The Oscars just blew into town, leaving nothing but despair and destruction in their wake. Apparently, Mexico and Kenya almost went to war over the nationality of Oscar winner and classiest new star since Audrey Hepburn, Lupita Nyong'o, a daughter of Kenyan diplomats who was born in Mexico and left at the age of one. Lupita gamely averted an international crisis by saying that she is Mexican-Kenyan or Kenyan-Mexican and she loves carne asada tacos and both countries equally.
Poor Alfonso Cuarón is first lambasted for not making films in Mexico, then treated like a national hero for winning a bunch of Oscars. National pride surges to an all time high, since his cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, is also Mexican. Some Mexicans consider the Poncho-Chivo-Lupita a Mexican axis of world domination. The last time this happened was when the Three Amigos (Del Toro, Cuarón and Iñárritu) all had nominated films.
Venezuelans bent on overthrowing their abject, incompetent, irrational, yet democratically elected government, organized a campaign asking Hollywood people to mention Venezuela's plight in their Oscar speeches. Apparently, Best Supporting Actor Jared Leto got the memo and mentioned, among other things, Venezuela, Ukraine, his mom, AIDS, etc. A lot of people liked his speech. I was not that impressed.
People who win Oscars are suddenly foisted upon a soapbox in front of a billion people, but they are still in a circus called Hollywood, not in the circus called the United Nations. Increasingly, I think they should stick to thanking their agents and costars and directors and moms. If they want to do something for world peace, they should do as Angelina Jolie and actually work it.
I know many Venezuelan friends will disagree with me on this one, but asking people who have nothing to do with that country to give it a political shout out at an entertainment ceremony is absurd. Why Venezuela and not Syria, where things are far more dire? Why not some war torn country in Africa? What makes Venezuela so special? The request is both disproportionate and inappropriate, as was the Venezuelan government's response delusional in the way that only ideologically perverse regimes can muster: they banned the Oscars. Reductio ad absurdum on both sides of the divide.
People have been trying to call the world's attention to sundry plights
at the Oscars since Vanessa Redgrave lashed out against Zionism and
Marlon Brando sent a Native American to retrieve his award. Except in very few instances when the issues are relevant to the films, broadcasting them from the winners' perch is misguided and frequently embarrassing.
And even when relevant, as in the case of 12 Years A Slave, it was rather jarring for Steve McQueen to mention that almost 30 million people are still slaves today, then jump around the stage like an overgrown schoolboy with his coveted Oscar. There is a tonal conflict at work. The possibility for gravitas is almost nil.
Bringing serious issues to the most frivolous event in the universe belittles and cheapens those issues. Unless the winners happen to be intelligent, articulate and self-possessed enough for impromptu eloquence, they all look like pompous asses trying to be something they're not when using their thirty seconds for some cause or another. Lupita Nyong'o did more against racism and for women with her poise and her refreshing lack of ego than any bombastic speechifying ever has.
Showing posts with label Crazy Latins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crazy Latins. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 05, 2014
Wednesday, November 07, 2012
Common Sense Prevailed
All of a sudden we are in love with the Electoral College we usually so despise, n'est pas?
I think the elation in the country after President Obama's reelection victory is not so much that he won, but a breath of relief that we are not as stupid and benighted as to elect a man and a platform that hinged on destructive lunacy. Almost half of us are were as stupid and benighted as to do that, (looking at the electoral map I feel like scooping out most of the middle/south of the country and kissing it goodbye - except for awesome New Mexico).
But what is truly heartening is that a narrow majority voted for sanity, common sense and reality.
I am very disappointed with Obama. I voted against Romney, rather than for him. As you voted, you probably became aware that there were more than two candidates in the ballot, who were completely ignored by the media. This is a travesty. It's a sports contest between two teams, not a real democracy.
I got a million emails asking me for money from Barack, Michelle, Joe, Bo the dog. I did not donate one red cent to the campaign, as punishment for the issues in which he has been remiss, such as immigration, gun control, the environment, drone attacks and others. I was very disappointed at his unwillingness to push things through despite Republican opposition. And I certainly hope that now he will finally stop campaigning and pretending he can work with the Republicans, and really push the most liberal agenda imaginable; really exercise his Presidential power and deliver on his promise to invest nationally on infrastructure, education, raise taxes for the rich, and send this country in the right direction. Am I convinced he is going to do it? No. But this is what I expect. And this is what those of us who voted for him should demand.
It is undeniable is that the Democrats live in a demographic reality that the Republican party refuses to accept. I was listening to Ed Rollins on Fox talking about including women and minorities next time around as if he was writing a shopping list for the supermarket. This party will pay lip service and effect the most empty tokenism, but it will never understand in its bones the real makeup of the country. It is out of touch with reality. One only had to look at the makeup of each candidate's supporters at their rallies. On the Romney camp, no one of color and very few young people. On the Obama side, the kind of people that you see on the streets everyday, that means, pretty much everybody. And a lot of young people, who are the most important voters because it is them who have to live with the consequences of their political choices. The Republican party painted itself into the most lunatic corner and this is the end result. But if it served a purpose, was to get apathetic people off their asses to vote against them. For this, they should be thanked. Serves them right for pandering to fringe minority extremes. The vast majority of the American people find their faith-based distorsions revolting (as in legitimate rape, condoned by God). The vast majority of the American people could care less about whether you are gay and you want to marry. And they don't buy the logic of a millionaire paying less than half the tax rate of the working stiff. Many women comprise this majority, and they are certainly not going to vote for someone who seems to hail from the 1950s.
Latinos did not only turn out in force but in the best news in centuries, their power has grown exponentially and has nothing to do with the four and a half Cubans that used to hold elections hostage in Florida for years. The greatest gift of all: Cubans in Miami have become irrelevant. Woo hoo! What's more, their children are probably voting Obama. Times have changed. It's time for Latinos to demand political payback. Immigration reform now.
For all the wringing of hands, Netanyahu machinations, and the despicable disinformation on the part of Republicans whose foreign policy spells real disaster for Israel, 70% of Jews voted for Obama. Lechaim!
Romney ran an atrocious campaign. Just from the way his campaign proceeded one feared for the fate of the country. He seemed incompetent, flaky, insincere, disconnected from reality, aloof and nowhere near ready for the job. Obama had David Axelrod, genius, on his side, but also common sense. Also a widening gap and a formidable class war that should turn the tide in favor of the 99%.
I can't wait to see what the Republican narrative is going to be going forward. In the meantime, enjoy the reprieve and expect much better from the President this time around.
I think the elation in the country after President Obama's reelection victory is not so much that he won, but a breath of relief that we are not as stupid and benighted as to elect a man and a platform that hinged on destructive lunacy. Almost half of us are were as stupid and benighted as to do that, (looking at the electoral map I feel like scooping out most of the middle/south of the country and kissing it goodbye - except for awesome New Mexico).
But what is truly heartening is that a narrow majority voted for sanity, common sense and reality.
I am very disappointed with Obama. I voted against Romney, rather than for him. As you voted, you probably became aware that there were more than two candidates in the ballot, who were completely ignored by the media. This is a travesty. It's a sports contest between two teams, not a real democracy.
I got a million emails asking me for money from Barack, Michelle, Joe, Bo the dog. I did not donate one red cent to the campaign, as punishment for the issues in which he has been remiss, such as immigration, gun control, the environment, drone attacks and others. I was very disappointed at his unwillingness to push things through despite Republican opposition. And I certainly hope that now he will finally stop campaigning and pretending he can work with the Republicans, and really push the most liberal agenda imaginable; really exercise his Presidential power and deliver on his promise to invest nationally on infrastructure, education, raise taxes for the rich, and send this country in the right direction. Am I convinced he is going to do it? No. But this is what I expect. And this is what those of us who voted for him should demand.
It is undeniable is that the Democrats live in a demographic reality that the Republican party refuses to accept. I was listening to Ed Rollins on Fox talking about including women and minorities next time around as if he was writing a shopping list for the supermarket. This party will pay lip service and effect the most empty tokenism, but it will never understand in its bones the real makeup of the country. It is out of touch with reality. One only had to look at the makeup of each candidate's supporters at their rallies. On the Romney camp, no one of color and very few young people. On the Obama side, the kind of people that you see on the streets everyday, that means, pretty much everybody. And a lot of young people, who are the most important voters because it is them who have to live with the consequences of their political choices. The Republican party painted itself into the most lunatic corner and this is the end result. But if it served a purpose, was to get apathetic people off their asses to vote against them. For this, they should be thanked. Serves them right for pandering to fringe minority extremes. The vast majority of the American people find their faith-based distorsions revolting (as in legitimate rape, condoned by God). The vast majority of the American people could care less about whether you are gay and you want to marry. And they don't buy the logic of a millionaire paying less than half the tax rate of the working stiff. Many women comprise this majority, and they are certainly not going to vote for someone who seems to hail from the 1950s.
Latinos did not only turn out in force but in the best news in centuries, their power has grown exponentially and has nothing to do with the four and a half Cubans that used to hold elections hostage in Florida for years. The greatest gift of all: Cubans in Miami have become irrelevant. Woo hoo! What's more, their children are probably voting Obama. Times have changed. It's time for Latinos to demand political payback. Immigration reform now.
For all the wringing of hands, Netanyahu machinations, and the despicable disinformation on the part of Republicans whose foreign policy spells real disaster for Israel, 70% of Jews voted for Obama. Lechaim!
Romney ran an atrocious campaign. Just from the way his campaign proceeded one feared for the fate of the country. He seemed incompetent, flaky, insincere, disconnected from reality, aloof and nowhere near ready for the job. Obama had David Axelrod, genius, on his side, but also common sense. Also a widening gap and a formidable class war that should turn the tide in favor of the 99%.
I can't wait to see what the Republican narrative is going to be going forward. In the meantime, enjoy the reprieve and expect much better from the President this time around.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Señora Cecilia: Art Restorer to The World!
By now, you must live under a rock if you haven't heard about the poor Spanish elderly lady who took it upon herself to restore a badly damaged 19th century portrait of Jesus in a church in Borja, Spain. You probably have seen the appallingly funny before and after pictures.
The story is very touching. She did it with the permission of the priest. According to her, people would walk into church and watch her at work and no one said a peep until she finished her masterpiece, which is now her gift to the world. While it is true that the poor soul became a laughingstock worldwide, something more interesting happened. Had we not lived in the day of internet and memes, we would have seen her in the evening news, shaken our heads, and moved on. But Señora Cecilia's good intentions have unleashed a wave of memes that are not only very funny, but that put art where it hasn't been in ages, at the forefront of popular culture EVERYWHERE.
While funny memes are born every day, memes about art are rare, and the ones inspired by Señora Cecilia's artistic inclinations help people remember how difficult it is to achieve good art. The idea that anybody can sidle up to an old fresco and retouch it is surreal. Who walks into a church, looks at a peeling antique and thinks they can fix it? She singlehandedly has made people appreciate how challenging it is to make art. Even unprepossessing art, like the one she fixed. It's not like she defaced a Velázquez. Her masterpiece is also now gracing some of the most iconic art in the history of Western civilization.
There are many people, including me, who feel sorry for her. But I don't feel so sorry that I'm not enjoying immensely some of the viral things people are coming up with. The purity of her intentions have made her a hero to many. I'm not ready to give her such a pass. Such epic cluelessness has to be addressed. But her touching desire to help is just as epic. I hope she takes it all in stride and people forgive her. She should be proud of how inspiring she has been to the world!
I don't think the memes are personal affronts to her. At this point they transcend laughing at her. A lot has to do with Spanish culture, where already there is talk of squadrons of señoras that are itching to restore stuff. Check any Almodóvar movie. There is always one such essential, folkloric Spanish old lady. She is usually played by the genius actress Chus Lampreave (who should play Señora Cecilia whenever Hollywood options the rights). These Spanish small town señoras are miraculously untainted by malice, they are enterprising and well-meaning and a little dim, and they are all a hoot, because they live with one foot in the modern world and the other one in the 18th century. Beyond Spain, the memes are a comment on the nature of art itself. Take a masterpiece and try to make it better. Jesus ends up looking like a monkey.
Señora Cecilia has unleashed a global wave of creativity where art is at the forefront of the popular buzz, so we have much to thank her for. For one, the restored painting is far more interesting now. It has a sweet art naif quality and it certainly doesn't look like the trillion other suffering Christs that exist in abundance in every church in every Catholic country and are virtually undistinguishable from one another. The town of Borja should be grateful: she just put it on the map. There should be busloads of tourists flocking to that church like pilgrims going to Lourdes in search of miracles.
Imagine the headlines: "New Face of Christ Discovered on Old Face of Christ". In this case, it's worth trying to emulate the saintly goodness of Señora Cecilia, the lady who wanted to make Jesus look better.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Vote For Pedro
As a good Mexican citizen, I took advantage of the new electoral law that allows Mexicans abroad with old voter cards to vote in the next Presidential elections. The system has improved from last time around, when instructions were so arcane, it was clear they wanted to make it as hard as possible for the millions of us who are abroad to vote. Why we can't go to our local consulates or embassies and vote is beyond me. We will probably get there in the year 3000. Yet now, after minimal bureaucracy, and with no cost to me, I got my voting package in the mail. The dilemma this time is that the three main candidates are abysmal. The fourth candidate from a newly minted party, nobody knows him from Adam, and though he looks and sounds like an egghead, he is a protege of Cruella De Vil, aka Elba Esther Gordillo, a paleolithic mafiosa who runs the 1.5 million strong teachers' union and who nobody has been able to get rid of for decades. I can't vote for him.
I did not see the presidential debate but learned that the most conspicuous feature was that the woman who was handing out the questions to the candidates (why do we need one?) looked like the vulgar version of a Playboy bunny. Which although sad and deeply shameful, should not be surprising. The political class in Mexico continues to treat Mexicans like retarded children. They think we are a bunch of ignorant, simple minded yahoos. It has barely noticed that Mexican society has changed at a par with the new facebook/twitter world order. Hence, they show their contempt for the Mexican people by picking a bunch of mediocre, incompetent losers. Mexicans are ready for a true democracy; not so their political parties and the media monopolies that have leeched on them for ages.
Only contempt can explain why the monolithic parties vying for the Mexican presidency chose their candidates so thoughtlessly. Like we say in Spanish, de los tres no haces uno. You can't make one by putting the three together.
The most egregious one is the PRI's guy, Enrique Peña Nieto, whose claim to fame is that he was governor of the State of Mexico, where he is accused of using violence to repress protests. But he is young and telegenic and, most importantly, married to a telenovela star, which also points to his party's unholy alliance with TV giant Televisa, a blight on the Mexican nation if there ever was one. As a campaigner, Peña Nieto has been a national disgrace. Unable to speak off the cuff at the most important book fair in the Spanish speaking world, he could not recall the name of ONE favorite book of his, which promptly launched an endlessly ingenious string of sarcastic memes that are still going on. People make fun of his ignorance, his inherited inability to speak normally (if you are from the PRI, you are genetically unable to be spontaneous. You speechify at the people, not talk to them), and his mini pompadour, also known as the copete. Most recently, in a very surprising development, he visited a posh private university, which his advisers undoubtedly thought a safe place, since the juniorcitos, the hijos de papi, the fresas and pirruris (all epithets that describe spoiled rich kids) who go there have never been interested in anything but their own well being. Lo and behold, he was chased out of the campus by a vocal group of students who, like any Mexican with an ounce of sense, do not wish to see the country revert back to the PRI and its corrupt, cynical, nefarious paternalism. If he had more backbone, perhaps he could have made himself heard above the racket. He chose to flee. Mexico being the country of mistrust, the country where no one is thought to have any purity or principle, soon the PRI spun the protest into what they themselves did for 70 years, accusing the students of being planted agents of the opposition. The 131 students, promptly created a viral video stating their names and showing their student cards to the camera to show that they were not anyone's lackeys. The most surprising, and most wonderful thing is that this happened in this fancy campus (the fancy have always voted for whoever keeps them that way, but not anymore). It is encouraging to see youth in revolt, and I certainly hope they will take this revolt to the voting booth, from which they have been traditionally absent, if anything, to show the PRI it is not wanted back. There was an impressive march of young people against the PRI, which the media was trying to downplay. The pictures point at a hell of a lot of people down Reforma Avenue.
I keep hearing Peña Nieto is ahead in the polls, but I surmise these polls are as trustworthy as a Mexican politician. After his terrible public appearances, all I hear is utter disgust with him so I wonder who in that fictitious country of polls actually likes him.
Meanwhile the PAN, which has been in power for 12 years (after 70 of the PRI's perfect dictatorship, as Mario Vargas Llosa called it), and which has fallen from the public's grace mainly because of the suicidal war on drugs waged by President Calderón, chooses a woman who was Secretary of something or other, and who lacks any credentials to be the president. Not because she is a woman, but because if she were a man, she still would lack the credentials, the personality, and the acumen. Whose puppet is she? Because of the war on drugs, Mexicans want someone who is going to give them the impression he/she is going to deal with the violence. She represents somehow the worst aspects of the PAN, which is a right-wing Catholic party with an antiquated ideology about women, gays, and the rest of the enlightened world.
The third option, which many of the intelligentsia, the young and the eternally utopian endorse, is Andrés Manuel López Obrador, better known as AMLO, who was mayor of Mexico City and who lost the last presidential election and proceeded to orchestrate a disruptive, 6 month long hissy fit that paralyzed Mexico City and made me loathe him forever (even though I was not living there at the time). Sore losers cannot possibly be good leaders. This one, the oldest of the bunch by far, is a mix between old fashioned Mexican populist politics and tired Latin American lefty demagoguery. People are afraid that he will be Hugo Chavez Jr. I simply do not trust him. I don't trust people who promise to fix absolutely every injustice. They are liars. I was hoping that the candidate of his party, the PRD, would be the competent current mayor of Mexico City, Marcelo Ebrard, but the conventional wisdom is that he may be liked in DF but cannot win in the rest of the country (which tends to hate the capital). Mexico is a country where demagogic populism has been the norm for ages, hence they chose someone who connects more with the people. Pity, because Ebrard seems capable. Maybe six years from now?
I heard the recorded greetings the candidates made for us voters abroad and none of them said anything smart or sincere, but to my surprise, the only one who spoke about the situation with a broader point of view was Peña Nieto, even if it was fed to him through a teleprompter. The other two just pandered to the Mexican migrants to the US, as if the election hinged only on the immigration problem. And Quadri, the fourth guy, was just awkward.
The Mexican paper ballot leaves an open space to scribble an alternative candidate of your choice. Rather than abstaining, which is useless unless done by a concerted and huge majority, this is the only way I see to express my discontent with the candidates. I know who I am voting for. She is a very smart woman who is not a politician, but who is always reading Mexico the riot act. The vote is secret.
p.s.: Mexicans abroad, remember to send your ballots back before June 20!
Friday, April 20, 2012
To Add Insult to Injury
Check out the google ad my friend Cynthia got in Puerto Rico.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Not funny.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Now Showing At A Theater Near You
A very eerie and elegant The Woman In Black, a not so great Hugo and a freakishly good Meryl Streep in the pedestrian The Iron Lady.
On DVD:
A grossly underrated The Ides Of March and a great Demián Bichir in a not so great A Better Life.
Plus, my customary annual rant about the Oscars.
On DVD:
A grossly underrated The Ides Of March and a great Demián Bichir in a not so great A Better Life.
Plus, my customary annual rant about the Oscars.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Now Showing At A Theater Near You
Two very good movies opening today:
Miss Bala, by Gerardo Naranjo
...and Coriolanus, by my BF, Ralph Fiennes, and William Shakespeare.
Miss Bala, by Gerardo Naranjo
...and Coriolanus, by my BF, Ralph Fiennes, and William Shakespeare.
Thursday, December 08, 2011
Mexican Memes
Mexicans have always been known for their sense of humor. Mexican culture is awash with jokes, puns, double entendres and what we call ingenio, which is something as funny as wit, but less dry. Yet I don't think anyone foresaw how much mileage Mexican humor was going to get out of new technologies like Photoshop, You Tube and social media, which are starting to make Mexico look like the capital of memes.
About a week after 9/11, if not sooner, I get an urgent email from my friend Pancho, with the following subject: "They found Osama Bin Laden". I open it, my heart racing, and I see a picture of Osama sitting placidly in a gondola in Xochimilco, a place where Mexican families go to have Sunday picnics on the water. To this day, it's the best thing I ever saw.
Apparently, it's the gift that keeps on giving:
Same when they couldn't find Ghadaffi:
Looks like the taquero from hell to me, even though, true to his Middle Eastern roots, he is hiding behind a spit of shwarma.
Any time a Mexican public figure makes a gigantic blunder, Mexicans and their ingenio take over cyberspace. A meme was created when newsanchor Joaquín López Dóriga attempted to interview Sir Anthony Hopkins and asked him "Juay De Rito" (Why The Rite?).
More recently, the PRI's candidate for president, a pompadoured calamity called Enrique Peña Nieto, was taken to task for not being able to answer correctly what three books have most influenced him, as he made an appearance at the International Book Fair in Guadalajara, the most important event of its kind in the Spanish-speaking world. You would think he'd brush up on his reading, given the nature of the event, but true to the caste of patronizing demagogues of his party, who are used to blathering from above and are completely unable to speak off the cuff, he was taken aback by the question and proceeded to pontificate without saying absolutely anything or remembering correctly the title of at least one book (not counting the Bible, which he said he had read parts of).
The barrage of tweets and doctored photos that invaded the net show no sign of abating.
His daughter then posted a tweet saying "a greeting to the bunch of fuckheads that are part of the prole (tariat) and who only criticize who they envy".
Now all of Mexico is claiming prolehood.
Gandhi, a chain of bookstores, famous for their clever ads, did not waste any time coming up with some funny print ads. Because their ads are easy to copy, Mexicans went to work on dozens of alternate versions:
There are pictures of Peña Nieto conferring with the actual Gandhi, with the Pope, and one of him as the swaddled baby of two of the most notoriously corrupt and sinister members of the PRI, ex-president Carlos Salinas and undying PRI fixture Elba Esther Gordillo.
Among the tweets:
Apparently, at the PRI's behest, which is revolting business as usual, Twitter tried to censor the PeñaNietoBookstore# hashtag after it started trending with over 60,000 tweets. There was a huge outcry and they allowed it again. One thing these lamentable politicos do not appreciate is freedom of expression. They are used to despotism, but Mexico is changing. There is no more delicious schadenfreude than to see these corrupt bozos exposed by the citizenry for the frauds they are. It may not be funny to them, but it is seriously funny for us.
Social media can change things. Hopefully this idiot will not become the President of Mexico after this.
About a week after 9/11, if not sooner, I get an urgent email from my friend Pancho, with the following subject: "They found Osama Bin Laden". I open it, my heart racing, and I see a picture of Osama sitting placidly in a gondola in Xochimilco, a place where Mexican families go to have Sunday picnics on the water. To this day, it's the best thing I ever saw.
Apparently, it's the gift that keeps on giving:
Same when they couldn't find Ghadaffi:
Looks like the taquero from hell to me, even though, true to his Middle Eastern roots, he is hiding behind a spit of shwarma.
Any time a Mexican public figure makes a gigantic blunder, Mexicans and their ingenio take over cyberspace. A meme was created when newsanchor Joaquín López Dóriga attempted to interview Sir Anthony Hopkins and asked him "Juay De Rito" (Why The Rite?).
More recently, the PRI's candidate for president, a pompadoured calamity called Enrique Peña Nieto, was taken to task for not being able to answer correctly what three books have most influenced him, as he made an appearance at the International Book Fair in Guadalajara, the most important event of its kind in the Spanish-speaking world. You would think he'd brush up on his reading, given the nature of the event, but true to the caste of patronizing demagogues of his party, who are used to blathering from above and are completely unable to speak off the cuff, he was taken aback by the question and proceeded to pontificate without saying absolutely anything or remembering correctly the title of at least one book (not counting the Bible, which he said he had read parts of).
The barrage of tweets and doctored photos that invaded the net show no sign of abating.
His daughter then posted a tweet saying "a greeting to the bunch of fuckheads that are part of the prole (tariat) and who only criticize who they envy".
Now all of Mexico is claiming prolehood.
Gandhi, a chain of bookstores, famous for their clever ads, did not waste any time coming up with some funny print ads. Because their ads are easy to copy, Mexicans went to work on dozens of alternate versions:
There are pictures of Peña Nieto conferring with the actual Gandhi, with the Pope, and one of him as the swaddled baby of two of the most notoriously corrupt and sinister members of the PRI, ex-president Carlos Salinas and undying PRI fixture Elba Esther Gordillo.
Among the tweets:
"Let's read something by Martin Burger King #PeñaNietoBookstore"
"What is your favorite Benedetti? The pepperoni one, of course". #PeñaNietoBookstore"There are also many hashtags for the "prole" comment.
"Three books that marked me for life: 1) Los Reebook, 2) La Notebook, y 3) El Facebook. #PeñaNietoBookstore"
Apparently, at the PRI's behest, which is revolting business as usual, Twitter tried to censor the PeñaNietoBookstore# hashtag after it started trending with over 60,000 tweets. There was a huge outcry and they allowed it again. One thing these lamentable politicos do not appreciate is freedom of expression. They are used to despotism, but Mexico is changing. There is no more delicious schadenfreude than to see these corrupt bozos exposed by the citizenry for the frauds they are. It may not be funny to them, but it is seriously funny for us.
Social media can change things. Hopefully this idiot will not become the President of Mexico after this.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Kimchi Taco Vs. Tacos El Idolo
After my French class (oui, mesdames et messieurs, I continue to grapple with this sadistic language), I could not resist stopping at the Kimchee Taco truck parked on Astor Place. Just so you know, Korean tacos are pretty much the only fusion taco I'm willing to accept, except for tacos árabes, Arab tacos, which are a Mexican invention. Why Korean? Because their barbecued beef and pork work well inside a tortilla, and some of the Korean flavors overlap with the Mexican palate.
The Kimchee Taco truck offers three assorted tacos for $7. I chose BBQ beef and shredded pork. The pork filling was excellent. The beef filling was tasty but ice cold. I told as much to the nice owner guy and he chose not to believe me. The tortillas were tiny, which is okay, but what is not okay is that they were cold and stiff and tasted like corrugated cardboard. Non-Mexicans still do not understand how to serve a tortilla soft and warm. The day they do may be the day the world finally comes to an end.
Kimchi Taco serves the tacos with something they call pico de gallo which is super spicy and tangy and not bad, I surmise made with radishes and scallions. Luckily I ordered the kimchi on the side because both salsas would have completely seared my mouth and overpowered the taco itself. The problem with the Korean pico de gallo is that it also comes straight from the fridge so dudes, (and this goes for Chipotle too) please understand that you can't put frigid stuff on top of a hot taco.
I had an epiphany last night which may help explain why most gringo taco concepts will never work here: hygiene laws. If the city demands that the food be kept in the fridge until the last possible minute, you are never going to get a decent taco experience. That is the only explanation I can find for tacos being cold. This can be easily circumvented by making the fixings less vulnerable to spoiling and appropriate for room temperature. Whatever you put on top of a taco has to be room temperature, otherwise you completely ruin the taco, no matter how tasty.
I felt guilty as I passed by the Tacos El Idolo truck, which is parked right on the corner. So I ordered an agua de horchata because of the Korean lingering spiciness, and then stayed for a taco de carnitas. This taco was $2.50, but it was at least twice as big and plump and had two much better, warm slightly greased tortillas. It was dressed with chopped onions and cilantro as it should be, and was served with a slice of unfortunately dessicated lime and radish (which I find unnecessary). It was pretty tasty. If you do the math, El Idolo is a much better deal because it is much more food and more satisfying. You can't possibly have room for three such tacos, and you will only be paying 50 cents more. The tortillas are warm, so is the filling and all is good with the world.
Now that going to restaurants in New York has become an activity that only the 1% can afford, food trucks provide excellent cheap alternatives. The taco trucks make New York an even better city, if that is even possible.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Today On I've Had It With Hollywood
You are going to think I'm very cranky lately: Margin Call and The Skin I Live In.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Más Respeto, Por Favor.
The new, astonishing figures for the Hispanic population in the US:
I find this very interesting. There are almost 32 million Mexicans in the US. The next large group is Puerto Ricans, with almost 5 million people, and the next, Cubans, with almost 2 million. Although Mexicans are six times as many as the next big group, for some reason they seem to be under served and under represented. Other groups, like the Cubans in Miami, make much more noise and seem to have far more political clout, even though they are actually less relevant. Here in the East Coast, Mexicans are almost invisible. We see them cooking and delivering our food, but otherwise, they don't make a political racket. They barely have political representation. My guess is that recent arrivals come from poverty and are severely undereducated. They are concerned about surviving, sending money to their families, and they are not used to having a political voice. They have been abandoned by their own government at home and they are not about to trust the one here. I hope that with new generations of Mexican kids born in America this will change. I'm hoping that they will integrate better and get to be Supreme Court judges, mayors, presidents of this country. They need to get out of the ghetto. And for this, they all need to learn English.
When I arrived in New York in 1992, the Hispanic advertising business in the East Coast was run by people from Cuban or Puerto Rican origin. There were a only a handful of Mexicans working in this industry and being Mexican turned out to be a huge asset for my career. I always resented, and still do, that every time I wrote copy, someone would ask if a person who wasn't Mexican would understand it. Not that I was writing Mexican slang, but once in a while, a legitimate Spanish word that was perfectly commonplace in Mexico would jump out at people. Some thought that Mexicans were too uneducated to understand perfectly commonplace words (there was a lot of ignorant prejudice from some quarters and there still is. Some people like to feel superior to Mexicans, because of race, economic status and education levels). In my mind, I was writing for the majority even then, and the majority rules. I still feel the same way. If the communication is national, it should speak to the majority. If it is regional; that is, if it's only going to air in Miami, then do it in Cuban and let the minority get used to it. Native speakers, whatever their country of origin, are deeply sensitive to regional accents. So in Miami they are used to Cuban, as in the Southwest and California they are used to Mexican, and here in the East Coast, to the Spanish spoken in the Caribbean islands. I believe that there is a neutral Spanish accent that is perfectly fine, and this is the neutral Mexican accent, which pronounces all the consonants, and which, without the melody, is as neutral as the Colombian accent from Bogotá, without the singsong. And whoever doesn't like this, should take a look at the numbers above and zip it.
One of the problems I have with the "Hispanic" market, is that because we strive to include everybody, the Spanish language that we use in mass communications has become impoverished. It is hard to write ads with humor, not because it is impossible, but because someone will always question whether the others will understand it. Advertising and marketing categorize people into targets until it dehumanizes them, as if people from different national origins are inscrutable aliens from a different galaxy that have no connection either to one another or to the rest of humanity. This results in people looking at every word in a sentence as if it was devoid of context. As if the way we speak is by understanding every single word in a sentence separately, without connection to what precedes it or what follows. In short, common sense leaves the building.
Let me give an example: popular idioms and expressions enrich communication. They are part of our culture. So if I want to use an expression like "sale más caro el caldo que las albóndigas", "the broth ends up costing more than the meatballs", which means something similar to "pound wise and penny foolish", everybody understands the gist of it, but it will have to go through a gauntlet of people who will admit they understand it, and even like it, but they are afraid that someone from the Dominican Republic might not. You can rest assured that it will never go on air. This is, among other reasons, why you can barely find good commercials in Spanish in the US.
The Spanish now used in mass communications in the US is for the most part an insipid, generic language that has no personality, no bite, no irony. Often times, it is sloppy and grammatically incorrect, or it is a lazy, literal translation of English idioms. As I was trapped in Cancún by hurricane Irene, I was watching the coverage on CNN en Español. I was appalled at the poverty of the Spanish of the newscasters and reporters. They sounded like nothing recognizable because for the most part they were speaking in some sort of awkward, literal Spanish translation of English; whenever they didn't know a word in Spanish, which was very often, they just said it in English. I cannot understand how a network with the resources of CNN can't hire good journalists, reporters and anchors who are native speakers of Spanish, and are fully bilingual and know the structural differences between the two languages. They can't be that hard to find.
The problem is bigger than advertising. Since this is not a Hispanic country, we don't have a solid literary and verbal culture. Our Spanish is poor. Children at school do not learn poems, songs, expressions, games, and literature in Spanish. We don't have good Hispanic-American literary writers who write in Spanish. We barely have a handful of good Hispanic-American writers who write in English. Our TV channels are a disgrace in terms of content. There is no cultural content. Newspapers and magazines leave much to be desired. And advertising, which in its best form should contribute to pop culture, is for the most part lame, artificial, generic and it belongs to no one. By trying to include everyone, it really speaks to no one.
So I have two points to make:
1. Our Spanish sucks, and we should do something to improve it. Making it generic makes it poorer.
2. Because there are almost six times as many Mexicans as any other Latins in this country, Mexican-influenced Spanish should be the language used to speak to the majority of Hispanics in the US.*
*By the way, if there was a Spanish-speaking majority from another country, I would stand by this, as much as it may pain me. It's only fair.
I find this very interesting. There are almost 32 million Mexicans in the US. The next large group is Puerto Ricans, with almost 5 million people, and the next, Cubans, with almost 2 million. Although Mexicans are six times as many as the next big group, for some reason they seem to be under served and under represented. Other groups, like the Cubans in Miami, make much more noise and seem to have far more political clout, even though they are actually less relevant. Here in the East Coast, Mexicans are almost invisible. We see them cooking and delivering our food, but otherwise, they don't make a political racket. They barely have political representation. My guess is that recent arrivals come from poverty and are severely undereducated. They are concerned about surviving, sending money to their families, and they are not used to having a political voice. They have been abandoned by their own government at home and they are not about to trust the one here. I hope that with new generations of Mexican kids born in America this will change. I'm hoping that they will integrate better and get to be Supreme Court judges, mayors, presidents of this country. They need to get out of the ghetto. And for this, they all need to learn English.
When I arrived in New York in 1992, the Hispanic advertising business in the East Coast was run by people from Cuban or Puerto Rican origin. There were a only a handful of Mexicans working in this industry and being Mexican turned out to be a huge asset for my career. I always resented, and still do, that every time I wrote copy, someone would ask if a person who wasn't Mexican would understand it. Not that I was writing Mexican slang, but once in a while, a legitimate Spanish word that was perfectly commonplace in Mexico would jump out at people. Some thought that Mexicans were too uneducated to understand perfectly commonplace words (there was a lot of ignorant prejudice from some quarters and there still is. Some people like to feel superior to Mexicans, because of race, economic status and education levels). In my mind, I was writing for the majority even then, and the majority rules. I still feel the same way. If the communication is national, it should speak to the majority. If it is regional; that is, if it's only going to air in Miami, then do it in Cuban and let the minority get used to it. Native speakers, whatever their country of origin, are deeply sensitive to regional accents. So in Miami they are used to Cuban, as in the Southwest and California they are used to Mexican, and here in the East Coast, to the Spanish spoken in the Caribbean islands. I believe that there is a neutral Spanish accent that is perfectly fine, and this is the neutral Mexican accent, which pronounces all the consonants, and which, without the melody, is as neutral as the Colombian accent from Bogotá, without the singsong. And whoever doesn't like this, should take a look at the numbers above and zip it.
One of the problems I have with the "Hispanic" market, is that because we strive to include everybody, the Spanish language that we use in mass communications has become impoverished. It is hard to write ads with humor, not because it is impossible, but because someone will always question whether the others will understand it. Advertising and marketing categorize people into targets until it dehumanizes them, as if people from different national origins are inscrutable aliens from a different galaxy that have no connection either to one another or to the rest of humanity. This results in people looking at every word in a sentence as if it was devoid of context. As if the way we speak is by understanding every single word in a sentence separately, without connection to what precedes it or what follows. In short, common sense leaves the building.
Let me give an example: popular idioms and expressions enrich communication. They are part of our culture. So if I want to use an expression like "sale más caro el caldo que las albóndigas", "the broth ends up costing more than the meatballs", which means something similar to "pound wise and penny foolish", everybody understands the gist of it, but it will have to go through a gauntlet of people who will admit they understand it, and even like it, but they are afraid that someone from the Dominican Republic might not. You can rest assured that it will never go on air. This is, among other reasons, why you can barely find good commercials in Spanish in the US.
The Spanish now used in mass communications in the US is for the most part an insipid, generic language that has no personality, no bite, no irony. Often times, it is sloppy and grammatically incorrect, or it is a lazy, literal translation of English idioms. As I was trapped in Cancún by hurricane Irene, I was watching the coverage on CNN en Español. I was appalled at the poverty of the Spanish of the newscasters and reporters. They sounded like nothing recognizable because for the most part they were speaking in some sort of awkward, literal Spanish translation of English; whenever they didn't know a word in Spanish, which was very often, they just said it in English. I cannot understand how a network with the resources of CNN can't hire good journalists, reporters and anchors who are native speakers of Spanish, and are fully bilingual and know the structural differences between the two languages. They can't be that hard to find.
The problem is bigger than advertising. Since this is not a Hispanic country, we don't have a solid literary and verbal culture. Our Spanish is poor. Children at school do not learn poems, songs, expressions, games, and literature in Spanish. We don't have good Hispanic-American literary writers who write in Spanish. We barely have a handful of good Hispanic-American writers who write in English. Our TV channels are a disgrace in terms of content. There is no cultural content. Newspapers and magazines leave much to be desired. And advertising, which in its best form should contribute to pop culture, is for the most part lame, artificial, generic and it belongs to no one. By trying to include everyone, it really speaks to no one.
So I have two points to make:
1. Our Spanish sucks, and we should do something to improve it. Making it generic makes it poorer.
2. Because there are almost six times as many Mexicans as any other Latins in this country, Mexican-influenced Spanish should be the language used to speak to the majority of Hispanics in the US.*
*By the way, if there was a Spanish-speaking majority from another country, I would stand by this, as much as it may pain me. It's only fair.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
No Habla Español
There is a mini-brouhaha raging because of a slogan used by a Pepsi campaign for the Hispanic market that a lot of people, including me, feel uses incorrect Spanish. You can read about it here.
This incident allows me to vent about a routine problem in Hispanic advertising, which is that the Spanish that is sometimes used runs the gamut from the pathetic to the blatantly incorrect. This is my theory of why this happens:
This is not a Spanish speaking country (yet). The Spanish spoken in the US is an impoverished version of what is spoken in any other Spanish speaking country, basically because Spanish is not the main language. It lacks a local literature, and it lacks outlets. We don't really have serious newspapers or magazines. People don't read in Spanish. We are not surrounded by the language. This makes our language poor. Add to this that we have different national groups with different accents and expressions unevenly scattered across the country, and we have a bit of a mess.
I have nothing against Spanglish, but nobody can tell me that Spanish in the US is a beautiful living organism. It's not.
Because of this unique circumstance, those of us who make a living communicating in Spanish need to be particularly meticulous with our language. This doesn't mean that we all have to sound like Cervantes, or that our Spanish should be stiff and archaic, but we need to know it and use it well. We are its custodians.
In the case of advertising, the problem gets compounded because people forget that Spanish and English have different grammatical structures. The products we shill have been dreamed up in English. The marketing lingo used to describe them barely resembles English to begin with, but clients and their legal departments expect the Spanish versions to be as close to the English as possible. This is why many agency creatives and executives pretend that Spanish should behave like English. For the most part, it doesn't. A classic example is that necessary articles (el, la, los, las) disappear from our sentences. English can do this, but Spanish needs articles. Stuff like this and worse happens all the time. It sounds dreadful.
The other problem, and this has happened to me countless times, is that clients trust some half illiterate Hispanic consumer more than they trust a professional copywriter or their agency. This is because of their reliance on research and focus groups. I will give you an example. We mentioned the word "college" in an ad. In Spanish it translates as universidad (university). However, in a focus group, some moron with a limited command of Spanish, whose only credentials were that he was a potential consumer, insisted that the word in Spanish for college was colegio. However, colegio in Spanish means grade school, and I can assure you we did not intend to recruit 7 year olds to the Army. It took way longer than should have been necessary to persuade our clients that the guy was talking out of his ass.
The standards of our industry are very low. When I moved here in 1992, pretty much anybody with a Hispanic sounding last name was considered the ultimate expert in the Hispanic market. You had people leading creative departments that were incapable of writing a sentence in Spanish. But nobody thought that the fact that they spoke three words of Spanish with their abuela on Sundays meant they could not write in Spanish or give grammatical opinions. Today, things have changed and most serious Hispanic agencies have very qualified people, most of whom are native speakers of Spanish, and actual writers who can write in Spanish. But bad habits and uncomprehending clients still wreak havoc.
People who defend the Pepsi phrase use the excuse that language is flexible. What are they, Noam Chomsky? I think the unspoken rule is that language is only flexible when it works; that is, when most people understand the meaning intended by an unusual turn of phrase. If most people are flummoxed and annoyed, and uncomprehending of a turn of phrase that seems unidiomatic, incorrect and weird, then language is not flexible. Also, language may be pliable, but we don't go around inventing meanings for words at our convenience, to please a marketing client. We don't say that now the word "tree" really means "cloud". Language seems to work as an unspoken collective contract in which we all agree with certain pre-assigned meanings. When new expressions are born, we all collectively, instinctively agree to accept them or not, use them or not, according to how much they resonate, and make sense to us. So don't tell me that in the Pepsi case they were being flexible with the language. They were sloppy, which is another story.
I'm fascinated with this case because it seems like an instance of groupthink, surprisingly coming from a good, reliable agency, which has consistently done dignified work. However, in advertising, and particularly in marketing, it is not unusual for common sense to leave the building. I can almost bet that they were trying to find a more original way of saying "I count" because that verb has been used copiously and frequently in connection to the Census, which is related to the campaign. What is a mystery is if anybody cautioned there was something wrong with the phrase or what processes of massive self-convincing took place in order for this to happen.
This incident allows me to vent about a routine problem in Hispanic advertising, which is that the Spanish that is sometimes used runs the gamut from the pathetic to the blatantly incorrect. This is my theory of why this happens:
This is not a Spanish speaking country (yet). The Spanish spoken in the US is an impoverished version of what is spoken in any other Spanish speaking country, basically because Spanish is not the main language. It lacks a local literature, and it lacks outlets. We don't really have serious newspapers or magazines. People don't read in Spanish. We are not surrounded by the language. This makes our language poor. Add to this that we have different national groups with different accents and expressions unevenly scattered across the country, and we have a bit of a mess.
I have nothing against Spanglish, but nobody can tell me that Spanish in the US is a beautiful living organism. It's not.
Because of this unique circumstance, those of us who make a living communicating in Spanish need to be particularly meticulous with our language. This doesn't mean that we all have to sound like Cervantes, or that our Spanish should be stiff and archaic, but we need to know it and use it well. We are its custodians.
In the case of advertising, the problem gets compounded because people forget that Spanish and English have different grammatical structures. The products we shill have been dreamed up in English. The marketing lingo used to describe them barely resembles English to begin with, but clients and their legal departments expect the Spanish versions to be as close to the English as possible. This is why many agency creatives and executives pretend that Spanish should behave like English. For the most part, it doesn't. A classic example is that necessary articles (el, la, los, las) disappear from our sentences. English can do this, but Spanish needs articles. Stuff like this and worse happens all the time. It sounds dreadful.
The other problem, and this has happened to me countless times, is that clients trust some half illiterate Hispanic consumer more than they trust a professional copywriter or their agency. This is because of their reliance on research and focus groups. I will give you an example. We mentioned the word "college" in an ad. In Spanish it translates as universidad (university). However, in a focus group, some moron with a limited command of Spanish, whose only credentials were that he was a potential consumer, insisted that the word in Spanish for college was colegio. However, colegio in Spanish means grade school, and I can assure you we did not intend to recruit 7 year olds to the Army. It took way longer than should have been necessary to persuade our clients that the guy was talking out of his ass.
The standards of our industry are very low. When I moved here in 1992, pretty much anybody with a Hispanic sounding last name was considered the ultimate expert in the Hispanic market. You had people leading creative departments that were incapable of writing a sentence in Spanish. But nobody thought that the fact that they spoke three words of Spanish with their abuela on Sundays meant they could not write in Spanish or give grammatical opinions. Today, things have changed and most serious Hispanic agencies have very qualified people, most of whom are native speakers of Spanish, and actual writers who can write in Spanish. But bad habits and uncomprehending clients still wreak havoc.
People who defend the Pepsi phrase use the excuse that language is flexible. What are they, Noam Chomsky? I think the unspoken rule is that language is only flexible when it works; that is, when most people understand the meaning intended by an unusual turn of phrase. If most people are flummoxed and annoyed, and uncomprehending of a turn of phrase that seems unidiomatic, incorrect and weird, then language is not flexible. Also, language may be pliable, but we don't go around inventing meanings for words at our convenience, to please a marketing client. We don't say that now the word "tree" really means "cloud". Language seems to work as an unspoken collective contract in which we all agree with certain pre-assigned meanings. When new expressions are born, we all collectively, instinctively agree to accept them or not, use them or not, according to how much they resonate, and make sense to us. So don't tell me that in the Pepsi case they were being flexible with the language. They were sloppy, which is another story.
I'm fascinated with this case because it seems like an instance of groupthink, surprisingly coming from a good, reliable agency, which has consistently done dignified work. However, in advertising, and particularly in marketing, it is not unusual for common sense to leave the building. I can almost bet that they were trying to find a more original way of saying "I count" because that verb has been used copiously and frequently in connection to the Census, which is related to the campaign. What is a mystery is if anybody cautioned there was something wrong with the phrase or what processes of massive self-convincing took place in order for this to happen.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Latinos in America
So CNN is trying to kiss and make up to Latinos because it keeps making money out of Lou Dobbs and his hate speech. I'm not buying it. I only saw the episode on internet about the teenagers who want to commit suicide because their moms don’t want them to behave like gringa sluts and think that girls should be versed in the arts of indentured labor, just like them. So here come the broad stereotypes and the dealing with Latinos in America as if we had all just crossed the border yesterday. It is amazing to me that the mainstream American media still treats Latinos (who have been here longer than the peeps from the Mayflower, if you think of it) as a sideshow.
But I have to say that being a Mexican Jew, an immigrant (albeit legal and with every possible privilege, including a college degree and already speaking English when I came), I've had it with the stubborn refusal of certain Latinos to adapt to this country. Most of the time, the reason for this is lack of education. Many newcomers have no high school education. They are busy working hard and making money, and can't be too worried about self-enlightenment.
However, if you don't learn English, you are just marginalizing yourself. You can't have come here looking for a better life and expect your kids to behave as if they still were in the old country. This is the story of every immigrant group to America. You adapt to the new country so you can belong and thrive. This is probably the only country on Earth that allows this with immense tolerance, even despite its racist grumblings. This doesn't mean you have to lose your culture if you know how to preserve it. Preserve the best of it. Get rid of the noxious bits. What an opportunity for improvement! It is up to you to adapt your values and your culture to your new environment so that your culture enriches society at large, and does not become a limitation to you, but an asset. And the first step is to understand that you are living in a different culture with a different language. There may be things you don't like about it, but as many love pointing out, you can go back where you came from if they bother you so much. Nobody is asking you to lose your identity. But you need to acclimate.
To me, there is nothing like contact with the others to open your mind, get a grip and progress. Matters are not helped by the Spanish media, which for the most part seems intent on feeding recent immigrants a diet of retarded and mind wasting programming. Univisión and Telemundo should have cultural and educational programming, and even English classes on TV. If they were worth watching, Latinos would still tune in, because culture is so much more than language.
I have hope in the second generation children, young American Latinos who bridge the gap gracefully without losing their Latino bearings. I know many people like this, smart, educated, ecumenical, and deeply fortunate to have an extra culture, an extra language, and fabulous food. However, these Latinos are absent from the media and entertainment. They are absent from the public eye. All you see is gardeners and illegals and housekeepers and gang members, both in the news and in entertainment.
I am not even going to go into, "but look at all the successful Latinos like Soledad O'Brien and Sonia Sotomayor and that crazy Costa Rican astronaut and Eva Longoria". It is offensive we have to remind people that the majority of Latinos are successful, well adjusted, interesting Americans. Like everybody else.
But I have to say that being a Mexican Jew, an immigrant (albeit legal and with every possible privilege, including a college degree and already speaking English when I came), I've had it with the stubborn refusal of certain Latinos to adapt to this country. Most of the time, the reason for this is lack of education. Many newcomers have no high school education. They are busy working hard and making money, and can't be too worried about self-enlightenment.
However, if you don't learn English, you are just marginalizing yourself. You can't have come here looking for a better life and expect your kids to behave as if they still were in the old country. This is the story of every immigrant group to America. You adapt to the new country so you can belong and thrive. This is probably the only country on Earth that allows this with immense tolerance, even despite its racist grumblings. This doesn't mean you have to lose your culture if you know how to preserve it. Preserve the best of it. Get rid of the noxious bits. What an opportunity for improvement! It is up to you to adapt your values and your culture to your new environment so that your culture enriches society at large, and does not become a limitation to you, but an asset. And the first step is to understand that you are living in a different culture with a different language. There may be things you don't like about it, but as many love pointing out, you can go back where you came from if they bother you so much. Nobody is asking you to lose your identity. But you need to acclimate.
To me, there is nothing like contact with the others to open your mind, get a grip and progress. Matters are not helped by the Spanish media, which for the most part seems intent on feeding recent immigrants a diet of retarded and mind wasting programming. Univisión and Telemundo should have cultural and educational programming, and even English classes on TV. If they were worth watching, Latinos would still tune in, because culture is so much more than language.
I have hope in the second generation children, young American Latinos who bridge the gap gracefully without losing their Latino bearings. I know many people like this, smart, educated, ecumenical, and deeply fortunate to have an extra culture, an extra language, and fabulous food. However, these Latinos are absent from the media and entertainment. They are absent from the public eye. All you see is gardeners and illegals and housekeepers and gang members, both in the news and in entertainment.
I am not even going to go into, "but look at all the successful Latinos like Soledad O'Brien and Sonia Sotomayor and that crazy Costa Rican astronaut and Eva Longoria". It is offensive we have to remind people that the majority of Latinos are successful, well adjusted, interesting Americans. Like everybody else.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Hispanic Advertising Awards
Report from Miami:
The level of the winners of the AHAA Ad Age Hispanic Awards this year was consistently high and most of them displayed sophisticated, rigorous creative thinking. None of the ads seemed silly or half baked, which has been the case with some entries in previous years. Quite the contrary, the respect afforded to language and craftsmanship, to thorough creative thinking and quality executions is very encouraging. All of the winners seem to belong in the same range of quality. Moreover, most of the winners are based on actual Hispanic insight. They pass the test of "why is this Hispanic?" with flying colors. This is very good news. It shows that our niche market certainly has room for a high level of creative excellence that still delivers on our cultural nuance.
There were two Best of Shows (which as someone pointed out, is sort of oxymoronic). One was the campaign by Lápiz for Pepto Bismol, a wry take on the foods you love that hurt you (a Spanish pun on hurting both your stomach and your feelings). They are funny and insightful, but talking to Lawrence Klinger, Lápiz's Chief Creative Officer, I mentioned that cheesecake is not necessarily hard on the stomach. He concurred and told me that there will be more challenging foods in the next iterations of the campaign. This is a campaign that could easily play in any Spanish speaking country; even in any country where people love to eat heavy, demanding foods.
It's always good to see women on the stage, and I don't mean the models who give out the prizes and who still, in the dawn of the 21st Century, get whistles from our boys in the audience. I mean female creatives. The fact that an openly gay creative director also gets whistled at really gives one pause. Perhaps we can leave that sort of atavistic, puerile machismo behind? Some day?
Remember Little Lulu's friend Toby who would not let girls into his treehouse? This problem is rampant in advertising in general. And the Hispanic agencies are no exception. We need to see more mixed creative teams which are not "El Club de Toby", like the Lápiz winning team.
The other Best of Show winner was a single ad by Latinworks, for the Cine Las Américas film festival, a hilarious use of real footage of President Menem of Argentina giving a bizarre speech about Argentinian spaceships. The tagline: "if this is our reality, just imagine our movies". The campaign includes other surreal executions like Hugo Chávez talking about getting coca leaves from Evo Morales. It is smart and simple and brilliant.
My other favorites were Adrenalina's wonderful spots for Tecate, which are the strategy come to life but with great casting, excellent direction and a smart, infectious sense of humor. The Mexican parents of a young guy read him the riot act about his drinking bad light beer, instead of Tecate. I particularly liked how Adrenalina integrated radio into the campaign. They could have lifted the dialogue from the TV spots but they created a hilarious ad with a long funny disclaimer about who is not to drink Tecate. Very macho, but that's the beer drinking target. My feeling was that this campaign was flawlessly executed and right on strategy and was a strong contender for Best of Show, but my hunch is that it was too Mexican. Lately, a lot of the best creative seems directed to (and acted by people who look like) the people who come up with it, rather than the actual consumers. Thus, the Tecate campaign has merit for being right on target and still being creative and funny. After the controversial DDB Brazil WWF fake ad, it behooves agencies and award shows alike to take a hard look at creative pieces and make sure they are intended to work in the real world, not just to win awards.
My feeling however, is that there were no "truchos" among the winners this year. The work felt refreshingly honest.
Another great campaign was Grupo Gallegos' campaign for Latin Cable Comcast. It's a very clever spin on preferring to watch TV in language rather than with subtitles. It demonstrates the superiority of in language communications simply and hilariously and it found an ingenious way of translating the very visual concept into radio.
I also liked The Vidal Partnership NFL ad where a guy asks what's a yard and his friend responds with a poem to the game and then shows him with his hands the actual length. Again, it shows Hispanic insight in a clever, creative way.
I will say one thing that drives me crazy: when agencies win CREATIVE awards and instead of sending their creative teams to the show, they send some account executive who has no business being on that stage. It takes the creatives of such agencies blood, sweat and tears to come up with those spots, let alone sell them through the line, and convince the agency to spring the money to enter award shows. They deserve respect and recognition from their creative peers.
As the winners celebrated, I thought that Hispanic agencies (at least the ones who win awards) have come a long way. Yet after over 16 years of working in this market I find it amazing that we still have many hurdles to overcome when convincing clients to advertise to Hispanics. It's as if the agencies have grown creatively in leaps and bounds, yet many clients are still taking baby steps. No matter how much marketing research belies the Latino spending power, many clients are still wary of putting their marketing dollars into Hispanic efforts. These days, the appalling anti-immigration rhetoric is not helping our cause, which is all the more reason to fight harder for brand solidarity and visibility. But at least it's encouraging to know that there are agencies out there doing stellar work, in spite of all the hardships.
The level of the winners of the AHAA Ad Age Hispanic Awards this year was consistently high and most of them displayed sophisticated, rigorous creative thinking. None of the ads seemed silly or half baked, which has been the case with some entries in previous years. Quite the contrary, the respect afforded to language and craftsmanship, to thorough creative thinking and quality executions is very encouraging. All of the winners seem to belong in the same range of quality. Moreover, most of the winners are based on actual Hispanic insight. They pass the test of "why is this Hispanic?" with flying colors. This is very good news. It shows that our niche market certainly has room for a high level of creative excellence that still delivers on our cultural nuance.
There were two Best of Shows (which as someone pointed out, is sort of oxymoronic). One was the campaign by Lápiz for Pepto Bismol, a wry take on the foods you love that hurt you (a Spanish pun on hurting both your stomach and your feelings). They are funny and insightful, but talking to Lawrence Klinger, Lápiz's Chief Creative Officer, I mentioned that cheesecake is not necessarily hard on the stomach. He concurred and told me that there will be more challenging foods in the next iterations of the campaign. This is a campaign that could easily play in any Spanish speaking country; even in any country where people love to eat heavy, demanding foods.
It's always good to see women on the stage, and I don't mean the models who give out the prizes and who still, in the dawn of the 21st Century, get whistles from our boys in the audience. I mean female creatives. The fact that an openly gay creative director also gets whistled at really gives one pause. Perhaps we can leave that sort of atavistic, puerile machismo behind? Some day?
Remember Little Lulu's friend Toby who would not let girls into his treehouse? This problem is rampant in advertising in general. And the Hispanic agencies are no exception. We need to see more mixed creative teams which are not "El Club de Toby", like the Lápiz winning team.
The other Best of Show winner was a single ad by Latinworks, for the Cine Las Américas film festival, a hilarious use of real footage of President Menem of Argentina giving a bizarre speech about Argentinian spaceships. The tagline: "if this is our reality, just imagine our movies". The campaign includes other surreal executions like Hugo Chávez talking about getting coca leaves from Evo Morales. It is smart and simple and brilliant.
My other favorites were Adrenalina's wonderful spots for Tecate, which are the strategy come to life but with great casting, excellent direction and a smart, infectious sense of humor. The Mexican parents of a young guy read him the riot act about his drinking bad light beer, instead of Tecate. I particularly liked how Adrenalina integrated radio into the campaign. They could have lifted the dialogue from the TV spots but they created a hilarious ad with a long funny disclaimer about who is not to drink Tecate. Very macho, but that's the beer drinking target. My feeling was that this campaign was flawlessly executed and right on strategy and was a strong contender for Best of Show, but my hunch is that it was too Mexican. Lately, a lot of the best creative seems directed to (and acted by people who look like) the people who come up with it, rather than the actual consumers. Thus, the Tecate campaign has merit for being right on target and still being creative and funny. After the controversial DDB Brazil WWF fake ad, it behooves agencies and award shows alike to take a hard look at creative pieces and make sure they are intended to work in the real world, not just to win awards.
My feeling however, is that there were no "truchos" among the winners this year. The work felt refreshingly honest.
Another great campaign was Grupo Gallegos' campaign for Latin Cable Comcast. It's a very clever spin on preferring to watch TV in language rather than with subtitles. It demonstrates the superiority of in language communications simply and hilariously and it found an ingenious way of translating the very visual concept into radio.
I also liked The Vidal Partnership NFL ad where a guy asks what's a yard and his friend responds with a poem to the game and then shows him with his hands the actual length. Again, it shows Hispanic insight in a clever, creative way.
I will say one thing that drives me crazy: when agencies win CREATIVE awards and instead of sending their creative teams to the show, they send some account executive who has no business being on that stage. It takes the creatives of such agencies blood, sweat and tears to come up with those spots, let alone sell them through the line, and convince the agency to spring the money to enter award shows. They deserve respect and recognition from their creative peers.
As the winners celebrated, I thought that Hispanic agencies (at least the ones who win awards) have come a long way. Yet after over 16 years of working in this market I find it amazing that we still have many hurdles to overcome when convincing clients to advertise to Hispanics. It's as if the agencies have grown creatively in leaps and bounds, yet many clients are still taking baby steps. No matter how much marketing research belies the Latino spending power, many clients are still wary of putting their marketing dollars into Hispanic efforts. These days, the appalling anti-immigration rhetoric is not helping our cause, which is all the more reason to fight harder for brand solidarity and visibility. But at least it's encouraging to know that there are agencies out there doing stellar work, in spite of all the hardships.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Miami Bitch
Just spent three nights in Miami, attending a Hispanic advertising conference.
Here are some generalized impressions about Miami.
There are a lot of new empty high rises.
There are a lot of very tacky people, with extremely tacky tastes.
People like and wear logos around here. They haven't gotten the memo.
It's a superficial and uninteresting version of LA, when LA was a cultural wasteland.
It's humid.
Every hotel thinks the swimming pool should be a disco, regardless of the wishes or opinions of the guests. This being Miami, the playlists seem to be chosen by committees of vulgarian technopop sadists. This idiotic dj-ing at the pool drove me crazy, and for this reason alone I consign Miami to its own circle of hell.
Another curious idiocy are the check in and out times (at least in my hotel). Check in is at 4 pm, which means, if you took a morning flight, you are to wander around without a room for most of the day. And checkout, get this, is at a prompt 11 am. For a town where tourists party (since there's nothing else to do), this is absurd.
Miami is an outpost of Latin America without the charm. There is absolutely no need to conduct yourself in English.
The beach is nice, the sea is warm, but there is garbage on the beach. Now, when I get into the sea I wonder if the fishies are swallowing my SPF 500. We really are gross, us humans.
But they do have a branch of Paul, the famous French boulangerie. And we don't.
And they have the only airport in this country where you can eat actual food (Cuban and delicious).
Here are some generalized impressions about Miami.
There are a lot of new empty high rises.
There are a lot of very tacky people, with extremely tacky tastes.
People like and wear logos around here. They haven't gotten the memo.
It's a superficial and uninteresting version of LA, when LA was a cultural wasteland.
It's humid.
Every hotel thinks the swimming pool should be a disco, regardless of the wishes or opinions of the guests. This being Miami, the playlists seem to be chosen by committees of vulgarian technopop sadists. This idiotic dj-ing at the pool drove me crazy, and for this reason alone I consign Miami to its own circle of hell.
Another curious idiocy are the check in and out times (at least in my hotel). Check in is at 4 pm, which means, if you took a morning flight, you are to wander around without a room for most of the day. And checkout, get this, is at a prompt 11 am. For a town where tourists party (since there's nothing else to do), this is absurd.
Miami is an outpost of Latin America without the charm. There is absolutely no need to conduct yourself in English.
The beach is nice, the sea is warm, but there is garbage on the beach. Now, when I get into the sea I wonder if the fishies are swallowing my SPF 500. We really are gross, us humans.
But they do have a branch of Paul, the famous French boulangerie. And we don't.
And they have the only airport in this country where you can eat actual food (Cuban and delicious).
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Latin American Looney Tunes
1.
Reading the New York Times the other day, I learned that there had been an Argentina-Brazil soccer match to qualify for the World Cup. Brazil won 3-1. They had footage of the goals, so I watched. All of a sudden I see a stonefaced Diego Maradona in the sidelines. And I'm thinking, what's he doing there? Is he the official mascot of the Argentinean team? Turns out he's the coach! This to me is in a nutshell a perfect example of the utter incapacity of our Latin American countries to get with the program.
Maradona was a gifted player and an even more gifted major, world class, fuck up. Who in his right mind would think that this guy is fit to be the coach of the national soccer team? Only a people rooted in self-mythologizing, which is what our countries do best. Getting a grip on practical matters is a different story. The result bears me out. Argentina, one of the greatest teams in the world and multiple World Champion, is apparently not going to the World Cup. Serves them right. Idiots.
2. The New York Times, instead of reporting on the increasingly scary water shortages in Mexico City, decides to do a piece on how Mexico is becoming a record holder for sundry imbecilities in the Guiness Book of World Records. They have made the biggest meatball, and the biggest torta, the most couples kissing on Valentine's Day, had the world's largest fat man (who lost 500 lbs and now wants to be the guy who lost the most weight), and the biggest cheesecake. And some genius in the article claims that Mexico wants to be "world class". Well how about instead of giant cheesecakes, start coming up with better policies, better education, a higher standard of living, and a law abiding state that is not rotten with corruption and cynicism? Geez!
3. From Mexico to poor Oliver Stone and his paean to lefty Latin American governments, his new film South of the Border. The Venezuelans who oppose Chavez are furious with Stone for rendering Chavez as a hero (which he is, let me remind you, mostly to those who happen to be piss poor, which happen to be the majority of people in Venezuela). The Chavez haters claim Stone got paid for making this piece of commie agitprop. I don't think he was paid. He has always been sympathetic to lefty causes in Latin America (remember Salvador?). His entire career is a provocation against American power and influence: Wall Street, Salvador, Born on the fourth of July, Platoon, JFK... Didn't he shoot a glowing documentary about Fidel a few years back, which by the way, no one ever saw stateside? With all due respect, people who don't like Chavez and Evo and Lula, etc, should understand that if these lefties are in power, 1) this is a direct consequence of benighted American foreign policy in the region. And 2) Stone is not being paid or coerced or brainwashed. He is entitled to his sympathies, whether one thinks they are misguided or not.
Reading the New York Times the other day, I learned that there had been an Argentina-Brazil soccer match to qualify for the World Cup. Brazil won 3-1. They had footage of the goals, so I watched. All of a sudden I see a stonefaced Diego Maradona in the sidelines. And I'm thinking, what's he doing there? Is he the official mascot of the Argentinean team? Turns out he's the coach! This to me is in a nutshell a perfect example of the utter incapacity of our Latin American countries to get with the program.
Maradona was a gifted player and an even more gifted major, world class, fuck up. Who in his right mind would think that this guy is fit to be the coach of the national soccer team? Only a people rooted in self-mythologizing, which is what our countries do best. Getting a grip on practical matters is a different story. The result bears me out. Argentina, one of the greatest teams in the world and multiple World Champion, is apparently not going to the World Cup. Serves them right. Idiots.
2. The New York Times, instead of reporting on the increasingly scary water shortages in Mexico City, decides to do a piece on how Mexico is becoming a record holder for sundry imbecilities in the Guiness Book of World Records. They have made the biggest meatball, and the biggest torta, the most couples kissing on Valentine's Day, had the world's largest fat man (who lost 500 lbs and now wants to be the guy who lost the most weight), and the biggest cheesecake. And some genius in the article claims that Mexico wants to be "world class". Well how about instead of giant cheesecakes, start coming up with better policies, better education, a higher standard of living, and a law abiding state that is not rotten with corruption and cynicism? Geez!
3. From Mexico to poor Oliver Stone and his paean to lefty Latin American governments, his new film South of the Border. The Venezuelans who oppose Chavez are furious with Stone for rendering Chavez as a hero (which he is, let me remind you, mostly to those who happen to be piss poor, which happen to be the majority of people in Venezuela). The Chavez haters claim Stone got paid for making this piece of commie agitprop. I don't think he was paid. He has always been sympathetic to lefty causes in Latin America (remember Salvador?). His entire career is a provocation against American power and influence: Wall Street, Salvador, Born on the fourth of July, Platoon, JFK... Didn't he shoot a glowing documentary about Fidel a few years back, which by the way, no one ever saw stateside? With all due respect, people who don't like Chavez and Evo and Lula, etc, should understand that if these lefties are in power, 1) this is a direct consequence of benighted American foreign policy in the region. And 2) Stone is not being paid or coerced or brainwashed. He is entitled to his sympathies, whether one thinks they are misguided or not.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Hispanics are from Mars, everyone else is from Earth.
I have had it with the lack of respect, willful ignorance and condescension with which Hispanics are treated by the mainstream media in this country. To be fair, I think other minorities suffer that fate too, like Asians, who are even more ignored. But to watch the NBC segment about Hispanics in America was to cringe, and fluster in frustration at the stupidity, and the disrespect. As if Hispanics are only here to furnish the gringos with spicy food and a sense of rhythm. The reporter was astounded that Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem have won Oscars! That the guy who wrote the music for Brokeback Mountain is Hispanic (well, so was the director of photography, if you must know).
As Laura Martinez points out, where's the mention of writers, scientists, judges, politicians? Los fucking Angeles has a Hispanic mayor. But here's this putz marvelling over cafe con leche and Gloria Estefán (remember her from like 30 years ago?).
NBC should apologize to Hispanics and to me for making my blood boil.
As Laura Martinez points out, where's the mention of writers, scientists, judges, politicians? Los fucking Angeles has a Hispanic mayor. But here's this putz marvelling over cafe con leche and Gloria Estefán (remember her from like 30 years ago?).
NBC should apologize to Hispanics and to me for making my blood boil.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Latinos in fear
Today I heard something so appalling, I could scarcely believe it. I heard a Latino say that many Latinos are afraid of an Obama victory because that would displace them as the priority minority, meaning I suppose that since Obama is Black, he is just going to care about his homies, beaners be damned.
This is so stupid and racist and childish, I can't even begin to process it.
Most Spanish speaking countries have traditionally been extremely racist towards their own darker citizens. There was slavery in the Spanish colonies. There were castes. The Spanish conquistadors were not exactly paragons of human tolerance. Their racist attitudes have endured, now defanged and civilized but still insidious and learned from the bosom, to this day.
1. I really resent that victimized "look at me, I need to be marginal minority number one" mentality.
As if it were a contest.
2. It is a sad reality that even the downtrodden like to find someone they can feel superior to. Usually someone darker or poorer than them. Cf. Dominicans vs Haitians, for instance. And in the case of many Latinos, Brown vs. Black.
2. The fact that Obama is Black colors everything, so to speak. Not that he is an extremely capable, extremely smart, extremely presidential MAN. etc. But that he is Black. People just can't get past this.
Think of all the problems this man is going to have to deal with if he becomes president, and Latinos are worried he's just going to cater to his own. How petty and provincial and pathetic.
What really annoys me is the appalling lack of solidarity of such a statement.
I am well aware of the tensions between the Black and the Latino communities. But one would think that Latinos could identify with a man who rose from the bottom, whose father was a foreigner, who belongs to a minority like them.
But what do I know?
This is so stupid and racist and childish, I can't even begin to process it.
Most Spanish speaking countries have traditionally been extremely racist towards their own darker citizens. There was slavery in the Spanish colonies. There were castes. The Spanish conquistadors were not exactly paragons of human tolerance. Their racist attitudes have endured, now defanged and civilized but still insidious and learned from the bosom, to this day.
1. I really resent that victimized "look at me, I need to be marginal minority number one" mentality.
As if it were a contest.
2. It is a sad reality that even the downtrodden like to find someone they can feel superior to. Usually someone darker or poorer than them. Cf. Dominicans vs Haitians, for instance. And in the case of many Latinos, Brown vs. Black.
2. The fact that Obama is Black colors everything, so to speak. Not that he is an extremely capable, extremely smart, extremely presidential MAN. etc. But that he is Black. People just can't get past this.
Think of all the problems this man is going to have to deal with if he becomes president, and Latinos are worried he's just going to cater to his own. How petty and provincial and pathetic.
What really annoys me is the appalling lack of solidarity of such a statement.
I am well aware of the tensions between the Black and the Latino communities. But one would think that Latinos could identify with a man who rose from the bottom, whose father was a foreigner, who belongs to a minority like them.
But what do I know?
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Counterfeit Argentine Pesos
A freaking fake.I feel violated. I exchanged $140 at the money exchange booth inside the Buenos Aires Airport. It turns out that they gave me some counterfeit bills! I have about $250 worthless Argentinian pesos.
This is the first time this ever happens to me. I tried to pay for a beer and a cappuccino and the waiter would not accept my bill. It turned out that all of them were just paper. One really feels like a schmuck when this happens, but it's not that I changed the money with a cabdriver. I did it at an official exchange place. If you look at the bills, indeed they are kinda funky, but it's not that easy to tell if you don't know how local money should feel to the touch. They even have a fake watermark which also gives them away.
What to do?
The police will probably think I faked them. If I ever succeed in getting through to them it will probably be more trouble than it's worth.
My feeling is get a baseball bat and bash the head in (flying shards of shattered glass included) of the c__t that gave them to me. I'm pretty sure she knew what she was doing, although she seemed the nicest. Still, she asked me if I didn't want to change 40 bucks more to get a better exchange rate.
I do not appreciate being a sucker.
Most probably, when it's my turn to fly out I will go back to that dump and raise a little hell, just to feel slightly vindicated.
With all due respect, what kind of godforsaken, piss-ant dump is this that there are so many counterfeit bills floating around?
Cabdrivers will not accept money that has a little tear, nobody ever has change and then you get swindled in official places. Not good for the P.R., okay?
One of my colleagues got his counterfeit bill from an ATM machine in a bank!
So, cautionary tale: if you still insist on coming here, make sure you take a good look at the bills even if they come from a cash machine (in which case u r fucked) or from reputable looking institutions. Do not change your money at Global Exchange in the airport. You should behave like freaking Sherlock Holmes from Scotland Yard when confronted with any paper money. Have fun!
I will keep you posted.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Another Dispatch from Surrealiland
Certain things can only happen in Latin American countries. To wit:
Venezuelan TV has taken The Simpsons off the air because it considers it not suitable for children. (They were showing it in the morning, like a regular cartoon for kids). Now they are going to show it at a later time slot. Okay, so they didn't get the memo about how The Simpsons is not technically a kiddie show, although frankly, there is nothing in it that wouldn't make a kid smarter.
So what do they replace it with that is wholesome, educational and perfectly suitable for children? Baywatch. BAYWATCH.
Really, words fail me. But such is life in the tropics.
Venezuelan TV has taken The Simpsons off the air because it considers it not suitable for children. (They were showing it in the morning, like a regular cartoon for kids). Now they are going to show it at a later time slot. Okay, so they didn't get the memo about how The Simpsons is not technically a kiddie show, although frankly, there is nothing in it that wouldn't make a kid smarter.
So what do they replace it with that is wholesome, educational and perfectly suitable for children? Baywatch. BAYWATCH.
Really, words fail me. But such is life in the tropics.
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