Zorro and the Californios

9:45 PM Friday, March 31, 2006

[California's favorite fictional vigilante]

They say it all started with the Scarlet Pimpernel, which is not a dermatological condition or a sex-worker's management consultant, but a kind of flower. It's also a character created by one Baroness Orczy. The Pimpernel, who protected French artistocrats from the excesses of the revolution, is said to have been the role model for Batman, Spider-Man, and the subject of today's discourse, El Zorro, another fictional character, who was created around 1919 by pulp writer Johnston McCulley (1883-1958). In McCulley's series, the masked protagonist and hero (who lived in California and whose name means "the Fox" in Spanish), defended the vulnerable and oppressed local folk against bad government, leaving his signature Z-shaped sword mark wherever he struck. (Zorro the fictional hero, BTW, should not be confused with the current President of Mexico, Vicente Fox, who does not live in California, and whose name means "Zorro" in his native language.)

In McCulley's scenario, Zorro lived in Alta California, which can be translated as either Upper or High California (I prefer the latter) and which was proclaimed as part of the United States of America by Commodore Sloat of the US Navy on July 7, 1846. The adventures of the Zorro character, however, took place when Alta California was under Mexican jurisdiction, and Zorro's nemesis was a perfidious, evil governor named Don Rafael Montero. Residents of California prior to annexation were called Californios, and included Robert Livermore, an Englishman, after whom a Northern California city and a nuclear research lab were named. (The tradition of perfidious, evil governors was not abandoned by Alta Californians following US annexation, as both Republicans and Democrats will attest.)

Culture Clash, which calls itself (through the Zorro character) an "agit-prop" performance group, recently staged a comic melodrama called "Zorro in Hell," which I enjoyed at the Berkeley Rep theater last week. The play's characters included a 200-year-old woman, a talking bear, and a gay stagecoach robber, as well as a writer who identifies, after some initial resistance, with the Z-man. But the real fascination I find with Zorro is that he was a fictional (harsh whisper here) vigilante. That means a self-appointed individual (or member of a "committee") who takes the law into his own hands, meting out his own version of justice. San Francisco had two such committees, in 1851, and 1856 respectively, and sentiment in favor of Zorroesque behavior is alive and well among today's Californians. One might also say that Batman, Spider-Man (and let's throw in Charles Bronson's character in the film Death Wish) to the contrary notwithstanding, California's very own most beloved fictional vigilante remains the masked avenger, El Zorro.

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