Mexico Needs Louder, Politically-Inclined Comedians
Originally published at linkedin.com on June 7, 2016.
As I finished another college year, I returned to visit my hometown in Baja California, Mexico. It had not been over ten minutes since crossing the southern US border that the radio and billboards greeted me with political spots on who citizens should vote for in the then upcoming state elections. Coming from the political craze occurring in Berkeley, I payed attention at the differences that made Mexico’s state election stand out to me — for all the bad reasons.
A common marketing strategy by political parties is to re-paint public transportation with ads. Here, an ad from the previous presidential election.
No thanks to the pitiful social media accounts (including some accounts that have now been deleted past voting day), but to the excessive ad placement throughout the city, and people campaigning on the streets in 112°F weather, I could now easily recognize most of the candidate’s image and the party they represented within two days of my stay. However, I had no idea of what their platforms conveyed and their TV spots were merely a play on words. For example, coalition candidate Antonio Magaña had a ridiculous video produced targeted at millennials with the slogan “ Él es Magaña. Él no te engaña,” which translates into “He is Magaña. He won’t deceive you.” Fair enough.
People Do Not Trust Their Politicians
When the family got together, the topic of politics quickly arose. I was surprised to hear that the majority of them did not know the platforms each candidate or party represented; regardless, they continued to show their discontent for each politician. Family members could easily repeat the TV ad jingles that they had seen countless times; after all, Mexico is dominated by Televisa, “the largest [media company] in Hispanic America as well as the first of all the Spanish-speaking world,” thus leading the company to run the same political party’s ad twice in the same commercial break. When I ultimately asked family members for what candidates they were voting for, many of the responses I received were through jokes of “whoever steals the least.”
The sentiment of choosing a candidate based on their probability of stealing from taxpayers should not be a qualifier. People need to be more aware of the platforms candidates are proposing at the same time that the candidates must make clearer what their goals are and what distinguishes them from others, instead of utilizing cheap strategies, such as giving out free TVs, to buy people’s vote.
More Digestible News For Mass Audiences
During my busy semester in UC Berkeley, I found myself catching up with the US presidential craze via shows like The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and Last Week Tonight With John Oliver via YouTube. Their humorous remarks made it worth watching for me — I was updated on the news as well as entertained. Late-night shows have been doing a great job at publishing their main segments into their YouTube channels, and have thus made their content and criticism more widely available.
With the 2016 presidential race, the aforementioned shows have a surplus of content. If crafted correctly, the content can go viral. Below are two examples of Stephen Colbert and John Oliver, respectively, and their take on issues raised by Republican candidate Donald Trump in his distinguishable campaign.
Boasting over +7.3 million views, Colbert showcases Donald Trump against himself using videos of the candidate expressing controversy in his consistency.
With +26.1 million views, John Oliver went viral on YouTube and started the trend of #MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain, a take at Trump’s connotation of “rich”.
Not to single out Republican candidate Donald Trump — shows like The Late Show With Stephen Colbert have also pointed to Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in other occasions, but Donald Trump’s have been viewed the most.
Mocking Politicians To Fix The Flaws In Our System
To say that Mexico needs louder, politically-inclined comedians is not to say that I am advocating for Mexico to be a “left” or “right” country, but rather to better inform the people before they cast their votes.
A great portion of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, and many other comedians’ work is making fun of the ridiculous statements that current US politicians say that sometimes go unnoticed in standard news channels, like Fox News. Through said type of late-night shows, audiences see the core problem in simpler dialogue with a politician’s actions, their flaws are more apparent, and a course of action is usually proposed. Just recently, John Oliver forgave $15 million in medical debt in an attempt to raise awareness that “we need much clearer rules and tougher oversight”, as well as donating money from a televangelist stunt to Doctors Without Borders.
That kind of exposure is what the rigged Mexican government system needs: someone to ridicule the corrupt and give a stronger sense of disapproval to politicians from the community, where applicable. With Mexico’s current president Enrique Peña Nieto having won the popular vote by his looks and his actress of a wife, there is no denying that the Mexican government needs to be ridiculed and put to test by harsh criticism to serve its people.
Got any thoughts to add? Tweet me @juliangumbo or comment below!
Julian Gamboa is a UC Berkeley graduate with a focus on marketing. Julian was selected as a LinkedIn Top Voice for Marketing and #Social Media (2017) and a Course Instructor of the marketing and digital publishing course Digital Marketing Today at the Haas School of Business. He is also the founder of Digiviewpoint, a millennial publishing account.
Like what you read? Share, like, and comment. Read Julian’s previous posts and follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.
