Monday, September 29, 2008

Are politicians 'off limits'? Just here in Mexico

Yesterday I posted a brief comment about a video with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, where the first one mocks again Sarah Palin, the VP candidate of the Republican Party.

In US there is a healthy practice: to show the weaknesses and mistakes the politicians have, even the President. Nevertheless, in Mexico this is not usual.

Here politicians, specially the President, are almost 'off limits' in TV shows.

I think we still have very present a time when the President was the most powerful person in Mexico, and talking about any kind of weakness was a dangerous thing to do. Some of them even ordered to disappear his opponents.

But now, even if we have more liberty to talk about the public figures than in previous times, there should be more spoofs of the President, candidates and every important person in politics.

In contrast, there are just some glimpses of comedy in segments of news programm, and they only cover some aspects of politics, but they lack of real 'sting', (i.e. they only mock partially or stuff that is not really important).

In my opinion, the media, by not having this kind of expressions, are showing they act as if they were in the past. I believe the censorship must disappear and that Mexicans are intelligent enough to judge by themselves if a comedian is showing something relevant or the government is right in its decisions.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

INTERESTING and thanks.

Im of the opinion that our comedy spoofing might be ok (SNL made me laugh) but that the candidates going places such as the world wrestling fed or on LETTERMAN might be a bit too much...too not becoming of the job for which they are applying.

I mightcould be alone in this though...

M.

Karina Velazquez said...

Well, I agree with you that visiting Letterman and world wrestling fred it is too much, but doing that I think it is more like political propaganda (done by the candidates and their campaign teams) and SNL does comic segments mocking the candidates (they haven't any influence in that).

That's why we think the first one is funny and the other it's sometimes like... candidates selling themselves. :)

Karina Velazquez said...

Ups, it was 'fed', not 'fred', hahaha, my fingers sometimes are a little clumsy. :)

Anonymous said...

good point.

and for some reason I CRINGE at the selling.

rings so desperate huh?

Karina Velazquez said...

They look false and everything looks so staged when it's propaganda and that's why I believe anyone with some sense of authenticity cringes seeing them, :) :)