FOLLOW ME HERE
nell haynes
  • home
  • publications
  • projects
  • fieldnotes
  • teaching
  • contact
  • espaƱol

irony pt 3, surfin wagner

7/10/2012

0 Comments

 
My favorite example of the ironic appreciation of lucha libre, which I saw live on Friday night, is the band Surfin Wagner. I first heard of them because the lead singer was a friend of a friend, but quickly discovered they had quite a following of Paceños. The band’s name is derived from a famous Mexican luchador, Dr. Wagner, otherwise known as Manuel González Rivera. He began wrestling in the 1960s as a rudo, but by the early 1980s—when the members of Surfin Wagner and my friends were young children—he had become a technico. In 1985 he lost his match in a well-publicized event and essentially retired. 

Picture
The band, like my friends who I wrote about here, creates humor using a frame shifting strategy by combining lucha libre aesthetics with surf music. The band members use lucha libre inspired names (Pedro Wagner, Médiko Loko—a misspelling of famous Mexican luchador Médico Loco, Roy Fucker—after a Japanese anime character later used in Mexican wrestling, El Momia, and Comando—both popular characters in Bolivian wrestling), and wear lucha libre head-masks along with their Hawai'ian print shirts. They describe their music as “el Garage, el punk y principalmente el Surf, siempre con un toque de sátira e ironía” [garage rock, punk, and principally surf, always with a touch of satire and irony]. The “biography” of the band on their website suggests that the band members are legitimate luchadores (again with irony), and they point out the incongruity of a surf band in a country without access to the sea. Clearly their use of the lucha libre aesthetic is meant to evoke laughter rather than contribute to a serious musical appreciation. 

So, over these last three posts, I've tried to give a sense that for many Paceños lucha libre in general, and the cholitas luchadoras’ participation specifically, are a light-hearted representation of Latin American culture. In a sense, lucha libre is positioned as authentically Latin American in a now-globalized world. As they combine cholas with punk culture or classic Mexican luchadores with surf rock, they reterritorialize these “traditional” icons by merging them with global symbols.
 


0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.


    themes

    All
    Aesthetics
    Authenticity
    Body
    Bolivia
    Chile
    Chola
    Class
    Disaster
    Drugs
    Food Studies
    Gender
    Globalization
    Indigeneity
    Inequality
    Lucha Libre
    Methods
    Migration
    Neoliberalism
    Performance
    Politics
    Protest
    Social Media
    Sport
    Tattoo
    Tourism
    United States
    Violence

    archives

    August 2022
    July 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    May 2016
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    March 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    August 2009
    July 2009

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.