Cantinflas and the Chaos of Mexican Modernity (review)

Well into the second half of his Cantinflas and the Chaos of the Mexican Modernity, Jeffrey M. Pilcher provides the conceptual key of a book that interweaves a discussion of the private-public divide with a study of the national in the intricate context of popular culture, the film industry, and politics in post-revolutionary Mexico. Pilcher explains how writers of the Hiperión group, influenced by Samuel Ramos' and Octavio Paz' celebrated essays on the Mexican psyche, remained fascinated by the figure of the pelado, a term used for a Mexico City slum dweller and a character immortalized and sanitized by Cantinflas (Mario Moreno), the country's most popular film star. "Intellectuals—the author claims—sought to unlock the contradictions of Mexican society through an examination of its leading celebrity" (155). Such is precisely the perspective adopted by Pilcher himself, who has written one of the most significant studies on a major figure of Mexican cinema to date. And, while some critics may find objectionable the seemingly facile association of the actor's biographical narrative with the narrative of a country in its convoluted quest for modernity (the unquestioned assertion of the book), those looking for relevant cultural interpretations will not be disappointed.

Biographies remain an important interpretive genre for historical understanding motivated by cultural, social, political and/or aesthetic demands. Literary critics and historians alike of ten attribute a certain epistemological quality to biographies, endowing them with a function as cultural trope or potential epochal synthesis. Outside academic circles, biographies remain one of the strongest niches of a book market that always favors tales of the powerful and famous and the endless re-elaboration of the myth of individuality through the construction of icons. This ostensibly North American phenomenon can also be observed in Latin America, as evident in a number of recent well-publicized biographical novels and studies on luminaries (i.e., Evita), modern day revolutionaries (i.e., Che Guevara), and the always popular caudillos (i.e., Francisco Villa)—not to mention controversial autobiographies or memories (i.e., Salinas de Gortari). Pilcher's biographical study is strongly grounded in primary and secondary research source materials. Particularly noteworthy is his use of film reviews and published interviews that span almost a 50-year period and intersect with numerous dimensions of Mexican cultural and political history. The author attempts to avoid the glorification of inevitability , fate and pure greatness that permeates an of ten-hyperbolic genre the so-called biography of the great. His study describes how Mario Moreno the historical character became trapped by his own comic persona, something the actor attests to—painfully at times—when dealing with serious topics, such as union politics. But most importantly, this balanced view is the result of the study's social analysis of urban humor and culture that contextualizes the comedian's contributions to popular culture.

The symbolic embodiment of Mexican culture and politics in an individual trajectory is an interesting proposition, but one that stands in contrast to current theoretical approaches, such as the New Cultural History trend in Mexico and the U.S. with its penchant for interpretations of the subaltern focusing on collectivities or communities. However, this biography is consistent with that trend's interest in the study of popular culture, rural migration, elite formation, social agency, ritual and performance, and constructions of gender and identity, among other topics. Studies associated with the New Cultural History approach coincide in analyzing the mechanisms of official discourse, the shaping of dominant ideologies, the forging of the nation-state, and the development of nationalistic culture in general. Eric Van Young points out several major features of this new historical discourse:

(1) the study of mentalities, if by this one means the perduring mental structures that motivate individual or group behaviors, and the symbolic systems people use to explain the world around them; 2) a particular, though by no means exclusive, interest in subordinate groups in history; 3) a certain turn toward inductivism in the writing of history; and...