On December 26, after his first performance at the Zorba Theater in Villa Carlos Paz, Jey Mammón collapsed in his dressing room. A mix of sensations that he summarizes in overwhelming emotion was what made the first night of his return to the stage special.
In March 2023, Mammón was denounced by Lucas Benvenuto for alleged sexual abuse and, after this accusation, the artist became a pariah. Telefe suspended him and removed him from hosting the program “Morfi” and he became a ghost in the air. The “friends” he previously frequented quickly turned their backs on him and very few broke a spear in his defense. In July, his presence at the Martín Fierro awards was a clear example of the emptiness that weighed on him. Not only did his former colleagues leave him alone at the table, but each of his movements was followed in detail and some did not even come up to greet him, when until only months ago they maintained a relationship.
But after a voluntary exile in Spain, Mammón returned to fight against the cancellation to which he was subjected. “I’ll be back soon,” his one-man show, is a work born from that journey in Europe and in which he traces how he went through all the moments of what he describes as an “individual pandemic” due to the isolation in which he found himself.
Return. “Have you seen when you go to the gym and muscles start to hurt that you didn’t even know existed? When they cancel you, parts of your soul hurt that you didn’t know you had. You die but you are alive,” the artist reflects in one of his monologues. However, in dialogue with NOTICIAS, he explains that this return is not a “cancellation.” “Of course I felt canceled and there were cancellation maneuvers, but I never felt it on the part of the public. Yes, from sectors that believe they are more powerful than the people. But, at the end of the day, people choose to believe, think and feel what they want, beyond what they want to put in their heads,” he explains.
Overnight, Mammón went from being a sought-after artist in the environment – who had the possibility of continuing to expand his figure even more after his arrival on the Telefe screen – to becoming a “bad word.” “An atomic bomb exploded,” he compares in his work. “I lost many jobs, many spaces. When the channel immediately took me off the air it was a domino effect. I had recorded an album that didn’t come out, they took me out of a movie that was never released and more, but people never canceled me,” he emphasizes while stating that his cancellation was not a product of the public’s verdict, but rather responded to a ” business decision.”
“I look forward. The facts and omissions, as there were in my case, speak for themselves about the decisions that were made with me,” she says. This new way of facing life arises directly from everything that Mammon had to face and took as learning.
“I’ll be right back” is an example of that. The work intersperses the artist’s monologues, in which he narrates his path over these nine months, with the appearance of his most recognized characters, such as “Estelita” or “Topu, the scary clown”, who since they began as an underground phenomenon They made it grow in popularity. “For this season I brought the same wigs that Carlos Paz wore fifteen years ago. Because it’s not that I’m reuniting with my original audience, since even now I’ve added new ones, but, on the contrary, I’m reuniting with the original Jey. There is a reunion with my genesis,” he says. In that sense, the choice of Carlos Paz as a place to return to the stage is not random, since it is in the city of Cordoba where Mammón became a phenomenon more than a decade ago.
Furthermore, the artist dedicates a special time to thanking those people who, when everything fell apart, did not let go of his hand. “La Negra” Vernaci is one of them, but he saves a special section for Charly García, who, while Jey was in Spain, called him to show him his support. But not only that, the rocker sent him a song, which arrived at a time when Mammón did not even leave the hotel room he was occupying in Madrid due to the situation he was going through and the harassment of the press even in Europe. “I heard that song on loop and it inspired me. I bought a guitar and began to compose what is now the work. It was a catharsis,” he explains.
Future. Mammón emphasizes again and again that what comforted him most about his return is the reunion with his audience and their reaction. His performances are dismissed with standing ovations, but he is not alone there. Several images of his tours along the Carlos Paz pedestrian street have gone viral, where the public approaches, but with a difference from other artists: “I am experiencing a round trip of energy. Before they came up there and just wanted a photo, now they want to talk to me. Because behind that now comes something more genuine and closer. Even with personal stories like ‘I cried for you’ or ‘I prayed for you’. What happens to me is really very strong”, he tells her about the sensations of this return.
This situation is replicated in the microclimate of social networks, where even though, as often happens, there are violent comments or attacks, Mammón decides not to respond or delete them, but only to dedicate himself to responding to messages of support and greetings.
The exit from ostracism may include a potential return to television in the future. In fact, Gustavo Sofovich (see box) insists on that idea. However, for Mammon everything is day by day. “I would love to return to TV, it is a place that makes me happy. Today there is no cancellation anymore, there are people who want me to come back and I know that. Or even other platforms like streaming. But beyond that, because of what happened to me, I no longer plan. I move minute by minute,” he says.
The continuity of the theatrical work is also a possibility. “This return exceeded my expectations. Not only in quantity of public, but also in quality. Because something very beautiful is happening,” she says.
Thus, nine months after becoming the subject of a massive cancellation that erased him from the scene at a stroke, the new Jey Mammón says that with the learning from that experience in tow, he is ready to continue. “’I’ll be right back’ became ‘I’m back,’” he summarizes.
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