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The language'sport and the sport's language in the Quino's pictorial humor Jesús Castañón Rodríguez The XXth century has been the one which has made stand out the development of the modern sports, a social phenomenon which has been able to catch our attention with numerous techniques. Among them, the pictorial humor has been relevant, pictorial humor understood as external expression related to humor made by means of special codes of communication, with a special quality in Argentina. Press
against each picture in order to see it complete. Pipo Quino has produced creative and everlasting texts which mix up the verbal aspect together with the one based on icons in order to make people reflect on ideas which are out of time based on freedom and critical analysis related to reality and phrased by means of compositions in sequences of film in order to dream in images and by means of linguistic resources based on generating exaggerations, showing sentences from political, commercial and social customs languages which are out of their context, combining absurd and logic relationships with final surprise; creating fantastic situations and making journalistic topics look foolish. The language´s sport The Quino’s production based on sports includes five sporting disciplines (chess, skittles, fencing, football and table tennis) which get into a different form depending on whether they are part of professional sport or child’s plays based on sports. 1.1.- The professional sport The professional sport which Quino reflects focuses on fencing and football. Fencing The first one is shown as a field based on unusual situations with an unexpected end when logical and absurd relationships are combined or mixed up: the person who fights with swords, as sport, asks his/ her opponent for a break in order to scratch himself/herself his/her back with the foil; another one poses with a trophy after defeating his/her rival because he/ she has stuck the foil in his/her opponent’s hearth; and a third person decides to commit suicide sticking his/her foil in a plug. Football Football becomes a field in order to combine logical and absurd relationships in a photograph of a football player who is squatted on a ball, and this photo is observed by a chicken which deduces that he will have chicks who will be football players as well. Above all, football makes people to be inspired in order to show the exaggeration of passions and also to reflect some excesses which reach and touch God, team’s supporters, referees and football players’ relatives. The divine passion is recreated in a fantastic situation where God supports his favorite team in a televised football match and he intervenes in order to the rival forward miss the refereed penalty against his team, with an odd trajectory of the ball. The supporters’ fervor has given it a motive for exaggerating about fans’ actions inside and outside the stadium. The first ones give rise to pictures about the excited feelings starting from the results: a curious fan doesn’t realize his team’s goal because he abandons the televised football match in order to observe how his pretty neighboring is undressing; an angry supporter against a referee because he hasn’t seen handling and this supporter thinks the referee is bribed and also he applies this nonsensical logic to a policeman who has fined him because he has parked under a traffic signal which forbids him to park; an angry fan, due to his beating team and full of passion and bitterness, doesn’t realize his wife has just been unfaithful to him in his own home; a spectator of televised football strikes his television set because it appears in the screen a ballerina who makes alike the goal-keeper’s technical face when he stops dead the ball, and he shouts with indignation: "The damned interference of the damned cultural channel again!!". Also pictures based on the football of life are registered: after watching a football match, an spectator goes out of his home mumbling with anger that everyday life doesn’t look like football, but also in life it finds too many similarities with people who go in search of money, people who take hold of his girlfriend’s shirt, so that she can’t abandon him, people who trip the others up, also people who treat roughly other people…. The conducts in the pitch give cause for fantastic situations such as the one based on a ball which goes in a pitch crying and with little bounces, while the fans’ row of seats is blowing vigorously towards the ball so that it can’t go in and in the presence of the forwards, zone defenses, backs and goal-keepers’ watchful look. The exaggerations about the referees’ emotions allude to a dream in images: the leaving towards the track suit street, the two gentlemen’s nice greetings, the young girl who falls in love with him, the baby who kisses him in his cheek, the priest who gives his blessing to him and also the general gratitude of a crowd who clap while he walks. When oneself wakes up, the ovation is faded away, he goes out wearing his track suit and he can be seen in a stadium among the cries and protests of football players and the crowd. Finally, players’ relatives’ passion is included in a picture where a deeply moved mother, who sees her son taking part in a wall in a warning while he protects his noble parts in a penalty kick, comments with tears: "The same position that in the gynecological examination, which doesn’t allow us to know if it was girl or what!". 1.2.- Mafalda and the child’s plays based on sports The presence of sports in the child’s plays based on sports is registered in Mafalda’s comic strips, fictional character chosen on November 1999 by Revista Viva as one of the most influential Argentinian women of the XXth century, together with Norma Aleandro, Hebe de Bonafini, Alicia Moreau de Justo, Marta Pelloni, Eva Perón or Gabriela Sabatini. She took her name from the film ‘Dar la cara’, she also lived from 1964 to 1973 in the pages of the weekly magazines Leoplán, Primera Plana, Siete Días Ilustrados and the daily El Mundo, and her relationship with sport is based on the plays which she goes in for with the rest of the children in her coterie: chess, skittles, football and table tennis. Chess In Mafalda 1,5 and 6, a considerable number of pictures is based on chess, and it admits forms based on sentences out of context and also based on the combination of absurd and logic relationships. The first one is applied to elements of the political language and social customs. The political phenomenon based on taking sentences out of context appears in the games which put face to face to Mafalda and Felipe: a check the king, shouted enthusiastically, to what Mafalda responds with dignity and seriousness "The King has died, three cheers for the King!"; an ideological discussion based on the order which must follow the pawns, the Queen and the King in the chessboard; and also an interpretation based on the way of moving the king and the pawns which results in an analogy about how the social inequalities can be resolved. The fact of taking out of context the customs appears in the accusation of sexy and brazen directed to the figure of the queen because she can move herself everywhere in a game with Felipe and in the checkmate the game of the play and also in the accusation of the neighborhood’s life in a game with little Susana where her difficulties and misfortunes are discussed. The combination of absurd and logical elements appears in the games which maintain Mafalda, Felipe, little Manolo and little Miguel: the litle Manolo’s astonishment due to the mobility of the chessmen leads him to ask for the place where the batteries can be put for these chessmen; the Mafalda’s father, who remembers the times when he was invincible, while the children are playing; the comment on the success based on a fumigation against ants, while one of them takes a pawn away from the chessboard , and the little Miguel’s cry concerning how time can fold over the corners in the clocks square in shape. Football Football is the child’s play more constant in the Quino’s production. It’s registered in Mafalda 3,4,5,6 and 7. It’s presented as the ideal field for the exaggerations during the celebration of matches based on scoring in some piece of ground where empty cans and bricks are suitable for goal posts. Sometimes they have in common to little Manolo as the main character: a fired with enthusiasm clearance, which fits into a general statue’s saber like an olive fits into a toothpick; his black eye, after encouraging his friends to play vigorously because he is the goalkeepers’ Moshe Dayan; and the advertising message "lentils ‘in’? Manolo’s Store" written on the ball after stopping it in flight. Other exaggerations reflect violence associated to sport: Mafalda is angry with a kiosk-man, who doesn’t want to sell her a magazine with little figures based on animals because of having violent contents, and however, he has in the window magazines with murders, acts of racial repression, a boxer in full contest, and a football player who threatens a referee. And other ones have to do with the children’s enormous imagination, like in the Felipe’s case when, on the way to school he is repeating the lesson of sciences based on monocotyledons, until he loses concentration when he is moved because of believing he is a brilliant football player when he slips a stone through the hole of a fence with a kick. Moreover, football also appears as a field in order to take out of context sentences from the language based on sport and social customs. It’s the case of little Manolo, who discuss with Mafalda his mother’s ‘vision of goal’ and also how he couldn’t get away from a punch in his face when he’s trying slip off in a moment when she had her hands occupied, or from the little Susana’s slap in his face, after drawing attention to him with the cry: "to a mother?". Skittles The third important child’s play is the one based on skittles, which is played by the clique of children in the street and in the living-room in Mafalda 3. It gives rise to absurd situations like the little Manolo’s unsuccessful penalty kicks, which emphasizes his nature as a clumsy person before the applause of the rest of the people, and also it justifies a broken vase taking out of context a topic based on the commercial language: the fatigue of the materials. Table tennis Finally, table tennis is important because of its consequences for the Mafalda’s personal diary in Mafalda 0. She writes in an unattached sheet about her feelings after suffering a serious defeat: 20 against 9 with Felipe and trying to fit it in the rest of the diary, she says: "The only personal diary with an sporting supplement". The sport’s language In addition to the language’s sport, a recurrent matter in the Argentinian graphic humor has been the reflection the players’ ways of speaking, trainers and sporting commentators. Caloi, Fontanarrosa, Garaycochea, Mordillo and other geniuses of the humor have turned the sport’s language into a play of creativeness for unusual and nonsensical situations, for crazy metaphors and for exaggerations. Quino pays attention to the passionate stories based on matches among the fans, such as the case of a man who tells a piece of play to another man with a hat so enthusiastically that the forward dribbles the goal-keeper bowling a powerful shot at goal which took off his hat with a kick. Passion of mass media gives rise to pictures for the written press in Mafalda 7 and 9, where it takes out of context other areas of language in order to apply them to sport: her father asks her for the sports page in the diary, and she gives him the international section after reading the headline: "New conflicts between Arabs and Israelis". In the case of the radio are also usual sentences out of context such as: Mafalda answers "Complain ourselves?" due to the sentence "Once again our microphones transmit to the whole country the emotion of our more popular sport", with this sentence the commentator makes way for a transmission based on football. And also it becomes a field for exaggeration in a picture where the commentator makes a deaf old man’s head, who connects the apparatus which allow him to value the acuteness of the hearing to the radio in order to listen better the transmission of the match, has a splitting headache after the stirred shout of a goal. Epilogue To
sum up, Quino spreads a play of elasticity based on language and
fantasy of images in five sporting disciplines in order to recreate
unusual situations, to criticize the exaggeration of passions and
also to portray emotions of the professional sport, and also to
generate fantastic situations and in this way to take out of context
linguistic expressions based on the political rhetoric, social customs
and commercial language in children’s plays. Moreover, he creates
graphic plays based on sporting language of the mass media in order
to portray passionate stories and also the Argentinian folk’s
emotion which follows this resonant bell based on "passion,
madness, impulse, rage, anger, din, tears, laugh, celebration",
words Diego Lucero defined football with. CASTAÑÓN
RODRÍGUEZ, Jesús (1999) "¡Hay movimiento
en el banco!", Idiomanía number 85, Buenos Aires, October,
pages 27-29.
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