I just saw this on TV, and I feel the need to make all of you suffer like I did. You’re welcome.

In a round of poster-hunting in second hand shops, I came across this gem. It really doesn’t need much explanation, it’s the definition of Mexploitation right there: Half-naked women, foreigners (and US border patrol agents, even!) as bad guys, even more half-naked women, etc. You need to click on this image to take a closer look. And probably also make it your desktop wallpaper. Or print it and hang it on the wall.

As an additional bonus, the scantily-clad woman in the photo on the right is Lyn May, an ex-prostitute and stripper turned actress who is one of the central characters in Mexploitation history. As if that wasn’t enough, she has an enormous ass. She probably warrants a post of her own, and since I know you want to know more about enormous mexploitation asses, I will give it to you. Just not right now.

The title of the movie, Las Braceras, is the feminine plural of “Bracero”, roughly “guest worker”, but read up on the Bracero Program for some important background on US-Mexico relations and immigration.

(And yes, I blog too little. People have let me know. But I’m doing very cool stuff, and it’s definitely worthwhile, I just want to wait a little longer before I announce it here. Be patient.)

This is a special treat. This amazing poster belongs to my girlfriend Aline, who lent it to me for scanning and touchup. Her copy has a bad tear down the middle, as well as other defects, but I fixed it up pretty decently, I think.

This is “El fantástico mundo de los hippies“, a 1972 movie that’s the only example I’ve seen of Mexican hippiesploitation. The poster is pure exploitation, the stuff the genre is made of. Check out the breathless descriptions, as well as the priceless addition to the cast in the bottom right corner. Also, I don’t know if it can be seen, but the plot seems to involve some straight-laced detectives or something solving murders amongst the hippies, judging from one of the photos… I’ve added translations for the texts, have a look.

I came across this rather bizarre ad at the pharmacy today. It’s for a strong painkiller, which, according to the ad copy, “cuts off the strong pain”. The chainsaw as an instrument of pain relief. I think that’s a first.

Oh, I know I’ve been away for a long while. I’ve been very busy, big things are afoot. More about that later.

Well, this is funny. Adela Micha is a Mexican news anchor, who according to her Wikipedia page charges 15000 USD for a 45-minute talk on ethics. Sounds steep, I guess, but maybe she’s particularly ethical and gives very sagely advice.

Then again, maybe not. I was watching the news on Televisa, Micha’s home network, the other day, and when they took a commercial break in the news, suddenly the screen read “Newsflash with Adela Micha”, and I was treated to a commercial featuring her. A commercial, styled as a news broadcast, in the commercial break of a news broadcast, featuring a newscaster of the same channel as a spokesperson? Yeah, no conflict of interest or confusing the consumer there.

Ethics, my ass. In any country with a functional media, instead of lapdogs of the government and commercial interests, a journalist would be thrown out for even trying something like that. Here in Mexico, it’s just to be expected.

For those of you who read Spanish, I can highly recommend Revista Cinefagia, a website (it’s called Cinephagia Magazine, but I don’t think they actually publish on paper) reviewing all sorts of movies, but mostly Spanish-language ones. I found them when looking for reviews of crappy Mexploitation horror movies (they review both Vacaciones de terror and another crappy 80s Mexican horror movie, Cementerio del terror), but they actually do a lot of different stuff, from international cult and horror cinema to mainstream Latin American movies, and they do it really well. The reviews that I’ve read are all smart, clever, and generally get the point.

Like many reviewers, they’re at their most entertaining when they really hate something (their review of Batalla en el Cielo is funny, for instance), but there’s plenty to read in their impressively long list of movie reviews. Oh, and they also review porn, including Eon McKai movies, something few critics are willing to do, but more should.

I’m tempted to send them a complimentary copy of Comando Zorras, now.

Following up on the theme of biases and weirdness in Mexican media, while in a taxi at a stoplight today, I got an issue of “Publimetro”, a free, ad financed city newspaper, which, according to one of the owners, is directed towards the middle classes and upwards. The mixture of getting their money exclusively from ads, making the readers not even the secondary customer, let alone the primary customer, and a focus on the moneyed elites, leads to some, shall we say, odd priorities in the editorial policies.

On page 17 of the 26 September issue, in the entertainment section, there’s an article of almost half a page, on En el hoyo being the Mexican documentary with the biggest box office of all time. It’s a big succcess, it’s possibly going to be Oscar nominated, it’s been in several festivals, and so on. A rather large article. But, there was a weird omission in the article. What’s the documentary about? After skimming it a couple of times, I noticed that it is indeed mentioned, in part of a sentence at the end of the first paragraph:

[...] the documentary, which looks at an aspect of everyday life in the city.

Hm, that’s awfully general. So, what’s the documentary really about? Well, I happened to know, and if you don’t, it’s easy to find out from the IMDB page, which says:

A portrait of the construction workers involved in building the second deck of Mexico City’s Periferico freeway.

Oh, that’s a lot more informative. I wonder why the paper doesn’t just say that?

Well, maybe it’s because the second deck of the Periferico was a successful project of Mexico City head of government Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who went on to be a leftist presidential candidate, and is currently arguing that he’s the real winner of July’s presidential elections, instead of conservative Felipe Calderón, favorite of the upper classes, who harbor a hate of López Obrador comparable to that of US republicans for Bill and Hillary Clinton. If you think it sounds weird to not mention a public works project just because of the politician who started it, think again. Miguel de Icaza mentioned people in his family who are conservative enough and hate López Obrador enough that they refuse to use the second deck of the Periferico, for exactly this reason.

It wouldn’t do to upset what Publimetro owner Antonio Torrado Monge calls “socieconomic levels A, B, and C”, now, would it, just to have an article that actually gives you some information about its main subject? Oh no. Wouldn’t do at all.

I’m going to try something new. There’s long been a lot of weird stuff going on in Mexican media, stuff that makes me laugh, or shake my head, or turn the TV off in disgust. There seems to be precious little discussion going on about the quality and values of Mexican media, so I figure I’ll give it a shot. So from now on, I’ll review and comment on Mexican TV, advertising, and general media goings on. I thought about making it a separate blog, but I don’t think I write enough to fill up even this blog, so it’ll go here, at least for now.

A few days ago, I saw this commercial for Gamesa’s “Emperador” (Emperor) cookies. It’s a fairly typical Mexican scenario, where the parking guy uses (or abuses) what little power he has over the clean-cut upper classes, refusing to let the guy in the car park. But this is no ordinary fresa guy who needs a parking spot. This guy eats emperor cookies, and thus has an emperor inside!

Check out what happens.

So the morale is, if someone denies you a parking space, you should have your shock troops come in and throw them to the lions. It’s only fair, dirty proles should know their place. This sort of attitude is very often how Mexican commercials get their laughs, playing to middle and upper classes’ sense of entitlement and feeling that they are somehow the ones who are being treated badly in Mexican society, while the lower classes are lazy and have it in for them. It’s a common theme, and a common feeling, but it’s rare to see the delusion expressed as clearly as this.