by Philip Katzenellenbogen
M.A. in Comparative Literature
University of Ediacara
There can be no doubt that El Físico Nuclear is one of the most vital and enduring myths of the 20th century. Ever since July 19, 1992, when a young man (whose true identity is still unknown) first publicly wrestled as El Físico, this heroic figure has been working his way into our consciousness. Aside from the personal reasons I am drawn to El Físico, this character from our folklore is important to me, a literary scholar, because he is an intriguing example of one of our first postmodern myths. Traditionally, myths have always been interpreted by scholars in a given historical context, in relation to the culture that produced them. For example, Joseph Campbell has demonstrated that the public's denial of Elvis' death is representative of our refusal to face our loss of innocence: Presley is a mythical representation of a purer adolescent desire, which was replaced by the sexual violence to which we subjected Vietnam. Likewise, Prometheus has long been interpreted as being symbolic of the light of reason which the elite of Athenian culture believed was uniquely their intellectual property.
It is not possible to restrict El Físico Nuclear in this manner. He is specific to no context; he can be interpreted relative to any historical situation. I will let a handful of illustrations suffice. An example that most of you will first think of is his infinite substitutability. Ask the legendary person in the street what they think of El Físico. "The Physicist's a no-good lying bum, and if you see him, tell him he's behind in his child support!" the first will say. Granted, many say this without prompting, to anyone passing by, but that is the price of fame. "El Físico?" another will say. "That man ought to run for President! I'd sure vote for him! The last honest man in America!" Another tells how her Ultra-Lite was going down in a tail spin, and how El Físico stabilized it so that it could land safely. These brief examples of his substitutability are but the tip of the iceberg. For whatever reason, all sorts of people place their dreams, hopes, and fears upon him. There is no limit to the contexts to which El Físico is native, if you will.
Another important factor is his indeterminate origin. He may have come from a distant star, or the world inside our hollow earth--or, perhaps he merely walked off the cel of one of his films. The stories simply do not agree. Even the physical traces of his origin are contradictory. If, for example, that spaceship which has been X-rayed beneath the Step Pyramid in Egypt is his, then what is a very different craft, likewise his, doing on the Leng Plateau? And what about the third one, currently on display at the Smithsonian? Each of the stories and the documents that support them indicate that all of these ships belonged to him--the photographs reveal his famous muon symbol on each one, for example--and yet, how could he have piloted them simultaneously from the stars to Earth? Despite the fervor with which the extraterrestrial origin stories are told, there are those who equally committed to denying that he came from space at all, and whose narratives offer proof that he is the bastard offspring of Alonso Quijana and Maritornes, that he was cloned with DNA from the Piltdown Man, and so forth. It is useless to discuss origins seriously in matters of this kind, except as they are contradicted by El Físico Nuclear's innumerable beginnings. Rather than being relevant to our culture, or any other, his origin is nowhere, and he is specific to no context.
His postmodern nature of this myth is further seen in his atemporality. Aside from being proof of something eternal and immortal, he undoes, through his ubiquity in time-space, the concept of cause and effect. For an example, I refer to the accounts of the events of 1952, when he destroyed utterly the planet known as Lanulos, along with its inhabitants. Despite this, these creatures returned to threaten him at Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in 1967. Actions and events such as these demand a paradigm shift in our understanding of the universe. Postmodernism, which certainly owes a great deal to Einstein's theories of time and space, is, because of this, truly manifest in El Físico Nuclear, who is in all places at all times. Much more than Shakespeare, El Físico is "not of an age, but for all time." It would appear that time as well as space is compressed into a singularity in the presence of El Físico Nuclear. These three characteristics--his lack of a specific context to which he belongs, the lack of origin, and his atemporality, identify him as a postmodern construct.
Likewise, his constant challenge of the standard, accepted paradigms of science make him an adherent of the idea that science is a human construction, rather than merely a description of reality. Though he is himself a trained scientist, and a practicing physicist, he does things which no earthbound thinker could do. He ignores the second law of thermodynamics, levitates, and travels faster than the speed of light. While philosophers such as Sir Karl Popper stodge their way through their syllogisms, worrying about "veracity," "validity," and "falsifiability," the scientist that is El Físico cavorts and cartwheels in a shower of falling fish. Phantom lights and geomagnetic anomalies do not threaten him. His very presence in the sciences, probing and proving in his unproof, challenges the discourse that prevents us from seeing that everything, including our verifiable conception of the world, is our own invention. I will not take the ridiculous next step, and say that therefore The Physicist proves that everything is possible--it is not--but I will say that El Físico and his Super ScienceTM certainly test the limits.
A brief list of the many other postmodern figures and phenomena with which El Físico has been associated is certainly necessary to this discussion. He has been photographed with Elvis, after the singer's alleged death. Tom Keating's forgery of Andy Warhol's pastiche "El Físico Nuclear" was auctioned off, by Christie's, for three million to Nissan for advertising purposes. The inhabitants of Tana Island believe that the wrestler has succeeded Jon Frum as King of the United States. He has an infomercial. He has had business dealings with J.R. "Bob" Dobbs. His '70s retro rock group, El Físico Nuclear and the New, Improved! is currently topping the charts, even though the band broke up four years ago. And he is slated to wrestle against Vandal Drummond at Lollapalooza next summer! His demand for paradigm shifts in the sciences I have already mentioned, but to give another example, research shows that his name, when converted to its corresponding numbers and factored out, constructs a Mandelbrot set, which of course is taken from the only slightly outdated fad of chaos theory. The ancient art of lucha libre as he practices it is certainly a type of modern primitivism, and Richard Feynman, who helped formulate quantum electrodynamics, referred to him in his 1965 Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Need I say more? El Físico Nuclear's Day Runner must look like an encyclopedia of postmodern culture!
In a justly famous essay, Michel Foucault asks "What is an Author?" and shows that "In current usage...the notion of writing seems to transpose the empirical characteristics of the author into a transcendental anonymity." El Físico Nuclear is the embodiment of this lapse, so typical of the postmodern. The man who created El Físico Nuclear as a character, and wrestled under his mask for years, has not written one word about this postmodern myth. Instead, the character has been given into the hands of hack writers who churn out drivel about him and splatter it all over the Internet. The copyright matter is muddy, and will take years for the lawyers to settle, but it appears as though Mr. Palatkin, or the anonymous cabal which he represents, will end up with most of the cash from the El Físico Nuclear project. The man behind El Físico certainly never receives any money or recognition for it. We are not even sure who he is, really. A series of anonymous young men play The Physicist now, but without the vivacity that this unknown wrestler, so long ago, brought to the character, before he disappeared. Thus, although El Físico Nuclear's transcendental anonymity has made him one of the most popular figures on the planet, it has resulted in personal tragedy. Most of the crowds don't know the difference, now, but a few of us remember what it was like, when it was really El Físico behind that mask. The substitution of one El Físico for another, the copyright infringement, the absorption by other myths into a vague netherworld of the half famous/half forgotten: these are all very amusing to the postmodernists among us today, and the suit may not feel it, but the man who once wore the Psychic Mask certainly must. I am sorry that he cannot be here today to hear my thanks, and join in this celebration of his famous creation.
But what makes him so mythic? Another literary theorist, Fredric Jameson, has written that what makes El Físico a myth is nothing more than the vast amounts of money his name generates. His products bring in more cash per year than the gross national product of many countries. There have been countless representations of the wrestler and his activities: toys, music videos, movies--some chronicling his exploits, and some which feature the Man in the Psychic Mask as an actor playing other roles--comic books, novels, museum exhibits, TV shows, plays...the list seems endless. And here I speak only of those genres popular in the United States: to give even a brief list of his presence in such forms as the corrido, Javanese shadow puppetry, and Scandinavian epic would take much longer. The copyright on representations of El Físico Nuclear will never expire, by special ruling of the Berne Convention. This means that his image will make money forever. And his appeal is global. When Hasbro first introduced the El Físico Nuclear Jet Pack, every child on every street corner, everywhere in the world, had to have one. (Let me add that a copy of this toy, in its original packaging, has been auctioned off at Sotheby's for £80,000.) Like the money which his image produces so readily for the copyright holders, El Físico Nuclear is both universal in his appeal and in his substitutability: as money can be exchanged for anything today, the argument goes, so too can El Físico represent anything.
Jameson's logic is certainly valid, but is it true? Is it merely a desire for the money that he represents that we experience when we see him wrestle, when we read of his adventures, hear of a new archeological dig that proves his presence in our most ancient cultures? I hardly think so. It is not this sort of absolutism, this post-Freudian Enlightenment paradigm that has an answer to everything that will tell us about El Físico Nuclear: no. El Físico Nuclear does not fit that model. He bends every construct around himself, like the cloak which is his trademark. As proof, I ask you to try an experiment. Think of an activity, a place, and ask yourself: is it impossible that El Físico has not done it, has not been there? There is no situation to which the Physicist is not party, at least potentially. For this alone he is a postmodern myth.
And ultimately, what I say about him is of little importance. Literary criticism can kill a myth. But when people stop telling the latest in a series of epic haiku based on his exploits, or proudly announcing that his name was the first sound out of their child's mouth, or no longer begin campfire stories with "In his laboratory deep beneath The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, El Físico Nuclear was hard at work..." only then will we be able to say that he is no longer a myth. And may there never be such a time! Other myths grow and then fade, but evidence shows that not only is El Físico increasing in appeal, but that earlier and earlier proofs of his existence are constantly being found. That is to say, he is moving backwards in our history. Soon there will never be a time when El Físico was not, and will not be. Nothing has ever been forever, yet, but for whatever reasons, El Físico has a better chance at it than any other myth to come round in a long time.
This is a transcript of a lecture originally delivered at "The ( ) Post-modern: (Re)Present(ation(s) of the (De)Construct(ed)," a conference at the University of California, Irvine, September 11-12, 1994. My thanks go to my wife and colleague Elizabeth for her invaluable help in preparing this paper for publication.
PW
© 1998 Denise Hopenhaym
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