Leticia Neria PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

collect a large amount of money to pay bribes to release her brother from jail. She visits
her old friend, the diputado previously discussed. During their conversation, the
diputado says ‘…pa’llegar a diputado lo primero que se necesita es no ser tarugo.’ To
his statement, Borola comments: ‘Permíteme que me guarde mi canija opinión’. 82
The situation here is different from those analysed earlier since the diputado is
not doing something which can be judged by the reader, nor is he not acting in an
exaggerated way. In this case it is Borola who criticises and humiliates the diputado
face to face. With her answer she is avoiding saying what she might really think. For
Borola, the diputados are not intelligent. Borola is perhaps saying something that people
would like to say but would carry risks. Thus, when someone else pronounces the insult
on our behalf, we feel avenged and relieved. The character is acting in the way we
would like to, but without bringing us any consequences. 83 And again, the energy that
we use to contain these thoughts is freed, bringing to us some pleasure and comfort.
But the diputados are not the only ones who are characterised as total failures.
The political class in general tends to be criticised in these comic books. In the same
issue previously described from Los Agachados, in which Trastupijes believes that El
Mesías is calling the diputados parasites, he thinks that El Mesías refers to government
employees in the same way. 84 His ignorance and his private secretary’s become evident
when Bedoyo –the secretary- asks Trastupijes what ‘parasite’ means and Trastupijes
gives the wrong definition. Trastupijes’ confused answer generates the hilarity. It is also
an exaggeration since it is hoped that a politician and a secretary would know the
meaning of the word ‘parásito’. This act of humour is an admissible way to describe the
82 La Familia Burrón, 16914, p. 18.
83 Freud, El chiste y su relación...p. 207, and M.K. Rothbar quoted in Raskin, Semantic Mechanisms… p.
40.
84 Los Agachados, 71, p. 10.
107