DUBMIXICO

I had been in Mexico for 6 weeks when I came across an article in ‘The News' reporting the results of a survey conducted in America on whether or not Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh should get the death sentence. Predictably, the majority of Americans believed he should. What did surprise me about the survey was that according to ‘The News': ‘it showed that 56 percent believe that those who kill for an ideological reason should be put to death'. I was dumbfounded. Hadn't any one of those Americans surveyed realized that they, too, were advocating the killing of someone for an ideological reason, i.e. the eye-for-an-eye rationale of the death penalty? And that, through a natural progression of their own logic, they themselves should be put to death for insisting on the death penalty for Timothy McVeigh?

This charming oversight by the American public was not commented upon by ‘The News', perhaps because most people here in Mexico were not surprised at all by the hypocrisy of those surveyed; they expect all Americans to be stupid. It was far more intriguing for me as an outsider, struggling with that perplexing mindbender which is the Mexican obsession with America; and the envy for it's all- devouring neighbor that is ever-present in every facet of modern Mexico. After weeks of observation, I could only confer with Freud's thesis that envy has nothing at all to do with it's object.

This was quite a volatile time to be in Mexico; everyone seemed to be looking for a way out of the rampant crime, the political corruption, the disastrous economy and the low quality of life, and the US was inevitably the focus of these not-so-latent desires. Mexico had still failed to recover much ground in the wake of the great 1994 peso crash; and the July 6 elections were fast approaching, the weeks leading up to it dragging the murky world of Mexican politics to the forefront of everyday life. Looming over Mexico City like it's national anxiety made manifest was the volcano Popocatepetl, who put the region at it's feet on yellow alert with ominous tremors and plumes of ashy smoke.

Meanwhile, over the border in the US, President Clinton was on a second-term roll, and the country was enjoying an unprecedented economic boom. Despite a ‘successful' visit to Mexico by the US President in May, the disquiet nature of relations between the two countries was evident in the front pages of every Mexican newspaper every day.
Recent newsreports described volatile clashes between the two countries, amongst them the murder of a young Mexican goatherder, shot at long-range by US Marines on the border; a high-profile trial relating to a recent incident (caught on amateur video) in which a pick-up truck full of illegal Mexican immigrants were savagely beaten by borderpatrol officers, and the imminent execution in Texas of Irineo Tristan Montoya, a Mexican taxi driver convicted of murder after signing a confession (in English) that he could not read. This was not a good time to be mistaken for an americano, which, despite being Australian, I always was.

The way a Mexican says americano is much the same as when they say gringo; the same inflection that makes the word strangely ambiguous. It is neither a compliment nor an insult; though it contains both of these things. It resounds with both admiration and contempt, jealousy and superiority. It is a very loaded word, and one best met with a vacuous smile. To be an American in Mexico usually means to Mexicans one thing - money - you are the greenback in your pocket; an object of both envy and scorn. To be a Mexican in a world dominated by America is a far more complex thing.

During my time in Mexico I found that I was always thinking about the ambivalence of Mexican/American relations when I was watching Mexican television. The thing that struck me the most about Mexican tv was that it was jam packed full of forgettable American movies and Z-grade series long extinct in their country of origin in a version quite different to their original form. Most often they had been dubbed into Spanish with ridiculously inappropriate voices that bore almost no resemblance to the people on the screen. The only voice I ever heard that actually sounded like the actor should sound was Arnold Shwarzenegger's; proving once and for all the Arnie transcends all cultural boundaries. Even Fran Dreschner of ‘The Nanny' fame, whose voice is the comic denominator of the show, sounded completely unlike her American version. This had the not unwelcome result of transforming the show into something quite different from it's original form; and took it out of the realm in which the program's effect could be predicted and controlled. What the Mexicans get out of ‘The Nanny' is definitely not what their American counterparts do. The ‘X- Files', too, became quite an earnest program without Fox's ‘Spooky' delivery, a crucial element of his character that conveys to a large extent the cynical, ironic tone of the entire series. The less said about the Mexican version of Dana Scully the better.

For those of us who have watched a lot of martial arts movies in a Western country, the uncanny effect dubbing has on a show or movie is not at all unfamiliar. It can often have the effect of accidentally parodying the visual image, usually because of both a cultural divide in style and form, and in the western incapacity to approximate or translate properly what the actors of a Hong Kong or Chinese film or show are saying. Moreover, the physical fact of the words not fitting the mouth on the screen is a constant reminder of the essential difference between the country that produced the text and those of us that consume it out of context. On Mexican tv, the dubbed voices, particularly those ones that depart radically from
their originals in order to fit a Mexican conception of character (which is most of them), emphasize the gap between
America and Mexico. They also express a conflation of the desire for the American cultural product with an acknowledgment of their own cultural superiority; just as the words gringo and americano contain within them a loaded and perplexing dialectic.

The Mexican voices that take the place of their American originals are not only inappropriate to begin with but are also most often far more affected, intense and melodramatic than the American viewer could bear. This concession to the dominant cultural mores of the Mexicans and to their passionate way of speaking reveals a great deal about exactly how much America they want to hear. Though they may rely upon the americanos for their daytime tv fodder, they like it to have a Mexican flavor; just as they refuse to buckle to the now mandatory lack of an interval at the cinema. To me the stubbornness with which they insist in breaking the film halfway reflects an abiding and far more social philosophy (sadly outdated now in the western world) that the whole experience of going to the cinema is as important as the film itself. (Though an equally as convincing explanation would be the Mexican appetite for popcorn.)

All this tampering with the texts of the great cultural imperialist, and making of the language gap a space in which to color it with their own culture, and say it in their own words, expresses to me the same ambivalence to America contained within the word gringo. Likewise, it expresses the same dynamics of envy. The Mexicans don't want to be Americans, they just want what the Americans have.

This attitude to America is in no way particular to Mexico; but it is often forgotten by tourists here who lament what they see as the slavish imitation of American culture in the popularity of American tv, movies, cigarettes, or jeans. They fail to acknowledge the possibility that these cultural signifiers can be absorbed and in the process altered into something Mexican. Nor do they see that the popularity of American cultural products does not necessarily express the abandonment of their own culture or their desire to become what these products promise you will become by seeing, smoking or wearing them.

The possession of the product, the thing itself, is the aim of the Mexican adulation of American products; simply because these things are a luxury for the majority of Mexicans. The possession of them signifies to other Mexicans not Americanization but affluence. To assume, then, that the Mexicans admire America itself is to make the grave error of assuming that a superior economy is based on a superior culture. The Mexicans can envy the American dollar without envying the culture that has made it such a global force.
It is understandable therefore that American tourists can often make no sense of the tone Mexicans use when addressing them; and fail to hear the love/hate quality of it that could also describe a global sentiment to the world's only superpower.

It does explain, however, how the Mexicans can observe the border squirmishes and denounce America as a trigger-happy, racist country, whilst also risking their lives to cross the Nevada desert in high summer in the hope of becoming an American citizen.

And it explains to me the uncomfortable, sapped quality American tv has when it is subjected toMexican meddling.
If it would be possible to separate America from all it signifies; to separate the object of world envy from the lack out of which envy arises, it would be very clear to see that the desire for what America represents has nothing to do with America. It is a desire felt the world over, a desire arising from frustrations with what our own country cannot give us; and a desire that blinds us to the hypocrisy of America and it's people.

Tasha Sudan