JE#1A

I had hoped that “immersing myself again in Speedy-Lore”, as La Profe directed us to do in our journal prompt, would bring to mind specific memories of seeing Speedy Gonzales cartoons as a child. When I think back to sitting on the living room floor as all the Warner Brothers cartoon characters chased each other across the Saturday morning television screen, however, I cannot seem to remember what Speedy meant to me. As I was reminded by our reading assignments, Speedy disappeared from the Saturday morning line-up in 1999, when I was eleven years old. But Speedy was certainly never gone for good. In addition to the expected Wikipedia page and Youtube clips, a quick Google search of “speedy gonzales” yields results for restaurants in multiple locations, Lays chips, and articles about a feature film written by Alec Sokolow and Joel Cohen that is set to be released in 2014. This information and the material on the course website initially elicited from me a response of surprise and disappointment that Speedy could still have such a significant fan-base. In light of Nericcio’s analysis, though, I should not have been surprised. Nericcio talks about stereotypes being the result of conflict between communities. It seems that as long as conflict along the U.S.-Mexico border continues, so will negative stereotypes like the Speedy Gonzales cartoon series.