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- <text id=91TT2406>
- <title>
- Oct. 28, 1991: Mocking the Ethnic Beast
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Oct. 28, 1991 Ollie North:"Reagan Knew Everything"
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- SHOW BUSINESS, Page 85
- Mocking the Ethnic Beast
- </hdr><body>
- <p>A sizzling young comedian draws on his roots to lampoon Latin
- stereotypes, but some Hispanics aren't laughing
- </p>
- <p>By Guy Garcia--With reporting by Patrick E. Cole/Los Angeles
- </p>
- <p> Preening for the camera in a white suit and Panama hat,
- an unctuous TV talk-show host named Agamemnon tries to prove
- his credentials as a Latin Lothario by reading letters from
- female viewers inviting him to "invade me, blockade me, dictate
- me." An amber-skinned transvestite named Manny the Fanny
- gyrates to a dance-club hit while recalling her Krazy Glue
- revenge on an unfaithful boyfriend. A punchy Peruvian ex-boxer,
- pressed to name a famous Hispanic, searches the blank canvas of
- his mind. "William Shakesperez," he intones. "He wrote Macho Do
- About Nothing and The Merchant of Venezuela."
- </p>
- <p> All these cutting Hispanic stereotypes are the inventions
- of a writer-comedian-actor who is, perhaps surprisingly,
- Hispanic himself. They are characters in the play Mambo Mouth,
- a one-man tour de force created and performed by Colombian-born
- John Leguizamo, 27. Kaleidoscopic, hilarious and politically
- very incorrect, Mambo Mouth had a successful 35-week run
- off-Broadway earlier this year and won a 1991 Obie and Outer
- Critics Circle Award. Now a one-hour TV special based on the
- show will get the first of six airings on HBO this Saturday.
- </p>
- <p> The seven sketches in Mambo Mouth (Leguizamo makes the
- transition from one to another by frenetically changing costumes
- behind a backlit scrim while loudspeakers pump out a salsa beat)
- grew from improvisations that Leguizamo based on his family and
- friends and on images culled from TV and films. "I drew on
- everything that was around me and put it together," he says. "I
- can only write something that touches me and amuses me, that I
- feel something about."
- </p>
- <p> The material is a little too close to home for many
- Hispanics, who charge that Mambo Mouth perpetuates negative,
- sexist stereotypes. A female columnist in the Village Voice
- accused Leguizamo of promoting "refried machismo" and "woman
- bashing." The actor rejects the charge. "To some Latin people,
- we're not allowed to mock ourselves," he says. "I'm supposed to
- be doing the Bill Cosby-Brady Bunch syndrome." Leguizamo
- acknowledges, however, that his unflinching portrayals of Latin
- lowlifes, louts and losers can trigger a painful catharsis.
- "Latin culture is very subliminal. There's still a lot of
- self-hate. It's underneath this mat and rug hidden in the
- basement, and it's the beast that wants to come out and chop our
- heads off. I'm letting out a lot of monsters."
- </p>
- <p> Leguizamo is, in fact, part of a wave of young minority
- comedians who use laughter to lampoon ethnic and other
- stereotypes, often at the risk of offending fellow minorities.
- Damon and Keenen Ivory Wayans have widened the parameters of
- black humor on their TV show In Living Color, enacting such
- caricatures as dogmatic homeboys, bums and effeminate book
- reviewers. Stand-up comedian Tamayo Otsuki revs up her act by
- portraying the Japanese as greedy moneybags who discipline their
- children by evoking memories of the atom bomb. Such humor,
- argues Leguizamo, is an "exorcism" rooted in the liberating
- power of self-recognition.
- </p>
- <p> In his sketch called "Crossover King," for example,
- Leguizamo satirizes Hispanics' desire to be accepted into the
- mainstream by playing a Latin who transforms himself into a
- pseudo-samurai businessman. Eyes squinting behind thick
- spectacles, Leguizamo lectures members of an imaginary Hispanic
- audience on how they too "can be Latino-free" if they just work
- hard enough at being Japanese. "Our computer graphics project
- that after only six years in the crossover program, Tito could
- become Toshino," he explains, "the quiet, well-dressed,
- manicured, well-groomed, somewhat anal-retentive overachiever
- who is ready to enter the job market at the drop of a dollar."
- The sketch takes a slapstick twist when the Crossover King,
- suffering a relapse into his Latin self, suddenly starts dancing
- and shouting Spanish phrases.
- </p>
- <p> Born in Bogota and raised in a working-class section of
- Queens, N.Y., Leguizamo discovered early that his talents could
- buy him protection from the streetwise youths who ruled the
- neighborhood. "They used to let me hang out with them because
- I would make them laugh," he recalls. After studying drama at
- New York University, Leguizamo landed some supporting roles on
- TV's Miami Vice and soon moved on to movies. In Hollywood he has
- alternated between playing mama's boys (Casualties of War,
- Hangin' with the Homeboys) and baby-faced killers (Die Hard II,
- Regarding Henry).
- </p>
- <p> Although his movie career is taking off, Leguizamo is not
- about to stop ruffling ethnic sensitivities with his comedy. He
- is hard at work on a follow-up to Mambo Mouth, a one-man show
- in which he will play six members of a half-Dominican,
- half-Colombian family who are attending a wedding. "I think it
- could be controversial," he says with an innocent smile. Its
- title: Spic-o-rama
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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