/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/TV-MEXICO: Comedy-Only Channel Gaining Monopoly on Laughter

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Feb 26 2002 (IPS) - The first comedy-only television channel in Mexico is winning audiences at the hand of its creator, Andrés Bustamante, an artist and actor who impersonates President Vicente Fox as flawlessly as he portrays his own cast of outlandish characters, including Ponchito, “Sigmund Fraud”, and “Dr. Clone-zalez”.

Politicians, writers and artists are avowed admirers of Bustamante, pointing to the way he eschews clichés as well as his boldness in directing “Ponchivisión” a TV channel whose programming is for laughs only, and is the work of just 25 people.

Ponchi Chow, Ponchi News, Ponchi-Talk and The Blender are among the original programming of this television project, on air since last November and steadily building its audience.

Ponchito, a character Bustamante has been portraying for the last 12 years, in the past has interviewed President Fox as well as the head of the insurgent Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), ‘Subcomandante Marcos’, among other notables, for various television stations.

Both the president and the guerrilla leader have expressed their great admiration for Bustamante’s humour.

Now with his own cable TV channel, the list of interviewees and admirers continues to grow, including well-known politicians, artists, sports figures and business leaders.

The inauguration of Ponchivisión, backed by the giant Televisa consortium, was led by President Fox himself, but played by Bustamante in disguise. Audiences were enthralled by how flawlessly he mimicked the president’s speaking manner and gestures.

The comedian, the first to impersonate Fox on television, tackles political issues as easily as he discusses matters related to cooking or sex, with such creativity that writer Germán Dehesa has dubbed him a “genius of humour and Mexico’s best comic.”

“Laughter is a very interesting intellectual capacity, it makes you see things differently. Let’s say that it, like sex, is a drug we produce ourselves and it is free. People who laugh have a much better time in life than those who don’t,” Bustamante said.

Ponchivisión confirms the comedian’s talent for laughing at the world and making the world laugh with him, as does the parallel project ponchito.com, an Internet site that highlights Bustamante’s characters and humour.

The website allows visitors to meet unique personalities as they read the horoscopes produced by Maestro Ramalazo, spiritual advice from Fray Chicken, a psychological test by Sigmund Fraud and a dictionary created by Greco Morpheme.

The biography of Maestro Ramalazo states that the character was granted “the religious franchise of the Jala Crismas, a religion invented by the divine Aypancha Tentra Sisigue Enbrama Elpanda, which combines the best of adolescence with the best of Christmas.”

Ramalazo has horoscopes to predict the future for all signs of the zodiac.

“Due to the severe crisis in Argentina, February will be a very difficult month for Aries. In fact, the capital of that country will change its name from Buenos (good) to Malos (bad) Aires. For the moment it is best not to dance the tango or to take on an air of grandeur. Do not forget that one must be humble, my dear Aries,” he writes.

About Fray Chicken, the biography states that the character “had a clear vocation for the priesthood, as the youngest in the family he was already a brother when he was born, then he grew a little, and became a father.”

“I am a great fan of Andrés Bustamante, a one-of-a-kind comic who has made humour an exercise in intelligence,” writer Dehesa said.

Ponchivisión “is a channel like the most intimate, because laughter is itself quite intimate,” says Bustamante.

Pablo Vázquez, director of Cablevisión company, which distributes Bustamante’s Ponchivisión, said the first months of the new project have been very promising and that the audience just keeps on growing.