By PAOLA MARÍN & GASTÓN A. ALZATE
Editors of KARPA
Cabaret is a genre well known for its playfulness, irony, ambiguity, and parody. Furthermore, cabaret has been and continues to be a tool through which artists express poignant criticism of their societies. Mexican cabaret has a rich tradition of such dissident expression. Due to its intimate connection to current affairs and its link to a strong theatrical tradition, Mexican cabaret can be used as an open map of knowledge for understanding the links between sexual and political ideologies in contemporary Mexico. In this paper we analyze cabaret as a quintessential urban production, characterized by fragmentation and improvising and with the potential of carrying out a radical analysis of the official symbolic order. In doing so, cabaret often becomes a social force that produces critical knowledge in an urban setting. In fact, in present day Mexico City cabaret has emerged as part of the globalized displacement of forms of knowledge. The oral and visual order, traditionally subordinated under the writing system, is suffering a constant deterioration in present times. This phenomenon originated in the new models of knowledge and texts that emerge through a new transnational arena and new technologies, especially computers and the Internet (Case 2003). This process has rationalized the market as the main organized principle of symbolic production (Martín-Barbero 2003). While cabaret artists may be critical of such order, their popularity is certainly related to the displacement of formal/canonical theater and connected to the search for cultural manifestations more closely reflective of the post-modern realities of their audience.
It is possible to see a connection between cabaret and melodramas (particularly soap-operas) because melodramas in Latin America go back to the forms and styles of traditional entertainment, such as popular fairs and oral storytelling (Martin Barbero 1993). These traditions are also at the origins of Mexican cabaret. Hermann Herlinghaus states that specifically melodramatic narrations of ordinary life constitute anachronistic and alternative forms of modernity (2002), therefore providing the possibility to study cabaret from the point of view of melodramas. Nevertheless, Mexican cabaret is quite different from soap operas because it presents an open challenge to traditional gender roles and conservative politics. While several contemporary Mexican soap operas offer a critique of political corruption and a few even include a gay character in a supporting role, they still tend to reinforce the traditional heterosexual couple as societal role model. This is quite different from several cabaret artists who either explicitly or implicitly manner their dramatic narrations to worldwide political movements such as gay and lesbian rights, indigenous rights, and women’s rights, to name a few. For this reason, we consider Mexican cabaret to be related more to deterritorialization and not to melodrama. Though contemporary use of the term deterritorialization may have its origin in French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, particularly in their Anti-Oedipus (1972), here we refer to Nestor García Canclini’s redefinition of deterritorialization as the process of the loss of ‘natural’ relation of culture to geographical and social territories (Hybrid Cultures). By the end of this article, we will have shown that today’s Mexican cabaret is a decentralized means of critical awareness that flows outside and inside the culture’s official web of information and education. Mexican cabaret puts itself in a unique position by mixing entertainment and analytical knowledge while remaining part of the deterritorialized, fragmented experience of contemporary Mexican culture. Contrary to most Latin American postmodern entertainment productions, cabaret has emerged as an urban cultural manifestation operating almost entirely beyond the realm of technology.
In order to illustrate the role cabaret plays in creating unorthodox dramatic text in Mexican culture, we will focus on five well-known Mexican cabaret artists whose work we consider to be challenging to the mainstream of sexual representation and political agendas. Astrid Hadad, Paquita “la del Barrio,” Tito Vasconcelos, Jesusa Rodríguez, and Francisco García Escalante, known as “Francis,”(*) are five artists whose cabarets offer a humorous and flexible space for the expression of sociopolitical and sexual dissidences.
Whereas Hadad and Rodríguez are openly lesbian, and Vasconcelos and Rodríguez are very active in promoting Lesbian and Gay agendas, Paquita and Francis are critical of gender-based discrimination in a more individual and subjective manner. Despite their varying degrees of explicit or implicit radicalism, all five artists unveil the connections between compulsory heterosexism and political control in Mexican culture. At times their manner is mocking, while at other times they explore elements traditionally repressed by patriarchal culture; sometimes they even reproduce the very elements they wish to dispel (especially Francis).
Another purpose of this article is to examine elements of Mexican popular culture with respect to contemporary artistic intentions. Although current Critical Theory has used the term hypertext in relation to the cyberspace and Internet culture, we use hyper dramatic text here to better define the open structure of cabaret: fragmented sketches that flow around a general topic without sharing necessarily a explicit unity. As part of a hypertext narrative, Mexican cabaret is a crossroads of many cultural levels, texts and genres, in which different cabaret sketches conform a decentralized mosaic of the culture. Whereas Francis and Paquita are self-made popular artists with no interest in belonging to the Fine Arts category, Hadad, Vasconcelos and Rodríguez have studied drama and often elaborate upon their shows by playing with elements from the Western canon. We are specifically interested in how Francis and Paquita are creating a personal fissure within mainstream neo-liberal popular culture. By creating new lyrics for the well-known Canción Ranchera, Paquita’s performances challenge the perception that Mexican women are passive and submissive. She also confronts the omnipotent attitude of Mexican men. In Francis’ show, she uses her position as a transvestite cabaret artist to challenge the contradiction between male “public” homophobia and “private” Mexican homosexuality. Additionally, we want to discuss how Hadad, Vasconcelos, and Rodríguez work is a reaction to an inflexible understanding of life, and to the denial of Mexico’s diversity by the political and social elite, which characterize much of the city’s commercial theater.
Even though not all cabaret artists analyzed in this article are queer or sexually dissident (Paquita is a heterosexual singer), it is certain that all five challenge patriarchal Mexican culture, some in very explicit ways. Though they have all undergone a process of struggle and emergence in the last twenty years they have nevertheless been legitimized by the globalized Mexican entertainment market. Both Paquita and Francis have been invited to participate in soap operas and perform on television, though popular comedy shows mock them for either their public homosexuality (Francis) or their low-class, non-glamorous style (Paquita). We consider these artists to be part of a deviation or perversion of the sexual norm because they challenge predominant conceptions of gender and sexuality. Perversion is used here in the sense given to it by Teresa de Lauretis, who called it a “perverse desire.” In De Lauretis’ The Practice of Love: Lesbian Sexuality and Perverse Desire, the term “perverse desire” was created largely due to a reconsideration of the construction of lesbian desire through a revisit to Freud, Laplanche and Lacan. Nevertheless, this reconsideration broadens our understanding of all kinds of sexualities. As part of a post-structuralist movement of the 1990s Queer Theory gives the idea that identities are not fixed and do not determine who we are. In this way queerness suggests that it is meaningless to talk in general about “lesbians,’ “gays,” “women,” or any other gender group, because subjectivities consist of many and complex cultural factors. This is why sexualities (normative or perverse) belonging to cultures supposedly located outside of the dominant economic sectors of the Western World are especially appropriate for analysis by queer theory. In consequence, queerness can exist as a subset of gay and lesbian cultures but need not be exclusively related to them (Doty). As David W. Foster asserts: “The so-called gay sensibility and its lesbian counterpart are necessarily queer (although lesbians and gays may in some contexts endorse the straight), but queerness is something larger than gayness and lesbianism.” (1997) Consequently, in this research queerness is not just a synonym for gay and lesbian subalternities, because in this case cabaret performances impact and attract more than the gay or queer sector of Mexican society. The queerness, and queering they produce within the dramatic text of Mexican culture, is their deviation or perversion of the sexual norm as part of the deterritorialization and fragmentation such culture experiences today.
There are two basic contexts that provide grounds for understanding contemporary performance shows in Mexico City. One is the theatrical tradition in which the artists we analyze are immersed, Teatro de Revista (Musical Review Theater), and Teatro de carpa (literally Tent Theater; similar to Street Theater). The second is the current atmosphere in Mexico regarding manifestations of resistance, discrimination and democratization in the political arena. Marginality, be it social, sexual, political, or economic, has found modes of cultural expression throughout the history of Mexico. The city has always had grand neighborhood festivities, family parties, dance clubs, cabarets, innumerous cantinas and especially splendid theaters. While Mexican cabaret goes back to the nineteenth century, it is only until the beginning of the twentieth century that Teatro de Revista, Teatro de Carpa, and Mexican-made films helped bringing together Mexicans from all social classes (Monsiváis 1999). The modern imaginary of the city began at that moment, the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema (1930-40), and specifically with the carpa. It is not coincidental that this is also a historical moment many performance artists try to recover. Although cabaret and Teatro de carpa are not uniquely Mexican, the circumstances as to how the Mexican carpa became a scenic space in which circus and frivolous theater were mixed are very particular to Mexico. The carpa was the marginal theater of the musical Revista of the twenties and thirties. In the same way it was the crucible where many artists who later went on to work in the Teatro de Revista and in the movies perfected their craft. These artists portrayed average Joes who had mastered the ability to play with words. Such is the case of Cantinflas; a famous carpa actor who overwhelmed audiences with long monologues that, while appearing educated, meant nothing (Pilcher). These characters depicted a very important subversive element typical of the carpa: because they were marginalized by the urban dynamics, they made fun of urban institutions and urbanites (Merlin). The carpa allowed Cantinflas and others like him to have theatrical space for cultural symbols of the low-classes and social outsiders: the leper, the bald/skinny/fat man, the provincial/illiterate country man, the diva, the prostitute, the drunkard, the stoner, all characters which spawned popular figures with similar exaggerated characteristics such as the well known Palillo, Tin Tan, Pedro Infante, or Ninón Sevilla.
Today, cabaret performance artists are developing multiform cultural productions in private owned or rented spaces that do not require governmental support. In this sense, they are all continuing a tradition. From the writings of Sor Juana to the present, theater as an art that relates to the present shows a strong conflict between a hegemonic society and the many subaltern segments of a population. Regarding women in Mexico, Jean Franco calls this conflict “the struggle for the power of interpretation" (Franco 1989, 87), which implies one's own rights need not be interpreted by anyone else. We can refer to this struggle for one’s right to self-interpretation by asking the fundamental question of Gayatri Spivak concerning the struggle for the voice ("Can the subaltern speak?"). Our research interprets this struggle for a voice as a struggle for a body, in other words, as a struggle for a less repressive social construction of the sexual self.
ASTRID HADAD
Astrid Hadad in Homenaje a mí misma (2007). Foto de G. Alzate
In Astrid Hadad’s cabaret work, one can see how her performances are specifically related to the Diva figure of the 1940s Mexican cabaret and Musical Review Theaters. Hadad recovers the autonomous space of the Diva as a resistant theatrical space. The Diva was a model for all classes as they broke with conventions and found spaces for behaviors and ways of being that were previously inconceivable for women in Mexico (Constantino 1995). Hadad also is interested in combining these elements with a bellicose contact with the public. Instead of merely recreating the autonomous space of these Mexican women, Hadad intended to take the Diva figure on a new historical step toward non-masculine or anti-straight space. Her performances do, however, reflect a desire to recover historical lesbian singers such as Lucha Reyes. One could say that it was through the life of Reyes that Hadad found the most characteristic ingredients for her performances: the dramatization of the lyrics, a tough voice, an aggressive attitude toward the audience, and wearing Mexican national symbols on stage. Reyes liked to scandalize the public by incorporating Mexican symbols such as nopales or the Mexican Eagle into her outfit. Hadad has tried to maintain a cantina-like environment by promoting the ranchero aspects of the show, which include the rude manner in which she sings and interacts with the public.
One of the purposes of Hadad’s cultural representations is to overwhelm the audience with her artistic splendor. This baroque element comes from different traditional Mexican spheres such as religious icons, kitsch popular culture, and Musical Review Theatre. These components are based on sensuality, carnality, and the pleasures of musical and visual aesthetics. The necessity of these components is closely related to the desire of the artist to define her body as the show or the performance itself. One’s perception of their body, however, is dependant upon his or her social and historical experience. Her cabaret looks for another rationale and a different combination of cultural elements that will create a contrasting order of knowledge, as did the baroque style in the 16th and 17th centuries. As an example, in 1992 she based her show La monja coronada on the visual iconography of colonial nuns. In the video performance Corazón Sangrante there is a segment in which Hadad appears as a sleeping Coatlicue, the goddess of all gods for Aztec culture. During her sleep, her body becomes Ixtacciuatl, the sleepy woman (also one of the volcanoes that surrounded Mexico City), and she then wakes up as the Virgin. The syncretism of her multiple costumes and habits allows Hadad to play with the hegemonic proposals that began during colonial times concerning women’s bodies. At the same time the lyrics of the song correspond to a heartbroken woman who laments her abandonment and mistreatment by her man. This abandonment and mistreatment extends to include all the feminine aspects of Mexican history since the so-called “Discovery.” All these meanings are implicit in the humorous and clever scene where Coatlicue becomes the Virgen de Guadalupe. These religious icons are, for Hadad, the foundations of the multifaceted identity of the Mexican people. They contain both regressive and progressive elements. Hadad makes these progressive elements more explicit and visible. Pecadora (2001) is a delightful example of this transformation of the non-progressive elements into something more healthy and liberating for Mexican women. Hadad knows that she performs within a Catholic culture, in which the division between religious and mainstream cultural icons is virtually nonexistent; they are one and the same. For this reason, Hadad uses a theatrical strategy of visibility that summarizes both the social construction of women, and the religious construction of saints, Jesus Christ, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and other Catholic icons. She resemantizes these hysterical and residual emblems from a progressive perspective. Paradoxically, by playing around with cultural icons Hadad also shows how she belongs to them, how to respect them, how to be part of them and, at the same time, how to resist the patriarchal ideology implicit in them.
Hadad not only wants to offer the baroque style to her audience as a mix of indigenous and Hispanic heritages, but also as a contemporary mestizaje (myscegenation). In her show La Cuchilla (2003) Hadad mixes Ranchera songs with boleros, tangos, rumbas and Cuban sones. It is a hyper dramatic text of multiple musical periods and genres that are updated and resemanticized on her body. It is also a style that does not pretend to delve deeply into false dualism, such as the dualisms of rural culture versus urban culture or modern culture versus indigenous culture. In fact this is a dualism clearly maintained by the neo-liberal market approach. She may incorporate references to current political affairs in dressing for her performances, such as a hat with a Mexican eagle with the face of Salinas being screwed by the American eagle with the face of Clinton. (La multimamada, 1996) Not surprisingly, in the same show she also portrays Mexico as a woman’s body being abused by its politicians. Hadad offered a similar dynamic with Bush, Blair and former president Aznar at the Forum Barcelona (2004).
In the same way that there was a resemantization of the European Christian icons in Latin American Baroque, Hadad’s performances queer the traditional and contemporary emblems and icons of Mexican culture. Through the use of mystical and profane elements, Hadad’s cabaret shows the history of her lesbian body, the history of a multiple, diverse, and fragmented self, in other words, the history of Mexico.
PAQUITA LA DEL BARRIO
Cabaret de Paquita la del barrio. Junio 1998, Colonia Guerrero, D.F. Foto de G. Alzate
Francisca Viveros Barrandas, a popular singer from Veracruz, is well known for her blatantly rude on-stage performance style, which mostly includes insults and reprimands directed at men. Paquita refers to men in her lyrics as garbage: useless, cheap, ordinary, inferior, human trash. In fact, she is commonly recognized throughout Mexico for one of her most favorite sentences: ¿Me estás oyendo inútil? (Are you listening to me, good-for-nothing?) which Mexicans jokingly use in everyday conversation. Much of her popularity comes from the fact that despite her fame and riches, she remains an awkward and introverted woman seemingly unaffected by her status within Mexican popular culture. True to her humble lower-middle-class roots, Paquita is a shy woman who does not want to be a cabaret Diva like Hadad, but rather aims to be a popular ranchera singer. During performances, her appearance is that of a mature female singer who, despite her popularity as a performer, seems very uncomfortable on stage. An example of this is that she begins her show without any kind of preliminary introduction, starting right into song and usually ungracefully standing off-center on the stage.
The fact that Paquita is singing from a point of view derived from the Mexican construction of heterosexual love (which enforces woman’s position of submission and suffering) is significant because she displaces men from the center of the stage and challenges them by appropriating their role.
As an old, overweight, angry female singer, Paquita utilizes her body as the center of her text. She changes the focus of the female body on stage, which in patriarchal societies is ubiquitously the site of sexuality. The sexuality Paquita’s body proposes is, from the sophisticated point of view of Mexico City postmodern nightclubs and en vogue MTV singers, an "unattractive" sexuality. In Paquita’s case, the male desire aroused by the sight of the female body does not occur. Paquita breaks this implicit negotiation with the audience. It is obvious how this lack of patriarchal customs affects men's attitudes at her cabaret. However, while the tables in Paquita’s cabaret are filled almost exclusively by women (administrative assistants, housewives, executives, retail workers, feminist intellectuals), there are many male fans who know her lyrics by heart and sing along with her. The public, both male and female, is interested in Paquita’s lyrics as cultural representations of feelings that the mainstream culture does not express (Foster). Paquita's popularity is a consequence of the excessive male desires projected upon female performers that have created an image of unreal and submissive women who always respond to men hysterically. The unusual title of some of her songs shows not only a deconstruction of the traditional system of representation of women, but also how these songs place women on an autonomous role. Songs such as Tres veces te engañé (Three times I cheated on you), or Bórrate (Get Lost) are already part of the Mexican traditional repertoire.
Bodily difference has for century predisposed social structures by defining certain bodies as the norm, and defining those which fall outside the norm as 'Other,' with the degree of 'Otherness' being defined by the degree of deviance from the norm. As with many postmodern cultures, Latin America has created through mass media a fictional 'paradigm of humanity' into which some fit efficiently while others fit very poorly. Life outside the paradigm of humanity is likely to be characterized by loneliness and often cruelty (Clapton and Fitzgerald). This is why, although Paquita is a heterosexual singer, her cabaret is a queer dramatic production, because her audience is not entertained by the fulfillment of patriarchal desire, but rather it is the emancipation of the official version of the Mexican female body from the position of an ‘Other’ that captivates the audience. In this manner males and females alike are entrapped by Paquita’s charismatic candor. Paquita’s candid performance builds a net of codes and conventions from which women receive the cultural mechanisms to re-construct themselves as subjects. As opposed to theatrical objects, a subject exists at the intersection of cultural symbols and practices and can remold a system of signs (Case 1988).
It is important to recognize the reception phenomena in which Paquita’s performance has been produced. These phenomena help us understanding the position of a marginal cabaret within certain socio-historic transformations. If we look at the critical comments Paquita has received from the beginning, we find that there has been a consistent trend toward her legitimization. Although her artistic project was initially made for a barrio cabaret audience, after 25 years her shows have seduced the hegemonic media. Televisa and TV Azteca in Mexico, and Univisión in the USA control the aesthetics of all Latino dominant cultural productions. It is clear that there has been a transformation of Paquita’s critical discourse since her beginnings. A great part of this critical reterritorialization of her production started when Pedro Almodovar invited her to Spain in 1980. This relationship was the beginning of Paquita’s legitimatization within the broader cultural movement of the 80s and 90s from which new camp codes and aesthetics erupted in the Hispanic world. At the end of the 1980s, Almodovar’s cinematographic productions introduced references to Spanish and Latin American queer and kitsch culture that in turn changed the Latin American perception and understanding of Paquita’s cabaret.
