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Abstract:
This study utilizes, rhetorically, the case of a Mexican television personality, Brozo, whose format includes satiric humorous communication and subversion of the authority of the Mexican elite on a morning television news program. Brozo's incursion into the realm of the elite television newscast implies an adversarial relationship, which he attains structurally through such devices as comic theatre and the role of the Jester. This study argues that Brozo's humorous communication can be seen as subversive and as contributing to the development of a shared critique of power in the Mexican political realm. Consequently, Brozo's humorous communication is a contestive strategy provoking the possibility of societal change.
Keywords: television, news, humor, jester, Mexico.
This study examines the Mexican television personality, Brozo 1, whose format includes satiric humorous communication on a popular morning television "news" program. Bozo's program on Televisa named "El Mañanero" is Mexican slang referring to "quickie" sex in the morning. "Brozo" is also a play on Mexican slang: Bozo the famous U.S. clown, also popular in Mexico, and Brosa, meaning the underclass masses. Victor Trujillo combined the two to create his full name, Brozo, el Payaso Tenebroso-Brozo, the Scary Clown. Tene-broso has other meanings as well: shadowy and spooky. "Dressed in his clown get-up, including a lime-green wig, Victor Trujillo hits the airwaves weekday mornings for four hours, dishing out satire, parody and humor-filled commentary on his country's politicos" (Nobody's fool, 2002).
Victor Trujillo, began his career two decades ago acting in situation comedies. Initially he used the broso persona to portray an earthy underclass person who told fairy tales, but later added social and political criticism, eventually assuming the role more akin to the Jester role. In the mid-nineties he re-created his character as a television news anchor, and developed a show for Canal 40, an independent cable station owned by Televisora del Valle de México, which had begun to experiment with unconventional news presentations during the Ernesto Zedillo presidency from 1994 to 2000. The unanticipated popularity of Brozo and the El Mañanero show compelled politicians, show business personalities, and other celebrities, including Marta Sahagun, Presidente Vicente Fox's wife, to appear on his show. Aware of Brozo's success, the mainstream television network, Televisa, the largest media company in the Spanish-speaking...