Comedy and Madness in México: From Medical Modernity to Popular Culture.

Comedy and Madness in México: From Medical Modernity to Popular Culture.

by B.C.S Marco Antonio Jiménez Siller

majsiller@gmail.com 

Universidad Iberoamericana

Mexico City, Mexico

Long before the study of psychiatry as a discipline, in feudal and medieval societies, “madness” had been strictly related to humor; insanity as a compliment of sanity. It is here that the relation among theoretical and academic study of society between comedy and dementia begins. This relation represented as a counterpart of what is rational; manifested in the artistic expression, in drama and folklore of the past; in television, cinema and radio of nowadays

I will then trace back to the traditional academic study and the treatment of dementia in Mexico. Well before the independence from the Spanish Crown, there is evidence of confinement of the demented, the indecent, the other. This tradition gets modernized clinically and it turns in the study and the medical attention for those that suffer the illnesses of the mind, the “mad ones”.

In Mexican popular culture we can find ancient traditions, filled with legends and mythology. Ours is a culture that has a day to day bond with laughter and comedy. The celebration of the “Día de Muertos” (Day of the Death) along with its rituals and folklore might be the one transcends borders the most. It’s precisely from this tradition where the popular saying comes: “In Mexico, we even make fun of the death”, if we have found humor in death, what can keep us from finding it in madness?”

This document provides an analysis of the concept construction of the “mad ones” in Mexico from the perspective of comedy through television and how this and other personages conformed, during decades, the portrait of the demented in our pop culture, taking original characters from Mexican comedians as an unmistakable reference.

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