Luis de Alba
Luis de Alba (born March 7, 1945 in Veracruz) is a Mexican comedian, famous for his character El Pirrurris (the presumptuous son of a millionaire). He also made other characters such as "El Raton Crispin" (Crispin The Mouse) in which he dressed himself as a big fat rat from Veracruz. His typical line was, Te odio con odio Jarocho, which means "I hate you with Jarocho (meaning from Veracruz) hatred". El indio Maclovio and Juan Penas were also two very famous characters he acted out on several shows.
His most famous TV program was El Mundo De Luis de Alba, (The World Of Luis de Alba), where El Pirrurris and other characters regularly appeared. After this program was canceled he spent many years away from television but retransmissions of the show were popular. In 2004 he came back portraying the Pirrurris once again in one of Jorge Ortiz de Pinedo's adult-oriented comedy shows, set in a primary school where the students are played by adult actors. In 2005 he got a new show where he plays the Pirrurris as well as his other characters. He is currently appearing in a show called "Los Chuperamigos" in telefutura with other actors such as "La Chupitos".
Characters
El Pirrurris
Created sometime in the 1970s, the character is a very rich young man with a haircut similar to that used by the Beatles in their early years and depicts sarcastically and exaggeratedly the stereotype of a so-called "fresa". He enjoys deprecating low- to middle-class people with illusions of grandeur, airs of importance, bad taste, and colorful (low class) slang, while at the same time emphasizing his own importance and class-superiority, using a lot of "high class" slang. The people he deprecates are pejoratively called nacos. Pirrurris refined the ridicule of nacos into nacology, the study of the naco. Sitting behind a desk, he would explain the naco to his audience in scientific terms.
So viewers would not take his remarks seriously, the character's locution and mannerisms are a parody of the so-called juniors, the pompous young sons of upper-class Mexicans, known for their tendency to dismiss anyone else as a naco. He frequently refers to his millionaire papi and expresses amazement at the most mundane problems faced by normal people. Incredibly narcissistic, he explains that his name comes from the mathematical constant Pi and rorro (slang for handsome), in that he is "3.1416 times handsome".
Pirrurris has become a common Mexican epithet for someone who looks down on others, is materialist and superficial but however non-intelligent and air-headed (although not aware of this), and act as if one were above one's real economic station. Mexican leftist politician Andrés Manuel López Obrador has used the term on different occasions to refer to his right-wing political opponents.
Luis de Alba started his artistic life when he was a child playing a character named "Solin". Solin was the always companion of a supposedly man with gifted powers (Kaliman). Kaliman was the name of a daytime radio drama transmitted to his audience by radio only in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
Trivia
In 1980, El Mundo de Luis de Alba became one of the first Televisa television series to use electronic graphics in its credits, as one of Mexico's first character generators was installed at Televisa San Angel, where the program as taped. The program's early-1980s opening titles were among the first in Mexico to utilize this technology.
Selected filmography
- Carnival Nights (1978)
- The Loving Ones (1979)
External links
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