It takes an exceptionally talented comic to slay a room with jokes
about childhood trauma. Not pedestrian traumas like the old monster in
the closet, but genuine wounds — the kind you could juice for
twenty years in therapy, if you had the desire and the economic
wherewithal. Chicano comedian George Lopez uses the stage as a
form of therapy, building his routines around autobiographical stories
about growing up in a working-class San Fernando Valley home, run by an
unyielding Catholic matriarch. In one of his most famous bits, “Mexican
Style Beating,” he sneers at white mothers for not knowing how to
properly abuse their children. (“Fuckin’ amateurs! They don’t know
how!”) Lopez impersonates an inept white mother slapping her child
under the watchful eye of a mall security camera (and getting
arrested), then contrasts it with a caricature of his own despotic
grandmother, who had the foresight to beat her children in department
store dressing rooms or in the privacy of her own home. “Why you
crying? I barely touch you!” Lopez bellows, whilst flaying a microphone
with his palms.
Unsavory as it seems in a culture that now debates the merits of
more conventional forms of discipline (the United Nations opposes
spanking, though it’s still legal in the United States), this tale of
corporal punishment rings true for a lot of people. Lopez’s impressions
of the matriarchs in his family elicited big laughs from his audience
in the 2005 Showtime special, Why You Crying?, even when the
characters seemed unusually cruel. (The show was based partly on
Lopez’s autobiography, which provided a thumbnail sketch of the
comedian’s hard-knock life.) But comedy isn’t mere catharsis for Lopez,
who’s always been kind of a ham. He’s a very physical actor, often
using the whole stage in the course of a single bit, and rendering his
microphone into a prop. (He’s screwed off the top and pretended to slug
from a flask; smacked it as though smacking the skull of an unruly
child; wrapped the chord under his nostrils to impersonate his
now-84-year-old grandmother with her oxygen tank).
Though Lopez advertises himself as having a culturally affirming
brand of humor (his ABC series The George Lopez Show was very
much about putting a Latino couple in the prime-time spotlight), he
delivers the “cultural” part in such a sardonic, politically incorrect
manner that you can empathize without having ever been paddled by a
saucy Mexican grandmother. If you heard the story told straight, you
might find it objectionable. But Lopez strips all the sentimentality
away — not for nothing did he call his first special Why You
Crying? George Lopez performs at Oakland’s Paramount Theatre
(2025 Broadway) on Friday, Dec. 5. 8 p.m., $39.50-$75.50. ParamountTheatre.com
