A risada é um triunfo do cérebro: aspectos cômicos, filosóficos e literários de El Chavo e El Chapulín Colorado

Abstract

The TV series El Chapulín Colorado (The Red Grasshopper) and El Chavo, created in the 1970s by the Mexican comedian Roberto Gómez Bolaños (1928–2014), also known as Chespirito, have reached great success in Latin America countries. Their permanence in the public's taste for almost five decades emphasizes the possibility and importance of studying them under a point of view that privileges their artistic aspects, in order to observe their theatrical and literary qualities. In response to the question of why Chespirito's work always continues to attract and interest the public, the thesis that this dissertation seeks to demonstrate is that one of the reasons is that it has a certain wealth of comic devices, ranging from the slapstick humor to the literary refinements of ironies and puns, besides of dealing with themes of universal interest. The demonstration is therefore done by exposing and commenting on a selection of these devices, with a special focus on those of literary nature—whose analysis is combined with interpretative remarks on the episodes in question, especially with regard to characters, plots, and dialogues. More specifically, another thesis is that, related to the comic aspect of the series, there is not only the literary aspect, but also a philosophical aspect. Thus, the concept of anecdote of abstraction is interpreted according to Guimarães Rosa's considerations in his book Tutaméia (1967), which maintains that humor offers us some means for a metaphysical comprehension of reality, especially the specific mechanism of the anecdote of abstraction, that is, a joke based on a process of mental separation, very common in Bolaños' writing. The idea of approximation between literature and philosophy suggested by Rosa is here complemented by the Aristotelian theory of the four discourses, as interpreted by Olavo de Carvalho. Then, it is observed that parody—understood, according to the definitions of Souriau and Dentith, as a deliberate deformation of a previous model—gives shape to various characters, plots, and dialogues of El Chapulín and El Chavo. Another device widely used by Bolaños for comic effect is irony, in several levels: 1) in the characters' speeches; 2) as a divergence between text and scene; and 3) at the situation level, in which, according to the studies by Brombert and Frye, the characters take an ironic position in relation to their environment, such as, for example, the irony of Chapulín's anti-heroic situation, a super hero who causes trouble instead of helping. There is also the satirical irony, in which the humorous function of insults and nicknames is observed, based on the elements of satire listed by João Adolfo Hansen. Still, there is the study of Cynicism, both under its original philosophical sense—starting from the analogy between el Chavo and the Cynic philosopher Diogenes, who have in common the fact of living in a barrel—and under its pejorative sense, synonymous with derision and impudence, noting how this type of cynicism appears frequently in the speech of some characters. Finally, based mainly on Bergson's theory of laughter, it is observed how Chespirito uses, as comic devices, the episode titles and character names, quid pro quos, misinterpretations, puns, and catchphrases.