Decorreu no passado dia 22 a entrega de prémios da Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores (SPA). Se exceptuarmos a presença de duas figuras ligadas à banda desenhada, João Paulo Cotrim (que até subiu ao palco e discursou - cf. acima) e António Jorge Gonçalves (já lá vou...), a banda desenhada, vejam só (também já lá vou...), brilhou pela ausência nestes Oscarzinhos portugas.
Começando pelo último "já lá vou...": a determinada altura a apresentadora e o apresentador da soirée, Pedro Lamares e Mafalda Arnauth respectivamente, enveredaram por uma rábula em que enumeraram as artes segundo Canudo, Beylie e outros... Depois de chegarem à oitava arte Mafalda Arnauth exclamou, e passo a citar:
E vejam só, a banda desenhada como nona!
E vejam só, uma fadista a fingir que é apresentadora!
Mas deixemos a ignorância e a estupidez em paz. Até porque o primeiro "já lá vou..." é um pouco mais grave:
Não é de esperar que a SPA ligue peva à banda desenhada (se pouco liga à música!, já lá vou...), como é mais do que evidente. Por aí não esperava absolutamente nada, mas o que foram fazer João Paulo Cotrim e António Jorge Gonçalves a um sítio daqueles? João Paulo Cotrim subiu ao palco para receber o prémio Melhor Livro Infanto-Juvenil. António Jorge Gonçalves era um dos nomeados na categoria... Melhor Livro Infanto-Juvenil.
Será que alguma fada (e perdoe-se-me a referência infanto-juvenil) rogou uma praga ao pessoal da banda desenhada? Algo do género: todos vocês estão condenados, para todo o sempre, a trabalhar para crianças! Até parece...
Quanto à música: que inanidade! Houve um prémio para Álvaro Cassuto e foi só. Onde estão as categorias: melhor solista, melhor compositor, melhor orquestra, melhor trabalho em prol do património? Até parece que a música é só aquilo que se viu (e, infelizmente, ouviu)... Se era para premiar inanidades com sucesso comercial, como faz a Amadora, prefiro que nem se fale de banda desenhada; neste caso, e se compararmos com o que se passou nas artes plásticas ou no teatro, era preferível que nem falassem de música.
A few posts ago I mentioned Narrative Art and Jochen Gerz. Today I want to show you what I meant.
Jochen Gerz, 1974.
(My translation):
The man, a foreigner by birth, spent most of his life in this street. From his attic to his working place the distance was a few meters only. What kept him here? It was the vista in front of them when they leaved the house: an image in connection with other images, like this writing in connection with other writings.
Jochen Gerz, 1976.
Until 1974 and 1976 no comic in the restrict field had such complex and poetic word / image relationships. I doubt that many since then do. Needless to say that I would love to see a book full of these. Unfortunately, as most of my dream books, this one will never happen.
José Tolentino Mendonça resolveu escrever um panegírico fúnebre a Umberto Eco na sua crónica "Que Coisa São As Núvens" da revista E do jornal Expresso de 12 de Março. Acho muito bem! Eis a blurb:
Falava com o mesmo à vontade de Montaigne e de James Bond, de Platão e de Rita Pavone, de Guilherme D'Ockam e do herói de banda desenhada Charles Brown
Umberto Eco falava disso tudo? Falava... em contextos totalmente diferentes. E não é preciso ser um douto exegeta para perceber as dicotomias com que Tolentino nos presenteia.
Mas não é isso que aqui me tráz. A bem dizer este breve texto foi motivado por duas singelas letrinhas. O "e" seguido do "s" no nome "Charles" acima (e diga-se, en passant, porque carga de água é que o tal Brown tem obrigatoriamente de ser um "herói" em vez de ser uma personagem?).
Quanta ignorância, desprezo ou simples indiferença podem duas letrinhas conter?
E, depois, admiram-se que, ao fim de vinte e cinco anos, esteja farto de ver que continua a reinar a piroseira no meio da banda desenhada e o desprezo fora dele, de não ver a besta mexer um milímetro sequer. O contrário é que seria de admirar, francamente...
Another reference point to The Crib died tonight: Umberto Eco, the author of Apocalittici e Integrati(apocalyptic and integrated intellectuals; Apocalypse Postponed is not a translation of Apocalittici e Integrati, it's a reprint of various essays about mass culture previously published in a variety of sources).
The title of Apocalittici e Integrati refers to two possible points of view about mass culture: those who see it as a sign of decadence and those who have no problems with it. Eco said that the title was the publisher's invention to boost sales with a hint of polemic. Looking at the Table of Contents such polemic is nowhere to be found, really... If I remember correctly the book contains semiotic analysis of Peanuts, Steve Canyon, Li'l Abner, but what I found really fascinating was the chapter "La sttrutura del cativo gusto" (the structure of bad taste) in which Eco defines kitsch as the "prefabricazione e imposizione dell'effetto" ("the pre-fabrication and imposition of an effect," translation by Anna Cancogni in The Open Work, 1989, 182). Indeed, when a comic uses manichean stereotypes arranged in what I could call the revenge swirl, a formula that, from Batman to Tarantino gave millions to the Lords of Kitsch, said comic is manipulative and in bad taste.
Thanks for everything, professor Eco!
Umberto Eco, Apocalittici e Integrati, Bompiani, 1964.
As promissed, in a comment to my last post, I'm quoting Dwight Maccdonald (Against the American Grain, Vintage, 1962, 235, 236):
The difference between our positions, of course, is that Mr. [Raymond] Williams [in Culture and Society, 1780-1950] blames it all on the cheapjacks and exploiters, while I see it as a reciprocal process, in which the ignorance and vulgarity of the mass public meshes in an endless cat's cradle with the same qualities - plus rapacity - in the Lords of Kitsch. The cheapjacks do indeed sell adulterated cultural goods, but the awkward question shall we say challenge?) is why the masses prefer adulteration to the real thing, why the vast majority of the British people read News of the World instead of the Observer and go to see Carry On, Nurse! instead of L'Avventura. Mr. Williams says it is because they are ill educated and socially disadvantaged. This is part of the answer but far from the whole. The difficulty is that most people, of whatever education or social position, don't care very much about culture. This is not a class matter and is not unique to our age. Some Renaissance nobles patronized the arts but most of them were more interested in hunting and fighting. Very few of my classmates in Yale '28, a notably un-disadvantaged social group, spent more time than they were forced to in that institution's excellent library - a fifth would be a generous, a tenth a realistic estimate. If between 80 and 90 per cent of the population just don't care about such matters, then standards can be maintained only by thinking in terms of two cultures, a diluted, adulterated one for the majority, rich or poor, and the real thing for the minority that wants it.
These are empirical impressions by Dwight Macdonald, but let's see what Pierre Bourdieu has to say (in Distinction, A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Harvard University Press, 2; Translation by Richard Nice):
The definition of cultural nobility is the stake in a struggle which has gone on unceasingly, from the seventeenth century to the present day, between groups differing in their ideas of culture and of the legitimate relation to culture and to works of art, and therefore differing in the conditions of acquisition of which these dispositions are the product. Even in the classroom, the dominant definition of the legitimate way of appropriating culture and art favors those who have had early access to legitimate culture, in a cultured household, outside of scholastic disciplines.
What Dwight Macdonald seems to forget is that a scholastic education is very important to those who don't live in a cultured household, not to those who come from such a background. This difference (implying an intellectual and an anti-intellectual approach to art) divides the dominant class in two (176):
Through the mediation of the means of appropriation available to
them, exclusively or principally cultural on the one hand, mainly economic
on the other, and the different forms of relation to works of art
which result from them, the different fractions of the dominant class are
oriented towards cultural practices so different in their style and object
and sometimes so antagonistic (those of 'artists' and 'bourgeois' that it
is easy to forget that they are variants of the same fundamental relationship
to necessity and to those who remain subject to it, and that each
pursues the exclusive appropriation of legitimate cultural goods and the
associated symbolic profits. Whereas the dominant fractions of the dominant
class (the 'bourgeoisie') demand of art a high degree of denial of
the social world and incline towards a hedonistic aesthetic of ease and facility,
symbolized by boulevard theatre or Impressionist painting, the
dominated fractions (the 'intellectuals' and 'artists') have affinities with
the ascetic aspect of aesthetics and are inclined to support all artistic revolutions
conducted in the name of purity and purification, refusal of ostentation
and the bourgeois taste for ornament; and the dispositions
towards the social world which they owe to their status as poor relations
incline them to welcome a pessimistic representation of the social world.
As you can see these are complex matters and I don't want to explore them any further. If it took Pierre Bourdieu 668 pages to explore the subject I'm not going to do the same in a measly blog post. Bourdieu above talks about the dominant fraction of the dominant class (the bourgeoisie) and the dominated fraction of the dominant class (the 'intellectuals' and 'artists'). If he's right, and, to be honest, I'm not completely sure (he seems to be describing aristocratic, not bourgeois taste), I would say that good taste lies in the hands of the latter, not the former (I wouldn't say that boulevard theatre is a great example of good taste, exactly).
On the other hand Distinction was published 35 years ago which means that things have changed a bit. Bourdieu describes Modernist aesthetics ("purity and purification, refusal of ostentation and the bourgeois taste for ornament") which, I would say, is out, but he also described what, in my opinion, but I may be wrong because I don't follow these matters closely, is perfectly up to date: "the dispositions towards the social world which they owe to their status as poor relations incline them to welcome a pessimistic representation of the social world." In other words: high art today tends to be highly politicized and, to be honest, that's the difference between the anti-aesthetic stance of Marcel Duchamp and the aestheticization and social critique of today's readymade as we can hear in Nicole Wermers' explanations below (that's, by the way, why Conceptual Art is not, and can never be, part of the PPP).
