Standup comedian Bill Santiago performed his set, "Spanglish 101," to a full house in Bentley Theater on Tuesday night. The set showcased the "Spanglish" language and the Latino-American culture at large. Despite his wry underdog humor, Santiago was carefully good-natured and tasteful. He pulled off irreverence without being abrasive -- a rarity in standup comedy.
Making fun of "Spanglish" -- a language with "double the vocabulary, half the grammar," as he described it -- seemed kind of like beating a dead horse. It's simply hard to make it funny. Santiago pulled it off, however, with his immense charisma and versatile expressions. Standing still, he was handsome and collected, but the next second he was contorting his face to look like his grandmother, or screaming at the top of his lungs to imitate his mother, or salsa dancing in place while recounting the white women he had met.
A former journalist and something of an intellectual, Santiago's humor differs from the superficial (if delightful) humor of other comedians such as Jerry Seinfeld. Although an immensely engaging physical comedian, Santiago also had much insight to offer.
This was especially true when he recounted his childhood. His parents, for example, always tried to encourage and develop his masculinity. "Don't forget, that I gave birth to four muchachos," his mother would say as she brandished her arm as a phallic symbol.
"How am I supposed to live up to that," he asked. He extended his various insights about his family to Puerto Rican culture at large -- "I'm not dysfunctional, I'm tropical," he said.
And then there were his jokes about American-Latino relations at large.
"You know we're now the biggest minority in America. Of the people there are least of, we have the most," Santiago said.
He described how most Americans react to the notion of Puerto Rico becoming a state: "Fifty is a nice round number, 51 -- kind of too ethnic." He talked about Latinos in politics: "Everyone talks about a black president but never about a Hispanic president -- evidently there's some sort of line here".
Santiago also talked about professional hurdles he has faced on account of his roots. Once, he met with a producer who was interested in making a show based on Santiago's childhood.
"The first thing he said was 'So, you're Latino...what does your father do?' I told him he was a lawyer, and he was like, 'Uhh, that's not funny,'" Santiago said.
Then there was his top ten list of good things about being Hispanic. For No. 7, you automatically get a role in the school production of West Side Story.
"I was cast as a Jet," he lamented. "My parents wouldn't look at me."
And then there was the benefit of "dating interracially within your own race."
Bill Santiago was raised in Brooklyn and attended New York University, where he studied film. After an aborted career in journalism, he moved to San Francisco and launched his career as a stand-up comedian -- "as a comedian, he was funny, but as a reporter, he was a joke," according to one source.
"Spanglish 101" is a work in progress, as evidenced by the ream of yellow legal pad paper he kept on a desk beside him and constantly referred to during the set. This was probably the central flaw of the show. At first, his referencing of notes worked well as far as the timing of the piece went, but it eventually became a little irritating.
"I didn't like the moments when he dropped off completely," Victor Cazares '07 said, who helped bring Santiago to Dartmouth.
"He could have been a little better prepared," Shinen Wong '07 said.
The other central flaw in Santiago's piece is the excessive use of Spanish. Anyone who is not Hispanic -- or has not taken at least a year of Spanish -- was certainly lost at various points in the show. For example, when he described how his mother would always call his father "el hijo de la gran puta," the theater erupted, but you got the distinct feeling that only half the crowd was laughing. Santiago recognized this and said, "I'm sorry, but I like turning the tables."
But really, there's no harm in letting everyone in on the joke.
