Ilan Stavans - The riddle of Cantinflas: essays on Hispanic popular culture

From one of our foremost cultural critics comes a provocative collection of essays on kitsch and high art in the Americas. Ilan Stavans examines the delightful if torturous relationship between a Europeanized elite and the hybrid masses in a continent he sees as imprisoned in the labyrinth of identity. In Santa Selena, for example, Stavans explores the beatification of the martyred Tejana singer in the context of American pop iconography. His interest is not in Selenas tragic death but in the ways her fans have turned her into a heavenly body, shaping her afterlife as an endless fiesta of spiritual and commercial possibilities. Similarly, Stavanss portraits of Jos? Guadalupe Posada, Tina Modotti, Frida Kahlo, Sandra Cisneros, Cantinflas, and Carlos Fuentes are less about these luminaries than about what people have turned them into. His search is not for the idol but for the idolater, and for ways in which technology and the media refurbish reality. At times humorous, often cautionary, always incisive, this collection is evidence of Stavanss power to go beyond common assumptions and make us understand Mexican popular culture and its counterparts in the U.S. I think he has one of the best grips around on what makes Spanish America tick and he is most sensitive about its relationship to the rest of the world.--Gregory Rabassa