“Yea sure ,whatever’s trendy” seems to be the sentiment with some now a days. No scruples attached, absolutely no sense or sensitivity involved , however plenty of ignorance & strong indifference is what leads to such attitudes & eventually selling out. Carlos Mencia receives a lot of criticism for his boorish,racist, sell out brand of comedy(and very well deserved it is), while on the other hand George Lopez seems to be riding high now a days thanks to his comedic style. He somehow seems to garner more approval. But don’t be fooled, just because the sell out factor isn’t as obvious does not mean it is not present. He too loves to showcase & concentrate on ignorant stereotypical portrayals of Hispanics( especially Mexicans) that are: disrespectful, undermine our beautiful culture and are damaging our image as a people. He loves to talk about gangsters,(His famous, “I know huh?” joke) Mexicans who speak messed up English(His “Mexicans who work at Jack in the Box” joke), and lazy Mexican who’ll do anything to skip work( “Danny boy” character on his sitcom played by him)
Being a person who is in a position to be heard, he gives all this “help” to his people in a country where we are already being bombarded with an onslaught of derogatory , racists put downs and each day the anti immigrant= anti Hispanic movement grows with fierce animosity.
His entire comedy angle revolves around talking about how if your Mexican,by nature you’re: antisocial, aggressive, obsessively frugal, and basically live a ghetto lifestyle all your life. His jokes say, that we can pretend to be educated, and cultured, even interact with other cultures, but in the end our vulgar, uncouth, simply ghetto sides comes out, because this is our true nature. He talks about his family & explains their (according to him) ghetto experiences to those who don’t know the REAL Mexican culture in a way that seems to say, “just imagine all of Mexicans being this way.” Those in the audience who are Mexican , Chicano, or Hispanic & have lost true connections with their roots laugh and agree stupidly along with all those who are not Mexican & ignorantly find it amusing. He calls himself Chicano, a beautiful word, but I think some use it as their safety net. It’s convenient at times to be Chicano , because that means your not so Mexican. That’s what it seems like when people like George Lopez keep flip-flopping.
During his sitcom you’ll notice that he keeps switching between, knowing how to speak Spanish with ease, like when he wants to cuss and then being all white washed and acting like he can’t pronounce words properly in Spanish without an English accent. There’s one episode (George Lopez Show)where he exhibits this “I don’t know Spanish” attitude, he goes to a drive through and finds it exceedingly hard to comprehend the worker at the window due to his Spanish accent. His reaction is like “Huh? What is this gibberish?”, so as to augment the ignorant appearance of the Hispanic character. Also here is another very ignorant comment he made during an episode of his sitcom when he had to attend a wedding . He was afraid to reveal to his wife that he was embarrassed due to HIS lack of dancing skills. He said “It’s easy for you, you’re Cuban you got dancing in your blood. I’m Mexican, the only dance we have is around a hat .” First of all I’m tired of people being so ignorant about our culture that is a dance that important to our folklore representing the wonderful state of Jalisco,”El Jarabe Tapatio” = Jarabe meaning syrup or elixir, referring to the mixture of rhythms in this style of music & Tapatio referring to anything coming Guadalajara. I hate when the real name is totally disregarded and changed in English to “The Mexican Hat dance”. And the song for this dance is thought of as funny Mexican music, because you’ll see it played in all kinds of stereotypical media. Well George saying that he can’t dance because he’s Mexican, is just so stupid. That was such a mega super, ridiculously ignorant comment of him to make because Mexicans & Mexican Americans love, love, love to go dancing. And news flash, there are Mexican dances. There is Mexican Cumbias, La Quebradita, Banda music, Durangese style dancing, and the list goes on…..
Why talk smack on your culture and in essence yourself. Why be pseudo Latino = just Hispanic enough to be “in” for Hollywood, but not too much so as to be able to turn it off at times.
So George Lopez is getting a lot of attention lately with his new talk show where he continues to contribute & be part of the problem. (The talk show has the character Chola girl, maybe following suit & drawing some “inspiration” from Jimmy Kimmel’s side kick boorish,clod Guillermo.) Seems though that might have something to do with the fact that The Tonight Show with Conan O’brien is no longer on air. I think that such a big name leaving gave other lesser shows, especially newbies a sort of confidence & So this new talk show starts to gain an “up & coming” rep.
★MeGaSuPer Chido y + 