There is a whole new category of celebrities these days: The YouTube Sensation. Some become quotable classics, like Kittens Inspired by Kittens (I want beef jerky!) or Marcel the Shell (Some people say my head’s too big for my body, but I say, compared to what?). Sometimes it’s just an incident of ‘kid’s say the darndest things,’ like “Charlie bit my finger” or “I like turtles.” YouTube stars are born and remembered, but they’re not all inacessible.
Middlebury has its own faculty YouTube star: Enrique Garcia, assistant professor of Spanish. Garcia uses his YouTube account, “El profesor quijotesco,” to teach his classes on visual culture and cinema.
“I teach the scenes in my class,” said Garcia of his YouTube uploads. “I want to give them perspective. They feel that Middlebury is in the middle of nowhere and think they cannot have a narrative here, so I want to prove them wrong.”
His most recent video centered on a vampire contingent in town.
“I think the future is [the] web being used,” said Garcia. “Students enjoy these more than a three-hour movie.”
Possibly his most viewed video is his Avatar parody, where Garcia himself dresses as a Naavi avatar. It was his Halloween special, and it is a remake of the movie set in Middlebury, Vt. Garcia’s video starts exactly as the movie does and includes key features from the film such as the video diary and intricate costumes. Garcia even paints himself blue though he had some initial reservations about whether this would be politically correct.
“Blue-face,” he called it. “It’s not racial because it’s not a real ethnicity,” said Garcia, “but it’s the same principle.”
Garcia used the political and racial issues brought up in his Avatar Parody as topics for discussion in his class.
“In Latin America, a lot of people were Naavi for Halloween,” Garcia said. “I read that in Puerto Rico stores were charging $300 to make you a Naavi. But they wouldn’t dare dress as a real native because of their lower class.”
Garcia felt that students really appreciated his use of alternative media as a teaching tool.
“Students had a blast,” said Garcia. “I want to show students they don’t have to be stuck-up with their presentations. Our society is obsessed with formality, but I’m saying, ‘Look, I’m putting me in as an Avatar! And there’s no shame in it!’ “Even something as silly as karaoke,” Garcia said. “I go to a party, and I stop caring about shame. It’s nothing bad. I think being fun is sometimes better than being stuck-up.”
Garcia stressed the importance of having fun, especially in schoolwork. For example, the seminar class he teaches is on Latin American comic books.
“It’s my greatest creation,” he said. “I think it’s the only class on Latin American comic books in the United States. I’ve googled it and found nothing.”
After earning a graduate degree in comparative literature Garcia began researching comic books, especially those published in Spanish America.
“I probably have the biggest collection of comic books from Spanish America,” said Garcia. His office is filled with comics of all different styles and types; he has two large filing cabinets full of them as well as a bookcase, and there are various others scattered around the room.“I found them on eBay,” he said. “In Latin America, stuff published in the 60s and 70s is not republished and there’s no way of finding it.”
Of all his various books, Garcia does have a favorite: a comic called “Memín.” Originating in Mexico “Memín” focuses on poor people in the 40s and 50s. It was groundbreaking but also very controversial because the main character is a 1940s minstrel, which is defined as a “member of a troupe of performers in blackface typically giving a comic program of Negro songs and jokes.”
“It’s a great work, so it brings [up] the question: do you make it disappear because of racial issues? … It’s different than minstrels in the U.S. because in the U.S. the minstrel was used to back-up racial thoughts by the government,” said Garcia. “The other thing is that in a weird way, [the minstrel] is not like even a real character. There’s no African population in Mexico, so [the character is] almost like Mickey Mouse.”
Garcia wants to write a book questioning whether a minstrel narrative can be positive and planned to interview Manelick de la Parra, the son of the creator of “Memín.” However, as he began planning a trip to Mexico, he realized that de la Parra has a house in none other than Stowe, VT.
“It was ironic,” said Garcia. “You think Vermont is so isolated, but here he is.”
De la Parra is coming to Garcia’s class this Friday to discuss the controversies of the main character of his mother’s comic book. He has also donated a collection of “Memín” books to Middlebury so students can further investigate.
“Another thing I like about “Memín” is that it’s written by a woman,” said Garcia. “The comic book world is very male-centric, which adds to the controversy.”
Garcia’s class for next spring fits in with his theme of “fun”: a class on Hispanic musicals. Every week the class will study a different country, study its music and then watch a film from a country that highlights the music.
“Students listen to more Spanish music than read the literature,” said Garcia. “It’s practical for them to know about the music they listen to.”
According to Garcia, his classes are only possible because Middlebury is so open.
“At Harvard, they probably would tell me that’s not literature,” Garcia said. “I love literature, my degree is in comparative literature, but we need to show the different aspects of literature to students.
“People ask me if I would go to a different place,” Garcia said. “Well, no, because I don’t know if they’d allow me to do this.”
Check out Garcia’s YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Elprofesorquijotesco
Staff Spotlight: Enrique Garcia
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