In The Name Of Freedom

I have had a strong connection with the Mexican culture ever since I met my wife. She is from Mexico City, we had to go through a long, cruel and seemingly endless process to have her immigrate legally into the United States of America. After having to go through this process I became obsessed with immigration reform and have been aware of the corruption in the U.S. immigration system. So when the ‘Textual Poaching’ assignment came up I immediately had a culture and a message I wanted to convey. I chose the infamous Mexican luchador films as the medium I would ‘remix’ for two reasons:

1. The recognizable nature of the films since the success of “Nacho Libre”, it would be easy for the viewers to recognize the medium as Mexican.
2. The consistent theme in the luchador films is that of a hero overcoming an ugly, soulless (often supernatural) foe.

I chose to remix clips from this film with the song “The Cave” by Mumford & Sons because of the pace, and because of the strong message of finding freedom, and helping others to find it also.

            Once I finished the initial remix I realized I needed to have some more elements to drive home the message of this remix, so I dug around until I found the speech given by President Obama when he announced his small immigration reform which I found made for a good Prologue and Epilogue to my remix but I still needed some more meat for the middle. Obama’s speech reminded me of a Speech given by Robert Kennedy entitled “Ripple Of Hope”. It’s message meshed well with the song, and I felt it hit right at the heart of what I wanted to say with my video.

            Lastly I needed to relate the mummies and vampires to something that we all could understand that is when I decided to incorporate the little known story of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas who was cruelly tortured and murdered by the hands of about twenty U.S. Border Patrol agents. I wanted to compare them with these monsters in the luchador films, so I meshed clips that witnesses captured of Anastasio’s torture and murder with those of the monsters doing their evil deeds.

            We hear Anastasio crying out for help, his cry is answered by the arrival of ‘Santo’, the proverbial super hero and savior of Mexican luchador films. After hearing Robert Kennedy’s inspired words he is freed from the vampires by the power of light, and destroys the zombies with his fellow luchadores. The final words are a simple plea, the song ends saying “…and I will change my ways, I’ll know my name as it’s called again.” And Obama finishes the piece by stating, “…we have always drawn strength from being a nation of immigrants.”

            When conceptualizing this film I took inspiration from Danger Mouse’s “The Grey Video”. I liked how he mixed the old film with the new and made them seem like one, and how he made the artist’s interact. That was my goal when bringing all these mediums together. I also took inspiration from the Cinderella piece, I couldn’t find quality film of Robert Kennedy’s “Ripple of Hope” speech, and so I sought out footage of another speech and spliced the audio from “Ripple of Hope” to the film and managed to make it look close to the real thing. Though my piece is imperfect, I feel like I was able to interrelate the clips to convey my message, “That there is hope if we realize that we are all strangers here”.

Materials:

Santo vs. Las Momias de Guanajuato

Santo vs. Las Mujeres Vampiro

Barack Obama "Speech on Immigration Policy"

Robert Kennedy "Ripple of Hope"

PBS "Crossing the Line at the Border"