The title of the Netflix film “Chupa” inspires hilarious tweets
Netflix upcoming movie Chupa is a reimagining of a creature that has haunted the nightmares of many Latin American children for at least three years Decades: el chupacabras. Also known as the goat sucker.
The film will be released on the streaming platform in early April. It’s about Alex, a shy teenager from Kansas who travels to Mexico to visit his family. He finds a baby chupacabra in a barn. It looks like an adorable cross between a kitten and a bird, so Alex decides to name it “Chupa”. This discovery sends him on the adventure of a lifetime. Somewhere in the trailer, a girl tells the protagonist that the name Chupa means “sucker.”
But the word “chupa” by itself doesn’t mean chump—it means “to suck” or “to suck”. And… it has some salacious connotations for many Spanish speakers. There are several definitions on Urban Dictionary outlining how chupa itself is used to describe a sexual act for many Filipino, Spanish speakers and Portuguese speakers.
The Hollywood Grip tweeted the Netflix movie poster this week and was rated with 13,700 likes to over 16,000 cited retweets in response to the comedy gold. Twitter users have demanded to know if Netflix has released the film’s title by Spanish speakers before announcing the new film. Others tweeted a variation of “I should call him/her.” Some simply posted JAJAJAJAJA meaning laughing in Spanish.
Author Vanessa Angelica Villarreal tweeted“Imagine how many people this title has reached @Netflix all the way to ‘release promotional film poster’ for no one to tell them you can’t abbreviate the word’Chupacabra with ‘chupa’ because it literally means ‘suck off’ … how kids shouldn’t google that word.” Joanna Hausmann, a Venezuelan writer and comedian, tweeted “I have some notes.”
People have also pointed out that they are confused about the attitude. The film is set in Mexico, not the Caribbean. Some of the earliest alleged sightings of Chupacabras are indigenous to the Puerto Rican countryside, according to one in the early 1990s NPR thread about the mythical creature. There is archival footage from the Associated Press that shows dead animals with stab wounds in Puerto Rico. A comment on the video suggested this may have been near Orocovis, a centralized mountain town.
Reports have apparently spread from there. Tabloid television news such as Al Rojo Vivo have broken news of the chupacabra terrorizing communities in several countries, including Guatemala And Mexico.
When I first saw a tweet titled the film, I cried out. Then I laughed. I then laughed out loud and spent over an hour reading reaction tweets. Here are some of my favorites:
