Aliens

My memories of Taxi got me thinking about TV immigrants.  There was Latka, of course, and then a direct Latka-derivative, Balki Bartokomous, from a made-up Greek-like island, on a show called Perfect Strangers.  

It ran for 8 seasons and generated a spin-off (Family Matters).

I did not enjoy Balki as much as Latka.  By the time Perfect Strangers aired, my English was a bit better and I was unimpressed (seriously, “the dance of joy”?!).  Latka though was cool.  He was funny and he had a multiple personality disorder (which immigrant doesn’t?) so in addition to his regular shtick, Kaufman occasionally became Vic Ferrari, turning shy Latka into a womanizer, or Alex (one of the cabbies), turning Latka into a fountain of wisdom.  

Does Alf count as an immigrant?  He emigrated from another planet.  He was illegal too (never was processed by the INS/now Homeland Security).  So was Mork from Mork & Mindy.  Both of them were quite literally illegal aliens.  More so than any human being I’ve ever known.  Mork even met the Fonz of Happy Days to learn about women on earth, and by that I mean in America; it’s not like the Fonz was acclimating Mork to Polish dating rituals.

I don’t care for the labeling of people as aliens—if you’re here illegally, you’re an illegal alien and once you get a green card (which is rather pink), you’re a resident/legal alien (Sting’s song immediately pops into my head “I’m an alien.  I’m a legal alien.  I’m an Englishman in New York”).  Immigrants experience alienation, but that hardly makes them aliens.  I am, however, happy to report that, since I took my citizenship a few years back, I’m no longer an alien of any kind (nothing to see here, Homeland Security).

Aliens on sitcoms are an excellent way to show American culture from an outside perspective without alienating (hahahaha) the anti-immigrant crowd.  

On a related note, I came across a trailer for a new film starring Demián Bichir (loved him on Weeds!  He’s super hot and can act, too).  It's called A Better Life and it’s about an undocumented Mexican immigrant who's trying to make it in California so that his son can have a better life.  I’m looking forward to seeing it and hope that, unlike Spanglish, it portrays immigrants as multi-dimensional human beings (although the mother-daughter relationship  in Spanglish made me weep.  That relationship makes the movie.  The love story part of it blows.  I mean who wouldn't totally fall for Paz Vega?). 

The Mexican immigrant experience has always been close to my heart.  I identified with it, especially when I lived in California (natives there often assumed I was Mexican anyway), probably because we were Catholic aliens landed on a Protestant planet.  

Sounds

You know that time between wakefulness and sleep?  You’re not quite asleep and not quite awake.  Your mind begins to wander and ends up in strange places (Proust wrote about it.  Hells yeah, I’ve read Proust!  Ok, a tiny fragment of Proust’s mammoth.  I appreciate what he did for literature, but Remembrance bores the living daylight out of me.  How many details can you cram into a single sentence, anyway?).  For one reason or another, before I fell asleep last night, my mind ended up hearing the theme music from Taxi.  Memory works in funny ways.  Even when you haven’t thought of something in ages, a sound or smell or taste all of a sudden brings it back full force (damn Proust wrote about that too, just spent way too much time detailing it). 

Taxi was the first TV show I watched (via what I now know were late night reruns) when I ended up in the U.S. back in the eighties.  I didn’t understand a single word of it, but after a few a weeks, began to distinguish a word here and there.  I loved it!  I’d like to think it was because of Latka Gravas.  

I’d like to think that even without getting the dialogue, I spotted a fellow immigrant, even one from a made-up country because, let’s face it, Andy Kaufman oozed alienation.  

Whenever I hear or even think of that wistful theme music from Taxi, I remember my first American summer and cringe with contradictions of delight and misery. 

What melody or sound reminds you of a crucial part of your life?  Not a song, mind you, because then we’d have to take stock of the lyrics.