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

to find a doctor, he sees a policeman and yells ‘¡intocables de chisguete!’ 111 This
expresses the audience’s view of police inaction: they appear but are inactive, failing to
come to the help of ordinary citizens, and people know this. The scene works as a safety
valve: we construct that fictional policeman as a representation of the real police, and
we assume Apache’s insult as if it were ours, even though we ‘are inhibited by
normative conventions from saying or cannot articulate/express so readily or so well’. 112
As we have seen, the act of humour makes insults possible. In a real-life situation we
would hesitate before insulting an authority figure, knowing the consequences,
especially in an authoritarian country.
While the family is deciding how to return with the corpse to the city, one of
Eufemio’s friends proposes the unthinkable: to take it the same way it came, in the car.
When finally Eufemio and his friends manage to put Lolita’s body in the car, they start
out only to find themselves stuck in traffic again. Three patrol cars are parked at the
roadside but the police do nothing to help the traffic move faster. Another driver notices
that Eufemio is carrying his mother’s corpse. A policeman is informed, and after
gathering a crowd around the car to pray for Doña Lolita’s soul, the policeman offers to
escort them into the city. Someone yells: ‘¡hasta que sirvieron para algo!’ 113 The insult
makes the joke possible and vice versa. Thus, Mecánica Nacional discusses serious
topics such as the death of a relative, the disinterest by the authorities, machismo, social
abuse, and others, but through Alcoriza’s focalisation, it remains a satirical and amusing
film.
111 Ibid.
112 George E. C. Paton, ‘The Comedian as Portrayer of Social Morality’ in Humour in Society. Resistance
and Control, ed. by Chris Powell and George E.C. Paton (London: MacMillan Press, 1988), 206-233 (p.
207).
113 Alcoriza, Mecánica Nacional, 1971.
198