Critique of mediocre culture. Interview with Enrique Serna
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Ariel Ruiz Mondragón
The life of Mexican culture has in its levels-from academia to the middle of the show, the burlesque to the opaque intricacies literature, where it has been necessary to penetrate to appreciate their miseries and their wealth, their changes and their permanence.
Several of these aspects have been described and analyzed, with good humor, by Enrique Serna in many articles that have been set up in various publications, cultural affairs, and have been collected in his book Turns Black (Mexico, Cal and Arena), which performs a critical dissection of some dark aspects of cultural, political, social and literary Mexico.
recent book on that we had a chat with the author, with which we address, inter alia, the following topics: changes in the dissipated nightlife of the city of Mexico, changes in sexuality in recent years, the cultural status of Mexican cultural continuities and transformations generated by democratization and the role of literature in cultural change.
addition, we address the role of academia in the training of writers, the conservative aspects of certain transgressive practices, excessive pain and literary creation and the value of the counterculture. Serna
studied English Literature at UNAM, and has worked in various media: Links , Free Lyrics , Criticism and Confabulario , among others. He is the author of 6 novels, two collections of short stories and one of essays. He has won awards Mazatlan Narrative Literature and Colima.
Ariel Ruiz (AR): Why collect and publish essays gathered here in this book?
Enrique Serna (ES): Because the literary journalism wants to survive on the reader's mind, but it is very difficult to dig up stories and articles from the archive. Then, precisely to facilitate this task my editors and I thought it would be interesting for some people to publish this book, that happened when I was gathering this material to make a selection of the best reviews of what I posted in the last 10 years in various media. I realized that many of them had ideas that were evolving from one text to another, which focused at a different angle, so I decided to group them thematically so that readers perceive this line of continuity.
AR: At the beginning of the first chapter you dedicate some articles to the subject of the clubs, the passing of the old cabaret burlesque striptease . The past does not like much, but it is also not a natural cultural change, as you mentioned that occurs in the language, although it is a degeneration?
ES: Of course it is a change, but changes can be made forward or backward, and I think this is a setback in the sense that it has dehumanized the environment, the consumer of those dens plucked out most of the time, and I think also the way to the girls is quite inhumane. Slums of old allowed a more close, more conversation, he could make friends, and that I miss dearly. I think that also favored such friendships, for example, the emergence of the bolero in the thirties and forties. Consider, for example, Agustín Lara, who fell in love a lot of prostitutes in the clubs where he played.
So I think that tradition is all I see is lost, it really hurts me, I feel nostalgia for it.
AR: Would it make any sense to try to revive today, these shows, cabaret burlesque?
ES: Yes I would, but I do not know if it could really, because usually most of the clientele of these clubs is youth. Those who already passed the 40 we're removing a bit of nightlife usually for health reasons, and the young who never knew this, they have different tastes, including music (such as reggaeton and similar horrors), and probably also feel they are treated well in the slums today, let them.
AR: Another part of the book contains a set of views on the evolution of sex: androgynous beauty, the happy life of couples in separation or "virginity on." What are the major changes in terms of sexuality in the period in which he wrote the articles?
ES: Well, it's a period of liberal attitudes, which is accompanied, paradoxically, one of the terror of AIDS. This really has me very worried lately, because I just saw an online video that is circulating a lot, which is called AIDS myth, in which several prizes Laureates and leading scientists argue that the AIDS virus is an invention that does not exist, nobody has been able to isolate, which is not scientifically proven its existence, that HIV testing does not work for absolutely nothing (in fact, already in countries like England did not make it), and the treatment of HIV positive people only serves to further destroy their health. I really think that is something that should be vented so much more in the public because, according to the opinion of all these scientists, it is likely that this has been a campaign to benefit large companies that have patented HIV testing and especially for a repressive offensive tremendous which is what we had in the last five years.
AR: Something that runs through the book, I found in several trials and especially in the past, is the condition of the Mexican: the oppressed and dominated, endorses racism and discrimination that are imposed. Does this cultural condition can be reversed?
ES: Yes, it has to do with historical oppression. Finally there is a trauma and some injuries that we have not had time to heal because I believe that the conditions of marginalization and exclusion remain. There can be no recovery of the self-esteem while this happens.
I do not claim that the Mexicans have a patriotic pride, to feel superior others, in fact, I think this pride mask an inferiority complex (and not only have told me, but many people). But what is that Mexicans want us to feel inferior or not superior to anyone, but they really made us feel equal to anybody, because I think that's what you can counter this culture of self-loathing, which, moreover, serves much the mafias that control the political and economic power in Mexico.
AR: You do in the "Poderdumbre" a very serious cultural criticism, which also reaches the same company in the article "Sociolatría" and there is another where it is disappointed that citizenship has not made the leap to adulthood in 2000. What are the most critical aspects that you find in Mexican society in cultural terms?, Is the democratization of the country changed in some culture?
ES: I think just from the transition to democracy in 2000-that many thought it was going to bring a much more substantial social and political life of Mexico, we discovered that a change of party in power actually does not mean much. I think it has meant, above all, because neither the government of Fox and this administration have dared, or wanted to "dismantle the corporate structures of the old regime.
But there is something worse, and that is something that we're seeing in all fields of social life: the PRI is not just the ideology of a party, but a culture which is imbued with all of Mexican society : the culture of the swindle, that things have to get through influence, illegality, does not deprive the state of law in Mexico, the privileges of a few corporations labor, business, and so on.
So this is a culture that has spread to the other parties, ie, PRI is in the PRD, PAN PRI is so that we are facing a problem that is tucked inside the company itself. Is a educational problem and a cultural problem.
overcome is the main campaign to confront society in a self-healing process, of course, has to start being much more demanding the accountability of rulers, and try to build games that truly represent our interests and not seek power for power, as at present.
AR: In the process of political and cultural change, what role can the literature?
ES: Literature can raise concerns and disagreements in some individuals. I really do not think I can bring about social change, but waking complaints, contributes a little to probably these individuals begin to take action and to demand their rights, and in that sense maybe can help a little, but in the long term, there are changes that are levied on the overnight.
AR: There is an article called "The thesis introverted", which indicated that grade academic work in literature are more concerned with methods and parameters that actually produce something of quality. In that sense, what is the role of academia in the training of writers?, What writers are giving us the academy?
ES: Well, despite the fact that academia is a meritocracy where usually the patients and more cutters come to complete their doctorates, has always been valuable and creative people in the academy. In my view I had as a student of Literature, I had superb teachers at the same time were good writers and essayists, as Ernesto Mejía Sánchez, Gonzalo Celorio, César Rodríguez and José Pascual Buxó Chicharro.
It is also true, unfortunately, that academia is a world that tolerates and overlaps much mediocrity, and a way of overlap is giving so much importance to the methodology, rather than focus more on inputs and ideas.
I think this is not only national academic environment. In another Articles in this book speak of gender studies at universities in U.S. and Europe, which obviously I think they are a big factory scrap, they are based on preconceived ideas that try to convert the civic merit academic merit , and I think this is a transgression.
AR: In several of the articles there is also a criticism of certain attitudes and behaviors that we go through offending, such as swingers, Satanism, body piercings. But what is the conservative streak is finally behind these behaviors "transgressive"?
ES: I think it's curious to see: how, sometimes, people who want to be free, to subvert the order, just falling into something more repressive, or just turning and following the moral game attempting to challenge.
This happens a lot in the field of subversion, drug violations, for example. I talk a lot of people, to reach a point of his office, begins to see his addiction as a penance rather than a pleasure, and from there it becomes a self-harm similar to that practiced by the saints.
This is something that has to do partly with my own personal experience, and also with literary experiences I've tried to mix in these items.
AR: It struck me that scores on the authoritarianism that exudes feminism. How does it manifest in the supposedly progressive causes authoritarianism?
ES: The is no doubt, just look what they have done in the area of \u200b\u200bthe Academy, have taken over many departments of many universities. I think this is a principle of corruption within his movement. But that does not mean that I'm really anti-feminist, I prefer a thousand times an intelligent woman who works, a submissive housewife and cloying.
So in that sense I am a feminist. The criticism that I am doing is to certain aberrations, some deviation of feminism, which I think redound to their own detriment.
AR: You also make a claim of pain, of grief, excess to the creative process. What is the role of it in literature?
ES: also commented in another section of the book, called "Transgressions of office", I really do not believe in the myth of the bohemian artist. I, of course, that life must be enjoyed, I had times of being a party animal, strong enough, but for literature it should be clear-minded. So the idea that the media spends a lot of the counterculture, to believe that simply taking a position is transgressive aesthetic value, I think is false. We see it all the time, I cite examples such as Molotov, they do a song where they say "Puto, puto, puto ..." and that trying to sell it as an interesting innovation.
I think it should be within the same self counterculture that is made of high culture itself.
AR: In this direction, what value gives you the counterculture in the cultural landscape of the country? In the book there are some signs.
ES: I think he had the courage to remove stagnant water, putting into question the gap between popular culture and high culture. In Mexico has been very harmful to have this gap in other countries Latin America, including Brazil, has been cleared, some of the best poets have been Brazilian popular music composers such as Vinicius de Moraes, Caetano Veloso and Chico Buarque. That is something that greatly benefits the song.
does not happen in Mexico, I think he would do a lot more need to have good novelists who were pianists, good poets who were composers of popular music, etc., to make themselves more these communicating vessels. And that is something that has been proposed in Mexico, especially the counterculture, because high culture becomes castor and cultural establishment does not want to ever mix with the people that we have to have had this culture elite, the Upper Room, which hosted many intellectuals who had an awareness of cultural leadership and living in a minority.
So in that sense it has brought the counterculture very interesting things, for example in the narrative, as in the novel by José Agustín, several of his works opened up a huge avenue for all writers who came later. Just compare that with the way the writers wrote the generation of so-called Casa del Lago, to whom he was as embarrassed to say they took to the streets of insurgents, or took a taxi on Avenida Obregon. As they were afraid they were going to seem parochial if they made an accurate picture of your circumstances and this I think was a very absurd. This broke
"I think very rightly, José Agustín, who also liberalized the use of colloquial language. But I've also noticed, for example, that the Mexican readership is mostly very conservative: the historical novel is a genre much more read than any other novel. I compare, for example, among my novels The seducer of parental and green fruit, the first is a historical novel that many people will read because you feel while being educated, while the other is a intimate novel that addresses the issue of homosexuality, and I knew from the time of publishing was going to have far fewer readers.
But I think we should insist on these issues, but is confined to a minority audience, because they are windows that can open people.
AR: On the other hand, what is in the counterculture excesses?
ES: to be too self-indulgent, and fall into the vulgarity.
* A shorter version of this interview was published in Millennium weekly, no. 594, March 9, 2009. Reproduced with permission of the director.
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