Rosario Tijeras and the Colonial Inheritance

Perhaps in one of the few mistakes of his illustrious career, Gregory Rabassa, mistranslates a key passage in Jorge Franco’s Rosario Tijeras. What makes this passage this mistake significant—and the mistake even more regrettable—is that it is perhaps the only moment in the text that attempts to provide a historical explanation for the violence and anomie depicted in the novel’s pages. The original passage is as follows: La pelea de Rosario no es tan simple, tiene raíces muy profundas, de mucho tiempo atrás, de generaciones anteriores; a ella la vida le pesa lo que pesa este país, sus genes arrastran con una raza de hidalgos e hijueputas que a punta de machete le abrieron camino a la vida, todavía lo siguen haciendo; con el machete comieron, trabajaron, se afeitaron, mataron y arreglaron las diferencias con sus mujeres. Hoy el machete es un trabuco, una nueve milímetros, un changón. Rabassa’s translation is follows: Rosario’s fight isn’t so simple, it has very deep roots, from long ago, from earlier generations. Life weighs on her with the weight of this country, her genes drag along a race of sons of plenty and sons of bitches who with the blade of machete cleared the pathways of life. They’re still doing it. They ate with the machete, they worked, shaved, killed and settled differences with their wives with a machete. Today the machete is a shotgun, a nine-millimeter, a chopper.

While I have some other minor quibbles with the translation—for instance, I think that mujeres in the last line of the passage should have been simply translated as women—my main objection to Rabassa’s rendition is the substitution of “sons of plenty” for hidalgos. Rabassa’s choice is surprising since hidalgo is on occasion even included in English language dictionaries. For instance, m-w.com defines the word as “a member of the lower Spanish nobility.” The metaphoric “sons of plenty” in his version are, in the original, the poorest strata of the Spanish nobility who came to the Americas in order to find the riches that their self-esteem and their social ideology told them was their right. It is possible, therefore, to see in the original an attempt at tracing the violence of the Colombian 1990s, indeed the whole of the tragic history of violence in Colombia, to the Spanish conquest.

Gay Bandits

One of the major modifications Marcelo Piñeyro made to Ricardo Piglia’s novel Plata quemada is bringing the love story between Nene and Ángel to the forefront, which in the original is only a secondary detail in the plot of the heist. In some aspects, this emphasis on the “love story” over other aspects of the plot is not so unusual. After all, Lombardi did the same in his adaptation of Captain Pantoja. (The romance between Pantaleón and the Colombian—originally Brazilian—had only been a secondary aspect of the novel). But, of course, if the film’s emphasis on romance is not only conventional, but, perhaps, the core trait of a commercial movie, the fact that the love story in question is between two men could be seen as subverting Latin American (as well as U.S.) social norms.

Bingham, in a very perceptive comment, noted that he found the film of interest because it made overt the homosexual undercurrent present in action films. In fact, the film seems to point out this innovation in a sequence when, during the final shoot out, Cuervo declares the hoodlums to be just like “the last of the Mohicans, and he and Ángel start banging on the floor and making pseudo-Native American noises. The reference to Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans is particularly apt, since this and other of the author’s novels can be seen as the origin of the modern Western genre and, therefore, of all action narrative. It has been argued that the “detective” is nothing but the transposition of the Western hero to an urban setting; and Cooper would go on the write the first “spy” novel, appropriately titled The Spy.

Some decades ago, Leslie Fiedler described the friendship between Hawkeye and his Mohican mentor Chingachgook—two of the protagonists of Last of the Mohicans—as “innocent homosexuality,” thus pointing out the same-sex desire that runs through Cooper’s novels and the action genre which descends from them. Of course, in Piñeyro’s film, there is nothing innocent about the characters sexuality. Moreover, if Ángel and Nene are heroes, it is sort of by default. They are portrayed heroically—and who doesn’t love doomed lovers?—but objectively, given their disturbed behavior—Ángel is psychotic and obviously a psychopath—they can only be seen as villains.

Piñeyro is thus developing a by now common insight regarding action heroes. Moreover, there is a tradition in film of depicting anti-social characters as homosexual. While rare in American film—the only examples from a studio era Hollywood film I can think of are the gay killers in Joseph H. Lewis’s film noir The Big Combo—it is much more common in European art film. For instance, in Roberto Rosellini’s Rome, Open City one of the main Nazi characters is effeminate, while his companion is a sadistic lesbian. Luchino Visconti, openly gay himself, depicted Nazis as homosexuals in The Dammed. Bertolucci explained, or perhaps explained away, fascism by linking it with homosexuality in The Conformist. (The ultimate villain of the film, Lino, is shown to be a gay fascist).

National Allegory and Metaphoric Gesture in Money to Burn

At the end of Money to Burn, Piglia quotes Berthold Brecht: “throughout the book I have attempted to maintain the stylistic register and ‘metaphoric gesture’ (as Brecht called it) of the social reports whose theme remains illegal violence.” Although Piglia’s quotation seems to indicate that the “metaphoric gesture” is already present in the “social reports”—“relatos sociales”—which, it appears, underlie the actual narrative of Money to Burn, the fact is that he admits that the novel attempts to be more than a straightforward narrative of events. (The “social reports” in question are, I believe, not only the narratives generated by the different media, but also by the population as a whole). If one remembers the epigraph which opens the book—“After all, what is robbing a bank compared to founding one?”—the “metaphoric gesture” seems to be an attempt at presenting the story as an illustration of the principle implicit in the epigraph, in addition to a fictionalizing a real event. In other words, if Brecht’s epigraph presents capitalism itself as theft in the grandest scale—represented by the founding of the bank—the narrative of the robbery and the brutal extermination of the criminals would be indicative of the ultimate criminality of the system under which, obviously, we live.

I cannot avoid associating ’s “metaphoric gesture” with Fredric Jameson’s notorious statement that “All third-world texts are necessarily . . . allegorical, and in a very specific way: they are to be read as what I will call national allegories.” However, while both Jameson’s national allegory and Brecht’s and Piglia’s “metaphoric gesture” imply the existence of a second meaning underlying the surface one, the fact is that Money to Burn takes great pains to break free from the ideological boundaries of the nation. In other words, Money to Burn is not a criticism of Argentine society or even primarily of capitalism in Argentina. Money to Burn is a criticism of capitalism per se.

The space depicted in the novel is, obviously, transnational: the robbery takes place in Buenos Aires (Argentina), but the shoot out is in Montevideo (Uruguay); the robbers aim to drive up the Pan American Highway all the way to Miami or New York, where some plan to invest their money in Tango joints; Giselle is an Uruguayan hippie, that is a local exemplar of an international type, and the music they listen to is rock; etc.

Perhaps the key moment that marks the “metaphoric gesture” as exceeding national boundaries, is the reaction to the burning of the money: “Burning money is ugly, it’s a sin.” As we know bills are not tied to any material object. They are signifiers without, in appearance, any signifieds. In fact, in appearance a rational response to the burning of the money would have been indifference. After all, one could assume, though it’s not mentioned in the novel, that the money could be insured and, therefore, its burning would have not affected anyone.

However, the response of the population to the burning of the money is one of extreme indignation, much greater than the reaction to the death of police, innocent bystanders, or criminals. It is seen as “an act of nihilism and an example of pure terrorism.” The reason underlying this moral indignation is precisely the emptiness of money as a signifier, which has permitted it to become the signifier of capitalism itself, of the possibility of acquisition of goods, services, and even more money. This moral indignation is, therefore, not culturally specific. It could just as well take place in Brooklyn as in Montevideo.

Not One but Many "Pantis"

As Bingham noted in class, the version we saw of Captain Pantoja is shorter than the one originally screened in Latin America. This led me to search for alternative versions of the film. Despite claims in imdb.com for the existence of a 2hr 55 minute print, the one that is generally mentioned in the web is 144 minutes (2hr 24 minutes). There is a 137 minutes version available in you tube. http://www.youtube.com/user/pestegoriko#p/u/15/s9kwe3coFlc However, the only other version I have been able to watch is a 131 minute one.

At least in the 131 minute version I saw, the additional minutes (or better said the minutes that had been cut) served to flesh out scenes that were abridged or, sometimes, completely eliminated from the subtitled version we saw. For instance, while there is no moment in which rape is depicted, as was suggested in class, there is, however, a scene in which pregnant local women are brought face to face with the soldiers who had raped them and asked to choose one for marriage (starting 7:00-7:50 in the youtube version). Thus the need for the service is brought in a somewhat humorous but still more pointed manner. Secondary characters are introduced in a clearer manner. Alicia, for instance, is introduced as a neighbor rather than simply popping up in the plot without any explanation. The relationship between Pantoja and Bacacorzo is developed, as is the one between Pantoja, Chuchupe and Chupito.

Personally I found the longer version more efficient than the shorter one in that the relationship between Pantoja and “la Colombiana” does not overshadow the other aspects of the movie. While one can understand some of the cuts for the US market—there are a couple of scenes where gay stereotypes are mildly mocked –most of them privilege the romance or soap opera aspects of the movie over those that actually make the characters more believable or htat explain the “service’s” creation and ultimate closing.

Vargas Llosa: Humor and Politics

The first novel written after Mario Vargas Llosa’s public break with the Cuban Revolution in 1971, Captain Pantoja and the Special Service has been described as marking his “discovery of humor.” Vargas Llosa’s earlier novels were characterized by their searing seriousness, by their ruthless, perhaps even exaggerated, foregrounding of the corruption of Peruvian and, implicitly, Latin American societies. However, Captain Pantoja and the later Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter are two novels in which humor predominates. What makes this discovery of humor of interest is that the topic of Captain Pantoja is, in some ways, as revealing , if not more so, of the country’s profound corruption and immorality than those of his earlier novels.

Prostitution is, after all, a “serious” social problem. It frequently originates in the conjunction of social inequality and patriarchal structures. It is a specifically patriarchal form of exploitation. Moreover, by having the army become involved in the business of prostitution, he brings together the institution that, at least in The Time of the Hero, represented patriarchy at its most naked and brutal. Thus Captain Pantoja had the potential to become an expose of patriarchy, the exploitation of women, and, of course, of corruption in the army.

Moreover an important subplot in the novel is that of the cult of Brother Francisco, As we know, this is a religious cult that practices ritual crucifixions, not only of animals, a gory enough activity for my taste, but, on occasion, even of humans. Their rituals, which include the drinking of the blood of the beings crucified, could easily have been part of one of his earlier novels. One can easily imagine one of his “telescopic dialogues” in which prostitution and crucifixion would be juxtaposed presenting women as Christ-like victims and men/the army as crucifiers.

Vargas Llosa with great mastery manages to turn all of these potentially dramatic, even tragic, elements into an outright comedy rather than another direct denunciation of Peruvian society.

It has been argued that this “discovery of humor” is linked to a loss of faith in socialism. Caught between the earnest belief in the possibility of revolution, which had characterized his earlier novels, and his later belief in the need for neoliberal reforms, the Vargas Llosa of Captain Pantoja had necessarily to turn to humor in order to face, and enable the reader to face, the brutality depicted. That said, the problem with this view is that his earlier novels, while brutally honest in showing the failings of Peru, do not show any alternatives to the corrupt society depicted. Socialism or, better said, the possibility of socialism is kept outside the narrative. Vargas Llosa only shows the problem and scrupulously avoids showing any possible solution in his novels of the 1960s.

The same case can be made about Captain Pantoja. Again Vargas Llosa brilliantly depicts Peruvian patriarchy, fanaticism, and the irrationality into which military rationality can easily transform. However, as in his earlier novels, the actual solutions to these problems are never intimated. But by transforming his earlier anger into humor, the narrative no longer arouses in the reader the need to find a solution to these social problems. Subcomandante Marcos, in an interview with Gabriel García Márquez, pointed out the role of literature and, specifically, that of The Time of the Hero, in his personal political development. It is doubtful that he would also single out Captain Pantoja.


*In the photo, Vargas Llosa directing his film adaptation of Captain Pantoja

The Kiss of the Spider Woman: A Hybrid Film?

It is tempting to see in Hector Babenco’s The Kiss of the Spider Woman an example of a hybrid film that brings together North and Latin American cultural and filmic traditions. After all, if the film is produced by Hollywood and the screenplay written by a US screenwriter, the director and most of the crew are Brazilian. (Babenco, although an Argentine by birth, has long been ensconced in the Brazilian film industry). Likewise, if the two main actors are from the US—even if Raúl Julia is Puerto Rican, he is based in Hollywood—the rest, including Sonia Braga, who performs all the main female roles, are Brazilian. And, while the film is in English, the source novel is by an Argentine writer, Manuel Puig.

If one looks superficially at the film, one could easily come to the conclusion that the film actually fulfills this promise. The grittiness of the world depicted—the prison, the city (Sao Paulo)—are obviously linked to the neo-neorealist aesthetic of Babenco , as exemplified by his earlier Pixote. The ending, in which Molina’s body is thrown into a garbage heap, reminds one of that of Buñuel’s Los Olvidados. Even the somewhat over the top acting can be seen as linked to Brazilian soap operas—a genre in which all the local actors have worked. (Sonia Braga had first become famous as the queen of soap operas).

Moreover, can one imagine a Hollywood film with a leftist and a drag queen as protagonists? But Puig had already scripted a 1978 Mexican film that had a drag queen as its main character: Arturo Ripstein’s El lugar sin limites (Hell Without Limits). (The protagonist is portrayed memorably by Roberto Cobo, best-known as Los Olvidados’ Jaibo). Moreover, Mexican Jaime Humberto Hermosillo’s had begun in the early 1970s a directing career centered on the exploration of sexuality, including homosexuality, in all of its manifestations. And movies about revolutionaries had already been made in Latin America, not only in Cuba—for instance, El joven rebelde (1961, directed by Julio García Espinoza) but in other countries in the region. For instance, the 1978 Mexican film El apando, directed by one of the best-known directors of the period Felipe Cazals, not to mention agitprop masterpieces, such as The Hour of the Furnaces (1965-68), directed by the Argentine filmmakers Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas. Revolutionary politics and homosexuality were, therefore, topics that had been dealt with seriously in Latin American film before The Kiss of the Spider Woman.

Nevertheless, there are aspects of this film that seem to undermine the core of Puig’s novel. For instance, already in the novel, Valentín’s political activities are presented as an amorphous union activism, rather than the obvious radical and violent Marxist/Peronist guerrilla and terrorist activities that actually took place in Argentina in the 1970s. (It seems that Puig is already concerned about the possibility that a reader would not sympathize with a character who actually ascribed to the revolutionary politics of the time). However, Valentín is presented as a student of Marxism and, in a very Argentine twist, as a firm believer in the validity of psychoanalysis. The film waters down his politics even further. Now he is presented as having only lent his passport to a radical political leader despite his stated loss of faith in violent political action (that is, revolution). Moreover, Valentín is transformed from the student revolutionary—or, at least, activist—to a journalist. In the movie, the (implicitly) Brazilian government is guilty of the greatest political sin conceivable in (US) American society: curtailment of the freedom of the press.

The dynamic implicit in the novel, in which a Marxist and a drag queen—two individuals belonging to groups rejected by the patriarchal and reactionary society depicted in the novel—come to understand, respect, and, why not?, love each other, is diluted in the film. If Molina is more or less accurately represented in the film—despite the weirdness of the casting—Valentín’s only truly radical trait is his fidelista beard. After all, for good or evil, the 1960s and early 1970s were a period in which “change we can believe in” was seen as only achievable through violent revolution. One wonders whether the film does not imply that the torture Valentín is subjected to would have been acceptable had he been a true Marxist revolutionary. By erasing Valentín’s Marxist beliefs, by transforming a guerrillero into a liberal journalist, the movie is erasing one of the central Latin American cultural traits present in the novel. It also responds directly to US cultural and political concerns, even at the expense of the novel’s plot and Latin American history.

Not One but Many "Hypos"

In his essay “The Dialogics of Adaptation,” Robert Stam applies to film studies Gerard Genette’s relational concepts hypo- and hypertext, to indicate an intertextual an relationship between an anterior (hypo)text and posterior (hyper) text which “transforms, modifies, elaborates, or extends” the former (66). The usefulness of Genette’s and Stam’s reflections for the course is obvious. Film adaptations are by definition hypertexts of the literary hypotexts they adapt.
However, Kiss of the Spider Woman can be seen, at least in part, as a case in which film or, better said, films, become the hypotext(s) for a literary hypertext. After all, Molina’s telling of film stories are themselves adaptations of film into literary terms. (In class, Peter noted that the narrative situation is particularly complex in that the novel, a written text, reproduces what are meant to be “oral” adaptations of the films The structure of the narrative is, therefore: film Molina’s narration novel’s representation of Molina’s narration and its contexts). Moreover, the novel does not imply one hypotext, but many. Cat People, The Enchanted Cottage, and I Walked with a Zombie are minor Hollywood classics which are incorporated or cannibalized, to use a word and concept dear to Stam. Kiss of the Spider Woman is comprised, therefore, of adaptations of film into literature.
But even the made-up movies are not without film precedents which Kiss of the Spider Woman interprets and modifies. Not only because as Puig has pointed out, his Nazi “film” was inspired by Die grosse Liebe (The Great Love), directed by Rolf Hansen in 1942 and one of the greatest hits in wartime Germany, or because the Mexican Cabaret “film” was, in turn, modeled on Aventurera (Adventuress), directed by Alberto Gout in 1950, but because regardless of these influences , the made-up “movies” are responding to the general traits of the film genres which they are then reproducing and modifying as they do so. In fact, one could argue that the film genres are here a kind of critical hypertext constituted out of numerous specific filmic hypotexts, which would, in turn, both the actual films and the generic abstractions, become hypotexts referred to in the novel.

Sergio's Guilt

Perhaps the one moment in which Sergio, the protagonist of Memories of Underdevelopment, breaks from his “objective” stance towards Cuban society and even the revolution, comes after he is declared innocent by the revolutionary court. Sergio, in his voice-over narration, notes: “There is something that leaves me in a bad position. I’ve seen too much to be innocent. They have too much darkness inside their heads to be guilty.”
What makes this comment particularly relevant to an understanding of the movie is that it seems to link culpability and class. Sergio has “seen too much,” both metaphorically and literally, precisely because he is a member of the bourgeoisie. The elite education, which has permitted him to develop his intelligence, is based on his economic position within Cuban society. His wealth has also permitted him to travel abroad and “see” the US. (He’s clearly been to New York). His guilt would then ultimately reside on his social privilege.
Moreover, Sergio’s relationship with Elena is predicated on social inequality. Sergio’s connections with the film industry; the fact that he was able to buy his wife luxury clothes, which, in turn, she had been unable to take to Miami; the fact that he owns a luxury apartment, etc; make it possible for him to seduce Elena. One can add to these economic factors, their age difference. One of the reasons, “he has seen too much” is because he is twenty years older than Elena. While Elena is seventeen years old, not sixteen as she claims during the trial, there is little doubt that he has been able to use his greater experience to seduce her.
To its credit, Memories of Underdevelopment avoids populist sentimentality which identifies goodness with poverty, the working class with progressive values, etc. The family’s obsession with obsolete moral values, Elena’s and the family’s lies, undermine any Manichean vision of class relations.
However, the fact is that the court is able to evaluate the case brought against Sergio by Elena’s family based exclusively on legal considerations. The trial can thus be seen as implying a positive view on the Cuban revolution. If the movie presents a lucid and, perhaps, pessimistic view of the Cuban people as divided between a “guilty” bourgeoisie and confused working class, it also presents revolutionary institutions, such as the court, as overcoming this negative dichotomy. One can, perhaps, make the case that the film ultimately justifies the Cuban revolution on the grounds not only that it is justified historically, a point made in the documentary sections of the film, but also in that it manages to overcome the social flaws of Cuban society. In Memories of Underdevelopment the only instance of Cuban society which has overcome “underdevelopment” is the revolution.

Cine cubano

If the Mexican and Argentine film industries, the two largest in Latin America, experienced significant contraction during the 1960s, that of Cuba began its golden age. In fact, while there had been isolated Cuban movies made in the Island, as well as some Mexican and US productions, the fact is that a film industry only began with the Revolution. ICAIC (Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográficos) [Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry] was founded in 1959. For the Cuban revolution, especially during the 1960s, as was the case with Lenin’s Soviet Union, film was the most important of the arts. In part, this was due to the emphasis placed by the Cuban Revolution on film as a central means of communication of social and political values and values. Moreover, if the goal of the revolution was the creation of a “new man” (and, obviously, also woman), a new visual culture was also required.
But in addition to state support, the birth of the Cuban film industry benefitted from the explosion in creativity that surged throughout the Cuban artistic community and, more generally, population immediately after the triumph of the Revolution. As Michael Chanan notes: “ The Revolution . . . unleashed among a new generation of filmmakers a furious creative energy as they turned the cameras on the process they were living, and told the Cuban people—and anyone else who was interested—who they were and what they were doing.” Revolutions are wont to create upsurges in enthusiasm and creativity, at least until the optimism begins to cool and censorship starts tightening.

To its credit, ICAIC has managed to maintain a surprising degree of independence from direct government interference. This was particularly the case during the late 1960s. In 1969, when rock and other US musical styles were discouraged by the government and banned from television, the ICAIC created the Grupo de Experimentación Sonora (Sound Experiment Group) which brought together, under the direction of the classical composer Leo Brouwer, folk/rock singer-songwriters Pablo Milanés, Silvio Rodríguez, and Noel Nicola, jazz musician Emiliano Salvador, etc, who would later become central figures in the Cuban music scene. ICAIC not only gave them a space in which to develop musically during a time when they were marginalized from Cuban media, but even provided formal musical and film musical training. As Leonardo Acosta, a writer and musician who participated in GES notes: “A revolutionary system of theoretical and practical studies was elaborated, which were combined with practice and the listening of almost all possible music: from Beethoven to John Coltrane, from Gilberto Gil to Ravi Shankar, from Anton von Webern to Xenakis, from Frank Zappa to Blood, Sweat and Tears, from Sindo Garay to Juan Blanco and, of course from Bach to the Beatles.”

As we are discovering in our readings on Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Memories of Underdevelopment, many saw in this film a dissident, even anti-revolutionary statement. While Gutiérrez Alea consistently dismissed this interpretation of his film, as we have seen, the ICAIC cannot be seen as unequivocally representing the Revolutionary government’s positions. In fact, I think there can be found a “dissident” ethos in many Cuban cultural products, even if this “dissidence” can, at least during the 1960s and 1970s, be interpreted as coming from the left. The flaws denounced are not presented as the product of the attempt at implementing socialism, but as flaws in the manner in which socialism is being implemented. The solution is more socialism, not a turn (or return) to capitalism.

Borges and Bertolucci

While Bertolucci is probably correct in noting that The Spider’s Stratagem is an exact adaptation of what he calls the “mechanism,” that is, the basic plot structure, of “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero,” the film obviously exhibits significant differences when compared with the source story. As Robert Stam notes in “Beyond Fidelity,” all adaptations, even those attempting absolute faithfulness to their literary source, must necessarily make innumerable modifications on the original given the different requirements and characteristics of the different media. While Borges at the start of “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” imagines alternative versions of his story, Bertolucci’s changes go beyond those envisioned by the Argentine author, those necessary to flesh out such a concentrated text, and those required by medial difference.
The first significant modification made by Bertolucci is the setting of the story. Borges, in his story, argues that “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero,” which in his telling takes place in Ireland in the 1820s, could just as well have been set in “Poland, Ireland, the Venetian Republic, some South American or Balkan state.” According to its author, the key to the story is that it is set “in an oppressed and tenacious country.” For Borges, therefore, the story implies a colonial or neocolonial situation, in which a national majority is oppressed by a minority whether foreign or domestic. Obviously, the Ireland of the story, oppressed by the English but actively resistant to foreign domination, fits Borges’s description perfectly.
Borges could have easily included 19th century Italy which, as we all know, fought against Austria in order to achieve it its unity. It is much more difficult to insert fascist Italy, the setting of Bertolucci’s film, in the series proposed by Borges. While an understandable choice given Bertolucci’s then radical politics, the fact is that, as he shows in the movie, fascist Italy of the 1930s was not a period when an a national majority resisted an oppressive minority. The anti-Fascists in the movie are a handful of people. Even if it is not clear that most of the population of Tara, the fictional town of the movie, support the fascists, the latter are obviously more than the resistance. If in Borges’s story, “Ireland idolized Kirkpatrick” and “hundred of actors collaborated with the protagonist,” in Bertolucci’s film, Athos will become a local hero only after the defeat of fascism.
But perhaps the major difference between “Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” and The Spider’s Stratagem resides in the fact that the film is focalized through Athos fils. This helps explain why in the historical flashbacks the anti-fascist clique are portrayed by the same actors who play them in the “present” scenes. This makes the flashback less like historical representations than dreamlike versions of the events uncovered by Athos.
The anti-realistic, even oneiric, staging of the flashback is, in my opinion, directly linked to the psychoanalytic undercurrents that run throughout the film. In fact, the film can be seen as a modified oedipal narrative. Athos fils embarks on a “search for the father,” but upon learning the truth that he was a traitor, is unable to take the next step and kill Athos père’s reputation, etc. There is even the possibility that he could end up living an alternative version of his father’s life—Draifa wants him to stay with her niece and supervise the lands.
Again the contrast with “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” is noticeable. While Ryan, who discovers the truth about Kilpatrick, the “hero and traitor,” is his great-grandson, it is not clear whether filial loyalty or, more probably, a refusal to destroy the reputation of a national hero is what leads him to repeat the myth. (Is this is why the story claims that this “perhaps, was foreseen”?) Granted that Athos, also does not tell the truth about his father, but here Bertolucci’s psychoanalytic spin on Borges’s “mechanism” transforms what is a comment about the social need for myths into an exploration of psychological mechanisms.
Curiously, this aspect of “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” has been present in a few major movies. The first filmic exploration of this “theme of the traitor and the hero” I am aware of is John Ford’s Fort Apache (1948), where Captain York (John Wayne) validates the whitewashed myths created around Colonel Thursday (Henry Fonda), a version of Custer. Ford would return to the topic in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). In this film, Ranse Stoddard (James Stewart) makes a political career out of having shot the Liberty Valance, even though , in reality, it was Tom Doniphon (John Wayne) who had killed the ruffian. A more recent, though less systematic, exploration of this topic is found in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008), when Harvey Dent’s criminal actions are blamed on the Batman so as not to damage the former’s reputation as a hero.

Borges and Yeats

Somewhat hastily in class I mentioned that I wasn’t sure about what Borges thought of Yeats or, for that matter, whether “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” was influenced by the Irish poet. Of course, I had forgotten that a quote from Yeats, precisely on the “eternal return,” opens the story. However, I would still prefer not only to see the story as dealing principally with the tenuous difference between hero and traitor, but also as presenting a kind of social and structural view of the event narrated: given colonial oppression and concomitant anti-colonial resistance, events such as the ones narrated are bound to happen. The idea that history repeats itself does not strike me as necessary to an understanding of “Theme of the Traitor and the Hero.” (Obviously, Bertolucci and Enrique disagree with me).

According to A Dictionary of Borges (Evelyn Fishburn and Psyche Hughes), in the story: “Yeats is presented as the prototype of the Irish poet, in opposition to the English Shakespeare, mentioned in the same context. The theme of betrayal and the ensuing desire to confess and make amends are well within the spirit of the lines spoken by Yeats on behalf of the Irish who repudiated Parnell.” While I do not agree that Yeats represents the Irish writer in “Theme of the Traitor and the Hero,” given that he is only explicitly present in the epigraph, Fishburn and Hughes point out intriguing possible links between the plot of Borges’s story and Yeats’ “Parnell’s Funeral.”

Yeats is a sporadic presence in Borges's writings. “The Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz” begins with an epigraph taken from the Irish poet. Some of his essays mention him, though mostly in passing. When writing about Walt Whitman, in an essay included in the translated Other Inquisitions, Borges presents Yeats as a precursor of Jung, who looked for “symbols that would awaken the generic memory”. Yeats is referred to in a footnote in his essay about the “Nightingale of Keats.” For Borges, the nightingale in question is the idea of the bird, not a specific bird. Yeats is presented as one of the many who misread the poem. Borges, in his anthology of fantastic stories, co-edited with Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo, included a story by Yeats titled “The Sorcerers.” He refers to Yeats in his Book of Imaginary Beings when writing about “fairies” and “the double.”
Borges’s had a problematic relationship with Yeats’ writings. In his Introduction to English Literature (1965), co-written with María Esther Vásquez, he mentions Eliot’s statement that Yeats was the greatest poet of “our time,” but gives no personal opinion. In interviews, he frequently concurred with Eliot, only to point out that he enjoyed other poets more. He described his take on Yeats’ poetry to the Argentine writer Osvaldo Ferrari: “the fact is that his verses impress us, let’s say, as verbal artifacts; beyond what they attempt to mean.” The fact that he uses some of Yeats’s verses as epigraphs to two of his stories may be evidence of Borges’s admiration for these “verbal artifacts.”

Should one interpret Borges’s ambiguity towards Yeats as representing a kind of anxiety of influence? Although Borges tended to embrace his predecessors—a gesture represented in “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” by his mention of Chesterton—it may very well be that he felt threatened by Yeats’ achievement as a poet. After all, Borges, despite the brilliance of his prose, tended to identify more as poet than as a short story writer. But investigating the psychological aspects of this literary relationship is clearly beyond the topics we are examining in our course.

Bertolucci on Borges

According to Bertolucci, he took from Borges “the mechanism” of the story, that is, the very basic plot, which he then translated to the Italian context in which he is interested. There is something very appropriate in this change of setting. After all, as Borges notes, before deciding to actually narrate “Theme of the Traitor and the Her o” in Ireland: “the action takes place in an oppressed and resistant country: Poland, Ireland, the Republic of Venice. . .”. Moreover, the abstractness of Borges's presentation also permits it to be adapted to less clearly colonial, but still repressive, situations, such as the divided Italy of the fascist period.

Moreover, the text as written resembles a treatment for a film script. The story is summarized so that only the basic twists and turns of the plot are retained. In my opinion, it is not too far fetched to even imagine it as a kind of pitch for a movie idea. Borges, the would be filmmaker, telling a skeptical producer: “we can film this movie in the cheapest or more convenient of these locations.”

However, I can’t help feeling that Bertolucci misunderstands Borges’s short story. While Borges was interested “in the cyclical nature of things,” as the Italian filmmaker notes, and the topic is present in other stories, such as “The Library of Babel,” and was the subject of one of his essays, “Cyclical Time,”I think this is not the core idea explored in “The Theme of the Traitor and Hero.” Instead, I believe that the story is more concerned with the tenuous separation between hero and traitor, a topic in which the Argentine writer was also interested. (This blurring of the antinomy hero/traitor is part of Borges’s consistent undermining of binary oppositions in his stories). For instance, in “The Shape of the Sword,” another story (partly) set in Ireland, Borges narrates the story of an apparently Irish patriot, ironically known as the “Englishman” in the Uruguay where he now lives. However, at the end it is revealed that he is actually John Vincent Moon, traitor to the independence movement. In “Three Versions of Judas,” the archetypal traitor is presented as the true martyr and savior. In “The Theologians,” the deadly struggle between two fathers of the early Christian church—Aureliano and Juan de Panonia—culminates in their discovery that: “for the incomprehensible divinity he [Aureliano] and Juan de Panonia (the orthodox believer and the heretic, the hater and the hated, the accuser and the victim) constituted one person.”

I am not arguing that the Nietzschean “eternal return” is not present in the story, just that it’s not the main topic of the story. However, Bertolucci, who claims to have been particularly impacted by psychoanalysis when making The Spider’s Stratagem, may have been influenced by Freud when interpreting the story. For repetition compulsion is one of the core traits of the unconscious and, in particular, of psychological trauma. Breaking free from its “cyclical nature” is one of the goals of all psychoanalytic treatment.

From Blowup to “Blow-up.”

If one understands the relation of a film adaptation to its literary source as being analogous to that between signifier and signified, then, it is difficult to make much of a case for Blowup as being a version of “Las babas del diablo.” The many modifications made to the story’s plot in the film—Paris is changed to London, an amateur into a professional photographer, an inter-age homosexual encounter into a murder, the self-shattering despair of the narrator into the more enigmatic reaction of the film’s protagonist—make it impossible to see Antonioni’s film as attempting to be a “faithful” adaptation of Cortázar’s story. The freedom with which Antonioni handled “Las babas del diablo” is obviously implied in the credits. There, it is claimed that the movie is “based on a short story by Julio Cortázar.”

However, Dudley Andrew argues for a second mode of adaptation in which filmmakers use the source as a springboard for the development of a new text which, while derived from its predecessor, makes no claim to being its intermedial translation. As Andrew puts it: “Adaptations claiming fidelity bear the original as a signified, whereas those inspired by or derived from an earlier text stand in a relation of referring to the original” (28). “Las babas del diablo,” therefore, is the referent, not the signified, of Antonioni’s Blowup. Given the critical and popular success of Blowup, it may very well be that Antonioni’s decision to take Cortázar’s story as only the starting point for a freely conceived autonomous movie was the correct choice. In fact, the elision of the short story’s title is a sign of the freedom to refer which makes Blowup a major movie.

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, short stories are generally less revered than novels. Can one imagine a movie claiming to be “based on a novel by Gabriel García Márquez” without mentioning which one? However, I cannot help believing that the comparative cultural capital of Cortázar and Antonioni also played a role in the lack of a direct mention of the film’s source. After all, Antonioni was widely hailed as a world film master, while Cortázar was far less known, particularly, in English language circles.

I want to conclude this superficial look at the relationship between “Las babas del diablo” and Blowup by noting its most peculiar aspect: this is one of the few cases where the film actually modified its source. “Las babas del diablo” is known in French as “Les fils de la Vierge” (“the threads of the Virgin”), taking up an equivalence proposed in Cortázar’s text, and in Italian as “La bava del diabolo,” to mention languages in which, one imagines, Antonioni could have read the story. However, the English translation, which came out in 1967, soon after the film, is known as “Blow-up.” If the film does not mention the story, the story has incorporated the film’s title as its own, thus highlighting its relationship with a celebrated cultural product. (In fact, the second edition of the collection of Cortázar’s stories, originally titled End of the Game and Other Stories, was re-titled Blow-up and Other Stories). Undeniably, there is a certain commercial opportunism in the renaming of the story. Blowup was a widely seen, widely honored, movie. By linking the story to its “film adaptation,” the editors wanted to borrow some of its audience. But there is also an attempt at acquiring some of the aura of the film masterpiece for a less known story, book, and writer. Granted it is the paratext—in this case the title of the story and, later, of the anthology in which it was included—that was changed, not the actual text. Nevertheless, by being identified as the source of Antonioni’s movie, the manner in which readers approach the story has been changed.

"The Devil's Drool" and Blowup as Hypotexts

As we saw in class, Robert Stam, basing himself on Gerard Genette, notes: “Hypertextuality . . . refers to the relation between one text, which Genette calls ‘hypertext,’ to an anterior text, or ‘hypotext,’ which the former transforms, modifies, elaborates, or extends.” From Stam’s and Genette’s analysiss one can argue that Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup is a hypertext to Julio Cortázar “The Devil’s Drool,” to use the original title of the Argentine writer’s short story.

However, Blowup has itself become a hypotext which has been re-elaborated in two major Hollywood films: Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) and Brian de Palma’s Blow Out (1981). (Both Coppola and de Palma have made public their debt to Antonioni’s film, though, Blow Out is also influenced by The Conversation). In both cases, Cortázar’s and Antonioni’s photographer has become a sound technician. Perhaps a more important modification is that Coppola and de Palma explicitly present the mysteries found and explored by the sound technicians—Gene Hackman in The Conversation, John Travolta in Blow Out—as illegal government activities. (But, as we will see in class, there may be political connotations already present in Blowup). Thomas Beltzer, despite, in my opinion, misreading Cortázar’s short story, notes correctly that: “The two American versions of the story are a copy of a copy which, of course, all but obliterates the original Cortázar story” (http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/05/35/cortazar.html).

Trailer for The Conversation



Trailer for Blow Out


Another hypertext of Blowup, according to Wikipedia, is the Bollywood comedy Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro. In this film, a couple of photographers accidentally capture in film a crime in, appropriately, Antonioni Park. This comedy is itself the hypotext to, of all things, Weekend at Bernie’s! (However, it is one of the highest rated movies in the imdb.com database).

*Above is the poster of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro

Eisenstein

Sergei Eisenstein’s “Dickens, Griffith and the Film Today” raises, in my opinion, some central questions in our understanding of the relation of film and literature. First it stresses the fact that film did not spring out of a cultural void, untouched by previous narrative genres. In addition to Dickens’s influence on D. W. Griffith, the main topic of the essay, Eisenstein notes the manner in which late nineteenth and early twentieth century melodrama played a role in the development of film. (In fact, the importance of “special effects” in the success of the theatre version of Way Down East noted by the Russian filmmaker can be seen as predicting the growing dependence of film on these, not only in its early stages, but also today). His reference to “montage,” for him the central and defining element of filmmaking, as being present in 19th century humor writing and even caricatures serves to stress the manner in which film is a product of a specific cultural moment in US and Western culture.

If film has not only a genetic but a structural relation with Dickens and, one can add, the realist novel as a genre, is that a reason why the most successful and popular adaptations are precisely of those type of novels? Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice has, according to imdb.com, been adapted 9 times, even if a couple of these film versions seem unusually free. (I am counting TV adaptations). Dickens’s David Copperfield has been adapted 17 times. James Joyce’s Ulysses, the best-known of the modernist master’s novels, and one of Eisenstein’s favorites, has been adapted 3 times, with two additional films made out of specific sections of the novel. (In reality, 5 adaptations for such a difficult work is a surprisingly high number).

However, without having seen the Ulysses adaptations, one can safely assume that these films are significantly different from the more mainstream films made from novels by Dickens or Austen. They are almost by necessity art films. (And one can also safely bet that any of the Austen adaptations has had more viewers than all the versions of Ulysses put together). Does the adaptation of modernist narrative lead to modernist art film? Can one trace a similar line of descent from modernist novel (in addition to Joyce, Proust, Kafka, etc.) to art film? This is a difficult question which I am not prepared to answer. However, it is probable that the formal narrative innovations of Cortázar’s modernist story was one of the factors that led Antonioni, another modernist master, to become interested in adapting it into film.

Image is of Eisenstein with a Mexican candy skull

Trailer for Tune in Tomorrow

In the trailer, Keanu Reeves proves it is sometimes easier to rescue reality than to marry your aunt.

Trailer for Love in the Time of Cholera

Adaptations and Translations

One of the defining characteristic of several of the films studied in this course is that they are translations. Of course, all films we are watching are translations in the sense that they are adaptations of novels and short stories. One of the meanings of the word translation is, after all, “the expression or rendering of something in another medium or form.” However, according to the OED, the main meaning of the word is, somewhat surprisingly, “transference; removal or conveyance from one person, place, or condition to another.” Therefore, Blowup, The Spider’s Stratagem, and The Kiss of the Spider Woman are also translations in that they transfer a “story” from a Latin American “location” and its readers— and, obviously, their culture and language—to a US or European “location” and corresponding audience.
The example of Tune in Tomorrow, mentioned in an earlier post, serves to illustrate the liberties which a filmmaker may take in adapting a novel. (This film is based on Mario Vargas Llosa’s Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter). The story is literally translated from Lima to New Orleans. The novel is comprised of two parallel and interrelated story lines—the young Marito’s courtship and marriage with the older Julia, his aunt by marriage, and the former’s apprenticeship as a writer with the radio soap opera scriptwriter Pedro Camacho—that one imagines were felt by the producer to be more believable in a setting which, for many, is exotic, despite being still in the US. Can one imagine a nephew and an aunt marrying in NY? (In the case of Marito and Julia, however, it would have been perfectly legal). Moreover, by the 1950s, soap operas had been superseded in the US by their TV counterparts, when the novel and the film are set. (For instance, Guiding Light, which had been on the radio since 1937, transferred to television in 1952). I guess the filmmakers assumed that this anachronism would not be noticed in a story set New Orleans.
One can contrast the freedom with which Tune in Tomorrow was made with the attempt at fidelity with which Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera has been adapted. The locations used in filming, the names given to the characters, even the “Hispanicity” of the actors—Bardem, Leguizamo, Bratt—all seem to indicate an attempt to exhibit, if not necessarily achieve, fidelity to the novel. (One assumes in the mind of the producers this Hispanicity or, better said, Latinism, also includes Italian actress Mezzogiorno). Moreover, this impression of fidelity is even present in the language used, despite the unavoidable fact—for a US produced movie—that the actors speak English. They speak with slight “Spanish” (or Italian) accents. Even the advertisements emphasize its links with the novel, claiming to be “from Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel García Márquez.”
On the other hand, Tune in Tomorrow attempts to fully translate Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. In the film Spanish is translated into English, Peru into the United States. Even the characters’ names are “Americanized”: Marito becomes Martin, Pedro Camacho, Pedro Carmichael. These changes evidence the manner in which the links of the film with the novel—its origin as an adaptation or translation—and its author are forgotten. This erasure of the author is already present in the change of names and locale given that the novel is autobiographical: the Marito in question is Mario Vargas Llosa and the aunt Julia is Julia Urquidi, the novelist’s first wife. (The great commercial success of the novel in the Spanish speaking world owed much to it being read as a narration of the author’s forbidden romance with his aunt).
Is this difference in treatment of the novels in their US adaptations a reflection of the difference in canonicity of the Vargas Llosa’s and García Márquez’s novels or in that of the authors? Ironically Vargas Llosa is arguably the only Spanish language writer that is seen by most Spanish speakers to be García Márquez’s peer. However, there is no doubt that Love in the Time of Cholera is a novel beloved by many who would have resisted it being translated to, let’s say New Orleans—even if there are paddle boats in the Mississippi. And it was this international cadre of readers of the novel that constituted the core of the viewers for whom the film was intended.
While none of the adaptations we are seeing erase the source text, questions of canonicity and cultural capital strike me as being central to the issue of adaptation. Does the fact that Antonioni was at the height of his reputation as a film master explain why he felt he could deal so freely with Cortázar’s story? (But short stories are frequently less prestigious cultural artifacts than novels). Of course, it could very well be that freer adaptations lead to better films. But, if we take the ratings at imdb.com as an index of quality, a problematic decision to be sure, Tune in Tomorrow and Love in the Time of Cholera are tied at 6.2.

Hollywood Adaptations

There have been a few mainstream (or near mainstream) Hollywood adaptations of Latin American texts:
--- Old Gringo (1989, directed by Luis Puenzo) from Carlos Fuentes' 1985 novel of the same name.
--- Tune in Tomorrow (1990, directed by Jon Amiel) from Vargas Llosa's 1977 novel Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter.
--- The House of the Spirits (1993, directed by Billie August) from Isabel Allende's 1982 novel of the same name.
--- Death and the Maiden (1994, directed by Roman Polanski) from his Ariel Dorfman's 1991 play of the same name. (The play may have originally been originally written in English-it was premiered in London in 1991).
--- Before Night Falls (2001, directed by Julian Schnabel) from Reinaldo Arenas' memoirs
--- Love in the Times of Cholera (2007, directed by Mike Newell) from Gabriel García Márquez's 1985 novel of the same name.
Perhaps the most successful critically of these is Before Night Falls, which, however is not based on fiction. The rest are generally considered failures, though, it must be pointed out, high toned ones. (Polanski is, of course, a major director; August had collaborated with Ingmar Bergman; Puenzo had won an Oscar in 1986 for the masterful Argentine film The Official Story).
The only film that aimed strictly for mainstream commercial success is Tune in Tomorrow. It changed the setting of Vargas Llosa's novel from Lima, Peru to New Orleans-I guess it's the most "Latin" city in the US-and, as the change of title indicates, downplayed its links with the Vargas Llosa novel. In fact, no comment at imdb.com (Internet Movie Database) mentions that the movie is an adaptation of Vargas Llosa's novel. This omission creates some involuntary humor. One commenter criticizes the movie for resorting to anti-southern stereotypes by depicting a romance between an aunt and her nephew. This is, of course, not only, part of the plot of the novel, but is actually its autobiographical core. As in the film and novel, young Vargas Llosa married his aunt (by marriage not blood). In fact, he divorced her years later only to marry his first cousin.

Mexican Films

This was not an easy course to structure. The reason for this is that the films and texts studied needed to fulfill conditions that I found more difficult to meet than I expected. I needed to find films that had subtitles based on texts that had been translated. While I think we'll be watching significant films based on important and representative Latin American, to be more exact, Spanish American, texts. The authors we are reading-Cortázar, Borges, Vargas Llosa, Piglia, Puig-are among the most important writers in Latin America and, I would argue, the world in the second half of the twentieth century. Moreover, Antonioni, Bertolucci, and Gutiérrez Alea are also major filmmakers and the films we are seeing among their masterpieces. However, the fact is that there are several significant omissions. The most important among these is the lack of a Mexican film or text among those we are studying.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of Mexican films in Latin American culture. For approximately 25 years-from the early 1930s to the late 1950s-they rivaled in popularity those from the US. The major Mexican stars-María Félix, Pedro Infante, the comedian Cantinflas, to name a few-were as popular, if not more, than comparable Hollywood stars. Moreover, Mexican films, as those made in the US and elsewhere, frequently have as their source novels and short stories. Furthermore, Mexican literature and the country's publishing industry is, together with those from Argentina, the most important in Latin America. In fact, many major Mexican and Latin American writers have worked in Mexico's film industry. Manuel Puig, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, just to mention some of the best-known, have written screenplays that were made into movies. However, we are not watching any Mexican films.

Again the problem I found is the impossibility of finding subtitled films adapted from novels or short stories that were translated. For instance, in the case of the 1943 version of Doña Bárbara, directed by Fernando de Fuentes and adapted by Rómulo Gallegos, from his novel of the same name, is not available for purchase. However, there are several dvds of the movie without subtitles. Perhaps the popularity of the film and the existence of a large enough Mexican and Latin American market make the expenses associated with adding subtitles less appealing. However, I also found cases where the movies were subtitled but the texts were not translated or out of print. In the case of The Place without Limits, a 1977 adaptation of a José Donoso novella, directed by Arturo Ripstein from a Puig screenplay, the novella is out of print. I could give many more examples.

However, apart from the omission of Mexican movies and novels, I believe the films we are watching and the texts we are reading provide a reasonably thorough look into the evolution of both film and narrative of Spanish America; from the parallel rise of modernist art film-influenced by European filmmakers such as Antonioni and Bertolucci-and literature in the 1960s and 1970s, to contemporary more pop-oriented literature and film represented by both the novel and film Rosario Tijeras (2005) .

* Image is of María Félix as Doña Bárbara

Welcome

This is the faculty blog for Screening the Latin American Novel and Short Story, a course taught at Eugene Lang College.
Here I will place both class related comments, as well as random reflections, on Latin American literature and film, and, more specifically, on film adaptations of Latin American narrative.