Coleção Zé do Caixão: 50 anos do Cinema de José Mojica Marins (Cinemagia, 2002)
VOL.1
* Mojica "O Amor pelo cinema e seus primeiros filmes" (doenças venéreas, mito do toureiro, quadrinhos)
VOL.2
* Ivan Cardoso: "O Universo de Mojica Marins" (1978) 26 mins.
* Rogério Brandão: "Cine Trash" (ZC figura pop, CD Roots - Supultura, Olímpia, Heavy Metal)
* Mojica (figura folclórica criada pelo cinema que foi para a história em quadrinhos)
VOL.3
* Rubens Ewald Filho (Sucesso popular maior que Mazzaropi, rebate o primitivismo: o cinema é mais complexo que a arte plástica, Mojica não fez o Drácula brasileiro, he had not yet become an "artisan" therefore, he was willing to try everything, had yet to learn what was not to do, what lens to use)
* Carlos Primati (Inferno de gesso e pipoca, Bava and Argento do not make Italian horror - i.e. national horor, Jacinto Molina played monsters, Jess Franco horror/sexo explícito)
VOL.4
* Clóvis Molinari Jr. (Coordenador de Documentação Audiovisual - Arquivo nacional do RJ): a chapter apart in the Brazilian film history, processes of censorship, criteria adopted by censors, numerous personalities of Brazilian culture, DCDP interest in recreating films, "surrealismo tropicalista", Mojica's meta-film.
VOL.6
* Jairo Ferreira (vídeos experimentais, Mojica o único que emplacou)
* Nicelmar Leyart (trabalhar com Mojica é um aprendizado em cinema, "Delírios de um Anormal" Arnaldo Jabor contou 4800 cortes - only 20mins of own footage, different sounds to different nightmares.
20091212
20091028
On the Horror (M. Jancovich 2007)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/nov/26/ohthehorror
The Guardian, Monday 26 November 2007 8.30GMT
On the horror
The genre of horror is culturally significant, and should no longer be seen as a political football for left or rightwing viewsComments (…) Mark Jancovich guardian.co.uk, Monday 26 November 2007 08.30 GMT
When I began to study horror movies, I was motivated partly by my enjoyment of these films, but also by their cultural significance. In the 1980s, when I was a young research student, a series of groups on both the left and the right of the political spectrum were engaged in an attack on both horror and pornography, genres that were said to have dangerous effects on their viewers. These claims were often vague and contradictory, but there was a general sense that these genres were supposed to justify or cause violence against women. In other words, horror and porn movies and the people who watched them were dangerous and needed to be policed.
So the study of horror became a way for myself and others to question these claims and the politics on which they were based, and to begin to understand the strange alliance between sections of both the right and the left on these questions. On the one hand, academics such as Carol Clover showed that slasher films, which were often taken to be the epitome of misogynist horror, actually bore little relation to their characterisation by those who would censor them. If these films often featured a male homicidal maniac, these monstrous figures were hardly presented as the heroes of the piece. On the contrary, the movies were usually distinguished by the presence of a female rather than a male hero, a final girl who dispatched the killer and saved the day.
If Clover and others therefore focused on claims about the films themselves, other academics started to think about the audiences for these films, and demonstrated that they were anything but the mindless zombies often implied. Rather than being unquestioningly controlled by these films, the audiences for horror were often shown to be highly sophisticated and discerning viewers, whose responses were quite different from those often attributed to them.
However, as the study of horror became less disreputable, I also started to become concerned about it. As the field grew, academics started to feel less defensive (which is good) but also began to talk among themselves (which is bad). In the mid-1990s, I therefore found myself at a conference where I had the uncomfortable realisation that my work was no longer contentious. It seemed that most academics felt that there were now so many academics working in the field that we had somehow "won the battle".
But what was the battle? If I have jokingly said that my mission in the late 1980s was to get John Carpenter's Halloween onto a university syllabus, it was certainly far more concerned to oppose those who would censor and control what we could watch and discuss. Unfortunately, it seemed that, for many academics, the fact that we had got horror onto the syllabus proved that we had made it: they seemed to have forgotten that this might not mean that we had convinced anyone in the outside world.
Since then, the study of horror has taken several different directions. First, some academics simply study horror in much the same ways as English departments used to study the Gothic novel: they regard it as an important form of historical significance and aesthetic interest. I have no particular problem with this: I don't think it is scandalous to study horror films seriously, and many are more rewarding than many of the more respectable "classics". However, I also feel that this work ignores some pressing issues.
Second, there are the academics that celebrate the shocking extremes of horror, and suggest that shocking middle-class taste is a goal in itself. The argument seems to go that, if something shocks people, then it must be challenging. This approach I find more irritating. It often simply confirms the superiority of the academic and reverses the values of the censors. In other words, sometimes we might be right to be shocked and appalled by things, and simply ridiculing others for being "uptight" seems to have little real significance.
Furthermore, this kind of work rarely demonstrates any real engagement with the cultural politics of shocking images. If I was originally motivated by the campaigns against horror and pornography in the 1980s, there are now new campaigns against sexual and violent imagery. The government has introduced truly dangerous new legislation (see Section 6 of the proposed bill on the criminalisation of the possession of extreme pornography (pdf)), while a bubbling liberal consensus emerges around the new forms of horror represented by film series such as Saw and Hostel. In short, simply celebrating the shocking hardly engages with the logic of government legislation or more general cultural attitudes developing around horror.
However, there are also two key trends to which I am more sympathetic. The first is best represented by Martin Barker, whose work around audiences and censorship makes a real contribution to policy issues (see his study for the British Board of Film Classification, Audiences and Receptions of Sexual Violence in Contemporary Cinema (pdf)). The second trend is the historical studies of horror such as that of Kevin Heffernan, who has gone beyond a simple history of the films to analyse the ways in which 1950s horror films were crucial to a series of changes within the production, distribution and consumption of cinema in the period.
An understanding of history can enable us to show that campaigns against horror are anything but new, and that they have a rather worrying and unsavoury history. While those who condemn horror and pornography today may feel themselves to be on the side of the angels, an examination of the past quickly dispels any such certainty and may even suggest the opposite.
The Guardian, Monday 26 November 2007 8.30GMT
On the horror
The genre of horror is culturally significant, and should no longer be seen as a political football for left or rightwing viewsComments (…) Mark Jancovich guardian.co.uk, Monday 26 November 2007 08.30 GMT
When I began to study horror movies, I was motivated partly by my enjoyment of these films, but also by their cultural significance. In the 1980s, when I was a young research student, a series of groups on both the left and the right of the political spectrum were engaged in an attack on both horror and pornography, genres that were said to have dangerous effects on their viewers. These claims were often vague and contradictory, but there was a general sense that these genres were supposed to justify or cause violence against women. In other words, horror and porn movies and the people who watched them were dangerous and needed to be policed.
So the study of horror became a way for myself and others to question these claims and the politics on which they were based, and to begin to understand the strange alliance between sections of both the right and the left on these questions. On the one hand, academics such as Carol Clover showed that slasher films, which were often taken to be the epitome of misogynist horror, actually bore little relation to their characterisation by those who would censor them. If these films often featured a male homicidal maniac, these monstrous figures were hardly presented as the heroes of the piece. On the contrary, the movies were usually distinguished by the presence of a female rather than a male hero, a final girl who dispatched the killer and saved the day.
If Clover and others therefore focused on claims about the films themselves, other academics started to think about the audiences for these films, and demonstrated that they were anything but the mindless zombies often implied. Rather than being unquestioningly controlled by these films, the audiences for horror were often shown to be highly sophisticated and discerning viewers, whose responses were quite different from those often attributed to them.
However, as the study of horror became less disreputable, I also started to become concerned about it. As the field grew, academics started to feel less defensive (which is good) but also began to talk among themselves (which is bad). In the mid-1990s, I therefore found myself at a conference where I had the uncomfortable realisation that my work was no longer contentious. It seemed that most academics felt that there were now so many academics working in the field that we had somehow "won the battle".
But what was the battle? If I have jokingly said that my mission in the late 1980s was to get John Carpenter's Halloween onto a university syllabus, it was certainly far more concerned to oppose those who would censor and control what we could watch and discuss. Unfortunately, it seemed that, for many academics, the fact that we had got horror onto the syllabus proved that we had made it: they seemed to have forgotten that this might not mean that we had convinced anyone in the outside world.
Since then, the study of horror has taken several different directions. First, some academics simply study horror in much the same ways as English departments used to study the Gothic novel: they regard it as an important form of historical significance and aesthetic interest. I have no particular problem with this: I don't think it is scandalous to study horror films seriously, and many are more rewarding than many of the more respectable "classics". However, I also feel that this work ignores some pressing issues.
Second, there are the academics that celebrate the shocking extremes of horror, and suggest that shocking middle-class taste is a goal in itself. The argument seems to go that, if something shocks people, then it must be challenging. This approach I find more irritating. It often simply confirms the superiority of the academic and reverses the values of the censors. In other words, sometimes we might be right to be shocked and appalled by things, and simply ridiculing others for being "uptight" seems to have little real significance.
Furthermore, this kind of work rarely demonstrates any real engagement with the cultural politics of shocking images. If I was originally motivated by the campaigns against horror and pornography in the 1980s, there are now new campaigns against sexual and violent imagery. The government has introduced truly dangerous new legislation (see Section 6 of the proposed bill on the criminalisation of the possession of extreme pornography (pdf)), while a bubbling liberal consensus emerges around the new forms of horror represented by film series such as Saw and Hostel. In short, simply celebrating the shocking hardly engages with the logic of government legislation or more general cultural attitudes developing around horror.
However, there are also two key trends to which I am more sympathetic. The first is best represented by Martin Barker, whose work around audiences and censorship makes a real contribution to policy issues (see his study for the British Board of Film Classification, Audiences and Receptions of Sexual Violence in Contemporary Cinema (pdf)). The second trend is the historical studies of horror such as that of Kevin Heffernan, who has gone beyond a simple history of the films to analyse the ways in which 1950s horror films were crucial to a series of changes within the production, distribution and consumption of cinema in the period.
An understanding of history can enable us to show that campaigns against horror are anything but new, and that they have a rather worrying and unsavoury history. While those who condemn horror and pornography today may feel themselves to be on the side of the angels, an examination of the past quickly dispels any such certainty and may even suggest the opposite.
20090824
Comics: the early editorial market in Brazil (Daniel Serravalle de Sá 2008)
Comics: the early editorial market in Brazil
The existence of serialised graphic art in Brazil can be traced to the second half of the nineteenth-century when Angelo Agostini’s illustrations commenced to both instruct and entertain the native population with humorous verbal and visual texts (Lima, 1963; Agostini, 2002). The appearance of Agostini’s visual story-telling in newspapers and magazines such as O Diabo Coxo, O Cabrião, O Mosquito, Don Quixote and Revista Arlequim served as a ‘literary diet’ for a population that was still largely illiterate, but which did not have to be uninformed. The artist’s sequential stories usually occupied a page or two in these publications and the cover, in the case of magazines. These visual narratives depicted a series of self-explanatory sequential images, were often associated with short texts or dialogues. They habitually tended to socio-political commentary, deriding the costumes of the time, especially those related to the Court and their French-ised etiquette. As a mean of mass communication Agostini’s creations were an important vehicle for the making of opinions, his sequential stories purported an ideological model that was republican, abolitionist and economically liberal (Cavalcanti, 2006). One prime example of his militancy can be verified in the sequential narrative ‘As Aventuras de Nhô-Quim, ou Impressões de Uma Viagem à Corte’, which first appeared in the magazine Vida Fuminense in 1869, and ran for nine episodes of two pages each. In 1883 Agostini initiated another successful publication with a fixed character entitled ‘As Aventuras de Zé Caipora’. Although often interrupted, the series published by Revista Illustrada counts thirty-five episodes spread over a number of years. The eight-page magazine consisted of black and white, ink drawn, verbal and visual narratives and had a weekly circulation of four thousand issues (Sodré, 1977; Ribeiro, 2002). The adventures of Zé Caipora featured the first Brazilian female graphic character, the Amerindian heroine Inaiá, whose figure Cardoso acknowledges as primitively sensual and erotic (2002: 10-11). Zé Caipora stories commonly involved themes of conflict between the agricultural and the urban culture. Arguably, Zé Caipora is Agostini’s most successful character; it achieved multimedia impact in the end of the nineteenth-century inspiring a popular song and also a homonymous silent film (As Aventuras de Zé Caipora by Emílio Silva, 1909) with Antônio Serra in the lead role.
Naturally, these serialised narratives still did not have yet all the characteristics of a modern comic book. For example, elements such as speech balloons or the panel composition in tiers were features still being developed by illustrators such as Wilhelm Bush (Max und Moritz), Rudolph Töpffer (The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck), Richard Outcault (Yellow Kid) and Angelo Agostini. Moving away from the single-frame caricature into the creation of serialised narratives, these artists are considered to be precursors to the invention of a comic book language. Although born in Italy, Agostini’s professional career took place in Brazil and was dedicated to the debate of national affairs. In 1888 he naturalised Brazilian and for these reasons Agostini is known as a Brazilian artist. However, with the abolition of slavery (1888) and the advent of Republic (1889) the central issues on which the artist based his work lost a great deal of its critical edge. In spite of this, Agostini continued active for almost every illustrated magazine of the time until his death in 1910.
The beginning of the twentieth-century saw the creation of many publications among which can be mentioned: O Tagarela, A Avenida, O Malho, A Ilustração Brasileira, Leitura Para Todos and Careta. One of the most influential and long-lasting magazines was O Tico-Tico (1905-1957), founded by a group led by journalist Luís Bartolomeu de Souza e Silva. The publishers spotted a niche in the editorial market and decided to produce a ‘model’ magazine for the Brazilian youth. The publication was partially based on the French La Semaine de Suzette, also founded in 1905, which featured comic illustrations, a large amount of text in short features and serial novelettes. In its own way, O Tico-Tico also aimed at including an educational programme on its pages. As well as the serialised narratives its didactic agenda encompassed games, quizzes, charades, information about history, geography and scientific facts distributed in sections called ‘Lição do Vovô’ and ‘Gaiola do Tico-Tico’, for example. Printed by the group O Malho, this juvenile magazine was surprisingly released with four colour pages already in its first edition, when most magazines printing were black and white. Moreover, O Tico-Tico had an impressive initial circulation of twenty-one thousand issues, which would reach up to one hundred thousand during its best years (Vergueiro and Santos, 2005). Many illustrators who much contributed to the success of O Tico-Tico, sequential artists such as Max Yantok (Kaximbawn, Barão de Rapapé), Nuno Borges (Bolinha e Bolonha), Alfredo Storni (Zé Macaco e Faustina), Miguel Hochman (Chiquinho e Jagunço) and Luiz Sá (Réco-Réco, Bolão e Azeitona), were active not just as children illustrators and left a highly collectible work with the passing years. O Tico-Tico is regarded by some critics to be the first ever Brazilian ‘comic book’ (Vergueiro and Santos, 2005), although such nomenclature for this kind of magazine was not yet adopted. O Tico-Tico’s importance is indeed far-reaching, not only for the national editorial market, but also for the formation of twentieth-century Brazilian literary culture. Writers such as Josué Montello, Olavo Bilac, Oswaldo Orico, Coelho Neto, José Lins do Rego, Catulo da Paixão Cearense, among others, contributed for the magazine’s content and, thus, assisted in the formation of a posterior generation of writers (and confessed readers of O Tico-Tico) such as Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Érico Veríssimo, Gilberto Freyre, Luís da Câmara Cascudo, Ana Maria Machado, Monteiro Lobato, Lygia Fagundes Telles and Mario Quintana, to mention a few (Moya, 1977; Vergueiro and Santos, 2005; Carvalho, 2006).
When O Tico-Tico first came out in the early twentieth-century an important sequential artist was just initiating his professional life. In many ways, J. Carlos, short for José Carlos de Brito e Cunha, would shed a new light on sequential art produced in Brazil. He instituted an extremely limpid drawing style which was considered an innovation for his artistic generation. J. Carlos worked for some of the most important magazines of the time and created many typical Rio de Janeiro characters, such as Almofadinha and Melindrosa. His visual representations are considered valuable historical material for the understanding of Brazilian identity at the time. He registered the ongoing socio-political changes and the fast-paced formation of national culture in the early republican era or Primeira República. His portrayal of the carnival, the beaches, and the current fashion provides admirable insights about the Brazilian customs of the period and how the establishing of a state of ‘Brazilianess’ was in operation. J. Carlos also worked for juvenile magazines and developed memorable characters such as Juquinha and the little girl Lamparina. The artist is also credited to have developed the character of an anthropomorphised parrot that displayed emblematic ‘Brazilian manners’. This character can be first seen on the cover of the magazine Careta from 1941 and it is said to have inspired Walt Disney to create Zé ‘Joe’ Carioca, which appeared in the film Saludos Amigos (1943) and from this time forth in many Disney’s products. J. Carlos’ encounter with Walt Disney in Brazil did not come to a further collaboration but, Zé Carioca remains in Disney’s line of characters until the present day (Lustosa, 2006).
In the 1940s the production and consumption of magazines and sequential art in Brazil augments in a significant manner, as the culmination of a process that started in the previous decade. Such transformation was largely triggered by the importing of U.S. superhero ‘comics’. Technically, these are not yet the ‘comic book’ as we know the today but the Sunday page comic strips, which according to Tom Morris ‘constitutes one of those original American art forms […] that have reached out to the world and made a distinctive impact across cultures.’ (Morris and Morris, 2005: X). Imported comics were not a novelty in Brazil, as Roberto Elísio dos Santos (2002) states O Tico-Tico had already introduced Brazilian readership to the vigorous production of North-American comics, for example, Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo, was first published in Brazil in 1910. Other North-American characters would be published in O Tico-Tico later on, among which can de mentioned: Bocoió (Elzie Crisler Segar’s Popeye), Gato Maluco (George Herriman’s Krazy Kat), Gato Félix (Pat Sullivan’s Felix, the cat) and Ratinho Curioso (Disney’s Mickey Mouse). However, from the 1940s, the publication of superheroes visual narratives becomes the new trend in the Brazilian editorial market and they started to occupy an eminent position in national newspapers. A mark of this process is the distinct characterization of superheroes stories and their drawing style. The former caricature and humoristic trace practiced in Brazilian juvenile magazines now competes with a more realistic drawing style originated abroad. One prime example of this new fashion in comics is Harold Foster’s Tarzan, first published in 1929 for the Metropolitan Newspaper Syndicate. Tarzan inhabits a world of fantasy that is very different from all the previously mentioned ‘comic’ characters, his action-packed adventures demand a more lifelike and dramatic representation. For the next two decades these North-American superheroes will fight enemies all over the world and will become important references during the Second World War, these years are considered the golden age of U.S. comics.
Eventually the superhero strips start to appear with more regularity and in more quantity in Brazilian newspapers. In a little while they started appearing not only on Sunday pages but three times a week, and soon they were being offered as an independent supplement. The São Paulo based newspaper A Gazetinha (later A Gazeta Infantil) had been publishing comic strips on its pages as early as 1929, however, a watershed event in the Brazilian editorial market happens on 14th March 1934 when businessman Adolfo Aizen inaugurates a newspaper supplement, in tabloid format, which could be completely separable from the main newspaper. This publication, O Suplemento Juvenil, which came as part of Rio’s newspaper A Nação, was based on King Features Syndicate products whose distribution rights Aizen bought while travelling in the United States. As well as the new format Aizen introduced a number of characters which were successful in the U.S.: Príncipe Valente (Prince Valiant), Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Agente Secreto X-9 (Secret Agent X-9), Mandrake, Popeye, Jim das Selvas (Jungle Jim), Brick Bradford, Terry e os Piratas (Terry and the Pirates) to mention but a few. The enormous success soon led other newspapers to follow the same tabloid size of publication and printing. Each story run only a few pages and was generally part of a continued story from day to day. Other newspaper supplements such as O Globo Juvenil, O Jornalzinho and A Gazetinha now also brought on its pages comics such as Carlinhos (Little Nemo in Slumberland), Barney Baxter, O Fantasma (The Phantom), Super-homem (Superman), Tarzan and others. These superheroes comics reach a great level of popularity and to supply such public demand Brazilian supplements started publishing the visual narratives in a frantic schedule, sometimes even on a daily basis (which was possible because the supplements were composed of multiple stories by different artists). Despite the overwhelming quantity of imported visual narratives not all stories were reprints and Brazilian artists, such as Carlos Thiré, Renato Silva, Tarsila do Amaral, Péricles Andrade Maranhão, among other previously mentioned, also marked their constant presence in the supplements. Among some of the well-known national characters from this period are Nhô Totico, Garra Cinzenta, Amigo da Onça, Chiquinho, Chicote and Chicória, for example.
These newspaper supplements are modified along the years. They start to be sold independent from newspapers and to look more like the modern comic book, as it is known today. One of the problems with the newspaper system of publishing visual narratives was the serialisation of the stories. The division of a story into several episodes proved not to be always convenient for the reader. Other problems concerned a certain level of inefficiency which was perceived in relation to the tabloid format. For example, technical difficulties involving the publication of coloured stories in the newspaper which caused The Phantom’s costume (originally purple) to become red in Brazil. To overcome these disadvantages a new publication format is introduced, once again following U.S. editorial developments. Gonçalo Júnior offers an idea about the impact caused by the introduction of the new template in Brazil:
The comic book was born from a simple but revolutionary idea, both in its handling and commercial practicality. All that was necessary was to fold the tabloid in half and staple it in order to create a magazine with twice as many pages but of similar cost – it was only sometime after that a cover printed in better quality paper was adopted. (Gonçalo Júnior, 2004: 73)
To a certain extent, as the critic acknowledges, the comic book model is a return to the magazine format, which never really ceased to exist. However, as it was mentioned before, for some critics the invention of the comic book in Brazil preceded this period. In the book entitled O Tico-Tico: centenário da primeira revista de quadrinhos do Brasil (O Tico-Tico: centennial of the first Brazilian comic book), Vergueiro and Santos affirm that the ‘comic book’ was already produced in Brazil since the publication of O Tico-Tico. The authors defend that O Tico-Tico already had all the formal attributes which characterise comic books, such as speech balloons, illustration within frames and organisation in tiers, cloud frames to represent dream or imagination, specific typographical symbols to represent snoring or cursing, among other features. On the other hand, Gonçalo Júnior understands the comic book per se a form closely associated with North-American editorial products and, for the most part, visual stories which involves superheroes or adventure narratives. In his book A Guerra dos Gibis (The comic book wars), Gonçalo Júnior delineates his conception of comic book. His definition of comic book has for template the celebrated publication Gibi Mensal (1939), a publication linked to the magazine O Globo. Printed by Roberto Marinho’s Rio Gráfica, Gibi Mensal was the first magazine in Brazil to publish a story with O Tocha Humana (The Human Torch) followed by complete stories with Capitão América (Captain Marvel). The publication set the smaller size format for this kind of publication and such was the success of Gibi Mensal that to this day in Brazil the word ‘gibi’ can be used as a synonym to designate comic books. A discussion which involves the opposition of Brazilian terms (revista infantil, revista ilustrada, tiras cômicas, história em quadrinhos, gibi) versus a definitions of terms which originate in the English language (Sundays, comic strips, comic strips magazines, comic books) and other technical features is in order.
In the 1940s the comic book reached its highest level of popularity and publications such as O Cômico, Guri, Mirim sextaferino, Correio Universal, Lobinho, Sesino, Vida Juvenil, Biriba were further examples of comics of large circulation which have a historical significance in Brazil. In 1945, Adolfo Aizen, having ceased the publication of Suplemento, founds Editoral Brasil América (Ebal)a future great publishing house dedicated to comic books. Its first publication was fittingly called O Heroi (sic - no diacritical mark). The work developed at Ebal exercised a strong influence on subsequent generations of editors, artists and readers. Aizen’s Ebal contributed enormously for the stabilisation of a culture of comic book appreciation and readership in Brazil. As the decade ends there are now in Brazil a number of artists schooled in the language and techniques of serial-art and comic books. Some of the most talented names from this period are Monteiro Filho, Fernando Diaz da Silva, Jayme Cortez Martins, Reinaldo de Oliveira, Álvaro de Moya, Syllas Roberg and Miguel Penteado, to mention but a few. In the 1950s, some of these artists migrate to different sectors such as publicity, cartoons, television, painting, book illustration, teaching, and areas more closely related to the editorial market, not always with success. But, one name worth mentioning is José Lanzellotti’s, a former illustrator who participated in the brothers Villas-Boas anthropological expeditions into the north and northeast of Brazil. Afterwards Lanzelloti would work for the production team in the film O Cangaçeiro (Lima Barreto, 1953), his previous research on cangaçeiros (Brazilian cowboys-cum-banditti) supported him in the creation of the outfits and accessories used by the characters. The bigger, more exuberant and allegorical hats seen in the film is his work which, although not verisimilar, is justified in the superior ‘plastic’ effect they resulted. Lanzelloti’s touch can be verified by contrasting photographs of real cangaçeiros with the ones in Lima Barreto’s film and the elaborated drawings the artist made for his Brazilian folkloric collection printed by Editora Três.
A discussion about the formation and development of the Brazilian editorial market can not ignore the cultural invasion of Latin America by the United States via the ‘Good Neighbor Policy’. At a time when international conflicts were beginning to rise once again, the United States wished to have good relations with southern countries in the American continent, and this policy was to some extent intended to garner Latin American support. Created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 this foreign policy of administration renounced military intervention and invested in other methods to consolidate its influence over Latin America. Among other strategies the proposition of ‘Pan-Americanism’ involved support for dedicated local leaders, the training of national guards, economic and cultural penetration, bank loans, financial supervision, and political subversion.
This scenario which persisted in 1930s and 1940s should be kept in mind as the historical background of a larger process of political and cultural domination enforced on Brazil and other Latin American countries. The main characteristic of this process of penetration of undeveloped economies by the U.S. political and economic apparatus was felt in the extractive, commercial, manufacturing and financial sectors. The political and economical realities of dependency that was created conditioned the very nature of Brazilian cultural production. Looking at a specific example of this dependency, it is being argued here that North-American comic books (or films), having already covered their costs on the domestic market, were sold to Brazil at very low prices. As result the flow of culture has been unidirectional and, from the 1930s onwards, Brazilian editorial (and film) market was shaped by the characteristics of North-American cultural and economic development.
In their pursuit for quick profit, these Brazilian entrepreneurs who brought imported comics to the country embraced a situation that was already given. Conveniently they bought the product offered by the U.S., but invested little to the advancement of an autonomous national industry. Nevertheless, these foreign comic books also brought positive contributions. The reprint of imported sequential art plays an undeniable role in the development of the editorial sector. As a mass-distributed form these U.S. comics helped to boost the readership and generated numerous jobs ranging from the production to the distribution and constituting a significant material for the growth of Brazilian editorial market.
From the early twentieth-century juvenile magazines (revista ilustrada) to the 1940s superhero comic book, the national publishing sector developed in an incredibly fast pace. From the initial layout and adaptation to newsprint to the final distribution on newsagent shelves and market stalls, there was a complex chain-process which generated a number of jobs and boosted the economy. For example, it is necessary to think that the Brazilian situation worked under different circumstances from those explained by Martin Barker when he discusses the importing of U.S. to Britain (1995: 8-17). The U.S. material imported in bulk had to be adapted in a process which involved a restructuring of some features, especially translation and lettering. The original text had to be not only translated but modified in order to fit the speech balloons (sentences in English tend to be more concise than in Portuguese). This process involved virtually the recreation of original dialogues. Then comic strips or frames had to be arranged in a new layout, and the work had to be art-finalised before the mass printing. These comics continued generating capital even after the re-production process in a number of indirect jobs involving packaging, logistic distribution and transportation of the material before it reached its final point, the reader.
As a result of the political infiltration of the North-American cultural products, the Brazilian editorial market acquired technological know-how and developed some intrinsic expertise. This initial market for comics enabled the subsequent ascension of many talented Brazilian artists such as Henfil (Gaúna, Zeferino), Ziraldo (A Turma do Pererê, O Menino Maluquinho) de André LeBlanc (Morena Flor) and Maurício de Souza (A Turma da Mônica). The unidirectional cultural flow is the mark of U.S.-Brazil relationships but, in a rare cultural exchange, the latter two artists managed to be distributed (though they did not reach the mainstream). It should also be observed that the enormous public success of these comic books contributed to the making of some of the largest Brazilian fortunes. Roberto Marinho’s Globo multi-media empire, Victor Civita’s Editora Abril and Assis Chateaubriand’s network of news agencies, radio and television stations, all started their personal fortunes in the publishing sector and built their capital largely on the success of the comic book sales.
U.S. comic books come from a distinct tradition of publication from that previously known in Brazil and this has caused noteworthy cultural impact on the national production. The comic book model set by O Tico-Tico in the early twentieth-century suggested an entertainment magazine characterised by the humorous tone and the caricature-like illustrational style. Taking after Angelo Agostini’s informative approach to serial-art, O Tico-Tico set a standard for nationally-produced magazines which included a cultural agenda aiming at both instructing and entertaining its readership. This way of thinking about comic books in Brazil starts to change drastically with the entrance of larger numbers of U.S. comics. By the mid-1930s a different world of fantasy disputed the Brazilian entertainment tradition by representing mighty heroes often surrounded by curvaceous women, battling power-craze villains in exotics landscapes inhabited by sub-moronic natives. The new North-American material was characterised by a more dramatic visual narratives which employed a more realistic drawing technique. Such exciting adventure stories drawn in a lifelike manner are factors partially responsible for the success of these comics in Brazil, ushering the national editorial market into an era of heroic characters.
It is not being said here that North-Americans comic books lacked a didactic dimension. As a matter of fact their instructive and ideological agenda operated in a less scholarly way than Brazilian comics, but not lees effective. Bradford W. Wright associates the ascension of superheroes with socio-historical traumas, namely the Second World War (2003: 30-85). This implicates that North-American publishers ‘sought to boost their image by linking their products to patriotism and war effort’, and Franklin Roosevelt, who had made skilful use of the media to further his policies during the Depression, now did it again during wartime.
The OWI [Office of War Information] asked the entertainment industry to raise American morale, encourage public participation and cooperation in the war effort, identify the menace of the Axis powers, and inform the audience of the progressive war aims pursued by the United States and its allies, always in ways that cloaked propaganda within the context of good entertainment as much as possible. (Wright, 2003: 34).
Captain America and Wonder Woman, whose costumes which allude to the American flag, are two blatant examples of the comic book definite entry in the culture of the war. And although some critics like Roberto Causo (2003) argue that such comics, pulp magazines and stories from the period were not as influential in Brazil as they were in the United States, the influence goes beyond the level of representation. The presence and influence of North-America comics in Brazil acted on many different fronts with different levels of intensity which makes their complex contribution a difficult task to access. Trying to clarify this reality it was briefly pointed out here the Brazilian editorial tradition and relations with the North-American cultural industry. Such phenomena was not only mimetic, comic books, as representation, is also a technology, which was copied, learned, parodied, and ultimately enriched (as we will see next) by Brazilian underdeveloped industry and subjectivities.
After the Second World War the North-American market for comic books was in crisis. Superhero characters were largely saturated due to their massive utilisation to denigrate the enemies. In order to raise the sales comic book editors had to reach for a new type of narrative and horror narratives presented themselves as the solution that had both a market and creative possibilities which could modify the stagnated reality left by the superheroes. When horror first emerged in the cinema, more specifically in German Expressionist cinema, Germany was a nation devastated by the First World War (Punter, 1996: 96-119). Horror Comic books also have their origins linked to the war context, but with its own specificities. Emerging out of the universe of juvenile and superheroes comic books, the field of horror comics in Brazil embodied a re-nationalization of comics. Brazilian artists found in horror (rather than superheroes) a better way portrayed national reality, industry and thematic environment.
The existence of serialised graphic art in Brazil can be traced to the second half of the nineteenth-century when Angelo Agostini’s illustrations commenced to both instruct and entertain the native population with humorous verbal and visual texts (Lima, 1963; Agostini, 2002). The appearance of Agostini’s visual story-telling in newspapers and magazines such as O Diabo Coxo, O Cabrião, O Mosquito, Don Quixote and Revista Arlequim served as a ‘literary diet’ for a population that was still largely illiterate, but which did not have to be uninformed. The artist’s sequential stories usually occupied a page or two in these publications and the cover, in the case of magazines. These visual narratives depicted a series of self-explanatory sequential images, were often associated with short texts or dialogues. They habitually tended to socio-political commentary, deriding the costumes of the time, especially those related to the Court and their French-ised etiquette. As a mean of mass communication Agostini’s creations were an important vehicle for the making of opinions, his sequential stories purported an ideological model that was republican, abolitionist and economically liberal (Cavalcanti, 2006). One prime example of his militancy can be verified in the sequential narrative ‘As Aventuras de Nhô-Quim, ou Impressões de Uma Viagem à Corte’, which first appeared in the magazine Vida Fuminense in 1869, and ran for nine episodes of two pages each. In 1883 Agostini initiated another successful publication with a fixed character entitled ‘As Aventuras de Zé Caipora’. Although often interrupted, the series published by Revista Illustrada counts thirty-five episodes spread over a number of years. The eight-page magazine consisted of black and white, ink drawn, verbal and visual narratives and had a weekly circulation of four thousand issues (Sodré, 1977; Ribeiro, 2002). The adventures of Zé Caipora featured the first Brazilian female graphic character, the Amerindian heroine Inaiá, whose figure Cardoso acknowledges as primitively sensual and erotic (2002: 10-11). Zé Caipora stories commonly involved themes of conflict between the agricultural and the urban culture. Arguably, Zé Caipora is Agostini’s most successful character; it achieved multimedia impact in the end of the nineteenth-century inspiring a popular song and also a homonymous silent film (As Aventuras de Zé Caipora by Emílio Silva, 1909) with Antônio Serra in the lead role.
Naturally, these serialised narratives still did not have yet all the characteristics of a modern comic book. For example, elements such as speech balloons or the panel composition in tiers were features still being developed by illustrators such as Wilhelm Bush (Max und Moritz), Rudolph Töpffer (The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck), Richard Outcault (Yellow Kid) and Angelo Agostini. Moving away from the single-frame caricature into the creation of serialised narratives, these artists are considered to be precursors to the invention of a comic book language. Although born in Italy, Agostini’s professional career took place in Brazil and was dedicated to the debate of national affairs. In 1888 he naturalised Brazilian and for these reasons Agostini is known as a Brazilian artist. However, with the abolition of slavery (1888) and the advent of Republic (1889) the central issues on which the artist based his work lost a great deal of its critical edge. In spite of this, Agostini continued active for almost every illustrated magazine of the time until his death in 1910.
The beginning of the twentieth-century saw the creation of many publications among which can be mentioned: O Tagarela, A Avenida, O Malho, A Ilustração Brasileira, Leitura Para Todos and Careta. One of the most influential and long-lasting magazines was O Tico-Tico (1905-1957), founded by a group led by journalist Luís Bartolomeu de Souza e Silva. The publishers spotted a niche in the editorial market and decided to produce a ‘model’ magazine for the Brazilian youth. The publication was partially based on the French La Semaine de Suzette, also founded in 1905, which featured comic illustrations, a large amount of text in short features and serial novelettes. In its own way, O Tico-Tico also aimed at including an educational programme on its pages. As well as the serialised narratives its didactic agenda encompassed games, quizzes, charades, information about history, geography and scientific facts distributed in sections called ‘Lição do Vovô’ and ‘Gaiola do Tico-Tico’, for example. Printed by the group O Malho, this juvenile magazine was surprisingly released with four colour pages already in its first edition, when most magazines printing were black and white. Moreover, O Tico-Tico had an impressive initial circulation of twenty-one thousand issues, which would reach up to one hundred thousand during its best years (Vergueiro and Santos, 2005). Many illustrators who much contributed to the success of O Tico-Tico, sequential artists such as Max Yantok (Kaximbawn, Barão de Rapapé), Nuno Borges (Bolinha e Bolonha), Alfredo Storni (Zé Macaco e Faustina), Miguel Hochman (Chiquinho e Jagunço) and Luiz Sá (Réco-Réco, Bolão e Azeitona), were active not just as children illustrators and left a highly collectible work with the passing years. O Tico-Tico is regarded by some critics to be the first ever Brazilian ‘comic book’ (Vergueiro and Santos, 2005), although such nomenclature for this kind of magazine was not yet adopted. O Tico-Tico’s importance is indeed far-reaching, not only for the national editorial market, but also for the formation of twentieth-century Brazilian literary culture. Writers such as Josué Montello, Olavo Bilac, Oswaldo Orico, Coelho Neto, José Lins do Rego, Catulo da Paixão Cearense, among others, contributed for the magazine’s content and, thus, assisted in the formation of a posterior generation of writers (and confessed readers of O Tico-Tico) such as Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Érico Veríssimo, Gilberto Freyre, Luís da Câmara Cascudo, Ana Maria Machado, Monteiro Lobato, Lygia Fagundes Telles and Mario Quintana, to mention a few (Moya, 1977; Vergueiro and Santos, 2005; Carvalho, 2006).
When O Tico-Tico first came out in the early twentieth-century an important sequential artist was just initiating his professional life. In many ways, J. Carlos, short for José Carlos de Brito e Cunha, would shed a new light on sequential art produced in Brazil. He instituted an extremely limpid drawing style which was considered an innovation for his artistic generation. J. Carlos worked for some of the most important magazines of the time and created many typical Rio de Janeiro characters, such as Almofadinha and Melindrosa. His visual representations are considered valuable historical material for the understanding of Brazilian identity at the time. He registered the ongoing socio-political changes and the fast-paced formation of national culture in the early republican era or Primeira República. His portrayal of the carnival, the beaches, and the current fashion provides admirable insights about the Brazilian customs of the period and how the establishing of a state of ‘Brazilianess’ was in operation. J. Carlos also worked for juvenile magazines and developed memorable characters such as Juquinha and the little girl Lamparina. The artist is also credited to have developed the character of an anthropomorphised parrot that displayed emblematic ‘Brazilian manners’. This character can be first seen on the cover of the magazine Careta from 1941 and it is said to have inspired Walt Disney to create Zé ‘Joe’ Carioca, which appeared in the film Saludos Amigos (1943) and from this time forth in many Disney’s products. J. Carlos’ encounter with Walt Disney in Brazil did not come to a further collaboration but, Zé Carioca remains in Disney’s line of characters until the present day (Lustosa, 2006).
In the 1940s the production and consumption of magazines and sequential art in Brazil augments in a significant manner, as the culmination of a process that started in the previous decade. Such transformation was largely triggered by the importing of U.S. superhero ‘comics’. Technically, these are not yet the ‘comic book’ as we know the today but the Sunday page comic strips, which according to Tom Morris ‘constitutes one of those original American art forms […] that have reached out to the world and made a distinctive impact across cultures.’ (Morris and Morris, 2005: X). Imported comics were not a novelty in Brazil, as Roberto Elísio dos Santos (2002) states O Tico-Tico had already introduced Brazilian readership to the vigorous production of North-American comics, for example, Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo, was first published in Brazil in 1910. Other North-American characters would be published in O Tico-Tico later on, among which can de mentioned: Bocoió (Elzie Crisler Segar’s Popeye), Gato Maluco (George Herriman’s Krazy Kat), Gato Félix (Pat Sullivan’s Felix, the cat) and Ratinho Curioso (Disney’s Mickey Mouse). However, from the 1940s, the publication of superheroes visual narratives becomes the new trend in the Brazilian editorial market and they started to occupy an eminent position in national newspapers. A mark of this process is the distinct characterization of superheroes stories and their drawing style. The former caricature and humoristic trace practiced in Brazilian juvenile magazines now competes with a more realistic drawing style originated abroad. One prime example of this new fashion in comics is Harold Foster’s Tarzan, first published in 1929 for the Metropolitan Newspaper Syndicate. Tarzan inhabits a world of fantasy that is very different from all the previously mentioned ‘comic’ characters, his action-packed adventures demand a more lifelike and dramatic representation. For the next two decades these North-American superheroes will fight enemies all over the world and will become important references during the Second World War, these years are considered the golden age of U.S. comics.
Eventually the superhero strips start to appear with more regularity and in more quantity in Brazilian newspapers. In a little while they started appearing not only on Sunday pages but three times a week, and soon they were being offered as an independent supplement. The São Paulo based newspaper A Gazetinha (later A Gazeta Infantil) had been publishing comic strips on its pages as early as 1929, however, a watershed event in the Brazilian editorial market happens on 14th March 1934 when businessman Adolfo Aizen inaugurates a newspaper supplement, in tabloid format, which could be completely separable from the main newspaper. This publication, O Suplemento Juvenil, which came as part of Rio’s newspaper A Nação, was based on King Features Syndicate products whose distribution rights Aizen bought while travelling in the United States. As well as the new format Aizen introduced a number of characters which were successful in the U.S.: Príncipe Valente (Prince Valiant), Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Agente Secreto X-9 (Secret Agent X-9), Mandrake, Popeye, Jim das Selvas (Jungle Jim), Brick Bradford, Terry e os Piratas (Terry and the Pirates) to mention but a few. The enormous success soon led other newspapers to follow the same tabloid size of publication and printing. Each story run only a few pages and was generally part of a continued story from day to day. Other newspaper supplements such as O Globo Juvenil, O Jornalzinho and A Gazetinha now also brought on its pages comics such as Carlinhos (Little Nemo in Slumberland), Barney Baxter, O Fantasma (The Phantom), Super-homem (Superman), Tarzan and others. These superheroes comics reach a great level of popularity and to supply such public demand Brazilian supplements started publishing the visual narratives in a frantic schedule, sometimes even on a daily basis (which was possible because the supplements were composed of multiple stories by different artists). Despite the overwhelming quantity of imported visual narratives not all stories were reprints and Brazilian artists, such as Carlos Thiré, Renato Silva, Tarsila do Amaral, Péricles Andrade Maranhão, among other previously mentioned, also marked their constant presence in the supplements. Among some of the well-known national characters from this period are Nhô Totico, Garra Cinzenta, Amigo da Onça, Chiquinho, Chicote and Chicória, for example.
These newspaper supplements are modified along the years. They start to be sold independent from newspapers and to look more like the modern comic book, as it is known today. One of the problems with the newspaper system of publishing visual narratives was the serialisation of the stories. The division of a story into several episodes proved not to be always convenient for the reader. Other problems concerned a certain level of inefficiency which was perceived in relation to the tabloid format. For example, technical difficulties involving the publication of coloured stories in the newspaper which caused The Phantom’s costume (originally purple) to become red in Brazil. To overcome these disadvantages a new publication format is introduced, once again following U.S. editorial developments. Gonçalo Júnior offers an idea about the impact caused by the introduction of the new template in Brazil:
The comic book was born from a simple but revolutionary idea, both in its handling and commercial practicality. All that was necessary was to fold the tabloid in half and staple it in order to create a magazine with twice as many pages but of similar cost – it was only sometime after that a cover printed in better quality paper was adopted. (Gonçalo Júnior, 2004: 73)
To a certain extent, as the critic acknowledges, the comic book model is a return to the magazine format, which never really ceased to exist. However, as it was mentioned before, for some critics the invention of the comic book in Brazil preceded this period. In the book entitled O Tico-Tico: centenário da primeira revista de quadrinhos do Brasil (O Tico-Tico: centennial of the first Brazilian comic book), Vergueiro and Santos affirm that the ‘comic book’ was already produced in Brazil since the publication of O Tico-Tico. The authors defend that O Tico-Tico already had all the formal attributes which characterise comic books, such as speech balloons, illustration within frames and organisation in tiers, cloud frames to represent dream or imagination, specific typographical symbols to represent snoring or cursing, among other features. On the other hand, Gonçalo Júnior understands the comic book per se a form closely associated with North-American editorial products and, for the most part, visual stories which involves superheroes or adventure narratives. In his book A Guerra dos Gibis (The comic book wars), Gonçalo Júnior delineates his conception of comic book. His definition of comic book has for template the celebrated publication Gibi Mensal (1939), a publication linked to the magazine O Globo. Printed by Roberto Marinho’s Rio Gráfica, Gibi Mensal was the first magazine in Brazil to publish a story with O Tocha Humana (The Human Torch) followed by complete stories with Capitão América (Captain Marvel). The publication set the smaller size format for this kind of publication and such was the success of Gibi Mensal that to this day in Brazil the word ‘gibi’ can be used as a synonym to designate comic books. A discussion which involves the opposition of Brazilian terms (revista infantil, revista ilustrada, tiras cômicas, história em quadrinhos, gibi) versus a definitions of terms which originate in the English language (Sundays, comic strips, comic strips magazines, comic books) and other technical features is in order.
In the 1940s the comic book reached its highest level of popularity and publications such as O Cômico, Guri, Mirim sextaferino, Correio Universal, Lobinho, Sesino, Vida Juvenil, Biriba were further examples of comics of large circulation which have a historical significance in Brazil. In 1945, Adolfo Aizen, having ceased the publication of Suplemento, founds Editoral Brasil América (Ebal)a future great publishing house dedicated to comic books. Its first publication was fittingly called O Heroi (sic - no diacritical mark). The work developed at Ebal exercised a strong influence on subsequent generations of editors, artists and readers. Aizen’s Ebal contributed enormously for the stabilisation of a culture of comic book appreciation and readership in Brazil. As the decade ends there are now in Brazil a number of artists schooled in the language and techniques of serial-art and comic books. Some of the most talented names from this period are Monteiro Filho, Fernando Diaz da Silva, Jayme Cortez Martins, Reinaldo de Oliveira, Álvaro de Moya, Syllas Roberg and Miguel Penteado, to mention but a few. In the 1950s, some of these artists migrate to different sectors such as publicity, cartoons, television, painting, book illustration, teaching, and areas more closely related to the editorial market, not always with success. But, one name worth mentioning is José Lanzellotti’s, a former illustrator who participated in the brothers Villas-Boas anthropological expeditions into the north and northeast of Brazil. Afterwards Lanzelloti would work for the production team in the film O Cangaçeiro (Lima Barreto, 1953), his previous research on cangaçeiros (Brazilian cowboys-cum-banditti) supported him in the creation of the outfits and accessories used by the characters. The bigger, more exuberant and allegorical hats seen in the film is his work which, although not verisimilar, is justified in the superior ‘plastic’ effect they resulted. Lanzelloti’s touch can be verified by contrasting photographs of real cangaçeiros with the ones in Lima Barreto’s film and the elaborated drawings the artist made for his Brazilian folkloric collection printed by Editora Três.
A discussion about the formation and development of the Brazilian editorial market can not ignore the cultural invasion of Latin America by the United States via the ‘Good Neighbor Policy’. At a time when international conflicts were beginning to rise once again, the United States wished to have good relations with southern countries in the American continent, and this policy was to some extent intended to garner Latin American support. Created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 this foreign policy of administration renounced military intervention and invested in other methods to consolidate its influence over Latin America. Among other strategies the proposition of ‘Pan-Americanism’ involved support for dedicated local leaders, the training of national guards, economic and cultural penetration, bank loans, financial supervision, and political subversion.
This scenario which persisted in 1930s and 1940s should be kept in mind as the historical background of a larger process of political and cultural domination enforced on Brazil and other Latin American countries. The main characteristic of this process of penetration of undeveloped economies by the U.S. political and economic apparatus was felt in the extractive, commercial, manufacturing and financial sectors. The political and economical realities of dependency that was created conditioned the very nature of Brazilian cultural production. Looking at a specific example of this dependency, it is being argued here that North-American comic books (or films), having already covered their costs on the domestic market, were sold to Brazil at very low prices. As result the flow of culture has been unidirectional and, from the 1930s onwards, Brazilian editorial (and film) market was shaped by the characteristics of North-American cultural and economic development.
In their pursuit for quick profit, these Brazilian entrepreneurs who brought imported comics to the country embraced a situation that was already given. Conveniently they bought the product offered by the U.S., but invested little to the advancement of an autonomous national industry. Nevertheless, these foreign comic books also brought positive contributions. The reprint of imported sequential art plays an undeniable role in the development of the editorial sector. As a mass-distributed form these U.S. comics helped to boost the readership and generated numerous jobs ranging from the production to the distribution and constituting a significant material for the growth of Brazilian editorial market.
From the early twentieth-century juvenile magazines (revista ilustrada) to the 1940s superhero comic book, the national publishing sector developed in an incredibly fast pace. From the initial layout and adaptation to newsprint to the final distribution on newsagent shelves and market stalls, there was a complex chain-process which generated a number of jobs and boosted the economy. For example, it is necessary to think that the Brazilian situation worked under different circumstances from those explained by Martin Barker when he discusses the importing of U.S. to Britain (1995: 8-17). The U.S. material imported in bulk had to be adapted in a process which involved a restructuring of some features, especially translation and lettering. The original text had to be not only translated but modified in order to fit the speech balloons (sentences in English tend to be more concise than in Portuguese). This process involved virtually the recreation of original dialogues. Then comic strips or frames had to be arranged in a new layout, and the work had to be art-finalised before the mass printing. These comics continued generating capital even after the re-production process in a number of indirect jobs involving packaging, logistic distribution and transportation of the material before it reached its final point, the reader.
As a result of the political infiltration of the North-American cultural products, the Brazilian editorial market acquired technological know-how and developed some intrinsic expertise. This initial market for comics enabled the subsequent ascension of many talented Brazilian artists such as Henfil (Gaúna, Zeferino), Ziraldo (A Turma do Pererê, O Menino Maluquinho) de André LeBlanc (Morena Flor) and Maurício de Souza (A Turma da Mônica). The unidirectional cultural flow is the mark of U.S.-Brazil relationships but, in a rare cultural exchange, the latter two artists managed to be distributed (though they did not reach the mainstream). It should also be observed that the enormous public success of these comic books contributed to the making of some of the largest Brazilian fortunes. Roberto Marinho’s Globo multi-media empire, Victor Civita’s Editora Abril and Assis Chateaubriand’s network of news agencies, radio and television stations, all started their personal fortunes in the publishing sector and built their capital largely on the success of the comic book sales.
U.S. comic books come from a distinct tradition of publication from that previously known in Brazil and this has caused noteworthy cultural impact on the national production. The comic book model set by O Tico-Tico in the early twentieth-century suggested an entertainment magazine characterised by the humorous tone and the caricature-like illustrational style. Taking after Angelo Agostini’s informative approach to serial-art, O Tico-Tico set a standard for nationally-produced magazines which included a cultural agenda aiming at both instructing and entertaining its readership. This way of thinking about comic books in Brazil starts to change drastically with the entrance of larger numbers of U.S. comics. By the mid-1930s a different world of fantasy disputed the Brazilian entertainment tradition by representing mighty heroes often surrounded by curvaceous women, battling power-craze villains in exotics landscapes inhabited by sub-moronic natives. The new North-American material was characterised by a more dramatic visual narratives which employed a more realistic drawing technique. Such exciting adventure stories drawn in a lifelike manner are factors partially responsible for the success of these comics in Brazil, ushering the national editorial market into an era of heroic characters.
It is not being said here that North-Americans comic books lacked a didactic dimension. As a matter of fact their instructive and ideological agenda operated in a less scholarly way than Brazilian comics, but not lees effective. Bradford W. Wright associates the ascension of superheroes with socio-historical traumas, namely the Second World War (2003: 30-85). This implicates that North-American publishers ‘sought to boost their image by linking their products to patriotism and war effort’, and Franklin Roosevelt, who had made skilful use of the media to further his policies during the Depression, now did it again during wartime.
The OWI [Office of War Information] asked the entertainment industry to raise American morale, encourage public participation and cooperation in the war effort, identify the menace of the Axis powers, and inform the audience of the progressive war aims pursued by the United States and its allies, always in ways that cloaked propaganda within the context of good entertainment as much as possible. (Wright, 2003: 34).
Captain America and Wonder Woman, whose costumes which allude to the American flag, are two blatant examples of the comic book definite entry in the culture of the war. And although some critics like Roberto Causo (2003) argue that such comics, pulp magazines and stories from the period were not as influential in Brazil as they were in the United States, the influence goes beyond the level of representation. The presence and influence of North-America comics in Brazil acted on many different fronts with different levels of intensity which makes their complex contribution a difficult task to access. Trying to clarify this reality it was briefly pointed out here the Brazilian editorial tradition and relations with the North-American cultural industry. Such phenomena was not only mimetic, comic books, as representation, is also a technology, which was copied, learned, parodied, and ultimately enriched (as we will see next) by Brazilian underdeveloped industry and subjectivities.
After the Second World War the North-American market for comic books was in crisis. Superhero characters were largely saturated due to their massive utilisation to denigrate the enemies. In order to raise the sales comic book editors had to reach for a new type of narrative and horror narratives presented themselves as the solution that had both a market and creative possibilities which could modify the stagnated reality left by the superheroes. When horror first emerged in the cinema, more specifically in German Expressionist cinema, Germany was a nation devastated by the First World War (Punter, 1996: 96-119). Horror Comic books also have their origins linked to the war context, but with its own specificities. Emerging out of the universe of juvenile and superheroes comic books, the field of horror comics in Brazil embodied a re-nationalization of comics. Brazilian artists found in horror (rather than superheroes) a better way portrayed national reality, industry and thematic environment.
20090814
Sacred Terror, Religion and Horror on the Silver Screen (A. Cowan 2008)
Andrew Cowan. Sacred Terror, Religion and Horror on the Silver Screen. Wayco, Tx: Baylor UP, 2008.
* Religious oriented horror cinema relies much of its effect on the direct collision between natural and supernatural. It seeks to frighten people into conformity. The soul is a religious concept that makes little sense apart from the various religious framework in which it comes embedded.
* The metataxis of horror, the inversion or reversal of culturally accepted categories, i.e., church as a place of safety and the clergy as a guardian of decency and moral.
"Religious oriented cinema horror remains a significant material disclosure of deeply embedded cultural fears of the supernatural and an equally entrenched ambivalence about the place and power of religion in society as the principal means of negotiating those fears" (p.9)
In classic horror cinema there is William Castle's The Tingler, about a creature-parasite that lives inside people, feeding on fear but controlled by screams. The creature is chased into a movie theatre filled to capacity. At that point the real screen in the movie theatre goes black and a voice tells the real audience that the Tingler is among them and they must scream to protect themselves.
Cowan affirms the audience are not all scared by the same thngs "Not all stimuli produces the same level of frisson. For some, thoughts of ghosts and discarnate spiritual entities are the height of horror, while zombies leaves the cold. For others demoniac possessions gives the creeps, but they remains entirely unnafected by mummies or slasher films. For me, snakes are interesting and enjoyable as cinema monsters (specially when they are eating annoying cast members), but spiders are virtually impossible for me to watch" (p.20)
According to Cowan, psycological approach is not without value but horror cinema is part of a cinematic lineage that cannot be easily or reductively psycologised, as it has a lenghty social history. Those who seek psychological interpretations often ignore or proscribe that. Approaching any film with a priori assumption is to actively avoid looking for any other meaning that which psychology has set out to find and severely restrict the range of interpretations available.
20090707
On the Gothic and eighteenth-century revolutions
Sade's preface Reflections on the Novel in which he states the gothic is “the inevitable product of the revolutionary shock with which the whole of Europe resounded.”
Idées sur Les Romans. edited by Jean Glatier. Bordeaux: Ducros, 1970.
“Uncertainties about nature of power, law, society, family and sexuality dominated Gothic Fiction. They are linked to wider threats of disintegration manifested forcefully in political revolution. The decade of the French Revolution was also the period when the Gothic novel was most popular” (Fred Botting. Gothic. London, Routledge, 1996. p.5)
“… it is important to register that terror had, and continues to have, direct connections with the social political realm. It is, of course, no accident that the roots of Gothic fiction in a time of European revolution, one of those manifestations was the French ‘reign of terror’, established ‘terror’ as a term that you could look outward as well as inward…” (David Punter. “Terror”. IN: The handbook to Gothic Literature. NY: NYU, 1998. p. 235)
“Locked in our distant modern view, the genre [irony, he does not believe it is a genre] looks all too unified, but the fiction market of the 1790s was polarised by a range of contradictory social and political factors …. For writers like Clara Reeve, the Gothick motifs, drawn from the age of chivalry, could used to redress the leveling tendencies that followed in the wake of the French revolution… . In 1800 the Marquis de Sade revealed an equally political interest in the gothick novel, reading ann Radcliffe and Lewis as a partially unconscious response to the upheavals that had recently shaken Europe." (Victor Sage. The Gothick Novel. McMillan, 1990. p. 13).
Idées sur Les Romans. edited by Jean Glatier. Bordeaux: Ducros, 1970.
“Uncertainties about nature of power, law, society, family and sexuality dominated Gothic Fiction. They are linked to wider threats of disintegration manifested forcefully in political revolution. The decade of the French Revolution was also the period when the Gothic novel was most popular” (Fred Botting. Gothic. London, Routledge, 1996. p.5)
“… it is important to register that terror had, and continues to have, direct connections with the social political realm. It is, of course, no accident that the roots of Gothic fiction in a time of European revolution, one of those manifestations was the French ‘reign of terror’, established ‘terror’ as a term that you could look outward as well as inward…” (David Punter. “Terror”. IN: The handbook to Gothic Literature. NY: NYU, 1998. p. 235)
“Locked in our distant modern view, the genre [irony, he does not believe it is a genre] looks all too unified, but the fiction market of the 1790s was polarised by a range of contradictory social and political factors …. For writers like Clara Reeve, the Gothick motifs, drawn from the age of chivalry, could used to redress the leveling tendencies that followed in the wake of the French revolution… . In 1800 the Marquis de Sade revealed an equally political interest in the gothick novel, reading ann Radcliffe and Lewis as a partially unconscious response to the upheavals that had recently shaken Europe." (Victor Sage. The Gothick Novel. McMillan, 1990. p. 13).
20090525
Shorthand system for technical information
cu = close-up
xcu = extrem close-up
ms = medium shot
fs = full or long shot
3/4s = three-quarter shot
ps = pan shot
s/rs = shot/reverse shot
ct = cut
lt = long take
trs = tracking shot
crs = crane shot
la = low angle
ha = high angle
xcu = extrem close-up
ms = medium shot
fs = full or long shot
3/4s = three-quarter shot
ps = pan shot
s/rs = shot/reverse shot
ct = cut
lt = long take
trs = tracking shot
crs = crane shot
la = low angle
ha = high angle
20090414
The horror genre and its critics (Daniel Serravalle de Sá, 2008)
The horror genre and its critics
Any critical research on horror films carried out nowadays will find a plethora of theoricists to choose from. Going through the shelves of libraries and bookstores, particularly through those sections dedicated to films, what can be observed is a vast number of guides, manuals and readers aiming at introducing the general public to the horror film genre.[1] To a great extent this varied and currently escalating production is linked to the expansion of academia. Since horror films gained entree into universities’ film departments its study has become increasingly institutionalised: it is regularly offered as discipline in several film studies departments, it has become object of post-graduate research, it is congregating people in workshops, courses, seminars and congresses, and, it is now even discussed in refereed journals. The irony of it is to see a previously stigmatised genre, often claimed to be subversive and capable of challenging hierarchies,[2] being studied in normative scholarly terms. Mark Jancovich says “the academic study of horror film has not only become a minor industry of academic publishing but has become virtually a genre in itself” (Jancovich, 2007:261). [3]
Due to the increasing number of people interested in working with horror films in academia, it is only natural that the question of how to attend the subject matter will show discrepancies. A diversity of approaches can multiply the understanding of a film and provide intellectually stimulating debates. However, narrow adhesions to areas of concentration and its specialisms may have the opposite effect and end up restricting emancipated thinking practices. Branson explains how adhesion to a particular theoretical model is often registered in the use of specific words and small nuances of phrasing (e.g. ‘Forced [not invited] into this position, the spectator’s [not audience member] reaction is symptomatic [not suggestive, indicative] of … ‘) through which models can be identified and how such elliptical approach to language can be baffling for the non-initiated. [4] Noël Carroll says “the problem with essentialism in film theories is that it blinkers theoretical imagination by limiting what questions should be asked about cinema.”[5] It is Carroll’s opinion that the frameworks mandated by the cinema studies establishment are impediments to free academic thinking and theoretical discovery. As a solution to this problem, the film theoricist endorses a non-dogmatic, multi-disciplinary and cognitive exploration for film theorising which should proceed at varying levels of dialectical abstraction. Carroll is not proposing the end of theory (the book he edited is perhaps inaptly named) but a historically positioned theorising practice when so much of what has been called ‘traditional film studies’ critical underpinnings seem no longer the key.
In the case of horror, a number of books available today conform to this most unadventurous side of academic specialities. For the most part, these books are rhetorical exercises on a critical theory which provide descriptive lists of films and pages of re-worded critical passages but are incapable of unfolding fresh meanings. And while elements of horror are thriving in contemporary cultural items (cartoons, comic books, toys, music videos, videogames and films), there is little conflation between horror film theory and the present interest for representing horror images (moving or still) in the social dimension. Trite academicism has led the university’s intellectual production to become an ‘industry’, to use Jancovich’s expression, of endogenous quotations. The academic study of horror films as it done nowadays is self-absorbed in its own domains and tangled in a web of critical theories which do not necessarily propose advances in the critical reflexion. In the future, the study of horror films should expand its horizons to observe how ‘horror’ manifests itself in socio-historical dimensions and how all the ongoing and abundant cross-references between cultural products interact.
The text which follows will look at some of the most well-known theoretical approaches in horror film studies and their key concepts. The eventual aim is to position myself in relation to these studies by elaborating a working definition of horror which will allow me to approach Zé do Caixão in a culturally equitable way. In order to do so I will be dialoguing with some of the books that aroused my interest whilst trying to expose the ideas which underpin their theoretical assumptions. For didactic reasons I opted to divide the text in three parts. I will start by debating the pertinence of ‘genre’ models in the investigation of horror films and the use of historical and industrial approaches. Secondly I will concentrate on post-structural and psychoanalytic models and their contribution to the debate. Later on, I will consider what these critical approaches and their concepts (most of them originated in the English critical literature) have to offer to the investigation of horror films made in a peripheral country like Brazil where the film production is intermittent and a horror tradition is virtually inexistent, or at least in the country’s official cinema historiography.
Approaches to the horror film: genre, history and industry
From the late 1960s onwards or since film studies eschewed the bourgeois notion of ‘high-art’, the field has operated on the premise that all films are worth of study, which does not mean to say they are all of equal merit. When studies on genre first became a focus of interest, in part it represented a turning away from what was perceived as the more conservative side of auteurism.[6]
In the 1950s auteurism had provided a breakthrough in the development of film studies by looking at cinema in terms of directors.[7] The auteur theory declared that cinema ‘artisans’ were also to be found in the commercial productions of Hollywood studio system. Later on this positioning was perceived as somewhat elitist since it focused mainly on directors at the expense of the other constituents of the cinematic experience. To some extent, the auteur theory eulogised Hollywood’s craftsmen by revisiting the eighteenth-century Romantic category of ‘genius’. Such directorial acclamation overlooks the fact that a film is a product of a joint-enterprise among people, in which the director is another clog in the complex cinematic machinery. The aggrandisement of directors-auteurs and the exaltation of the personal vision they brought to the cinema, excluded the audience’s opinion and arguably the motives people went to see mainstream cinema. For that reason a revision of the values of auteurism and the subsequent shift towards the study of genre was thereby endorsed as a way of thinking about cinema in terms of its appeal to audiences: specific narrative formats and film stars.
The change in the critical attitude, towards the study of films by means of ‘genre’, represented the latest tendency in the investigation of popular film culture. The reasoning behind this new approach was to challenge a restrictive film Canon and broaden the scope of enquiry by incorporating the analysis of Hollywood commercial films and not just of those made by renowned directors. Since then, the study of Hollywood mass culture most commonly embraces the concept of genre as the theoretical framework used to analyse those films that were not made by directors-auteurs. And most books concerning horror films published in the last decades reflect this persuasion as they frequently engage with the study of horror film resorting to the notion of genre.
In film studies, ‘genre’ is a product created from the interaction between media producers, the film and the audience. That is to say, the concept of genre is a shared knowledge and different groups of people will have distinct, sometimes even divergent comprehensions of a particular genre. In 1974, Andrew Tudor put forth a conundrum which succinctly stated that to identify a film as belonging to a certain genre, the critic had to know the characteristics of that genre but, conversely, the critic could only know the features of a genre by reference to films already identified as constitutive of the genre.[8] Todorov suggested a way of addressing this tension by proposing that whereas historical genre is amorphous, theoretical genre is specific and subject to amendments with every new addition to the generic corpus.[9]
More contemporary works have demonstrated the complexities involving the theoretical definition of genre, emphasising how its understanding can only be apprehended within certain boundaries.[10] According to such studies, genres are social processes of classification and not a body of films to which newly released films are appended. As the preferential site of film investigation tends to turn to the perspective of film industry’s productivity, the division between genre as a critical and a trade category are debated, eroded and redrawn.[11] A film which is seen as belonging to a particular genre today can be neglected as such in the future. A film that was considered as belonging to the horror genre in the past may not be thought as horror film nowadays. For that reason, genre theoricists like Neale, Maltby, Altman and Klinger suggest in different ways that the current studies should focus on specific definitions concepts (cycles, production trends, local genre) rather than seeing genre as an ever growing chain of films. In other words, the idea is that films participate in a specific genre rather than belong to it, and the classification of films is essentially an arbitrary process.
The study of genre is obviously not free of problems, it could be pointed out that classifying films in genres at any instance is merely another kind of formalism. Christine Gledhill categorically (but unintentionally) implies that limitation by claiming “genre is first and foremost a boundary phenomenon”.[12] Even though the previously mentioned studies on genre have aimed at opening up the question by making the term historically flexible; in practice, any discussion based on film genre will become sealed in an opposition of filmic forms. Used as a critical category ‘genre’ is a strategy of interpretation which confines films to boundaries and makes broad classifications inescapable. Studies based on genre will tend to work with particular groups of films (dominant types) and often disregard the complexity of social factors, the role culture and how this is represented in specific films. The downside of working with a generic body of rules for the evaluation of films is that such conceptualised ‘supervision’ mode tends to flatten the critical possibility of a multi-level discursivity within a film.
In the case of horror films, any suggestion of transgressiveness or subversiveness in the horror genre becomes ultimately deprived of its efficacy by the implication that the major aspect it is ‘subverting’ is another film genre. To problematise even further this precariousness which characterises the conceptualisation of genre, a lot of films are generic hybrids. This means that the usual repertoires of elements (mise-en-scène, iconography, settings, characters, etc.) which are used to place a certain film into a specific genre are transgressed in these hybrid forms. When it comes to horror films, a clear-cut definition is extremely hard to achieve, since there are numerous identifiable sub-genres within the larger horror genre definition with their distinctive style and subject matter.[13] The film industry will also try to stretch a film into as many genres as possible [14] or remarket films into a different genre context. Universal’s Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931) is a famous example of a film initially marketed as a ‘weird thriller’ and then as a sci-fi movies in the early 1950s, only to be marketed again as horror in the late 50s. Moreover, what audiences make of these critical and industrial classifications is not a lesser question, since the public have their own ideas about films and the capability to decide whether a film participates of their understanding of a particular genre.
What can be observed in the books dedicated to the study of horror films is a lack of critical consensus around the notion of the horror genre. Hybrids, sub-genres, industrial marketing and audience reception add further complexities to any comprehensive attempt at classification and films which are treated as ‘horror’ in one book go without mention in a volume by another critic. This process of placement, whereby critics position films inside or outside the horror genre boundaries, functions as particularised interventions. It means that critics aggregate a group of films together in order to elaborate a personal critical understanding of horror. And by selecting a body of study, the critic is also helping to shape the concept of horror genre. For example, Carol Clover’s Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (1992) discusses primarily serial-killer and slasher movies, which she approaches from a psychoanalytical and feminist perspective. Taking serial-killers and slasher films as examples of the horror film genre, Clover argues that it is necessary for the last surviving character to be female, since many viewers would reject a film that showed fear on behalf of a male character. Clover coined the expression “final girl”, a horror film trope in which the girl becomes masculinised through “phallic appropriation” (taking up a chainsaw or a knife) during the final confrontation with the killer.
Another important study on the genre, The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart (1990), by Noël Carroll, does not address the bloody-stained violence of slasher movies in its investigation of horror, since there is nothing uncanny or supernatural about this sort of movies which can situate such films in his critical understanding of the horror film genre. Carroll’s work is based on a tradition of analytic philosophy and it is more concerned with questions of aesthetics, cognition and history within horror texts. His main enquiry concerns the emotional responses derived from horror texts and how do texts create this effect. The paradoxes consist of raising questions such as, how can one be afraid of beings which one knows do not exist, and how can one enjoy a narrative intended to instil fear in them.
In Nightwalkers: Gothic Horror Movies, the Modern Era (1995), the critic Bruce Lanier Wright says to have come across studies on horror films which address titles as varied as: “Jaws and Psycho; Chopping Mall, The toolbox Murders and assorted slasher movies; Godzilla, of all things, and Night of the Lepus, a giant-bunny yarn”. Then, the critic concludes that “any definition broad enough to encompass all these titles must be very nearly without meaning”. [15] Ultimately, by highlighting the ‘emptiness’ of the term horror, Wright is pointing to the little critical agreement concerning the nebulous subject-matter of the horror genre.
On that note, there are critics who are even reluctant to employ the designation ‘horror films’ in the kind of study they have developed. Carlos Clarens’s seminal research An Illustrated History of the Horror Film (1967) says the term ‘horror’ in the English language carries connotations of repulse and disgust. According to the author this undertone is not entirely suitable to refer to some of the movies he analysed, some of which would be better described by the French word fantastique, comprising the idea of fantasy, adventure and the visionary. Carlos Clarens traces the origins of the horror films back to the early ‘special effects’ or camera tricks created by Georges Méliès and to the pathos of 1910s-1920s German Expressionism. Clarens is perhaps the first critic to make this connection, suggesting how these early manifestations lead to the arrival and ascension of the horror film in the United States in the 1930s. Still, Clarens keeps the word ‘horror’ in the title of his book as it is the term “sanctioned by usage and the best available in English.”[16]
In A Heritage of Horror, the English Gothic Cinema 1946-1972 (1973), David Pirie states the term ‘horror’, as employed with regard to certain types of films, have inaccurate connotations. Pirie says he only employs the term because “it has come to be understood by both the public and the film industry as a distinct cinematic designation…” Pirie disputes German origins of the “terror” by offering an excellent study of the British contribution to a specific branch of horror brought up to a peak by gothic writers. Pirie’s work detects and analyses the roots of British horror as built on “psychopathological aspects of the English temperament” [17] which prefigures the motifs revived by British cinema in the late 1950s. The film critic draws extensively on the work of Mario Praz, The Romantic Agony (1933), to trace a long-established history of British horror which can already be seen in John Milton, in the eighteenth-century gothic novelists, in Byron, in Stoker’s Dracula, leading all the way to the Hammer productions.
Both of these books are now regarded classic studies on horror films and due to their links with German ‘art-movies’ and Literature, respectively, many contemporary critics consider their approach aged. In spite of that, these books provide important insights which show an understanding of ‘horror’ manifested as an aspect of culture. Underpinning their reluctance to employ the term lays an admirable respect for the ‘voice’ of the films they analyse and a multifaceted conception of the meaning of horror which does not resort to unproblematic explanations, as it is often the case with horror film genre manuals, companions and guides. Although the two accounts are very different from each other in content, the reasoning behind their argument is that the idea of horror as narrative prevails over the notion of horror as genre. These critics orient their work on grounds that ‘horror’ maintains certain patterns (images, structures, style, villainous/victims characters, themes, etc.) which can identify them as a textual body throughout History. Contemporary film theoricist Nick Lacey says that “although not all narratives are generic, all genre films do have narrative, which suggests that narrative is a more fundamental concept”. [18]
Obviously not all critics working with the category of History agree with such perspective. Some studies privilege the economic history of the horror film and therefore prefer to look at time-specific industrial conditions in order to define an understanding of the horror genre. These critics do not recognize a common thread that can bind horror throughout History. In Ghouls, Gimmicks and Gold, Horror Films and the American Movies Business, 1953-1968 (2004), Kevin Heffernan says that when a young person thinks of horror films, the images that come to mind might be Freddy Krueger, Jason or Chucky. On the other hand, for a member of the baby boom generation horror films are associated with Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolf-Man and the Mummy. In order to show how the symbols of horror are transitory, Heffernan restricts the scope of his investigation to what he identifies as particular economic cycles of production, in which both the market forces and the industry production point to a specific meaning of horror. For example, the author claims “there was a major cultural and economic shift in the production and reception of the horror film that began at the time of the 3-D horror film cycle of 1953 and ended with the […] subsequent development of the adult horror film in 1968.” [19] Arguing for the impact technological advances in the film industry and how it provoked immense social changes Heffernan’s statement looks retrospectively on the period. Such position is disputed by William K. Everson who declares that “Universal’s 3-D It Came from Outer Space shows that these new techniques can change the face of the horror film but not its form.” [20] Everson’s essay, called Horror Films, written in 1954, gives no a posteriori classification, construed by historical distance. The text provides a then-and-there opinion of how matters of production and development of new technologies are incapable of modifying either the culture or the essence of the horror film to the extent Heffernan suggests. According to Everson all 3-D did was to gives the horror film a new appearance without altering its essential features.
Also privileging the economic function and the commercial reality of horror films, Peter Hutchings argues that genre cycles are akin to financial cycles. In his book The Horror Film (2004), the critic defends that if a genre suddenly becomes popular, then a large number of similar films are likely to be produced. The definition of the horror genre is a question that permeates Hutchings thesis, which he pursuits by employing arguments of commercial conditions in the historical development of horror films. He advocates the genre’s “changeability and its unpredictability”[21] but he opposes to attempts at retrospective classifications, such as Clarens incorporation of German Expressionism into the horror film genre. The critic defends that efforts to define horror in totalising terms throughout History are always abstract, as they do not correspond to the perceptions of the audience and are also distant from industrial definitions.
Based on such premises, Hutchings argues against those studies which attempt to go beyond a pin-pointed explanation of horror genre. According to the critic, the horror film as it came to be understood has its origins in the United States in the early 1930s. For him, the way the ‘horror film’ came to designate a particular type of film (not only in the United States but in the countries where these films were distributed), is essentially a product of American film industry. In doing so Hutchings denies, for example, the idea that silent German films were also a cinematic expression of horror on the basis of the absence of industrial circumstances in their production. Furthermore, the critic challenges the relationship between English gothic novels and its influence on horror films. Hutchings defends that “establishing the precise nature of the connection between gothic and horror is complicated by the fact that the term ‘gothic’ itself can be just as vague and imprecise as the term ‘horror’.” [22] Instead, he defends that the popularity of American pseudo-horror theatres plays, such as Frankenstein, Dracula and Jekyll and Hyde, along with Universal's marketing campaigns played a much greater role in the success and construction of American 1930s' horror films than eighteenth-century British gothic novels.
What can be seen here are two competing critical positions within a historical dimension to the understanding of the horror genre. The first perspective defines the horror genre stylistically, thematically and by its narrative constructions and disruptions. The idea is that the horror genre has recognisable characteristics, such as themes, settings, characters, moods, iconography and symbols, which point to an organic body of study. Such elements of horror are part of a long-standing horror tradition and they can manifest themselves across different media. According to this point-of-view the narrative patterns which constitute the horror genre are not radically transformed with passing time but recombined in the genre’s process of transformation. On the other hand, in the second perspective, the horror genre and the very definition of ‘horror’ are subject to industrial conditions and liable to historical change. All horror narratives get outdated over time and this has to do with the genre’s inherent necessity to mutate in order to survive. As a result, a theoretical trans-historical merger of the characteristics of the genre becomes impossible given that the meaning of horror is only attainable in the context within it is situated. That is to say, while the second perspective on the horror genre can be thought of as a phenomenon which is ‘horizontal’ in time, the first concept of horror moves ‘vertically’ investigating how the horror genre behaves throughout History. Metaphorically speaking, time-specific enquiries are like photographs while far-reaching horror investigations can be thought of as films.
These critics among many others have illuminated the understanding of horror film genre and of the horror tradition in general. Their intellectual work has contributed to lessen some of the negative disposition which is frequently associated with horror forms (even though this implicates in the already mentioned study of horror in terms of canons and consensus). Still, an economic history of horror uninterested in cultural, thematic and aesthetic aspects seems rather abridged and devoid of a certain explanatory power. Hutchings claims that “neither the industry nor audiences think about the horror genre as either a historical or a theoretical totality; instead they operate on a much smaller scale, interested only in what is relevant to them in the context which their engagement with horror is situated.” [23] What the critic does not explain is the vitality of recurring horror imagery. For example, how exactly do the materials of a horror film become available to film-makers of a certain period? How does the horror genre survive long after the economic cycle is over? And why there are persistent horror images in horror films from different epochs?
The act of favouring of one epoch over another, and hence segmenting the investigation, is widespread among industry-centred approaches. The problem with economic history studies of the horror film starts when the positions become too sectary. To divide the horror film so neatly into periods (or economic cycles) is not representative of the historical processes undergone by the genre. Also, this sort of fragmentation not only fails to answer for the continuum industrial development of these studios but forgets that whilst production is centred in specific locations (California, Hong Kong, etc.), finance, distribution and exhibition operate far more widely.[24] A consistent study on film industry is a very complex undertaking but most works on the subject tend to treat the task rather one-dimensionally. Another problem with economic history approaches is that they are often incapable of sustaining a solid debate about the ‘commercial reality’ of horror films and the ‘influence of market forces’ throughout their accounts. Such critical appreciation is often confined to the introduction, to a specific chapter, or else appears fragmented into mini-comments within paragraphs. Not only the economic/industrial discussion is fleeting but the way in which the argumentation is proposed tends to privilege basic descriptions of the studios’ economic development rather than industrial performance. Lacking in thorough quantitative analysis and deficient in the appropriate methodology which characterises traditional economic studies, the centrality of the debate is lost before too long and the focus becomes a recounting of how the industry operates.
To reduce the history of the horror film exclusively to the capital cravings of the commercial industry seems a rather inadequate model. However, this is not to say the investigation of industrial aspects is not valid. In order to make a pertinent examination, the already consecrated protocols and methodology employed in the field of Economics to access industrial performance should be duly observed.[25] Ideally there should not be a conflict between the two forms of historical approach considered. As much as time-specific studies may provide a sharper picture of a particular period, to shift the appreciation from deep-rooted cultural traditions which precede, run parallel and evolve along with cinema to plain industrial matters seem to be a discursive loss.
For the most part both positions are (or should be) complementary. Although economic factors and technological progress play a significant part in the production of films, it should not be forgotten that horror patterns from the past still linger in the present. Historical continuity is the key to explain how horror images, structures, characters and themes herald film-making and survive long after an economic cycle is over. Any proposed ‘rupture’ in the historical development of the horror film is arbitrary. In a broader sense, Horror is a cultural response which encompasses a network of relationships with History and with the whole of the culture in which it is produced. A study about horror films provides an opportunity to engage with cultural forms which can be observed throughout the times and the chance to explore the power of enduring images which belong to the human experience. The narrower the disciplinary frames used in the debate of the horror film genre, the further away one is moving from the possibility of understanding the broader meaning of Horror.
[1] Here are a few examples of recent publications: Alain Silver and James Ursini (eds). Horror Film Reader. New York: Limelight, 2000; Ken Gelder. The Horror Reader. London London Westport , CT
[2] Since the advent of cinema, images of sex and violence in horror texts were strongly censored and even banned from the public eye by means of questionably democratic processes of control. De Grazia and Newman discuss the history of the censorship of films in the U.S.A describing legal battles over the banning of horror films from 1908 to the present day. See: Edward De Grazia and Roger K. Newman. Banned Films: Movie Censorship in the United States Britain
[3] Mark Jancovich. Review. Screen, Oxford Journal, Volume 48, number 2, Summer 2007(pp. 261-266).
[4] Gill Branson. “Why Theory?”. IN: C. Gledhill and L. Williams. Reinventing Film Studies. London: Arnold, 2004. (18-33)
[5] Noël Carroll. “Prospects for Film Theory: a personal assessment”. IN: D. Bordwell and N. Carroll. Post-Theory: reconstructing Film Studies. Madison : University of Wisconsin
[6] The ‘limitations’ of auteurism and its praise of ‘great men’ (during Hollywood’s Golden Age women rarely directed movies) was attacked by critic Pauline Kael in the essay “Circles and Squares” (1963). A few years later, Roland Barthes’ essay “Death of the Author” (1967) offered a new perspective on the author’s identity. By then auteurism would not coalesce with the ideals of May ’68.
[7] The most notable origins of the Auteur theory can be found in André Bazin’s pivotal work in Cahiers du cinéma which made way to François Truffaunt’s seminal essay “Une certaine tendence du cinéma français” (numéro 31, 1954) in which the expression ‘politique des auteurs’ appeared for the first time. Truffaunt’s critical policy was later reinterpreted/reformulated as a theory by Andrew Sarris. See: Andrew Sarris. “Notes on the auteur theory in 1962”. IN: G. Mast and M. Cohen (eds.). Film Theory and Criticisms: Introductory Readings. 2nd edn, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.
[8] Andrew Tudor. Theories of Film. London: Secker and Warburg/British Film Institute, 1974.
[9] Tzvetzan Todorov. The Origins of Genres. New Literary History, 8(1), Autumn, 1976.
[10] Rick Altman. Film/Genre. London: BFI, 1999; Steven Neale. Genre and Hollywood. London, Routledge, 2000.
[11] Barbara Klinger. “‘Local’ Genres: the Hollywood adult film in the 1950s.” IN: J. Bratton, J. Cook and C. Gledhill (eds.). Melodrama: stage, picture, screen. London: British Film Institute 1994 (pp. 134-46). Richard Maltby. “Genre.” IN: R. Maltby. Hollywood Cinema: an introduction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1995 (pp. 107-43).
[12] Christine Gledhill. “Rethinking Genre”. IN: C. Gledhill and L. Williams. Reinventing Film Studies. London: Arnold, 2004. (221-243)
[13] For example, not all horror films deal with the time-honoured theme of the supernatural. Splatter films or gore films are a specific subgenre within the broad horror film category which deliberately display an interest in the vulnerability of the human body and the theatricality of its mutilation. When the graphic violence is overtly excessive (as much as to become a comedic device) such films are dubbed splatstick, a portmanteau of “splatter” and “slapstick”. If the film represents a combination of strong sexual imagery associated with graphic violence it can be labelled as a torture porn or gorno film, a portmanteau of “gore” and “porno”. See: John McCarty. Splatter Movies: Breaking the Last Taboo of the Screen. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984.
[14] Gladiator (Ridley Scott, 2000), for example, uses three different types of trailers to stretch the film into as many genres as possible. One of the trailers focuses on the love innuendo between Russell Crowe and Connie Nielsen, highlighting the film’s romantic appeal. Another concentrates on the gladiators’ wrestles, suggesting an action-packed movie. And by parading images of ancient statues, historical locations (such as the Coliseum) and characters (such as the emperor Marcus Aurelius), the third trailer focus on aspects of the Roman Empire history in order to capture the viewer who is interest in watching a film with a ‘cultural content’. This marketing fluidity is used by the industry as a way of not restricting the film to a single genre and, ultimately, broadening its audience.
[15] Bruce L. Wright. Nightwalkers: Gothic Horror Movies, the modern era. Texas: Taylor, 1995 (p. 1)
[16] Carlos Clarens. An Illustrated History of the Horror Film. London: Panther, 1967 (p.13).
[17] David Pirie. A Heritage of Horror, the English Gothic Cinema 1946-1972. London: I.B. Tauris, 1973 (p.8 and p.11, respectively). More recently Pirie revised some aspects of his judgement in a new edition called, fittingly: A New Heritage of Horror, the English Gothic Cinema (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008).
[18] Nick Lacey. Introduction to Film. Basingstroke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005 (p.46).
[19] Kevin Heffernan. Ghouls, Gimmicks and Gold, Horror Films and the American Movies Business, 1953-1968. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004 (p.7).
[20] William K. Everson. “Horror Films”. IN: Alain Silver and James Ursini (eds.). Horror Film Reader. New York: Limelight, 2000 (p.36).
[21] Peter Hutchings. The Horror Film. Harlow: Pearson/Longman, 2004 (p.217).
[22] Peter Hutchings, The Horror Film, p.10.
[23] Peter Hutchings, The Horror Film, p.7
[24] Gomery points to misconceptions among scholars in understanding Hollywood film industry: “As an industry, Hollywood has never been as important as we think it is. Yes, famous stars come from its studios, and we spend hours upon hours watching its visual narratives. Yet Hollywood has always been a small, albeit efficient set of enterprises. The belief it is a major industry is a product of its own hype.” (p.413). According to him, unless there are very clear criteria, scholars should not overestimate an industrial period over the other, suggesting an unproblematic discontinuation in the production. Still according to the critic, to focus attention on theatrical box-office is also an incomplete method since it represents mere twenty percent of the industry revenue. Gomery observes that Hollywood operates several industries, such as, television, music, radio, and many other ancillary products. Therefore to restrict the discussion by pretending Hollywood studios deal mainly with films is a flawed practice. Douglas Gomery. “Toward a New Media Economics”. IN: D. Bordwell and N. Carroll (eds.). Post-Theory: reconstructing film studies. Madison: University of Winsconsin Press, 1996 (pp.407-418).
[25] Schaefer’s study of early exploitation films in the United States is a good example of a well-balanced historical and industrial account but, however, it is specifically unrelated to horror film studies. See: Eric Schaefer. ‘Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!’ A History of Exploitation Film 1919-1959. Durham and London: Duke University Press 1999.
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