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

no se va a poder [cheat on him]. Porque yo soy muy macho. Y puedo matar, y perdonar.
Lo que no aguanto es que me vean la cara de…’. 164 According to Barajas, ‘el macho
puede abusar o burlarse de los demás, pero absolutamente nadie abusa de él’. 165 The
humour in this case points out faults by magnifying them. These scenes are far from
funny on their own, but despite the harshness of the scenes and topics we know that
they belong to a comedy text.
We need the help of our super-ego to tolerate these scenes. To witness abuse is
difficult. In various scenes in which Eufemio abuses Isabel they are surrounded by
people who do not come to her aid. Mechanisms such as relief help us deal with it
because we recognise it as a mise-en-scene. We also distance ourselves from the
character who suffers. Through superiority we also penalise Eufemio by laughing at his
behaviour, but we will need our super-ego to triumph over our ego. Our super-ego must
convince our ego that we should not concern ourselves for the safety of Isabel because
she is a film character. We need to understand the facts as a ‘possible world’, a distorted
reality, but not the reality. 166 Even if we suffer from machismo ourselves, humour helps
us ‘detach’ 167 allowing us to repress our feelings and understand the scene as a critical
statement. We understand that it is socially acceptable to laugh, and doing so releases
the energy that we used to contain our pain, relaxing us and helping us overcome the
tragedy. Thus, the big challenge for the filmmaker is to make clear to the audience that
they are within the universe of humour. Special signs are necessary which make the
genre clear, 168 such as incongruity or exaggeration.
Other symbols of machismo include the portrayal of mothers considered as
saints and daughters as virgins, pure before the eyes of society. Charito is the daughter
164
Alcoriza, Mecánica Nacional, 1971.
165
Barajas, Sólo me río… p. 115.
166
Raskin, Semantic Mechanisms… p. 55, Davies, Jokes and their Relation… p. 1.
167
Critchley, On Humour, p. 62.
168
Purdie, Comedy. The Mastery… p. 13.
219