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[11] [1] On Hero-worship frederick luis aldama: An appropriate place to start this first conversation might be on the nature of hero-worshiping in Latino culture. You’ve written eloquently, and influentially, on Mario Moreno, the arch-famous comedian known as Cantinflas. I know he is one of your idols. ilan stavans: Are an idol and a hero the same thing? Well, an idol, in ancient times, represented a deity, whereas a hero was a person of distinguished courage. Strictly speaking, Cantinflas is neither one nor the other. Still, he is unquestionably my idol as well as my hero. fa: One of your books is titled after an essay you composed on him and originally published in the journal Transition (1995). The centennial of Cantinflas’s birth took place in August 2011. is: All Hispanic comedians are Cantinflas’s children, just as all Spanish-language writers are Cervantes’s heirs. His anarchic humor presents a picture of the peladito, the urban, unemployed, downtrodden street-wise who is capable of surviving in spite of the harsh circumstances he encounters. Cantinflas refuses to work. His rebellion is against the rapid industrialization Mexico is undergoing. Too much is going on in his eyes. He doesn’t have the training to be employed in a factory job. At best, he can shine shoes on a street corner, maybe sell tacos. He refuses to fit into any social canon, especially when it comes to fashion. (Is he the first to wear his pants down?) But what I am most at awe about is his language: his syntax is a mess. That, indeed, is his sharpest weapon in his anarchic war against the system. There is a terrific scene at the end of the movie Allí está el detalle (1940) where Cantinflas is on trial for having stolen someone’s wallet. He refuses to have a lawyer represent him. As he defends himself, his syntax begins to confuse everyone in the court. That confusion is his redemption: he is set free after the judge himself can’t put a standard sentence together. fa: Is he a people’s hero? I mean, do people see his actions as models? is: I do not think anyone wants to be like Cantinflas. However, everyone laughs with him. And therein lies his revolutionary dimension: in the face of adversity, even apocalypse, he makes the audience laugh. [12]¡Muy Pop! Nothing more Mexican than that: if you can’t beat them, laugh at them. Jokes are one of Mexico’s most effective weapons to battle adversity . It is often said that after an earthquake or a hurricane, jokes arrive way before the police makes an appearance. fa: Cantinflas is well liked throughout the Spanish-speaking world. This speaks to his universality. is: Humor, as you know, is difficult—impossible?—to translate. Try adapting a joke from one language to another; you’ll kill it on the spot. The fact that Cantinflas’s movies are enjoyed in Santiago, Bogot á, Buenos Aires, and Madrid does speak to his universality. He is not Charlie Chaplin (who, by the way, made his career in silent films) because you do need knowledge of the Spanish language to appreciate him. So Cantinflas’s appeal is limited to the Hispanic world, where it is deep and transformative. fa: I wonder if this stripping down that happens in the translation process doesn’t tell us something about the distinction between a culturally located humor and a universal capacity for laughter. Cantinflas films rest heavily on bringing together the incongruous beliefs specific to Latinos of the Americas. An audience outside Mexico , for instance, might not pick up on the incongruities of folk belief because they are not familiar with the common doxa of the locale. Yet, folks the world over share similar responses to incongruous movements, and the misreading of minds to comic effect is a worldwide phenomenon. Is the way we worship Cantinflas a symptom of how Latinos approach the hero? Is there a type of hero-worship that is unique to us? is: In his lectures On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841), Scottish essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle discussed heroes from the perspective of masculinity. A hero for him is a great soul, free, outward, and courageous, capable of understanding the meaning of things. In Victorian times, Carlyle believed hero-worship was a transcendent endeavor, a way to simultaneously envy and celebrate greatness, to dream of being a valiant man by applauding those...

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