I’m willing to
bet that most of the native English-speakers reading this (all two of them)
have absolutely no idea who this guy is, unless they’re Latino and/or grew up
around Latino people. (Is Latino even politically correct anymore? I can’t keep up with this…) El Chapulín
Colorado, “the Red Grasshopper”, is the brainchild of Mexican comedian Roberto
Gómez Bolaños, a.k.a. Chespirito. The
characters he created—particularly Chapulín Colorado and Chavo del Ocho (dude
had a thing for “ch” sounds)—are immensely popular, scoring monster ratings
across multiple nations and multiple decades.
He’s popular outside of Spanish-speaking nations too; his shows have
been translated into Japanese, Portuguese, French, Russian, and more.
The one language
it hasn’t been translated into?
English. The DVDs I own don’t
even bother to provide English subtitles.
Which is a pain, because that means I have to do the translating
myself.* But hey, nowhere in my list of superhero requirements does it say that
a superhero needs to speak English, so let’s take a quick look.
