Tag Archives: Acapulco

08/1/17

Having Fun in Acapulco with Elvis is a Matter of Perspective

Fun in Acapulco (1963) tells the story of Mike Windgren (Elvis Presley), who is fired from his job at a show boat and has to take a job as a lifeguard at a nearby hotel in Acapulco. Mike, fearful of diving into the pool, faces his rival, another lifeguard, Moreno who becomes jealous of him for going out with his girl, Marguerita, and the two become enemies.

On one side, this movie depicts the different vicissitudes and troubles that Mike, a young American must face when working as lifeguard in the Mexico’s touristic town of Acapulco. He needs to work for less and attend many interviews with different hotel managers to find the best offer that he and his small partner Raoul, can find. On the other, Fun in Acapulco also shows the troubles that two ex-royals, Marguerita and her father Maximillian, must face when losing their high-class status and are forces to migrate to Mexico and work in the resort. However, the movie takes away from presenting the problems that the Mexican workers or citizens of Acapulco face with the surrounding and powerful economic forces that the hotel and truism industry display in Acapulco. For instance, the figure of Elsa Cardenas as a female bullfighter sends a romanticized image of a heroic figure who likes and chases handsome men. Elsa doesn’t have to work since she seems to have it all and also belongs to a higher social class than the rest of Mexicans. She even has a manager who tries to please her in all he can. But what about Raoul Almeido, the Mexican kid who manages Mike? How does he know so much about the managing business and what about his relationship with all his other ‘cousins’ in Acapulco?

As I see it, Fun in Acapulco focuses on Mike’s issues and takes away from the struggles of the Mexican characters. Or at least, it diminishes them by making them appear as fun and easy-go-lucky type of characters who are contempt with the situation they face. For example, while the audience gets to know that Mike, Marguerita and her dad, all live in the hotel complex, what about the Mexican kid, Raoul? And does Raoul’s extended family of cousins replace the need for a real family within the movie? What’s more, Fun in Acapulco seems to imply that Raoul’s ingenuity and resourcefulness would allow him to be okay even after Mike leaves the hotel for America. Raoul says, “I’ll find another nobody and turn him into a somebody.” In a sense, Raoul’s words allow the viewer to come to the conclusion that the kid, as well as all the other Mexican locals, are not and will not be affected by the tourism industry and the local authorities which regulate that business. What’s important within the movie is not the troubles that Acapulco’s third world location may bring such as poverty, housing issues for tourist workers, hygienic conditions, prostitution, etc., but the American visitor and worker, Mike. What matter are his struggles, his peruse of happiness, the way in which he seduces and captivates the local culture by becoming more Mexican than the Mexican singers. Elvis is a performer and as such, his character Mike, steels the show and adopts the Mexican music, customs, and culture as his own. Hence, the local Mexicans such as Raoul serve as mere background and fillers in the story of an American having fun in Acapulco.

Additionally, when the people of Acapulco are depicted in the movie, they are set to be taking “too many siestas (afternoon naps)”. Mike, then, contraposes this lazy idea of the siesta with his hard work, ambition and the willingness to overcome his diving fear. Mike is the center of attention in the movie and embodies performance, singing, athleticism throughout the whole movie. Mexico, and as a consequence, Acapulco serves to promote the idea of “tropical paradise”, where tourists can have a good time without worrying about anything, all while enjoying the tropical beauty that the landscape offers them. Elvis and his Mexican errant-boy, Raoul, make sort of a dynamic-duo, which allows Elvis to shine. Just like other characters have their side-kicks such as The Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore and his loyal Indian ‘friend’, Jay Silverheels as Tonto. If you ask me, this comparison while different in setting, is similar in racial differentiation and apparels characterization of the ‘other’.

Additionally, Mike the American immigrant but a temporary visitor to Acapulco changes jobs and professions seamlessly. But, Raoul, for instance, stays fixed to his surviving type-of-trade. This shows an advantage for the American character while placing the Mexican one to a defined set of rules with regards to his work, family, and future situation. In the end, only the American Mike, and the tourists he entertains, can have Fun in Acapulco. Hence, ignoring all the issues that the locals of the city of Acapulco may face by their presence.

07/14/17

Week One: The Man from Acapulco (Le Magnifique): The bending of reality

My first reaction to The Man from Acapulco (Le Magnifique) (1973), directed by Philippe de Broca, was of fantasy meets reality. It is a movie with different layers but those layers, like many other movies, need to be peel with care before they reveal what they have to tell. At first, The Man from Acapulco seems to be a French version of James Bond, charged with many shades of humor and parody against the tropical Mexican landscape. On the other hand, this movie also resembles the Pink Panther because it plays with a clumsy but agile detective, Bob Saint-Clar, a fiction character, who is involved in all of the action scenes which later are explain to be the creation of the other main character: François Merlin, the writer. In a sense, The Man from Acapulco is a movie about the creation of reality based on fantasy. A French writer writes about Acapulco, a place he has never been to, but wishes he could be there in person in order to escape the cosmopolitan city of Paris. Hence, Merlin uses the genre of action and adventure literature to create fictional characters who can travel to remote places (away from civilized France) to solve miseries and to live a more exciting live.

There is something very important about this movie because it explains the power of writing. But beyond creating stories and imagining fictional heroes saving the pretty girl, this movie also showcases the struggles of the creative process of writing itself. Here is where I relate to the movie and to the difficulty of writing something of value. This is not to say that the movie cannot be analyzed in other ways. For instance, one of the elements of the movie, and perhaps an empowering element for Merlin as a writer, is that he becomes some sort of semi-god full of vengeance. Case in point, Merlin punishes or rewards the people who live in his building (Christine) or come to his apartment (Charron, Mrs. Berger, the electrician and the plumber), depending on how his state of mind is at the moment. If the electrician does not fix his cable problem at home, then Merlin makes him an evil villain in his book. Hence, the power of writing and his personal power as a character is to use his talent to create other fictional charters which makes his story line very successful. But the vengeance part does not end in the fictional section of the movie. For example, Merlin also punishes Christine when he thinks she’s been cheating on him with his editor. During this final scene, Merlin’s male ego is hurt so much that he leaves Christine outside of his apartment to sleep on the floor just because he thinks she has betrayed him. Not to mention, the many times Tatiana, the fictional double character of Christine, who suffers multiple violent rapes many times over at the hands of the military as a punishment.

Another element which is important in The Men from Acapulco is the breaking down or failure of the typewriter machine. This event allows the filmmaker to ‘break’ the fantasy/reality continuum of the scene and to tell the viewer there are to different worlds being presented here. One is the the word of reality of Merlin and the other is the fantastic world of Bob Saint-Cla, the action hero. Now, the viewer can identify that Merlin is a writer but not any kind of writer. He is a writer having some issues with money, his flat, his lonely life in Paris, and more importantly, with his instrument of creation: the type writer. Here, the power of creation of the type writer (and now with our computes) gives Merlin the power to imagine other exotic geographies far away from home. In these foreign lands, such as Acapulco, a helicopter can fly over the pyramids of Tenochtitlan and inside them a crazy sacrificial bloodbath type of killing can take place. Hence, the violence and horror is justified in this context of primitivity. Even the theme of his novels are set to be cheesy. Merlin knows his audience and writers for a sex and violence thirsty kind of reader. Nothing wrong with that, but the only thing is that his writing perpetuates certain misconceptions that many French (and perhaps Europeans) people might have of remote place such Mexico.

In the end, The Man from Acapulco was a very funny and entertaining movie. At the beginning, I stated watching with French subtitles on but later and thanks to Jon, I watched it with Portuguese subtitles which made much more sense and allowed me finish watching the movie until the end.