Editing Cantinflas (section)

== Critical response ==
[[File:Homenaje a Mario Moreno "Cantinflas".jpg|thumb|Cantinflas depicted in 1952 by the Chilean muralist {{ill|Fernando Marcos Miranda|fr}}.]]
Cantinflas is sometimes seen as a Mexican [[Groucho Marx]] character, one who uses his skill with words to puncture the pretensions of the wealthy and powerful, the police and the government, with the difference that he strongly supported democracy. Historian and author of ''Cantinflas and the Chaos of Mexican Modernity'', writes, "Cantinflas symbolized the underdog who triumphed through trickery over more powerful opponents" and presents Cantinflas as a self-image of a transitional Mexico. [[Gregorio Luke]], executive director of the [[Museum of Latin American Art]] said, "To understand Cantinflas is to understand what happened in Mexico during the last century".<ref name="lyt" /><ref name="jhu.edu">[http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/the_americas/v059/59.1bliss.html Cantinflas and the Chaos of Mexican Modernity]. Retrieved 1 February 2006</ref>

Monsiváis interprets Moreno's portrayals in terms of the importance of the spoken word in the context of Mexico's "reigning illiteracy" (70% in 1930). Particularly in the film ''[[El analfabeto]]'', (''The Illiterate''), "Cantinflas is the illiterate who takes control of the language by whatever means he can".<ref name="Monsiváis3">Monsiváis, p. 52</ref>

The writer [[Salvador Novo]] interpreted the role of Moreno's character entirely in terms of ''Cantinflismo'': "''En condensarlos: en entregar a la saludable carcajada del pueblo la esencia demagógica de su vacuo confusionismo, estriba el mérito y se asegura la gloria de este hijo cazurro de la ciudad ladina y burlona de México, que es 'Cantinflas'''". ("In condensing them [the leaders of the world and of Mexico], in returning to the healthy laughter of the people the demagogic essence of their empty confusion, merit is sustained and glory is ensured for the self-contained son of the Spanish-speaking mocker of Mexico, who Cantinflas portrays.")<ref name="Novo2">Novo, p. 47</ref>

In his biography of the comic, scholar of Mexican culture Jeffrey M. Pilcher views Cantinflas as a metaphor for "the chaos of Mexican modernity", a modernity that was just out of reach for the majority of Mexicans: "His nonsense language eloquently expressed the contradictions of modernity as 'the palpitating moment of everything that wants to be that which it cannot be'."<ref name="Pilcher1">Pilcher, p. xxii</ref> Likewise, "Social hierarchies, speech patterns, ethnic identities, and masculine forms of behavior all crumbled before his chaotic humor, to be reformulated in revolutionary new ways."<ref name="Pilcher2">Pilcher, p. xviii</ref>