eyes, carries along a sense of fraudulence, of sin,
of imposture, of plagiarism, but not in Spain, where talent must be
found in the lack of talent, where fantasy is congenital to the trite and
repetitive. What is Don Quixote if not first-rate art born from
exhaustion and duplication? How to explain the Spanish Golden Age
if not by invoking Lope de Vega's 728 "original" comedias? What is
baroque architecture if not a caricature of previous architectural
modes? In fact, I am tempted to date with as much precision as is
advisableand I do so in "Appeal of the False Quixote"the moment
when kistch became an inseparable stamp of the Hispanic
idiosyncrasy: in 1614, when Avellaneda, trying to beat a turtle-paced
Cervantes, appropriated the characters of Don Quixote and Sancho
and published the second part of Don Quixote. The age of illegitimacy
was thus legitimated.
Analogously, the Americas, an outgrowth of Spain, are a sequel, an