The Signifying Taco

Taco attack

This GIF is from an ad for Tums I saw the other day. It is apparently trying to demonstrate the way Tums wards off indigestion from spicy Mexican food. But it seems to have a double meaning, perhaps also signifying the subliminal hostility toward Mexicans and other Latin Americans that continue to flow northward and interrupt the American Dream.

Check out the palpable fear on the woman’s face. And the aggressive move by the taco, defiantly crossing a border towards her. Or maybe this was a taco already living in the US, perhaps working as a domestic servant and obliviously violating her personal space.

She grabs the guitar from the mariachi player and slams it directly into the taco, emulating the Who at the Monterey Pop festival. The iceberg lettuce, canned tomatoes and processed cheese bursts into harmless debris, and America is safe, at least for one day.

emorales7

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s