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

The violation of the rule may come from the characters when they are engaged
in an activity, which is why it is so important that the comic character is animalistic –
and that we feel no sympathy for his/her actions. 157 In La Familia Burrón, Ruperto is
waiting for his girlfriend outside her house when the police stop and try to arrest him
without giving him a reason. The policeman threatens him: ‘Si no quieres sentir que las
piernas se te doblan al recibir un cachazo, súbete al carro sin protestar’. Ruperto replies:
‘A un hombre honrado no se le puede detener.’ The policeman ignores Ruperto’s
comment and pushes him inside the patrol car while saying: ‘¿Qué no?’ 158 In this case a
policeman is breaking a code: an innocent man cannot be detained by police. And as we
have seen, this is a common representation of the police in the three comic books. They
create a carnivalised situation in which the criminals are the authorities, and the
civilians are abused by them. However, the Mexican reality was indeed upside down
like in carnival, and citizens often suffered abuse, as stated in chapter two. In this
example we feel relief that someone is portraying policemen as abusive. This is another
violation of the rule since the artists who created La Familia Burrón were discussing a
taboo topic, the abusiveness of our authorities. They violated the rule that indicates that
we should not make fun of the authorities, so here we have two mechanisms which
trigger laughter.
We recognise Umberto Eco’s proposition when police dishonesty is discussed.
In Hermelinda Linda a policeman asks the witch to help him change the ashes of a thief
who died in a fire before confessing where he hid all the money he robbed from the
bank. Hermelinda asks the policeman: ‘¿Y qué les parecerá a los del banco?’ and the
policeman replies: ‘Señora, los del banco siempre están asegurados…’. 159 The
157 Eco, ‘Los marcos de…’, p. 10.
158 La Familia Burrón, 17164, p. 5.
159 Hermelinda Linda, 1743, p. 10
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