How To Essay about Embodied Rhetorics Written Assignment No 3 Steps Gain beginning knowledge embodied rhetorics through the readings. Synthesize what the

How To Essay about Embodied Rhetorics Written Assignment No 3 Steps

Gain beginning knowledge embodied rhetorics through the readings.
Synthesize what they each have to say about the importance of the body as we learn and write.
Next, pick a specific audience and practice identification to figure out how you’re going to have to write to make sure they get it and don’t feel talked down to.
Write your paper using the following format:
Introduction
Explanationabout the importance of the body
A step-by-step guide(including pictures) explaining how to do the activity
This means directions.
This also means providing advice or cautioningas needed
Wrap-up(conclusion) that ends the process on a good note See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304014078
Day of the Dead: Decolonial Expressions in Pop de los Muertos
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32
Day of t he D ead
Decolonial Expressions in
Pop de los Muertos
Cruz Medina
Sweet smells of pan de los muertos and sugar candy skulls, vibrant pastel paper cutouts lining
the streets for processions in skeleton face paint, with oversized papier-mâché figures and
altars decorated with pictures of family members lead the way to the cemetery with offerings
of bottles and plates of food at tombs and headstones, with golden bouquets of marigolds
adorning burial plots.1 These familiar sights, smells, and tastes of Día de los Muertos pop
cultural memory possess distinct layers of indigenous, colonial, and decolonial expression.
The indigenous Mexican practices associated with Pre-Columbian Nahua and Mayan
civilizations surviving the Conquest would be adopted by mainstream Mexican artists and
intellectuals following the Revolution, translating into more current U.S. representations
that gained popularity via the Chicana/o art movement. That struggle and resistance can be
identified with each of these time periods when Día de los Muertos re-emerges “suggest[s] an
almost irreverent, macabre confrontation with mortality” (“Day of the Dead, Halloween”
360). Día de los Muertos expressions derive much of their rhetorical power from PreColumbian roots and the anti-colonial ethos of the Mexican Revolution that express not
only a distinct visual aesthetic, but more importantly, symbolize the decolonial belief system
that resists Western traditions. That the popularity of Día de los Muertos continues to
grow demonstrates an exigency for conceptualizing death in a manner that diverges from a
Western ideology of imperialism through consumption and fear of the afterlife.
Contemporary productions of Día de los Muertos reflect the traditional skeleton art
popularized by Jośe Guadalupe Posada and his image of “La Calavera Catrina,” which was
meant as social criticism of the elites in Porfirio Díaz’s pre-Revolution Mexico. The anticolonial ethos of this aesthetic levied towards Spain further emphasized the importance of
Día de los Muertos as a cultural practice that was indigenous to Mexico. Building on this
tradition, Regina Marchi notes that “[m]any Chicano artists were inspired by Jośe Guadalupe
Posada’s satirical calavera caricatures, and began to create stylistically similar drawings that
critically commented on California’s politicians, urban youth, and other political topics”
(40). The self-determination embodied by the art created before and after the Mexican
D ay o f t h e D e a d
Revolution provided a clear inspiration for the Chicana/o art movement that paralleled the
civil rights movement and the spirit of anti-colonial resistance.
The incorporation of anti-colonial messages into popular cultural productions such as
theater can, in fact, be traced to the project of the conquest of the Americas. While some
argue that there is a lack of explicit connection between Día de los Muertos and its PreColumbian roots, this argument remains indicative of the colonial project that sought to
erase the history, literacy and knowledge of Pre-Columbian populations through the burning
of codices. Pre-Columbian culture served to differentiate Mexico from Spanish colonialism,
and Día de los Muertos highlights the difference in how death is represented in Western pop
culture amidst the current popularity of zombies in TV, comic books and movies, providing
an alternative—even liberatory—worldview that values family, communing with the dead,
and cultural memory.
Framework of the Dead
In the pop culture imaginary, death is often associated with Halloween and the fantastic and
fear-eliciting zombies populating a “hell on earth” that fits within a Western colonial religious
belief system. Día de los Muertos serves as a cultural practice that not only differentiates how
death is represented in film, movies, and comics, but the celebration of the dead signifies a
cultural break from Halloween, which in Mexico “has become a symbol of the United States
and its cultural imperialistic designs” (“The Day of the Dead, Halloween” 371). Although
Stanley Brandes also speculates about the connection between Dia de los Muertos and
Pre-Columbian traditions (“Day of the Dead, Halloween” 366), it is important to keep in
mind that decolonialism is not just a study of history, culture and artifacts. Decolonialism
offers a framework for interpretive projects and the creation of knowledge: “A delinking
that leads to de-colonial epistemic shift and brings to the foreground other epistemologies,
other principles of knowledge and understanding and, consequently, other economy, other
politics, other ethics” (Mignolo 453). Decolonial epistemologies can develop when we
authorize Pre-Columbian fragments remaining from the codices and archives of knowledge
burned in the project of the Conquest. In both authorized and unauthorized epistemologies,
fragments of texts provide sources of background knowledge and evidence that generate
arguments with decolonial methodologies that recognize the hermeneutic potential of
indigenous culture and practices.
To study how pop culture expresses particular rhetoric related to death, it is important to
recognize how a decolonial methodology offers alternatives for how death is conceptualized.
In his discussion of sacred rhetoric, Morgan Marietta examines the psychology behind ‘sacred’
topics in political arguments often associated with religious beliefs. Marietta concludes that
sacred rhetoric possesses absolutist reasoning that influences “public discourse rather than
public opinion” (777). Although the dominant epistemologies in the U.S. purport to rely
upon logic as a guiding principal, the ideological underpinnings of U.S. politics demonstrate
that even logic fails to effectively persuade audiences with entrenched beliefs. In keeping
with the psychology undergirding rhetoric of the dead, Joshua Gunn’s “Refitting Fantasy:
Psychoanalysis, Subjectivity, and Talking to the Dead” conceptualizes communication with
the dead as “a conspicuous and exaggerated elaboration of the underlying fantasy that is
central to the ways we think about rhetoric: the mediation or reconciliation of self and
other across a terrible, yawning gap” (2). Gunn’s main site of analysis is the television
psychic John Edward who channels the dead for the members of his studio audience. That
Edward remains something of a punch line shows how communicating with the dead is
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viewed pejoratively; in addition, the ability to speak to the dead is defined by Gunn as a
fantasy, and death “a terrible, yawning gap” as opposed to an inevitable stage of life.
Día de los Muertos pop culture express layers of semiotics associated with these
representations beyond the yawning gap of zombies. By following decolonial scholar Walter
Mignolo’s advocacy to examine parallel “loci of enunciation,” sites of analysis related to
Día de los Muertos stem from the distinct epistemologies associated with the history and
people of that geographical space, rather than the thoughts from imperial outposts of power.
After contact, the Franciscans recognized Aztec rhetoric that connects with the Día de los
Muertos practice of speaking the words of the ancients and elders:
What the Franciscans recognized as rhetoric the Aztecs themselves called huehuetlahtolli.
This Nahuatl word is formed by compounding huehue, “old man” or ‘men of old’ and
tlahtolli, “word”, “oration” or “language.” Thus huehuetlahtolli is variously translated as
“the ancient word,” “the speeches of the ancients” or “the speeches of the elders.”
(Abbott 252)
Pre-Columbian huehuetlahtolli, or speech of the ancients, can be traced to the tradition of
pláticas in Día de los Muertos celebrations. The holiday serves as a time for children
to listen to these pláticas (talks) because they are expected to embrace these stories [of
the deceased] and retell them in other venues. It is understood, and often explained by
the family’s leader to the child, that he or she will eventually lead these discussions in
the future”
(Pimentel 264)
These pláticas perform an important role in the remembrance of the deceased. Like Día
de los Muertos, huehuetlahtolli performs an epideictic role that “consists of orations relative
to the life cycle. These speeches were delivered by elders or parents at crucial junctures
in human experience: birth, infancy, marriage, death” (Abbott 255). Día de los Muertos
ritualizes the remembrance of the deceased, so it possesses elements of epideictic rhetoric.
By speaking the speeches of the ancients, celebrators are also reminded to think about
death as more than fantasy, or acting as willing colonial subjects to earn passage into the
afterlife. Día de los Muertos supports a decolonial ideology because the holiday “helps to
create an interpretation of the world in which Mexico is unique, culturally discrete, and
above all different from the two powers that have dominated the country throughout its
long existence: Spain and the United States” (“Day of the Dead, Halloween” 359). Rather
than fearing zombies who hunt the living to feed, or praying to saints who mediate prayers
for the dead, Día de los Muertos symbolizes a liberating worldview that draws on ancient
indigenous practices that continue to resonate.
Day of the Dead Expressions
When it comes to Latina/o representations of the dead in the pop culture collective
unconscious, Cuban filmmaker George Romero occupies a sacred space due to his iconic,
cult cinematic representations of the dead. In the U.S. tradition of Halloween zombies,
Romero’s Dead series established a blueprint of cinematic tropes and rules about what the
dead can do when they come back to life in an unthinking form in search of living humans
for consumption. Because Romero’s 1978 Dawn of the Dead takes place against the backdrop
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of a shopping mall, the critique of consumerism rings through because in an unthinking,
zombie state, the dead return to the mall as they were trained to in life (Bishop; Harper;
Walker). The horror genre remains popular in the U.S. because it is inexpensive, and much
like the artisans of Día de los Muertos crafts, “they [traditional Mexican artisans] do not
object to the introduction of Halloween symbols, so long as their handiwork sells” (“Day of
the Dead, Halloween” 377). Still, the critique of western imperialism through the metonymy
of consumerism reflects the decolonial ethos that expressions of the dead facilitate.
The characters in Romero’s films remain in the colonial paradigm that focuses on the
catharsis of fear through schadenfreude for characters finding themselves in post-rapture
storyworlds. In Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Visions of Hell on Earth, colonial
morality plays “a part of Romero’s symbolism that the characters who do reject the sinful
perversions of reason and violence are once again people who … stand outside the power
structure of the ‘normal,’ pre-zombie, prejudgement America” (Paffenroth 89). The western
religious paradigm represented in Romero’s films that include the judgment and rapture
exhibits the enduring tradition of evangelical passion plays that the Franciscans employed
in the conversion during the Conquest of the Americas. However, even the Nahua (Aztecs)
infused the evangelical theater with messages of resistance: “This [evangelical] theater gave
the Nahuas the opportunity of managing public space again, of showing their unrivaled
ability to incorporate new meanings … and possibility of encoding ‘hidden transcripts of
resistance’ for the consumption of the indigenous audience only” (Balsera 63). Similar to
the Nahua during the Conquest, Romero composes within the expectations of the horror
genre, although he manipulates the conventions to communicate social critique.
Without explicitly drawing on Día de los Muertos beliefs, practices, or ritual, George
Romero’s 1985 film with the title Day of the Dead—the third film following Romero’s
Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1978)—demonstrates a subversive
translation of the deceased occupying the same space as the living. Taking place in an
underground Florida missile silo, Day of the Dead (1985) centers on a tyrannical military
leader who takes over a scientific mission to reverse the zombie outbreak. Romero’s social
critique is evidenced by the location of Florida, where many Cubans sought refuge following
Fidel Castro’s paredón firing squads, as well as the resemblance of the soldier named Rickles,
portrayed by actor Ralph Marrero, to Cuban revolutionary soldiers, wearing a thick black
beard and up-turned army cap. Though Romero does not widely discuss his Latino heritage,
his father was born in Cuba; and in an interview with the Daily News, Romero said that he
traveled with his family to Cuba during his youth before Castro came to power (Monell).
The military tyrant’s isolation from the world of the living in Day of the Dead is analogous
to the disconnection of Romero’s cultural homeland of Cuba. In Joe Kane’s book Night of
the Living Dead: Behind the Scenes of the Most Terrifying Zombie Movie Ever, Romero explains
that the Day of the Dead depicts a world where structure and communication are suddenly
removed. He says,
[W]hen that structure is gone, they don’t quite know how to behave or they cling to old
behaviors and no one talks to each other and no one communicates. So there’s this sort
of tragedy about how a lack of human communication causes chaos and collapse even
in this small little pie slice of society.
(Kane 140)
On the surface, the scientist character’s experiments in Day of the Dead, attempting
to reverse the zombie process, portray Gunn’s explanation of the death fantasy as
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communicating across the “terrible, yawning gap” (2). Still, many Cubans in the U.S. like
Romero literally experienced “a lack of human communication” once Castro seized power
and the U.S. placed an embargo on Cuba (Kane 140). When Russia experienced economic
hardships during the Cold War and it could no longer financially assist Cuba as the
Communist outpost in close proximity to the U.S., the small island nation also experienced
the structural “collapse” that Romero’s films portray.
The political commentary of Romero’s zombies functions as critique within the horror
genre, although Romero’s influence in popular culture extends outside of the U.S. film
industry. The influence of Romero’s Dead series can be seen, as both parody and homage, in
the Spanish-Cuban zombie comedic satire Juan of the Dead/Juan de los Muertos (2011). The
New York Times film review calls attention to how Juan of the Dead follows in the tradition
of Romero’s social commentary in the political context of Castro’s Cuba: “As the zombies
turn Havana into a gory circus of flying limbs and severed heads, the nightly news anchors
continue to calmly assert the government line, that the attacks are not the work of the
undead but dissidents in the pay of the United States” (Burnett). Independent from the
state-financed Cuban film industry, Juan of the Dead has a title character that connects with
Día de los Muertos pop culture with Spanish influence from pre-Revolution Mexico: “In the
year 1847, a play by the Spanish playwright Jose Zorilla arrived in Mexico. The play, ‘Don
Juan Tenorio,’ … takes place in a cemetery where statues and spirits come to life. It became
a popular play, often performed during the Days of the Dead” (Moss 5).
Even if Juan of the Dead does not follow the belief system represented by Día de los
Muertos, the social criticism follows the traditional use of death in Latina/o pop culture.
Sarah Misemer explains,
death invokes the ongoing syncretic nature of the fight to integrate all segments of the
Mexican population—a goal of the Revolution. Artistic figures such as Diego Rivera,
José Clemente Orozco, and Guadalupe Posada among others used the trope of death to
make social and political commentary through their art”
(763)
The zombie plague metaphorically standing in for Cuban unemployment and crumbled
infrastructure in Juan of the Dead hardly mirrors Día de los Muertos philosophy about death,
yet the powerful critique of government embodies the same decolonial ethos of resistance
to an oppressive authority.
Pop de los Muertos
In the genre of documentary, Lourdes Portilla’s La Ofrenda: The Days of the Dead captures
the preparation, the cleaning of cemetery headstones, the offering of traditional food dishes,
and the construction of altars in Oaxaca, Mexico. Often overlooked, Juan Velasco (40)
explains that “La Ofrenda rescata dos elementos memorables de la tradición Mexicana del día de
los muertos: el altar y el acto de ofrecer [La Ofrenda rescues two memorable elements of the Day
of the Dead tradition: the altar and the act of offering]” (author’s translation). Marta Turok
explains that in Mexico “[t]he ofrenda has also taken on new values … it becomes a medium
for reaffirming Mexican cultural values in schools, countering the Anglo-Saxon tradition
of Halloween” (79). Portilla’s focus on the ofrenda in both Mexico and in San Francisco,
California, shows how the traditional cultural practice provides a decolonial space where
altars and offerings draw attention to the impact of AIDS in the LGBTQ community.
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Portilla channels the rhetorical power of “remembering loved ones through ofrendas [that]
could also serve as a way to publically commemorate individual and collective experiences
of the Mexican American community” (Marchi 39). The Día de los Muertos expressions
engage in critique of what mainstream society has ignored.
In music, Día de los Muertos is represented in multiple genres ranging from traditional
son jarocho from Veracruz, Mexico, to Latin American electronic dance pop, as well as the
fusion of hip hop and cumbia by musicians in the U.S. (Raygoza). A salient example of the
conflation of Día de los Muertos pop culture and western ideology is the traditional son
jarocho song called “La Bruja” about a drunken man who is held hostage by a witch. The
song has become associated with Día de los Muertos because of the influence of traditional
western Halloween symbolism, and it additionally reveals “insight into Catholic-Latin
sexuality; the enticing fear of the woman who ‘consumes’ men in the wee hours of the night
and is promiscuous even in her cannibalism” (Garsd). Though a traditional folklore song,
colonial ideology permeates the negative portrayal of female sexuality.
The mestizaje of Día de los Muertos culture with Halloween can also be seen with
Gilbert Hernandez’s, of Love and Rockets notoriety, contribution of a variant cover of The
Walking Dead for the Las Vegas Wizard World Comic Convention. Still, Día de los Muertos
iconography is fundamental to the aesthetic and storyline in the film The Dead One (2007)
from the comic by the name El Muerto: The Aztec Zombie by Javier Hernández. In El Muerto,
the main character Diego is killed by “Mictlantecuhtli, the Aztec God of Death, also known
as Mictlan” before Diego is reborn as El Muerto with a Chicana/o consciousness of PreColumbian history (Foster 235). Unfortunately,…
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