Dusk of the cultural B-Hero

Espektro — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 20:36:31 +0000

It's clear what's coming up next. The Bride and O-Ren Ishii are staring at
each other on the snowing roof of the Crazy 88's night club, beautifully
decorated as a zen yard with a snow carpet covering it. This is the climatic
fight we were expecting for arround 80 mins of Kill Bill vol. 1, and the Bride
is going to obtain vengeance against one of her multiple attackers, former
allies, The samurai swords flies, clangs, one single cut leaves O-reen kneeling
on the snow, now blood-spattered. The Bride finishes her. Tarantino yells cut
from his director chair and finishes his last scene, a homage to all those Kung
Fu features he saw as a kid and formed in his mind a brilliant sense of film
deconstructing.

This is a scene we'd seen a lot of times in a lot of different films. Is the
climax of a B-series movie, the black & white clash betwen forces of order
and chaos. The hero restores the order, gains redemption in form of vengeance,
justice or peace, very Campbellian.

El Mariachi arrives to this mexican town looking to work as a performancer
in a bar, Destiny crossroad takes him to face a local gangster while he saves a
mexican girl to restore the order in his life. He wants to sing, not to
be a gunslinger. Robert Rodriguez put the cowboy figure inside a mariachi
suit.

I love B-movies! who doesn't? as long as they make you spend a good
afternoon with popcorns it's perfect. Maybe they don't teach you about the
deepest truths of life but there are other things you can find in them. Action,
explotions, gangsters, cowboys, samurais... cultural disguises...

This post is part of a conversation I'd with Fableforge a long ago, about
how the heros of the b-movies from different countries are archetypes changing
cultural disguises on every movie. In a globalizated world, it's important to
understand the rooths of your culture to stand against the tides of economic
and social changes. Were you come from makes you what you are today, but the
values are universal as Robert McKee says.

The cultural B-Hero represents the particular understanding of each country
about values like honor, justice, family and tradition. In a classic B-movie,
the cultural hero lives appart from the society, watching from above but
waiting his moment to help restoring the cultural order as mirror of it. The
cowboy, the samurai, the shaolin, the mexican luchador are lone stars coming to
help society on moments of crisis.

I'd like to point specially to the Lucha Libre movies because I'm mexican
and I think this particular genre originated in my country is in the lower
ranks of the cult, but it has too much to say about what mexican culture is,
beyond the stereotypes of Hollywood. As the western, samurai and kung fu
genres, the lucha libre movies share the same aspects of region trademark and
time. 50's, 60's and 70's were the golden age for B-movies, while Clint
Eastwood was spitting bullets over indians and Bruce Lee kicking asses of the
hong kong mafia the real life wrestler/luchador El Santo was figthing against
vampires, gangsters, martians and all the bizarre collage of enemies generated
inside the pulp culture. This is the most recognizable aspect of the lucha
films: SURREALISM.

Understood in the most simple definition, the luchador is the hero and he
must confront the villian. ANY VILLIAN. A luchador is understanded as a
comic book superhero incarnated in the figure of a real life sportsman. Like
Batman and Superman in the 70s, their main market was childhood and the
producers never tought necesary to explain why Santo had to fight martians in
one movie and then vampires in the next because kids had already enough
information about martains and vampires: they're the bad guys! Enuff to say,
but if today is unthinkable to expect Batman figthing against vampires on a
summer hit, we still can expect a luchador fight against this dark stalkers
because it's part of the genre.

Surrealism is not an exclusive task of the lucha movies, all B-series share
this ingredient as well. Kung Fu movies are the notourius next: people hanging
from cables simulating long jumps and acrobatic punches, one man defeating in
hand-clean combat against hundreds of warriors, martial arts masters with
psycokinetic-laser powers and a bunch of other nice things. A single cowboy
shooting against hundreds of indians isn't surrealist too? not in the same
proportion of course, but the exageration is there.

I already said the cultural B-Hero is going to defend the cultural
perspectives of values from a society, but I would like to list them:

a)HONOR: This is, maybe, the most important value of the cultural B-Hero.
The honor is the respect you obtain from others because the way you conduct
yourself in life, and is what gives you a name in the world. The cultural
B-Hero uses the honor as his most powerfull weapon against the forces of chaos:
the cowboy has his gun, the samurai his sword, the shaolin his kung fu and the
luchador HIS MASK. Despite the fact he fights hand-clean, without the mask the
luchador would be just a normal brawler; the mask gives him a reason to exist. In
'SANTO VERSUS EL REY DEL CRIMEN' (Santo vs the king of crime) there's a
scene were Santo discovers he belongs a dinasty of justicers and
inheritates the status wen he obtains his silver mask after years of training.
The buttler of the family (an element taken from the Batman mythos) explains
him the reasons why he must wear this weird looking mask:

-Preserving your identity substracts you from vanity.

-You should never take this mask off, because represents your life.

-Taking this mask you renounce to the world and it's pleasures, sacrificing
your life in the service of the poor and the weak.

It's almost like a monk! (with catholic values, but this will be treated on
the TRADITION aspect).

The fact of honor is perfectly settled. Like the samurai, the shaolin and
the cowboy, the luchador will use his mask to bring justice and the people will
make a mythos arround it and his name.

b)JUSTICE: The cultural B-hero will make justice in the form of cultural
preservation. The cowboy defends the town from the indians and bandits who
wants to destroy it. The same as the shaolin, but in form of gansters or rival
schools. The samurai is required to defeat the evil feudal lord who invades the
town and claims for tribute. The luchador fights against the zombies infesting
the mexico city. The social peace must be restored by the most strong
representant of it.

The fictional menaces are subconcius fears of the society to lose their
identity, being conquered by other forms of culture and destroying their
concept of life. The indians and bandits of the western are outsiders trying to
destroy the american way of life, in the cold war era this was incarnated by
the soviets, today we can find a lot of sources were the american society
identifies as a foreign danger: illegal aliens and muslim terrorism. The
shaolin represents the traditional China, preserved in Hong Kong while Mao
destroyed it during his cultural revolution on the continent. The samurai is
the spirit of the traditional Japan, defeated on WWII and trying to give a
singificance to the post-nuke era. But the luchador is kinda more complex:
Mexico didn't fought in the WWII, and had no significant role on the cold war,
but we'd always been sunked on internal struggles arround politics since the
mexican revolution. The PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or
Institucional Revolutionary Party) ruled Mexico for 70 years in a pro
dictatorship system, with a lot of similarities with the soviet state but with
sympathy for the USA, turning our political class in a huge parasit with
effects still struggling the country nowadays, even without the PRI in the
president's chair.

The undead, the gangsters and the martians are a rotten reflex of what we
mexicans are. I admit it, the corruption in all levels is our primal enemy.
From the policeman in the streeth to the highest rank on goverment, corruption
infests the mexican state. The vampire sucks blood, just like the corrupt
Senator steals money from the taxes. The gangsters are the alarming level of
crime we'd always been sick off, because the lack of honest law enforcers to
protect us. Martians are here to conquer us, to imput a state of opresion...
like the PRI was. Subconciously, the mexican has been always figthing against
the mexican. Maybe, if the luchador takes his mask off, the magic that
preserves him as a man of good will dissapear, and will just show a rotten
zombie face... the mask is the only good thing we have before turning into the
other side of the mirror. It's sad, but our culture is always menaced by our own
anticulture.

c) FAMILY: As the cell of the society, the B-Hero must defend the family in
order to preserve the main body. Maybe represented by a love interested (saving
the girl), maybe represented in a friend or directly on a composed family (the
Bride seeks for her tough-was-death daugther on Kill Bill). Sometimes is not
necesary to save the family and having a happy ending, maybe obtaining
vengeance after the death of the close friend, the child, the wife, the
girlfriend. Bruce Lee promised his mother to not fight ever again, but he must
do it to save his girlfriend in Fists of Fury, and a shaolin monk defends the
temple from the outsiders. In 3:10 to Yuma, Christian Bale accepts to bring the
dangerous Russel Crowe to the Yuma prision because he has bills to pay in order
to save the farm were his family lives.

For a luchador, the family is intrinsecal to his mask because represents his
legacy. Maybe he will save the girl or a friend, but like no other B-Hero the
luchador is trying to preserve his family and his honor melted on a single
element of magic and mystery, maybe because the family is one of the strongest
values for a mexican. An inmigrant working in the USA leaves his homeland
because he has a family to protect: with the dollars he wins, his family gets a
better life level in Mexico, and it's the main reason why he dares to confront
all the obstacles of crossing the border. If Santo never inheritated the mask
from a line of justicers in real life, he did gave the mask to his son and he
continues wrestling nowadays as El Hijo del Santo.

d)TRADITION: the forms of each society to express their relation with the
universe. Our hero must be fund on a strong tradition in order to defend his
society. They're part of a top class, the finest kind you'll ever find on
each culture, but not an aristocracy because they don't rule over the masses,
they help to solve their problems. They live a particular lifestyle, not an
profession every member of the society could take because it's spiritual and
physical demanding, but only a champion. The luchadores are a whole class, just
like the other examples I mention but maybe the only one actually interacting
directly with their society in the XXI century. El hijo del Santo is the main
figure on a Green Peace campaign to preserve the oceans, Mistico is starring on
a soup opera and Blue Demon Jr. is anouncing his entrance to the political
arena. Bizarre... but truth. Only in Mexico baby :D!

Religious aspects can be found here. The budhism on the shaolin is the most obvious,
also the zen philosophies and shinto in the samurais. The cowboy is a sutil
exposure of the protestant culture, there's always a cameo to the church on the
western movies and pastors play sometimes significant roles (Russell Crowe
comes to my mind as the gunslinger preacher in THE QUICK AND THE DEAD). But the
luchador has STRONG CATHOLIC ROOTHS, like I mentioned before. The purpouses of
a luchador are almost like a catholic priest (but without the chastity vote of
course :D ), working in favor of the comunity, protecting the poors and weaks,
and OF COURSE! praying to the most noticeable mexican catholic icon: the Virgin
of Guadalupe.

Santo used to appear in the ring wearing a cape with a large picture of
Guadalupe on the back. There's a very bizarre scene in SANTO CONTRA LOS
MARCIANOS (Santo vs the martians) were a group of abducted civilians start to
pray inside the alien ship, leadered by a catholic priest. Mexican vampires
were always weak against catholic symbols like crosses or rosaries (just to
note: the PRI was an officially atheist party). The main idea is to project
that the divine forces are in the side of our hero, so he will prevail in the
end against the chaos. Catholicism is, maybe, one of the strongest links
amongst mexicans and in the 70's was a terrible tabu to critizice the catholic
church and of course an element of unity against the expanding comunism.

Well, after keeping you reading until down here, what can I conclude? the
blog post is called the DUSK OF THE CULTURAL B-HERO. What is happening? this
archetype is dying? Nope, not at all. It's transformating into a cultural
A-Hero. The B-movie label is getting obsolete as most and most producers,
directors and screenwritters are considering the forms encripted on the
B-series and turning them into A quality movies, like Tarantino for example.
How is this? well, because they're giving those B-movies something they didn't
had in a begining: tridimensional stories, tridimensional characters, better
screenwritting development, a rainbow of elements instead of black and white.
And that's so freaking cool... :)

USA started a long ago this revamping with the western genre, and this year
came with noticeable pieces like '3:10 to Yuma' and 'the Assasination of Jesse
James by the coward Robert Ford'. 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon',
'Hero' and 'Fearless' are extraordinary examples of Hong Kong superproductions.
I can't remember an actual movie of samurais (the last with Tom Cruise counts?)
but the genre has a lot of charm in the audience. Also, the genres are not limited by industry anymore, Hollywood is producing kung fu movies and westerns as well. Will happen the same with the
lucha libre movies? Is it possible to think a summer hit of this strange but
delicious genre? 'Nacho Libre' is an strange aproximation but lacks in many of the genre elements. Guillermo del Toro already externed his wishes to make
something called 'PLATA', a story of a retired wrestler working as the bodyguard
of a corrupt politician until he discovers this guy and the rest of his party
are vampires planning to turn Mexico in somekind of ghoulish state... and
sounds awesome!

So remember kids: don't mess with a luchador! :D