magical realism
Carolyn Faber
Regarding films that could be considered a part of the "magical realism"
category...
There is another film by Jodorowsky(don't know if I got that name right)
that is much better than Sante Sangre. "El Topo" is amazing, far and above
Sante Sangre in all respects and probably a very definitive example of
magical realism. Of course, it is probably unavailable in the U.S. BUT
it is worth tracking down if possible.
If you are going to show a Tarkovsky film I would enthusiastically
reccommend "Stalker" before "Solaris". In every respect it is a much stronger
film and the writing in particular is superior to "Solaris."
Students may get sleepy during these films but it is possible to present
and discuss them provocatively.
Good luck.
C.F.
mud...@mcs.com
Carolyn Faber
Would it be possible for someone to provide a more specific definition of
magical realism? Some of the suggestions for films seem way off to me but
then maybe I'm just not understnading it myself. And I think it's also
because people aren't saying WHY they think those films work. The original
posting made it clear that the genre was vague and hard to define but maybe a
quote from that Jameson article would help. Or, let me know where to find it.
Thanks,
C.F.
Chris Stolz
in the name. Latin-American writers such as Marquez and Fuentes
or Asturias or Allende have an acute, accurate, detailed and
highly sensitive factual historical memory. History, for Latin
American writers, is something lived in not merely an object of
representation. This has to do with the fact that their
countries have not yet crystallised into fully stable and
workable political forms, and because the forces of change
(capitalism, American secularism, aetheism, non-Catholic
Christianity, mass culture etc.) interact with pre-Reformational
structures such as the Church and almost feudal types of sociial
organization. History is alive, well and very much a part of the
Latin-American consciousness. So the works of these writers
reflects history in a detailed and accurate way.
The flip side of this is the magic business, which
coexists peacable with representationas of history. Latin
American writers often do not distinguish (in their writing)
between history/empirical reality and "magic," for this
distinction is one born of the Reformation and a science-based
culture, which must separate the languages of realism and fantasy
in order to conduct its affairs. The key thing to remember is
that magic reaism does NOT subject either history or magic merely
to the narrator's whims-- that genre derives its effect, like the
work of Kafka does, from its straightforward tone, implying that
realism and fantasy are complementary ways of examining the
world and that neither is more adequate than the other. Magic realism,
if you will, is the product of the extreme and fantastic
interpenetration of cultures that is Latin and South America--
look closely, and you will see that the heady mixture of
indigenous customs and religious systems and modern, westernised
technology and atomistic ideas about the individual are really
quite disconcertingly distinct, yet coexistent. As Marquez has
often noted in interviews, the problem of writing about Latin
America is that it really is a lot more magical than real in the
Westerner's sense of things. (I lived in Guatemala for a year,
and it about tripled my appreciation for these writers' stylistic
maneuvers).
If you find these ideas vaguely agreeable, check out the
Introduction to Paul Coates' _The Realist Fantasy_. The Jameson
article is in Critical Inquiry in 1985, I believe.