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Reaction to Comics Readings

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I apologize for the EXTREME lateness of this blog post… This is the last entry of this blog, in which I explain my reaction to the last readings of the term. This time, these were comics from Latin American authors: El Eternauta by by Héctor G. Oesterheld and Francisco Solano López, and Mafalda by Quino.

Both were episodic but each belongs to a different kind of comics: El Eternauta is a linear narrative with realistic drawings, obviously targeting a older public, which makes it quite similar to the Graphic Novel genre, while Mafalda is a daily newspaper strip, without chronological order, with much more cartoony designs. Yet the strength of Mafalda is to sometimes address, if briefly and humorously, deep subjects that you would not expect from this kind of medium.

El Eternauta is the work of Argentinian comic makers, published between 1957 and 1959. From the extract, we understand that an Argentinian town is suddenly covered in a dead snow, leading the few survivors to plan an exploration of the area. I initially though it was the result of a nuclear testing by the USA (which is explicitly discussed in the extract right before the events). But we learnt from the course that the story is actually about an alien invasion and time travel, which seems a bit uncalled for, perhaps. The commentary written on the website of the extract implies that the main goal of the writer, Oesterheld, was to depict heroism in the form of normal people, working together despite a apocalyptic situation. Yet references to more concrete realities can be found: Argentina is worried by the nuclear tests of the USA near its shores and the inescapable alien invasion, starting with a deadly fallout, appears to represent the feeling of a country completely overwhelmed by much bigger powerhouses escalating into the Cold War. Oesterheld was eventually arrested, tortured and presumably killed during the period of unrest of the 1960s in Argentina, another proof that the artist wanted to convey more than just universal and vague messages.

I already studied Mafalda five years ago so it was pleasant to see a familiar “face”. Mafalda is a daily comic strip centered around the eponymous character, a young girl with rather unusual points of view on society: the main asset of the comic, I suppose, is this contrast between the appearance of the protagonist and her words that catch adults by surprise. Mafalda’s author, Quino, did escape the executions in the Dirty War, emigrating to Italy just before the start of the events. He worked on Mafalda between 1964 and 1973 but, even without new comic strips the character remains very popular, even used by the UNICEF for communication campaigns, with Quino producing new drawings.

Reaction to readings on the End of Popular Culture

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I explain in this blog my reaction to the readings of the week: “In Search of a New Topography” by Guillermo Gómez-Peña; “The Hollywood Latina Body as Site of Social Struggle: Media Cinstructions of Stardom and Jennifer Lopez’s Cross-Over Butt’” by Mary C. Beltrán; and “The Embodiment of Salsa: Musicians, instruments and the Performance of a Latin Style and Identity” by Patria Román-Velázquez.

Gómez-Peña’s text deals with the Mexican revolutionary group of the 90s called the Zapatistas, and more precisely with its leader, the so-called Subcomandante Marcos. The extract explains that Marcos initially won popularity by trying to be a popular culture phenomenon: he used slang, references to urban culture and pop culture, theatrical performance… But he eventually lost this popularity: people simply got tired of his character with time, as if he was a pop star instead of a guerillero.

Beltrán’s text focuses on the fact that in the late 1990s, most of the popular attention devoted to Latina star Jennifer Lopez was centered around the shape of her butt. From this rather unconventional starting point, the author tries to develop an argumentation about how this could illustrate a media system that is still uncomfortable with promoting the body shape of non-white women or, to the contrary, an industry that continues to use and to extrapolate stereotypes from other ethnicities.

The last text, by Patria Román-Velázquez, is centered around the theme of salsa, a Latin dance/music that the author of the essay uses to reflect on ethnicity and culture. By taking the example of Salsa musicians who are not Latin and who play in London, the essay states that, though we consider salsa to be a pure element of Latin America popular culture, musicians from other backgrounds can learn it but, due to the differences in places, they will play it slightly differently: one does not need to be Latin to play Salsa but according to the place of learning the result will differ (not that there is a more authentic way, warns the writer). Additionally, salsa bands in English-speaking countries note the constrains imposed by the industry: to remain profitable, they have to cope with the expectations and the limited familiarity of their audience with this music. They must keep the Spanish lyrics fairly simple and restrain themselves to create a music to make people dance.

Reaction to Hybridity reading

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I explain in this blog my reaction to the readings of the week: two extracts from Néstor García Canclini ‘s Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity.

A thought I found interesting in the introduction is the fact that we have to nuance the idea of hybridization when it is understood as a fusion of two cultures. First of all, the idea of a peaceful fusion is too optimistic, in most cases hybridity is in fact a form of violence and of conflict. This is why names such as syncretism, mestizaje and creolization allow to describe more specifically the kind of process involved. Secondly, as the author takes the example of the hybrid language called Spanglish, we can say that the two components mixed in the process (here, English and Spanish) are pure themselves: each culture is itself the result of past hybridizations, and the idea of pure, absolute essence of one culture is in fact a biased vision of the process, when one observes the culture at a precise moment in time. The author suggests that better understanding the process of hybridization is a way to relativize conflicts between cultures, and to prevent conflicts predicted by Samuel Huntington in Clash of Civilizations.

With globalization, increased economic exchanges and economic segregations imply more phenomena of hybridization but with newer conditions. For instance, in Latin America, Spanish investments are considerably increasing, which represent both an opportunity and a challenge for Latin American culture to express itself. This doesn’t mean global and national cannot be reconciled: the process of glocalization hopefully manages to do it.

The chapter 7 lists several ways in which modernity challenges the way to see culture. It addresses urban culture in Latin America, evolving with the political situation (dictatorship, populism…), with globalization, with social protests,… “New” technologies (the author writes in the 1990s) endanger the very idea of collection (precious, unique, physical items). Deterritorialization and reterritorialization are other new processes that heavily modify the traditional way to perceive culture in Latin America, as some places lose a cultural trait that was attached to them or regain it or gain a new one (such as the maquiladoras along the border between the Mexico and the US). And even Latin American comic strips can now tackle with humor social problems.

Reaction to Mass Media readings

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I explain in this blog my reaction to the readings of the week: “Big Snakes on the Street and Never Ending Stories: The Case of Venezuelan Telenovelas” from Imagination Beyond Nation: Latin American Popular Culture, by Nelson Hippolyte Ortega; and an extract from Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life, by Alex Bellos.

Hippolyte Ortega’s text deals with the history of telenovelas, a form of Latin American TV shows reminiscent of North American soap operas but with its own codes. The ancestors of the genre were radionovelas in the 1940s but the first telenovelas appeared in the 70s and the 80s, produced by several Latin American countries for their own domestic market. Enjoyed by the whole family, telenovelas deal with love triangles, Manichean stories and their plot is artificially lengthened for the show to last longer. However, in 1992, a Venezuelan telenovela, Por estas calles, managed to introduce new elements in this old formula: instead of relying on the traditional plot, it mirrored the scandals and the social problems of the country at that time, allowing the audience to identify strongly with the struggle of the characters. With time however, the telenovela eventually returned to the stereotypical formula but Hippolyte Ortega states that nonetheless it has managed to illustrate the ability of Latin America culture to combine opposite elements, such as mass distribution and popular appraisal.

Bellos’s text deals with football in the Brazilian imaginary. The first third of the extract is dedicated to the defeat of Brazil to Uruguay in the World Cup of 1950. The writer meets with different personalities (players from both teams, the designer of the Brazilian shirt…) to collect testimony and analyse the importance of this sport event in the mind of the country. From the reader’s perspective, the overemphasize on this football game can at times appear extravagant (it is described as a national disaster, while the country just had been freed from dictatorship and that WWII ended five years earlier) but nonetheless the text allows to realize the prominence of this memory in Brazil culture. Then the extract explains how indigenous culture has contributed to the Brazilian culture, and how indigenous players are able to reconcile this sport with their own traditions. Then Bellos describes the life of Garrincha, one of Brazil’s iconic footballers. The final part of the extract describes the supporter group called “the Hawks of the Faithful”, an example of a group gathering football fans that progressively turned into infamous hooligans.

Reaction to Transculturation

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I explain in this blog my reaction to the readings of the week: the chapter “On the Social Phenomenon of ‘Transculturation’ and its Importance in Cuba” from Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar by Fernando Ortiz; and “Transculturation: Contrapuntal Notes to Critical Orthodoxy” by Mark Millington, extracted from Bulletin of Latin American Research.

The first text is from Fernando Ortiz, a Cuban anthropologist from the first half of the twentieth century. He creates and justifies the new word “transculturation” (to replace the term “acculturation” that he believes is inadequate) and uses it to briefly summarize the history of Cuban culture. Transculturation describes the process of transition from one culture to another (with the loss of one’s original culture and the creation (instead of simple adoption) of another culture), with all the social repercussions associated. In Cuba, this process was undergone both by Spanish immigrants (Renaissance workers from poor background arriving in the island with high responsibility) and by African slaves (forcefully torn from their home culture to be used as labour in the new colony).

The second text takes place in the 21rst century. Now, the word “transculturation” is widely accepted, like the word “hybridisation”. The writer, Mark Millington, refers to the text of Ortiz. He criticizes the two words. He is harsher against “hybridisation” because it is conflicting with “hybridity”, its definition still remains imprecise and it has political connotations. Millington seems to agree more on transculturation, though he is not entirely convinced. Ortiz left some points unclear on the definition, such as the idea that transculturation can be experienced at different intensity (the migration of Spaniards / the enslavement of Africans). There is also some doubt about whether transculturation is completely separate from acculturation (movement into another culture). Other recent anthropologists have also argued that the word cannot fully explain the inequalities in Latin America, that it doesn’t offer a solution to this problem and it is hard to assess its relevance in today’s modern world, outside of only Latin America. Yet Millington admits the term transculturation, coined by Ortiz, does have its pros: it allows for an analysis that takes individual actions and realities, as well as local processes into account, so that the study does not remain abstract.

Reaction to the readings about Mexican Murals and the Maria Lionza cult

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(Same introduction as always) I explain in this blog my reaction to the readings of the week: a chapter from Mexican Murals in Time of Crisis by Bruce Campbell and the beginning of The Magic of the State by Michael Taussig.

The extract of Bruce Campbell’s work offers an overview of the history of Muralism in Mexico and an idea of why it is a complicated form of popular culture, with examples depicted. From what I understood, the first urban murals date from the 1920s and were commissioned by the new government to promote its ideals, like those of Vasconcelos. But progressively, muralists began to create more controversial pieces and three main figures appeared (“los Tres Grandes”). The 1930s-1940s were the golden age of the Mexican School of muralism. But since the death of the Tres Grandes, there seems to be a lack of successors. Art critics argue that remaining Mexican muralists are less ambitious and memorable. However, Campbell describes an episode when the creation and then destruction of a more recent mural had a clear social and political impact in a town near Mexico City. So Mexican murals, though they seem to have declined, can potentially be again an example of problematic popular culture (they are in public space but they can be offensive, especially for the government).

As for the text of Michael Taussig, we were told we would find it weird and indeed it is. But since I was already expecting it (unlike The Cosmic Race, in which the swift in tone caught me by surprise), I decided to look at what universe is implied by it rather than what the actual plot of the book. It seems to be a mixt of very romanticized autobiography (the narrator as the first chapters appears to be the writer), of fiction (without warning, the main character becomes a man called Mission) and of study of the Maria Lionza cult (even if this study is biased by the fact the writer follows this religion). I couldn’t really understand the actual plot: each chapter constantly changes focus, the main character changes,… But all in all, it offers an introduction to the bizarre world of this cult, where spirits roam Venezuela, sometimes possessing people. The main figure of this cult, the Spirit Queen, ruler of snakes and dragons, is quite unclear herself: the believers argue whether she was an indigenous or a mestizaje and what the conditions of her exile were, but they agree that she is now one with the mountain (even though she is able to interact humanly with the narrator). This text is strange, of course, but al least we now have an idea of the myths, rituals and beliefs of the followers of this Venezuelan cult.

Reaction to Mestizaje Readings

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I explain in this blog my reaction to two readings related to the theme of mestizaje in Latin America: an extract from The Cosmic Race by José Vasconcelos; and the chapter “Rethinking Mestizaje: Ideology and Life Experience” from the book Journal of Latin American Studies by Peter Wade.

 

The main message of The Cosmic Race is that Latin America has the potential to give birth to a new human “race”, fruit of the mixing of all the races the author counts, that could progressively extend to the whole world, beginning an age of prosperity. Despite such a supposedly benevolent topic, I found the reading quite disturbing, for several reasons: the strange paleoanthropological assumptions of José Vasconcelos, his radical views on history, his racist believes (though he does address the Nazi propaganda) and his idea of passive eugenics.

First of all, the reasoning begins with the idea that the first humans, forming an ethnically homogeneous culture, were the Atlanteans, living in the American continent several million years ago: they were incredibly advanced and perhaps this is the reason the writer advocates for the advent of a unique human type. Vasconcelos then exposes a biased version of the history of colonialism in the Americas (Pizarro is depicted as a very decent leader, for instance) and insists on antagonizing the Anglo-Saxon world (the United States, even independent, remaining indistinct from the United Kingdom). This brings him to call for unity between countries of Latin America and to embrace the culture and history of their original colonizer, Spain. In the process, Latin American countries have the opportunity to begin the birth of the Fifth Race, one that gather all the specific advantages of each race according to the writer. Additionally, since people choose their partner with an aesthetic reasoning, ugly/poor people will be bred out of society. Vasconcelos concludes by stating that, by counting the number of races and the number of evolutionary states by which one chooses a partner, he finds 8, which represents the equality of all men according to Pythagoras…

By the end of the extract, not much credibility is left.

 

“Rethinking Mestizaje” by Peter Wade was a more enriching reading: the writer actively uses his travels across the continent to try to define the phenomenon of mestizaje. He comes to the conclusion that two major definitions of it as an ideology can be found, and they are contradictory. The first one states the advent of a single culture/ethnicity in the country (instead of the three sides: White, Black and Indigenous) but it is actually a form of propaganda aiming at the extinction of cultural traits of Blacks and Indigenous and the survival of only White traditions. The second one puts the “mixing” more at the individual level: the mestizaje allows one to identify with traits from all three sides, without being restrained to one of them exclusively. Expanded at the level of a whole country in Latin America, this creates flexibility and a constant re-definition of the culture.

Reaction to Folktales

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I will explain in this blog post my reaction to several folk tales from Latin America: four legends from The Mirror of Lida Sal: Tales Based on Mayan Myths and Guatemalan Legends, by Miguel Angel Asturias; and the tale “The Pongo’s Dream” by José María Arguedas.

As we have seen in the previous readings, folk tales can be considered part of what we call popular culture, because of their traditional origins and of their broad audience still today. Those five tales also allow to have an idea of what a folk story can aim to do: criticizing the social order, among other things, or ensuring the survival of the knowledge of certain traditions or civilization.

As we are told by the text, “The Pongo’s Dream” is actually a tale that José María Arguedas adapted, introducing a twist at the end to reverse the initial message of rigidity of the social order. Arguedas seems to predict an eventual but inevitable change that will bring justice to the peasants and put an end to the unquestioned authority of the landowners. I believe this is an example of a politically engaged folk tale.

As for the tales written by Miguel Angel Asturias, we merely know from the title of the book that they are “Based on Mayan Myths and Guatemalan Legends” so we don’t know to what extent they were adapted. Given their content, we know they were necessarily written after the conquest of Latin America.

The aim of Legend of the Singing Tablets is very different from the one of The Pongo’s Dream, I believe. The plot is quite confusing, especially the ending, but I think the tale is supposed to transport the reader to a very ancient and mystical time, with unfamiliar Mayan myths like the tradition of the Moon-Chewers poets.

Legend of the Crystal Mask, surprisingly, doesn’t address that much the Spanish invasion (even if its story is situated after it), rather focusing on a Mayan religious stone-carver in exile, and his struggle to respect his vows despite his desire to use more precious material. The end is again unclear and I don’t know if the carver is murdered by his stone sculptures because he broke his religious vows by crafting the Crystal mask or because, like the “Priests of the Eclipse” seem to say, they would always have rebelled against him anyway (making the Crystal mask irrelevant to the plot).

I liked in the Legend of the Silent Bell, even if it is only my own interpretation, that one can find similarities between the Christian cult as it described in the tale and the Mayan sacrifices that preceded them in the country: the theme of sacrifice and execution as spectacle is present during all the text.

Finally, I suppose the Legend of the Dancing Butchers is one of the tales that the author modified most. It seems like a transposition of indigenous mystical elements (the witch that is said to grow back arms, the trickster entity, the metamorphosis) in a more contemporary setting (the cigarettes, the town).

Reaction to The Faces of Popular Culture

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I will develop in this blog post my reaction to the text The Faces of Popular Culture, by William Rowe and Vivian Schelling.

The text describes exhaustively a large number of elements that the writer attributes to the popular culture of countries such as Mexico, Brasil, Chile, Argentina and those of the Andean region. Oral traditions (like duels of poets), literature (like the Literature of cordel), religion, carnivals, dances (like samba), television (with telenovelas) and sport (with football) are studied.

Though the exhaustiveness of this text allows us to have an idea of concrete examples of popular culture in Latin America, I think The Faces of Popular Culture is also useful in determining the ability of these elements to evolve and the factors of such change. The writers explain that, in a first time, it was a combination of native culture / African slaves’ culture and of the colons’ culture in some sort of equilibrium, with various interpretations sometimes possible at the same time. But regularly, William Rowe and Vivian Schelling elaborate on how urbanization and the rise of capitalist society disturbed the popular culture, in its form and in its goal.

I can develop the example of the folhetos studied in the text. Folhetos are books containing a story written in verse which were created in rural communities, having evolved from a tradition of oral poetry. In the past, they had a cheap, wooden cover and they never aimed at challenging the social order. But within a “modern” capitalistic culture, they are massively printed, with covers reminiscing of comic books, and criticize much more vigorously the conditions of the poor. Therefore, the folhetos are now “popular” because they are the product of a rural tradition and because they address the issues of the living condition of the working class or of the rural populations.

Finally, another point I found interesting was the relation between popular culture and mass culture / the culture industry. At one point, the writers explain there is a disagreement between scholars as to what this link is: are they opposed, are they the same thing, is one of them included in the other? I think Rowe and Schelling believe that mass culture is actually part of popular culture, without being its only form. Even if we find its products have less value compared to more traditional ones, they are consumed by millions and they can evolve to reflect the minds and the demands of the people.

Reaction to My message

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I will explain here my reaction to the reading of My message by Eva Perón. She wrote this text shortly before her death by cancer and this was a way for her to address her final words to the Argentinian people, to justify her and her husband’s struggle, to identify the enemy and to express her dying wish.

Evita continuously explains she never forgot her poor background and has always remained loyal to the “people”, which she almost qualifies as a separate species: one that is cruder than that of the oligarchy, but also more loyal and humane. She regularly reaffirms that her husband has always fought for the betterment of their condition, instead of living a life of privilege. I think the way Evita calls to the needy and sympathizes with them aims at justifying the political movement and the leadership of her husband, but at the same time her work for them actually proves her honesty.

She warns the “people” of the main enemies they face in this battle: the military, the clergy, the oligarchs in general but also the indifferent, those who do not feel violently convinced by Peronism. She calls to the passion, to the fanaticism of the people to prevent political or military opponents from overthrowing Perón.

The tone of the text is overly optimistic and grandiloquent. Evita appears sure that the population can form a coherent force dedicated to the common good and that the demonstration for the liberation of Perón was an example of this. However, this same event is exactly the same as the previous reading of the week, A celebration of the monster by Jorge Luis Borges: Borges stated that such dedication and unity are not to be expected.

It can partially explain why Peronism is controversial. Theoretically, it has a benevolent goal of helping the poorest of the country but it mainly relies on demagogy and fanaticism.