El Chavo del Ocho

I have a lot of Spanish class every week. 3 seperate classes with two different teachers for a total of 4 hours in class and about 2 hours of homework each week. Totally worth it, of course, as my Spanish is improving. I wanted to be able to carry on "small talk" conversations with random people, and understand the newspaper, and I can do both, so I think my Spanish is pretty good. When we move back, I'm going to start reading children's books in Spanish and watching CNN en Espanol to keep practicing.

Anyway, we often will watch TV clips or listen to songs or read newspapers or even bible study books in our spanish classes in order to make the classes more interesting and to learn more things.

In December, I was shown a few clips from a December holiday episode of a 1970s Mexican TV show called "El Chavo del Ocho" That title doesn't translate well, so I'll explain it: there is a homeless kid who lives in a barrel in the back plaza in the middle of a tenement apartment building and since he doesn't have an address, they just call his "home" number 8.

This show is supposed to be a comedy. I am not joking.

For some reason, an entire cast of people too poor to help a kid living in a barrel is funny. For some reason, a kid asking Santa for a ham sandwich is funny. For some reason, the neighbors invite him over only for Christmas dinner, and not to actually spend the night. For some reason, the entire idea of a young child (10?) living in a BARREL in an ALLEY is supposed to make me laugh, and not cry.

My spanish teacher told me that poverty is so common in Mexico, that they have to joke about it so they don't cry.
Wow.

During the holiday season, a movie was showing in the U.S. about how a rich American couple adopted a teenage boy who "fell through the cracks".
Apparently, in Mexico, there isn't a crack. There is a huge canyon, and everyone falls in it.

In the U.S., no one wants to admit there is real poverty, and real racism, and real addictions, and real despair. So all of our TV shows are about suburbanites who have everything, and we watch for a distraction. I suppose that our approach isn't fundamentally different, but I could not, as a Christian and a humanitarian, and a middle-class comfortable American, sit by and laugh at the poor kid with holes in his shoes and an empty belly.