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

policeman is not acting in the way that we would expect a policeman to behave, as
happened in the previous example from La Familia Burrón. The policeman is breaking
an ethical code when trying to discover the money that the thief robbed. His behaviour
is reprehensible, and according to Eco this will bring us pleasure when he is punished.
We feel no sympathy for the man who transgressed the rule, and we enjoy the
punishment meted out for his transgression. For breaking the deal, he made and
disobeying Hermelinda’s advices, he disappears transformed into dust.
As we have seen, through humour the reader and the artist get pleasure by
expressing, or seeing expressed, what they would like to criticise but cannot. By
enunciating banned topics or forbidden thoughts we are also breaking a rule, even if this
is a self-censorship. Even when we are not the ones who directly insult someone we do
not like, or point to a fault that should be corrected, we take ownership over the insult as
if we were the ones to have made it. But as in the previous example, perhaps we do not
like the person who infringed the code, and our pleasure will come from the naked truth
(Freud) and from the misadventure of the character who broke the code. In La Familia
Burrón, in the episode in which Borola is trying to collect money for a party, she visits
an old friend from her childhood who tells Borola that she is married with a highway
patrolman and they are rich because ‘de puras mordidas se embolsa un millón mensual’,
and adds: ‘cuando yo lo conocí, ya era muy rico, era vigilante de tránsito de un crucero
muy importante. Después se dio cuenta que sorprender parejas de enamorados era una
mina de oro y se metió de patrullero’. 160 The woman’s statement is exaggerated since it
seems unlikely that someone can become rich simply by demanding bribes from lovers
caught in their cars. However, the exaggeration helps uncover the corruption of
policemen, which citizens are familiar with, and we get relief when Borola tells her
160 La Familia Burrón, 17280, p. 16.
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