Writing Archive

REBOZO LIBRE

Jack Black’s Nacho Libre just hit On Demand, and I gave the pig a chance after spitting up food and spewing yucks over my favorite Mexican stereotype: the exaggerated, clownishly baroque Spanish accent.

NACHO: “I went to a wrestling massshhh — lucha libre…”
SISTER ENCARNACIÓN: “¿¡You went to wassshhh a wrestleeeng massshhh?!”

Preposterous Spanish proclamations lick inexplicably English conversations that randomly break into anachronistic Americanisms.

NACHO: "EEET SOCKS TO BEEE MEEE!"

Shades of Speedy Gonzales, the Taco Bell Chihuahua, and that sleazy, oily, filthy Greaser who gets his teeth kicked out by Chuck Norris in Lone Wolf McQuade. In fact, Jack Black could be a white stand-in for that very Greaser.

And so, Nickelodeon's brownface hero in a kid flick makes for two culturally ridiculous propositions to get past, at least for the brown kid in me who nonetheless likes to watch Jack Black act idiotic.

First, a white guy playing a Mexican luchador: I was able to suspend disbelief here because I grew up watching bilingual Tex-Mex wrestling and not strictly lucha libre from across the border. Sometimes I'd flip channels quickly to watch Mil Mascaras morph into Rowdy Roddy Piper and then into Andre the Giant to El Santo, all on the same TV screen.

(Once, a friendly gringo asked me if it was called "lucha libre" because admission was free. Actually, the "libre" part means "freestyle," which explains why makeshift weapons sometimes get thrown into the "wrestling" ring. I prefer the "lucha libre" moniker to the more prosaic American "pro wrestling.")

But then I had to get past the ridiculous accents and tired stereotypes of Nacho Libre.

I'll be honest: After watching Jack Black in the preview gutturally utter, with sabor and Pavlovian savor, the two words "lucha libre," I had to clean the snot off my living-room table. After all, you watch any Jack Black movie mainly for the ubiquitous, ludicrous mugging. (See Nacho sing his operatic anthem-rock aria to Sister Encarnación like a Meatloaf burrito.)

Really, I've gotten used to the malleable Spanish accent and Latinoid identity somehow implied through the crafty linguistics of being vocally "down." For one thing, even Chicano movies like Mi Familia have always featured random English, without context or explanation, in conversations that should be Spanish. For another, the on-air accents of my favorite NPR Latinos convinced me a long time ago that you could make of your accent (and identity!) what you like, in Maria Hinojosa-like forcefully Hispanicized tones or Ray Suarez-sounding overly enunciated English. Brown it up, brown it down.

I'm reminded of all the times, like Richard Rodriguez, that I've heard "students on campus loudly talking in Spanish or thickening their surnames with rich baroque accents" (Hunger of Memory). This happened moreso at Stanford, where it was important to carry one's identity credentials at all times.

So, I don't think it's a stretch to allow a Beck ("Güero") or Jack Black a brown fancy or two. But why tap into Mexican clerical culture for gags? Why friars at an orphanage in the Spanish colonial-mission style? Won't that just suck the funny right outta the room?

In the movie, directed by Jared Hess of Napoleon Dynamite, Brother Ignacio ("Nacho") pursues his secret obsession of becoming a luchador while courting the lovely, dark-eyed Sister Encarnación, seducing her steadily with stretchy pants and delicious toast. While picking up day-old corn chips for the orphanage, Nacho meets the odd, skinny, dark-skinned, burro-faced Esquéleto ("Skeleton"), who becomes his wrestling partner and foil.

Where Nacho is a man of God, Esquéleto believes firmly in "science," which he pronounces with a broad, leering mouthful of equine teeth.

Nacho explains that his mother was a Lutheran missionary from Scandinavia (?) and his father a deacon from "México" (enunciated boldly): "They tried to convert each other, but they got married instead." When Nacho finds out that Encarnación considers wrestling ungodly, he goes underground and dons the mask to chase his dreams. Of course, in the end, he wins the big match and redeems his sport, riding off in unspoken betrothal with Encarnación.

In the end, the stereotypes don't hold up under the weight of Jack Black's stretchy pants. Yes, he busts out with a howler of a fresh interpretation of the worst Spanglish cliché:

"NO NO NO NO NO NO way JOSÉ!"

But the typical hokum gives way to broad cultural tableaux, in the style of Mexican retablos and physical comedy, with farcical results.

"LEEETLE KEEESSS!"
—Nacho to Encarnación

I recall a review that bagged the movie because, it said, the director seemed to think being Mexican is inherently funny.

But is it? Inherently funny, I mean. Or tragic? Or fated? Violent, spicy, sexy? Taco-Bell-Chihuahua-esque?

Yes, I remember the Frito Bandito and the Alamo. (Well, come on. At least we don’t have a leprechaun hawking cereal.)

But these are images with which Latinos even make play. I'm thinking here of the Sandra Cisneros poem, "You Bring out the Mexican in Me":

"The eagle and the serpent in me.
The mariachi trumpets of the blood in me.
The Aztec love of war in me. …
The switchblade in the boot in me.
The Acapulco cliff diver in me. …
The ¡Alarma! murderess in me."

Are these images and stereotypes, like two-sided tokens, better or worse than lost, dead ethnicity that collapses into stale multi-catch-all clichés in contrast to generic Anglo-American temperance: hot Irish temper, hot Italian temper, hot Polish temper, etc.? (Hot Scandinavian temper?)

(By the way, I like la Sandra's reference to ¡Alarma!, my favorite Mexican tabloid from childhood.)

In San Antonio, she of the purple rebozo draws admirers and wannabes and sycophants into a circle of comadres and clones, called the "Sandralistas." Like a friend at UTSA says, "They dress like the Dali Lama," in a mix of Asian and pre-Colombian flowing robes, when they read their precious fiction.

I propose rebozo libre. A new style of wearing ethnicity. Better than Tejano chic or rascuachismo.

My friend Marcy says we must go soon to Neo, a Chicago goth club, to get spooky and wear all black like when we listened to death rock and industrial music. This will be the perfect chance to dance al estilo rebozo libre! We will mix with the witches and vampires, the bleary-eyed dandies of the dark and Bettie Pages death-bunnies, the pierced and tattooed and eerie. ¡Viva Death! We will gyrate creepily with all the sexy calacas y gatas guapas.

Our soundtrack will be KINKY, as passersby see us and wonder, "¿a donde van los muertos?".

"te suplico hay que morirnos juntos
te lo ruego hay que morirnos juntos
que morir es nadar por el mundo
sin tener que salir a respirar..."

Posted by Benjamin at December 13, 2006 06:58 PM