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Guillermo Gomez-Pena Spits It Out

Jenn Harris |
February 8, 2009 | 7:31 p.m. PST

Staff Reporter

(Creative Commons Licensed)

Guillermo Gómez-Peña spit at me.

No, it wasn't personal.

It followed neither a rude provocation nor the exchange of harsh words.

It didn't actually follow anything.  

Gómez-Peña spit on me, for no other reason than that of spitting, toward the middle of his solo performance--El Mexorcist 4: America's Most Wanted Inner Demon--at the USC Fisher Museum of Art Wednesday January 28.  He grabbed a sugary, lemonade-filled Mr. Clean bottle off his black cloth-lined prop table, took a swig, then spit the entire mouthful onto the audience in front of him: me.  

This was but one of the many jaw-dropping, mind-opening moments bound literally to hit me in the face during his spirited performance.

From the moment he stepped on stage--Harley Davidson black leather boots, kneepads, suit-jacket and cowboy hat in two--the shirtless Gómez-Peña encouraged the audience's participation, making them an integral part of the show.  

"Dear contemporaries," he said.  "God bless Mexico, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Venezuela..."  As the audience began to join him, shouting the name of country after country, Gómez-Peña continued to bless every nation he could think of besides the U.S.  

After what felt like a 10-minute geography lesson, he finally blessed America.

"God bless America--the continent I mean," a place, he said, in which people pray for "perfect tits and a big dick."

That denigration did not, however, bar him from paying his own "dick" heed.

I find it worth mentioning that throughout the show, the talented activist repeatedly mentioned his genitals and all but performed fellatio on his microphone.

"My testicles feel like they are floating on chipotle sauce," he said. "All real and confusing, no?" At one point, he groped himself for a good half minute or so.

Maybe this was his way of shocking people into listening.

Whatever the reason, I can almost guarantee that after that, everyone in the audience was paying attention.   

During one of his tamer moments, Gómez-Peña confronted Mexican stereotypes by shouting the names of popular Americanized, Mexican food and terms from rap songs: "Burrito!" "Taco!" "Enchilada!" "Culo!" He posed questions like "Who is more dangerous, the Tijuana drug cartel or the Minutemen?"

With the economy crumbling around us, Gómez-Peña's tirades are relevant, if also extreme. His songs and comments explored alternative, unconventional but incredibly logical solutions to the world's problems: we should learn how to live with less. We should depend on less. We should think of ourselves as equals with the rest of the world, instead of as superiors.  

With a fiery passion only properly exhibited by an artist, Gómez-Peña called for a sort of free-for-all artist's colony/utopia where everyone has a decent low-rider and studio space.  

"Is art our salvation?" he asked.  "Art has saved me from deportation, jail and a mental hospital."

Gomez-Peña addressed the government and its current bailout plan in only the snidest, most critical manner. He asked if those on Wall Street would "seek us - artists - for a cultural bailout?"

The performance felt more like a conversation that might take place at a cool party than anything else.  It was thought-provoking, funny and radical in the craziest, non-slang-oriented sense of the word.

It was all I could ever want from a one-man show.  

To top it all off, Gómez-Peña handed a bottle of rum to a woman sitting in the audience. He told her to take a swig and pass it around so that the entire audience could toast the Obama era of '09.

Cheers Guillermo!



 

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