This dissertation is the result of a comprehensive study of the 256 episodes that constitute the Mexican TV series El Chapulín Colorado . Examining the parodic character of the series, it analyses the role of parody as an articulating form ideal for cultural products whose success and survival depend on their capacity to become and stay popular. Parody is analyzed as a content processing mechanism especially successful in Latin America where, I argue, the feudal and capitalist modes of production still coexist. My study further contends that the TV series El Chapulín Colorado reflects the state of the so-called “national project(s)” in Latin America in an expanding market for cultural products, exploring how, in the very specific structural causality of the continent, male and female individuals are hailed as contradictory subjects bound to act as “free subjects” and “vassals.”

The introductory chapter provides a succinct history of the establishment and development of Mexican Radio and TV, including the career of series author and protagonist, Roberto Gómez Bolaños, that reveals how the development of conglomerates centralized production and largely eliminated competition while expanding the coverage and market for their products. The second chapter analyzes the parodic nature of the series: its models, forms and mechanisms. The parody of U.S. superheroes is analyzed in comparison with Cervantes' Don Quijote. The parody of cinema from westerns to science fiction is seen as both a critique of its American models and a critique of Latin American development. The parody of literature from Cervantes to the 20th century foregrounds the category of the popular as a continuous re-contextualizing of narratives and the dissolution of canonic labels into collective memory. The third chapter offers an analysis of the Latin-American ‘national project’ represented in the series as the need for a language-based cultural identity securing the consumption of cultural products without risking the stability of local hegemonies. The fourth chapter reveals how the TV series was constituted as a mechanism of “subject determination”. The contradictory subject(s) portrayed by the series are bound to function in relations of production and modes of consumption that are contradictory yet reciprocally sustained.