What Style of Art Is Don Francisco Famous for
Mario Kreutzberger, popularly known equally Don Francisco, stands on the set of Sábado Gigante in Miami, Feb. three, 2012. (Wilfredo Lee/AP)
This fall, the wildly popular Spanish-language tv set testify Sábado Gigante (Supersize Saturday)—seen by millions of Hispanics around the world for two hours every Sat afternoon—celebrates its 50th anniversary. This makes it, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the longest-running variety testify in the history of television set.
For those who oasis't seen it, Sábado Gigante offers lite entertainment that at times borders on the ridiculous and, at other times, on the inspiring. In that location are contests and games, a standing contest for a Ford Fiesta, parodies, music, and a beauty contest chosen "Miss Colita," along with moving personal life stories and discussions of controversial political issues like clearing. And although the prove is lighthearted entertainment, politicians worldwide recognize that it is a potent conduit to the growing political ability of the Latino voting bloc.
All of which makes Don Francisco, the show'due south popular host, something of a prophet. His instinct regarding the entertainment needs of Latinos has been sterling ever since he landed in America. In terms of popularity, Don Francisco easily bests Bob Barker, with much greater international achieve and an innate ability to predict the desires of viewers. ("100 Million Viewers—But Practice You Know Him?" crowed ABC's Nightline.) He is friends with Latino luminaries like Gloria Estefan, Daddy Yankee, Sofia Vergara, Ricky Martin, and Andy Garcia, every bit well as President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry. He has a Hollywood star and also hosts a serious interview show, Don Francisco Presenta. He has been interviewed, parodied, imitated, and feted.
Just behind the comical and somewhat silly TV persona is in fact a rather serious and somber son of German Jewish Holocaust survivors, Mario Kreutzberger Blumenfeld. Kreutzberger'due south passion for making an audience laugh was born at the Maccabe Club in Talca, Chile, where he created the first Don Francisco graphic symbol, a German-Jewish contempo arrival named "Don Francisco Ziziguen González." Although Kreutzberger's begetter had sent him to New York to learn the trade of tailoring and follow in the family business, he returned with an obsession with idiot box. Shortly after, in 1962, Kreutzberger began his testify on Aqueduct 13 in Republic of chile. Twenty-five years after, he was gigante.
Function reality Television set bear witness, function Saturday cartoon, part Barbara Walters, Sábado Gigante is packaged to provide viewers with escape and comfort from labor and reconnection with countries left behind. It is designed to smoothly assuage the intangible yet recognizable feeling of being in the precarious position of belonging to an embattled minority in the United States. Kreutzberger excelled at this job in office considering he had seen his parents struggle with the same feelings in Chile.
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On the air, Don Francisco is known to his audience as a kind of jovial "gordito," a flake of a fatty macho, e'er laughing, always poking fun at himself and at others. But when I called his role in Miami, he soberly introduced himself as "Mario Kreutzberger Blumenfeld," using the Latin American tradition of putting the begetter's surname first.
His parents, Erich Kreutzberger and Anna Blumenfeld Neufeld, escaped to Chile from Germany in 1938, the day subsequently Kristallnacht. Anna and her female parent were able to canvass from Hamburg to England and so to "this strange and foreign state" chosen Chile. Erich Kreutzberger was not then lucky. Though the facts are obscured by Erich'southward refusal to talk about his experiences, he spent time in a concentration campsite. When he was liberated he outset went to London and then to Chile. Equally was the example with many European Jews fleeing to South America from Germany, the Chilean regime welcomed them but with certain stipulations: They had to alive exterior the urban city of Santiago, the uppercase. The Kreutzbergers were thus relocated to Talca, about 150 miles outside of Santiago. At the time, Talca was a rural area without a Jewish customs, and even today most of Republic of chile's approximately 20,000 Jews live in Santiago.
Because of the persecution his male parent faced in Germany, including the destruction of his tailor shop, Kreutzberger said that his male parent was restrained when information technology came to raising his 2 sons Jewish in Talca. Although they both had bar mitzvahs and celebrated Shabbat, Kreutzberger believes that they were given their names, Mario and Rene, to help them assimilate into their surroundings. His father never spoke of his life in Germany—equally if fearing that if he exhibited any existent passion it would infect or taint his children'southward future in Chile. He wanted them to fully digest and be Chilean higher up everything. Like many Holocaust survivors, Erich never spoke of his time in a concentration camp or life in Germany.
Every bit the son of immigrants who left everything behind, Kreutzberger is proud of his success in the United States. "I came hither similar Christopher Columbus," he told me. "I hosted the kickoff production made in the The states that ran for 52 weeks." Simply, he added, there are ii things that make him even prouder: Fundación Teletón Chile and Testigos del silencio. He started his Jerry Lewis-like telethonin 1978 to raise funds for children with neuromuscular disorders, including cerebral palsy. According to Kreutzberger, the telethon raises millions of dollars each year and has helped over lxxx,000 children in Chile. He is also extremely proud of his 2005 documentary Testigos del silencio, or "Witnesses of Silence," which retraces his father's journey from a pocket-sized town on the edge of Frg and Poland to a concentration camp and and then to Chile. It was meant to pay homage to his father and the millions who died in the camps, merely also to Kreutzberger himself, his Judaism, and his inherited by as a son of Holocaust survivors.
The documentary is solemn not merely because of the subject matter but because Kreutzberger is and then dramatically unlike here than in his TV persona: "For the commencement fourth dimension e'er," he says in the documentary, "instead of being in forepart of the camera, I will be the camera." His narration in this documentary, initially meant simply for his family and close friends, is subdued. With a certain sense of abashment, Kreutzberger told me that it took him near of his life to come to terms with this history and his begetter's persecution non only considering his father did not share his story merely too out of fear of opening old wounds. In fact, to this day Kreutzberger knows very footling about his father's ordeal. He does not know the name of the army camp in which his father was interned, he does not know if he escaped or was released. He does not know how he secured passage to England and then on to Chile.
"When I wrote my commencement book, I told my father that I needed to know his story, why I was born in Chile, why he came to Chile. Just he would not share his story," Kreutzberger told me. "My father did not want me to feel hate toward anyone. And out of respect I did non push button him."
Simply in 2005, five years after his male parent's decease, Kreutzberger went on a March of the Living trip to Poland on the 60th ceremony of the end of the Holocaust, the aforementioned year he turned 65 (he is at present 72). "I inherited this history but I never wanted to know information technology, until I was 65. I was scared to see it, to hear it," he told me. "But finally, I had to go see with my ain eyes." He continued: "We thought of our male parent every bit a superman. He started out so modestly and had success, but to accept it be taken from him and sent to a concentration camp then having to move to a new country, Chile, where he didn't even speak the language." His begetter arrived in the new country damaged by the persecution. "It wasn't only the concentration campsite. It was the whole process of slowly being stripped of everything he knew."
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The procedure of being stripped of everything is well known to many Hispanics in America. Despite the loss of homeland, the language barrier, the political and economic turmoil, many Hispanics, like Kreutzberger, retain a deep orgullo, or pride, against powerful odds. Kreutzberger said growing up Jewish in Chile was difficult, merely he was always proud of his heritage. "I always tried to live every bit a Jew and a good man who can cross religious borders." When I asked him almost anti-Semitism in Hispanic civilization he said, "At that place is anti-Semitism in every civilisation, not merely in the Hispanic globe."
In his autobiography, Don Francisco: Entre la espada y la T.V. (Betwixt the Sword and the TV), Kreutzberger narrates the harrowing tale of how he was temporarily held hostage by Augusto Pinochet's soldiers, who had appeared at his home in the early backwash of the coup. The soldiers had been directed to take Kreutzberger to the headquarters of Channel xiii at the Catholic University in Santiago and announce to the nation that Salvador Allende had been overthrown by Pinochet. Kreutzberger managed to talk his manner out of this and, he says, that is when he swore to himself to stay out of politics, even though he is now occasionally mentioned as a presidential candidate. "I always stay out of politics," he told me. "I never share my personal political behavior with my audience. Never. I have to attain everybody, and this show is not political." This approach is perhaps what enabled him to stay on the air during the Pinochet junta, when well-nigh other shows were censored. In fact, his show accomplished its highest ratings—as loftier as 80 pct, according to him—during the 1970s of Pinochet's dictatorship, when the program ran equally long every bit eight hours on Saturdays.
Though he is adamant about remaining apolitical, he does let sideslip later in our conversation that he is not ever in understanding with Israel'southward politics. Only that statement is apace followed past a poignant sense of bemusement: "I do non understand the obsession that other countries or people have with Jews. Information technology always shocks me because when yous ask people how many Jews at that place are in the world they rarely fifty-fifty know. Why can't they go out us alone? Why so much focus on us? We are merely about 16 million. I always ask myself why does information technology come up back and dorsum and back? Why are the Jewish people e'er in the middle?"
I, and others, might ask the same question about Latinos. Why are they in the center of a national debate about immigration? Why is Arizona, with several states following, raging against the Hispanic customs, profiling, isolating, ostracizing, and segregating its members. Politicians seem to recognize that placing a community front and middle in a hostile and contentious debate about what it ways to be American tin pay sure dividends. Some rail almost national identity, the "browning of America," La Reconquista.
Kreutzberger, consciously or not (and I would venture that information technology is conscious) recognizes this narrative, this story, this plight. It is deeply rooted in his very being. Sábado Gigante is meant to entertain, and for many of the more than fifty million Latinos in the United states that tin can come as a relief. Immigration policies come and get, but the show has remained an anchor for diverse Hispanic communities. Kreutzberger knows the risks of xenophobic policies. He understands what they tin lead to. He witnessed the scars of his parents, which were so deep that they were never spoken of. And he became an MC, a human being paid to speak for the silenced.
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Bridget Kevane is a professor of Latin American and Latino literature at Montana State Academy in Bozeman. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Volume Review, ZEEK, the Forwards, and Brain, Kid, among other publications.
Source: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/the-giant-of-sabado-gigante
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