El Risitas
 |
El Risitas | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Juan Joya Borja 5 April 1956 |
| Nationality | Spanish |
| Occupation(s) | Comedian, actor |
| Years active | 2000–present |
| Known for | Comedian |
| Notable work | Comedy |
| Height | 170.18 cm (5 ft 7.00 in) |
Juan Joya Borja (born 5 April 1956)[1][2] is a Spanish comedian and actor known by the stage name El Risitas. He gained widespread popularity in 2015 thanks to a series of memes from a television interview from June 2007 on Jesús Quintero's show Ratones Coloraos.[3]
Biography
Joya was born in Seville. He had a number of jobs throughout his life, including cooking and unloading sacks of cement. His first appearance on television was in 2000, on Jesús Quintero's show El Vagamundo, where he interviewed on various life situations with his partner "El Peíto" or "el Cuñao", in a comedic tone. He became recognizable for his high-pitched, wheezing laugh (described in The Guardian as like a "dolphin with a 20-a-day habit."[3]), which led to his nickname "El Risitas" (translated to "the giggles" in English). He also appeared in the 2005 film Torrente 3: El protector. When he became known internationally by 2015 (see internet meme) he did also perform for companies outside of Spain, for example in a Finnish commercial.[4]
Ratones Coloraos interview meme
In June 2007, Joya appeared on Jesús Quintero's show Ratones Coloraos and described an incident when he worked as a dishwasher. He describes leaving some paella pans (paelleras) at night in the ocean to soak and clean, and when in the morning he returned to retrieve the pans, they had washed out to sea with the tide. He frequently interrupts the story with his trademark laugh.[3] The original video was uploaded to YouTube on June 25, 2007, and received over a million views eight years before the meme became widespread.[5]
In March 2014,[6] footage from the interview was used by the Muslim Brotherhood to parody the President of Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.[7] Other parodies were also produced, usually parodying technology and gaming.[3] The most viewed versions of the video subtitled Joya as the designer of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 graphics card, a designer of Team Fortress 2, a Valve employee discussing Dota 2, a Canon representative discussing the C300 camera, an Xbox Live employee describing the platform's system, and a cinematographer describing shooting on a Red camera.[8]
In March 2015, the meme received its most attention after the launch of the 2015 MacBook, where Joya was subtitled as a designer who worked on the prototype. Within a month of its uploading, the video received over five million views on YouTube.[9] The meme's impact has been compared to parodies of the 2004 war drama Downfall, where several scenes from the film are similarly edited with fake subtitles.[3]
Another popular meme was published in April 2015 parodying a political affair in Slovakia known as Vahostav affair,[10] where Joya was subtitled by popular Slovak stand-up comedy performer Jano Gordulic. In June 2016 it was used to parody the Brexit decision in Great Britain, with El Risitas allegedly having been an advisor to David Cameron in planning the Brexit campaign [11]
In November 2018, the meme had yet another success in criticizing Blizzard Entertainment's decision to bring Diablo to mobile devices with the new game, Diablo Immortal,[12] with 350,000 views.
In 2019, a zoomed-in still image of his face was added as a 3rd party emote for Twitch on FrankerFaceZ. As of October 2019, over 10,000 channels on Twitch have enabled the emote.[13] With more than 95 million uses in chat, the emote occupies 14th place among the most popular FrankerFacez emotes.[14]
Film
Television
- 2000–2002: El Vagamundo, Canal 2 Andalucía
- 2002–2005: Ratones Coloraos, Canal Sur Televisión
- 2005–2012: El loco de la colina, El Gatopardo
References
- ^ "YouTube". www.youtube.com.
- ^ "El Risitas confirma que "los franceses están locos" (con él)".
- ^ a b c d e Parkinson, Hannah Jane (2015-03-13). "Apple engineer spoof video: is Spanish Laughing Guy the new Downfall?". The Guardian. Retrieved 2015-03-13.
- ^ "'El Risitas' triunfa en Finlandia con un anuncio de pizzas". 20 minutos. 2015-10-21.
- ^ El Risitas, Jesús Quintero (2007-06-24). Risitas y las paelleras [Risitas and paelleras (paella pans)] (Television production) (in Spanish). Spain: Canal Sur (broadcaster), video via Jesús Quintero's YouTube channel. Retrieved 2015-04-12. Note: The date value is the video upload date on YouTube.
- ^ "Viaje a Egipto del 'Risitas' y los 'Hermanos Ubnormales'".
- ^ "Viaje a Egipto del 'Risitas' y los 'Hermanos Ubnormales'" (in Spanish). El Mundo. 2014-06-04. Retrieved 2015-03-13.
- ^ Hardy, Robert (2015-03-14). "Hilarious Parody Video: DP Discovers That He Has to Shoot on a RED Camera". nofilmschool. Retrieved 2015-04-12.
- ^ "'El Risitas' sorprende en Estados Unidos como ingeniero de Apple" (in Spanish). Europa Press. 2015-03-12. Retrieved 2015-03-13.
- ^ a.s., Petit Press. "Fico seeks to blame Figeľ for Váhostav".
- ^ (Risitas Parody) Brexit, UK leaves the EU.
- ^ Mvgen (6 November 2018). "Diablo Immortal: Interview with an Blizzard employee" – via YouTube.
- ^ "KEKW" – via FrankerFaceZ.
- ^ "KEKW" – via SlangLang.
External links
- El Risitas at IMDb