KOJAK YOUR ENTHUSIASM (24)
By:
June 20, 2022
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of our favorite TV shows of the Seventies (1974–1983).
CHICO AND THE MAN | 1974–1978
In 1974, I was a 13-year-old Tejano being raised by nuns in Laredo. I was starved for anything (and I mean anything, not for nothing did I write the book on Speedy Gonzales) even slightly Mexican in pop culture. So imagine my joy when in September of that year, Chico and the Man, starring Freddie Prinze, loud, proud, and funny Boriqua genius playing a West Coast Chicano mechanic in a garage with a mean old racist played by Jack Albertson, debuted on NBC.
But… a puertoriqueño (worse, a mixed-race American of German and Puerto Rican descent) passing as a Chicano from East LA? Holy Latinx, Batman!
Those that despise Latinx do so for the same reason the Nixon-era “Hispanic” moniker rankles — because there are more differences than similarities when it comes to the histories, languages and cultures of Hispano/Latinos in the Americas. (I say we let folks — or folx or gente — call themselves what they want.) Anyway, for 13-year-old me the show was a revelation, a respite from the gringolandia that played out on TV every night even in my 99% Mexican and Mexican-American city.
Walker Percy’s “certification,” from his utterly under-rated The Moviegoer, holds that you don’t exist till you see your town or neighborhood on television. Freddie Prinze’s NYC-accented Spanish may have been an unsatisfactory substitute for the heavily accented Mexican English I heard growing up — yet to me, it was an existential salve, reminding me that I too existed… and that I just might have a future in this bizarre amalgam of people and cultures we call the “united” states.
When Prinze shot himself in 1977, to me it was the sudden and tragic end of a wellspring of existential reassurance. All of a sudden, there was one less “Mexican” to reassure me that I was still here.
KOJAK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Lynn Peril on ONE DAY AT A TIME | Dan Reines on THE WHITE SHADOW | Carlo Rotella on BARNEY MILLER | Lucy Sante on POLICE WOMAN | Douglas Wolk on WHEW! | Susan Roe on THE LOVE BOAT | Peggy Nelson on THE BIONIC WOMAN | Michael Grasso on WKRP IN CINCINNATI | Josh Glenn on SHAZAM! | Vanessa Berry on IN SEARCH OF… | Mark Kingwell on BATTLESTAR GALACTICA | Tom Nealon on BUCK ROGERS | Heather Quinlan on LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE | Adam McGovern on FAWLTY TOWERS | Gordon Dahlquist on THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO | David Smay on LAVERNE & SHIRLEY | Miranda Mellis on WELCOME BACK, KOTTER | Rick Pinchera on THE MUPPET SHOW | Kio Stark on WONDER WOMAN | Marc Weidenbaum on ARK II | Carl Wilson on LOU GRANT | Greg Rowland on STAR TREK: THE ANIMATED SERIES | Dave Boerger on DOCTOR WHO | William Nericcio on CHICO AND THE MAN | Erin M. Routson on HAPPY DAYS. Plus: David Cantwell on THE WALTONS.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!