Entrevista: Profecía Maya

El periodista Juan Miret, nacionalmente conocido editor de HispanodeTulsa.com, me ha entrevistado con el motivo del mentadísimo calendario maya y el supuesto fin del mundo...

Salió muy bien la entrevista, y Juan la ha armado en YouTube de manera muy profesional, como siempre. ¡Mil gracias, Juan, por la oportunidad!

No se pierda el blog de Juan, A Hispanic Matter, con excelentes ensayos acerca de las más diversas manifestaciones culturales de Latinoamérica. 

La hipérbole ridícula de una bala

¿Cómo responder a una masacre como la de Sandy Hook, una masacre que es una, y también una masacre más?

En su magistral cuento "La estampida," sobre la represión militar, escribió la autora uruguaya Cristina Peri Rossi del

sentimiento de piedad por tantas anécdotas truncas, por tantas biografías de pronto segadas, rasgadas, interrumpidas por la hipérbole ridícula de una bala [...] por todos los idilios bruscamente suspendidos, por las casas vacías, por los muebles abandonados, los niños huérfanos [...]

y la frase que no me abandona, la imagen que se niega a soltarme, es aquella de

la hipérbole ridícula de una bala.

la hipérbole ridícula de una bala

cuando el cuerpo es un cosmos 

y la vida un cielo, un viento, un río

y hay momentos en que nos percibimos 

como parte de una totalidad infinita

pero hay momentos cuando nos perecemos

de tanta hostilidad desacertada

de tanta violencia implacable

y basta una bala

hasta una bala

basta

bala

como para acabar una cosmografía

cada cabeza un mundo

cada esencia su espíritu

y no nacemos con armadura antibalas

nacemos vulnerables

desnudos

así como debemos vivir

porque la vulnerabilidad

es poder

y la bala

es despoder

deshacer

desvivir

destruir

la bala

en el blanco

es la negación

hiperbólica

hiperbálica

y ridícula

del futuro

El que teme el futuro

se desespera

y dispara.

¡Para!

¡Basta!

vivevivevivevivevivevivevivevivevivevivevivevivevivevivevivevivevivevive

12/12/12

Here's the text of an announcement for an upcoming event at The University of Tulsa. Students of my course, SPAN 4073 Poesía latinoamericana, will be presenting original poetry on the theme of time. 

The logo, designed by a colleague in the School of Art who is organizing the event, incorporates Mesoamerican elements such as the two horizontal lines and two dots (the T and the U) to signify the number 12.

The World Ends? A New World Begins?

What will happen when the Mayan calendar reaches its final date? The world ends? A new world begins?  Will it mean fewer days for holiday shopping?

The 12-12-12 performance event at The University of Tulsa is a collaboration between numerous departments and colleges at TU including Theatre, Art, Film, English, Music, Languages, Computer Science--even Physics! 12-12-12 will take place in the Lorton Performance Center on the TU campus on December 12th, at 7 p.m..  The event is free and open to the public. For further information and directions call 918-631-2566 .

In conjunction with our celebration "End Or Not? 12.12.12."  an art and writing exhibition will be displayed on the second floor of the Allen Chapman Activity Center December 4th through the  14th. The exhibition is a collaboration of the School of Art, the English and Languages Departments in the Henry Kendall College.

On 12.12.12. the Computer Science Department will run “Basic Zombie Apocalypse Survival Training”. This entails playing zombie games in Rayzor Hall room 2045. The games will begin at 12:12 PM and go until 3 PM.

American Funnymen, Mexican Pastiche

Nacho Libre (2006) and Casa de mi Padre (2012) share a Hollywood approximation to Mexico in which an American comic stars as a humble, big-hearted Mexican struggling to do the right thing. In Nacho Libre, Jack Black is a listless monk who aspires to help the orphans he serves by winning fame and fortune as a luchador, while in Casa de mi Padre, Will Ferrell is a dim-witted rancher who must defend his father's lands from the narco-fueled bad decisions of his older brother.

Nacho Libre--a Nickelodeon-funded kids' movie, after all--is the sweeter of the two films. The only violence to be found is in the overwrought theatrics of the lucha libre style wrestling. Goofy but melancholic tag-team sidekick Esqueleto (Héctor Jiménez) is the perfect foil for Black's earnestly ridiculous Nacho, making the pair of luchadores something like a fat Quixote (Nacho) with his skinny Sancho (Esqueleto). The unattainable Dulcinea of the film is Sister Encarnación (Ana de la Reguera), a nun whom none can have yet all covet. Nacho's "dates" with Encarnación (dry toast, tight pants), and his outrageous song of dedication to her, are some of the funniest moments in the film. In the climax Nacho does manage to defeat his luchador nemesis, Ramses (César Cuauhtémoc González Barrón), and then celebrates by taking the orphans on a field trip--in a new bus--to Monte Albán. The soundtrack, with memorable and original contributions from Beck, Danny Elfman, and Black himself alongside classics from Mister Loco, Caetano Veloso and Eddie Santiago, is outstanding. There was talk of a follow-up, but I think ultimately the sequel was "outsourced" from Mexico to China: Kung Fu Panda (2008), in which another portly and comical Jack Black character overcomes the odds to excel in a physically demanding discipline.

In contrast, Casa de mi Padre is a jarringly and explicitly violent film, in spite of the ham-handed meta-cinematic production error jokes. Ferrell's film is all the more disturbing and acerbic, precisely because it's funny even though it has a serious message about the violence of drug trafficking. An offbeat love scene between Ferrell's Armando Alvarez and Armando's brother's fiancée Sonia (Génesis Rodríguez), featuring the absurdly prolonged squeezing of bare buttocks, is contrasted with the graphic violence of a ripped-from-the-headlines wedding party narco-massacre. Entre broma y broma, la verdad se asoma / Much truth is said in jest: the final dialogue, after a US federal agent turns on his corrupt boss to save Armando and Sonia, sums up the lesson with an exchange something like, "No todos los gringos son malos" / "No todos los mexicanos son narcotraficantes." The film features terrific performances by Diego Luna (Armando's brother Raúl), Gael García Bernal (narco kingpin "Onza"), and the late Pedro Armendáriz, Jr. (the Alvarez paterfamilias), as well as an original soundtrack with contributions from Ferrell and other cast members, and Cristina Aguilera. 

While Jack Black plays his character with a comic Mexican-accented English in the English-language Nacho Libre, Will Ferrell actually delivers his lines in Spanish alongside the rest of the Spanish-speaking cast of Casa de mi Padre. This makes the latter a subtitled film in the American market - a gamble the producers must have been willing to take based on Ferrell's fame and on the importance of Spanish-speaking audiences worldwide.

I find that the people who tend to appreciate these two films the most, are those who are familiar with both Mexican culture and United States culture. Especially the symbolically rich visual detail of Oaxaca and the nuanced musical references in Nacho Libre get lost on viewers unfamiliar with Mexican cultural expressions. Likewise for Casa de mi Padre it helps to have a visual and plot-based familiarity with Mexican telenovelas and classic films of the Epoca de Oro. Ultimately, both of these films are silly and self-conscious in their winking Mexican-ness, but all in good fun, and while simultaneously offering up lessons on humility and ethical courage.