Today we celebrated dia del alumno, Students' Day, by having breakfast in class, watching the teachers put on a show, watching a movie, and having a cookout (asado). Jackass 3D was the movie of choice for the sophomores and the few 7th graders that watched it with us. The movie itself was hilarious, and screw you to all my friends that refused to go see it in 3D in theaters with me. However, it certainly made for some odd moments like when a dildo flew through the air and hit a man in the face in slow motion, as a seventh grader behind me asked, "What's that?" Or when we watched a man super glue his ass to another man's hairy back. Or when we watched Steve-O get propelled into the air in a full port-a-potty (the "poo cocktail supreme," which I would have loved to see in full 3D). Okay, so there were a lot of awkward scenes.
The most surreal moment, however, was when I watched a naked, obese man have a pig eat an apple out of his ass (there really is no non-crude way to write that sentence). I was astonished at how similar the pig, and the naked fat man kneeling in the mud on all fours were (again, the grown man willingly having an apple eaten out of his ass). I sat there thinking, "This is America." I was originally going to make some disclaimer about how Jackass in no way represented Americans. But after thinking over my own high school years, the shenanigans of my kids at summer camp, and how dirty, stupid, glutenous, and anti-intellectual our society is...there is no way I can say Jackass isn't American. Nay, it's more American than Microsoft, or Levi's, or American Airlines, or any number of businesses/products that get outsourced to Asia or South America. Though I'll take Johnny Knoxville over Sarah Palin as the face of our country any day.
Earlier in the day our teachers put on a show for the students. Two female teachers performed a skit which involved colorful wigs, lip-synching, and a story of two women singing about heartache. Another professor wrote an original funny story about the students which I couldn't understand, but it had some funny voices and got a lot of laughs. Sadly, the majority of the show consisted of four professors pretending to be contestants on "Yo Soy" ("I Am"), a Chilean show where contestants do their best celebrity imitations. All four guys took turns imitating various Latino gay performers from the 80s and 90s (Ricky Martin was the only one I recognized). Now, I have absolutely nothing against making an ass of yourself in public for comedy's sake, nor would I often pass on the opportunity to look fabulous imitating Ricky Martin. But the fact is that this was basically a show of person after person coming out and mocking gay performers.
There's a fine line between laughing with someone and laughing at them. The best similarity I can think of would be "Chappelle's Show." The skits offered brilliant social commentary on race in America, but when white kids started to laugh along with Dave Chappelle for the wrong reasons, things got messy. Under different circumstances I would have jumped at the opportunity to put on a wig and stiffly wiggle my hips in front of the school. For example, later in the show the same teachers acted as male back-up dancers for another female teacher who impersonated some old Chilean diva. The guys still had very effeminate dance moves, but the whole thing was one elaborate, fun dance routine. The "Yo Soy" skits, on the other hand, had a frat party atmosphere to them. They told us that society here is overtly macho, with women still expected to fulfill all domestic duties and such. And though I've heard stories from past volunteers -- her host brother who was in his early 30s refused to make himself dinner for a week when the parents were out of town, and bitched and moaned that the female American paying the family rent money wouldn't go out of her way to make him food or clean his dishes -- I haven't seen anything like that up until now. Fact is that in every home I've visited the father helps cook and clean up at every meal, and this past Sunday the men completely waited on their wives hand and foot.
Sadly, I saw a very different side of the culture today as all four teachers made sure to mockingly flirt with the male contest judge and basically make their character look stupid. It's hard to really tell the difference between making yourself look dumb for the sake of having a good time, and trying to make the character you're portraying look dumb (as in, "Man Ricky Martin sure was a maricon."), and perhaps I'm wrong to judge too harsh. But I can safely say that watching your entire school crack up at the idea of homosexuality is not going to make it any easier for gay students to feel comfortable in their own skin. Of course, it's not like American society doesn't have the exact same problems. But it's definitely nice to know that a full blown show mocking gay singers like this would not be okay in the majority of American schools, and that plenty of US celebrities and politicians get together to work on pro-gay rights issues and PSAs to young students. But at the same time, we still have schools barring students from their own proms for being gay, so...there's that.
Essentially, I think that this is an example of identical issues and problems facing two separate cultures. But whereas here it is still quite public and open, in the US we often take the official policy of "This isn't P.C. and it's not tolerated or accepted here, thus we're on moral high ground" while shoving our skeletons back into the closet. The series of student suicides on college and high school campuses proves that all too well. I guess I don't have too much to say at the moment on this incredibly broad, complex issue. But I figured this was a story worth sharing. Hopefully in the near future I'll write a little more about Chilean daily life in general and the new Aysen hydro-power project that was just approved and will shortly be tearing apart all of southern Chile. Unfortunately, our country's find common ground on bullshit yet again.
-Pablo
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