Wax museums have been giving us a slightly vertiginous, eerie, hair-raising sensation as far back as the 18th century.
And Guadalajara’s version, while not nearly as renowned – or respected – as Madame Tussauds in London, delivers on that ineffable sensation with two floors and several rooms crowded with silently staring life-sized representations of actors, athletes, writers, musicians, clergymen and politicians from around the globe.
It’s immediately obvious as you enter the first and largest room that local and national celebrities enjoy the lion’s share of the wax artists’ attention, with international notables getting somewhat short shrift in the verisimilitude department. For instance, the representation of “Brozo el Payaso Tenebroso” (Brozo the Creepy Clown, a beloved but abrasive character played by actor Victor Trujillo for over 20 years) was spot on – or so my partner in crime for the museum tour, a Tapatia in her early 30s, informed me. Contrast that with the museum’s dismal stand-in for multi-hyphenate Justin Timberlake, who looked more like a bored, half-bright Italian barber than the dashing, clarion-voiced bachelor oft-fawned over by women and men alike.
On the other hand, the gallery’s Donald Trump avatar seemed to deftly capture the source’s hugely inflated ego. Also, his pairing with a radiant, grinning Dalai Lama was an inspired bit of absurd juxtaposition, intended or not.
One whole room in the museum’s basement level was made up to look like a chapel, complete with not one, not two, but three recent popes (Francis, John Paul and Benedict) on a platform facing three blank-faced parishioners in wooden pews. Surprisingly for such a devout country – and the presence of an all-star cast of sermon-givers – this particular service was sparsely attended.
Aside from the mock chapel, the basement houses a large pantheon of actors, assorted entertainers and national heroes (Cantinflas, Agustin Lara, Father Hidalgo), a circular room crowded with sports idols (including the country’s most famous luchador, El Santo), a smaller anti-chamber dedicated to U.S. megastars such as Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson and the aforementioned butchery of poor Mr. Timberlake, a corridor of terrors lit by the hallucinatory glow of blacklight, and finally, a room housing a strange mishmash of miscellaneous fictional personages: Harry Potter and the Cookie Monster rubbing shoulders with Wolverine and Cri Cri, a tiny but much-loved Mexican cartoon cricket.
Following the exit sign, attendees pass through the inevitable gift shop before walking up a short flight of stairs back into the open air and grand rectangular sweep of Plaza de la Liberacion, with the faux Roman Teatro Degollado on the right, the city’s magisterial, ornate cathedral on the left, and a bronze statue of Hidalgo in the center rending apart with his bare hands a sturdy length of chain. While no great shakes itself, the plaza statue illustrates an advantage marble, bronze, et al, have over wax: being in the presence of art made from those media doesn’t give you the clammy-palmed heebie-jeebies.
However, as “low” art goes, wax museums, along with velvet paintings, are the perfect antidote to a night suffering through a program of “high” art at, say, the Teatro Degollado.
The museum is open daily from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Cost is 70 pesos general, 60 for children, seniors, teachers and students.