Why Sarli-Bo Are So Important?

Chapter 1:

Why Sarli-Bo are so important?

At first I was grappling with their work as a form of something that was valueable in and of itself because it was never studied (2009) but I couldn’t articulate why. I think now I can. I now argue that there are many reasons why their work is important:

1. because in general their work fits within the confines of censorship in Argentina and you can look at this history through the caleidoscope of their work – in this case it can be argued that their work shows a negotiation and frustration with the developing censorship apparatus that was taking place.
2. Furthermore it’s a study of the history of sexuality in argentina - -challenged accepted notions of sexuality and begun to take a shape that was creating their own niche in argentine society
3. Furthermore this extended beyond the borders of argentina – seen as a beginning to a process that was begun in the 1960s, a process of cooperation in film development between nations and their work- pioneer in this regard and we can use it to see how these negoitiations between nations were shaping out- especially their role in reaching out to more marginal film cultures –ie the case of Paraguay
4. Now it’s common to talk about the Hispanic market in the US but Sarli-Bo’s work really crutial during the 1960s as a developing that audience in places like New York and how because of restraints in argentina their work is important in places like new york where they are showing more than was allowed in argentina and breaking taboos even in new york (la Leona).

My goals is to recreate this history and to allow it to speak for itself to show that popular culture in itself is worthy cause for academic study. But not because for the sole reason of being inclusive but also for the importance of how it can shape how a society grapples with an issue such as sexuality and what is permissible and what isn’t .
It’s very easy to watch these films today and to deconstruct them as sexist, poorly made, prejudiced against homosexuality etc. But the problem with that is that this is not the whole story after they were chopped in Argentina and abroad, how while there were many versions we are still only left with very different versions how can we make these judgements. Their work raises questions of

1. authentic
2. Authorial control
3. Importance of the context – then and now

Questions that we as critics take for granted. Questions that may not come up under normal circumstances and with general artistic dircumstances.

What is popular culture?

Why study popular culture?

John Fiske:

How it differentiates from mass culture: the cultural products put out by an industrialized, capitalist society – and popular culture – the way people use abuse and subvert these products to create their own meanings and messages—

An interesting approach that avoids the problems of the culture industry as Adorno and Horkenheirmer saw it. But ignores the possibility of having popular culture from a non industrial, marginal place like Latin America and the actual popularity of it at the time in many places around the world. Popular culture can take on different meaningful meanings for different

people.

Feel like we need to go beyond the legitimizing of the study of popular culture. Already entrenthched. So it’s not about creating a space for Bo and Sarli. That space is already created. They have already entered the dialogue in academia. QUESTION OF TASTE AND DISTINCTION. (Bordieu)

If we think about hall it’s about the process that tells us about what happens in society. USE HALL. USE THE OTHER REASONS LINKED TO THE PROCESS THAT THIS CAN GIVE US INSIGHT INTO. I agree with this idea but I feel like it’s not enough. It doesn’t push us far enough. NOT JUST REFLECTIVE OF SOCIAL ORDER BUT A PRODUCTION OF MEANING (GEERTZ) –habermas –use of public sphere as a normative standard may contribute to or impede rational and cticial participation in the political world

YET THIS IS STILL LIMITING. USE TWO FILMS CARNE (POPULAR AESTHETICS AND POPULAR NATIONAL CULTURE- AT TIME WHEN THAT WAS NOT THE STANDARD – CHALLENGES IN A WAY THE )- AND ULTIMO AMOR (MOST COMPLICIT WITH THE REGIME) TO ARGUE THAT WE CAN SEE THESE EXAMPLES AS RESISTANCE AND COMPLICIT IN A MORE TRADITIONAL WAY OF STUDYING POPULAR CULTURE BUT THEY ARE NOT ENOUGH. NOT ENOUGH TO LOOK AT THE TEXTS BY THEMSELVES. USE THESE EXAMPLES TO LOOK AT THE REAL OF HISTORY BUT THIS IS NOT ENOUGH. THE EXAMPLE OF BO AND SARLI ARE AN EXAMPLE THAT LEAVES THIS RESIDUO – RESIDUAL UNSETTLING LEFT OVER. THEY WERE NEITHER PERONISTAS NOR PART OF THE DICTATORSHIP—LEAVES US WITH THIS DISTANCE –ESPECIALLY NOW – ROLE THAT HUMOR HAS IN THEIR FILMS.

Fiske argues that the more popular a text the more (decoded by audiences in variety of ways Hall) multivocality of pysemy of texts = contradict the need for censorship

Sex and power motivatig forces affecting ways in which culture can be made and used

Hegemony-

p.49

John Storey, What is Popular Culture?

-always defined implicitly or explicitly in contrast to other categories like folk, mass, dominant, culture…

-popular culture is in effect “an empty conceptual category, one which can be filled in a wide variety of often conflicting ways depending on the context and use”

-industrialization and urbanization caused three things to happen: 1. Shift of relationship based on mutual obligation to one based solely on cash

-separation of classes

-fear that revolution would come to country encouraged governments to enact repressive measures

-allowed for the construction of a cultural space outside the controlling influence of dominant classes

Stuart Hall Notes on Deconstructing the Popular – chapter 42 in Cultural Theory and pooular culture: a reader by john storey –wrote it in 1981

-transition from agrarian capitalism to industrial capitalism continous struggle over culture of working people, laboring classes and poor- starting point for the basis for and transformations of popular culture

-we are looking at cultural change –some forms are marginalized

-transformations are at the heart of popular culture

-popular culture is ground on which transformations are worked (popular traditions of resistance to these transformations)

-displacement and superimposition: how the liberal middle class press of the mid nineteenth century was constructed on the back of the active destruction and marginalization of the indigenous radical and working class press what happens beginning of the twentieth century there is an active, mass insertion of a developed and mature working class audience into a new kind of popular commercial press

=CAN WE SAY CLASSIC COMMERCIAL AND MIDDLE CLASS CINEMA OF 1940S AND 1950S WAS CONSTRUCTED UPON THE ACTIVE DESTRUCTION AND MARGINALIZATION OF RADICAL AND POPULAR WORKING CLASS CINEMA OF THE 1930S (FERREYRA) BUT THIS LEAD TO INDEPENDENT COMMERCIAL AND POPULAR CINEMA OF BO

-cultural consecuence – new forms of technology and labour processes and a new distribution of the new cultural mass markets

-LIKE BO

-like the study of labour history and its institutions

-have to understand the domuninat cultural production in order to understand Bo

“”There is a continuous and necessarily uneven and unequal struggle, by the dominant culture, constantly to disorganie and reorganize popular culture; to enclose and confine its definitions and forms within a more inclusive range of dominant forms. There are points of resistance; there are also moments of supersession.This is the dialectic of cultural struggle.”

-they play up on contradictions and are not wholly corrupt or authentic

-not about the list of what is popular culture but about the “forces and relations which disdain the distinction, the difference” – the categories remain though the inventory changes

-We are looking at this as an example in the context because these context is what makes it such- questions of distinction and disdain iln this context and how the institutions and institutional processes were required to sustain these categories: how this is trickles down to different actors in the field

-what is valued and what is valueless

ROLE OF TRADITION –ELEMENTS OF TRADITION ARE REARRANGED LIKE IN CARNE- SEEK TO DETACH A CULTURAL FORM FROM ITS IMPLANTATION IN ONE TRADITION AND GIVE IT A NEW CULTURAL RESONANCE OR ACCENT- TRADITION AS A BATTLEFIELD

-popular forces vs the power block this is not a case of class vs class but a class vs a variety of classes

-settles for third defintion: forms and activities which have their roots in the social and material conditions of particular classes which have been embodied in particular popular traditions and practices –continuing tension with dominant culture- constantly changing field- looks at the process of relations of dominance and subordination – culture and question of hegemony

-what matters is the state of play in cultural relations

I AM NOT HERE TO ARGUE THE RADICAL NATURE OF BO SARLI OR HOW PROGRESSIVE THEIR TEXTS WERE BUT TO SHOW THE PROCESSES AT WORK IN THEIR WORK AND HOW THESE WORKED TO DESTABILIZE THE DOMINANT CULTURE DURING THE TIME – NOW THEIR WORK CAN BE SEEN AS FUNNY AND OUTDATED WITH ITS FASHION OR SEXY TEMPTATIONS BUT ITS NOT JUST ABOUT THE WORK ITSELF THAT COMES TO US BUT ABOUT THE PROCESSES BEHIND IT THAT MATTERS

“To put it bluntly and in an oversimplified form – what counts is the class struggle in and over culture”

-cultural struggle takes many forms: incorporation, distrtion, resistance, negotiation, recuperation

-transformation is key – popular culture is neither the popular traditions of resistance to these processes or forms which are superimposed on or over them: double movement of containment and resistance, which is always inevitably inside it

-problem of periodization 1880s and 1920s period of structural change- social imperialist crisis

-FORMS OF PPOULAR recreation are saturated by popular imperialism –we could even make the case of this in the film industry in argentina in the classic period until the independents

-study of popular culture keeps shifting between two poles: pure autonomy and total incapsulation

-people are not dupes

-but there is a continuous and uneven and unequal struggle to disorganize and reorganize popular culture to enclose and confine its definitions

-there are points of resistence and moments of supersession and this is the dialectic of cultural struggle

-he settles for a third definition = look in any particular period at those forms and activities which have their roots in the social and material conditions of particular classes which have been embodied in popular traditions and practices

-insists what is important is continuing tension to dominant culture

-looks at process of why which these relations of dominance and suordination are articulated

-treats them as process

-THINK ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASS AND POPULAR

“Posthegemonia o mas alla del princip del placer” Alberto Moreiras

Naci pop:

5 peso bill with Sarli’s picture on it

Banco Central de la republica Nac&pop

Coca Sarli – the important national figure on the noney

-gives you a 5 peso discount

-popular chain for fast food

-ad says 100% carne y con piel

-playing out carne film

- Use carne to talk about the popular culture

IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT BO REPRESENTS A SHIFT IN FILMMAKING IN ARGENTINA. A TIME WHEN INDEPENDENT PRODUCERS WERE BREAKING OUT AND DOING SOMETHING OUTSIDE THE STUDIO SYSTEM THAT DOMINATED THE MARKET IN THE CLASSIC PERIOD. WE SEE THIS RISE OF A DIFFERENT KIND OF FILMMAKING PROJECT AND OBJECTIVE. THAT WILL AIM TO BE BOTH POPULAR AND INTERNATIONAL.

ROLE OF THE POLICE TO OVERSEE CULTURE

In this paper I compare two films from directors Emilio Vieyra and Armando Bo, both shot before 1969 when censorship was officially sanctioned and both using sex to sell an Argentine product that in one case exalted the national and in the other annulled it. I argue that while the state was implementing laws and putting in place a clear systematic apparatus to help with the export and regulation of “certain” Argentine films, it was pioneering directors such as Bo and to a lesser degree Vieyra, who would ultimately be at the forefront of this exportation. Bo and Vieyra conquered foreign markets with the help of foreign-based producers and distributors such as Orestes Trucco and Columbia Pictures International. While using different strategies to do so they both managed to reach overseas audiences, in particular the vast and growing market of Hispanics in the US, by selling a product that was not acceptable to the Argentine state, these very same films were heavily censored and not considered representative of the “estilo nacional.” As a matter of fact, I suggest that it was this trend of Argentine cinema that was motivating the law, which was trying to stifle any morally substandard production. If we take a look at two of the films made before 1969, Carne (1968) and La venganza del sexo (1967) then we can see just how these films engaged with the State’s policies for exporting such products. Bo will embrace the national excessively, thereby parodying the State’s misguided effort for transnationalization. And Vierya will obliterate any aspect of the national in his own quest to become truly transnational, beyond the nation. These two very different strategies, Bo’s playing with the “legitimate” and Vieyra’s embrace of the “false,” ironically have one common goal, and the irony is that this goal is in line with the State’s philosophy: to increase the consumption of Argentine films.

The connection between the two directors is solidified through distributor and producer Orestes Trucco of Argentine Film Enterprises based in New York, whose ambition was to supply Argentine films to the over 40 Spanish language theatres in Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan, which until that point was purely dominated by Mexican fare. When Trucco met Bo in the early 1960s he picked up the distribution rights to three of his films (India, Favela, and La burrerita de Ypacaraí). Trucco also launched Libertad Leblanc’s features and eventually Emilio Vieyra’s erotic productions.

Carne begins a different phase in the work of Bo and Sarli. A clear affiliation with major distributor Colombia Pictures International characterized by critics as inaugurating the most extreme phase of their career (See Sergio Wolf). It is the story of two lovers, Delicia (Isabel Sarli) and Antonio (Victor Bo), working in a meat packing plant whose relationship is interrupted by Delicia’s constant rapes by “el Macho” and his friends. The film exposes the double macho standard of Argentina: men were to indulge in sex but women were expected to be monogamous and even virgins. In the end, Antonio avenges Delicia’s violations by punishing el Macho and friends. He accepts Delicia despite the many rapes she has experienced because these were not her fault and because he truly loves her. This seemingly Catholic tale of redemption actually has many elements that both fit nicely and clash with the restrictions that were to come in 1969. However, from the very title, Carne, there is a clear reference to Argentina’s two greatest exports: beef and Sarli as a star.

Cultural identifiers such as the language and accent used, the context of the meat industry, the tango songs, and the mate all together characterize the film as purely “Argentine.” Furthermore, in the final half of the film, when Sarli is repeatedly raped by different men, she is wearing a light blue skirt, a matching sweater, and a white scarf tied around her neck. This image equates Sarli with the nation, as she wears its national colors at the worst moment in the film until its conclusion, when she is kidnapped and kept locked in the back of a refrigerated truck, used to carry meat, in this case of the film the meat is Sarli. Sarli/Delicia as the object of desire in the diegesis is likened to the meat that is desired, eaten, or consumed by the male workers in the plant, who like the voyeurs watching the film are Argentines and foreigners. Yet for the censors Sarli’s body is the site of the intersection between the nation and the excess of the foreign. It is this site that both excites and offends. Carne was censored in 1968, when it premiered at the Hindu cinema (24-10-68) in Buenos Aires. Certain scenes were cut, ones that were too “lascivious.” It was not until 1979, during a retrospective, that Carne was seen in Argentina in its uncensored complete form.

The film references England’s accusation that Argentine meat is contaminated with hoof and mouth disease. That is that its most important exportable product, beef, is not consumable by foreigners because it is diseased. Yet the film argues that this is a fallacy, both beef and Sarli, are indeed consumable and delicious or “una delicia” as the main character’s name indicates.

While Carne clearly references the nation and the consumption of national beef/Sarli, La venganza del sexo is a more complex tale because of its own production history. The international career of Vieyra, really begins after meeting producer Orestes Trucco in the early 1960s as both establish the production company Artistas Asociados Argentinos. Through this company Vieyra’s early attempts at exploitation: Testigo para un crimen (1963), Maria M (1964) are fraught with frustration as he struggles to release them nationally. For instance, Maria M is the story of a prostitute who wants to find God, and in doing so, changes her life. However, it was the ending that disturbed the censors. As María enters a church to thank God for her fortunes after having met the man of her dreams, she discovers that this same man is the priest at the church. In a panic she exits the church and is struck by a car. This ending was entirely eliminated by the censors, and thus left the film without a clear conclusion, thereby explaining its failure at the box office, according to the director. His next film Extraña invasion (1965) would not even be released in Argentina until 1974. The four films that follow were clearly made for the foreign market in 1966 and 1967: Placer sangriento, La venganza del sexo, La bestia desnuda, and Sangre de virgenes. As a matter of fact, only Placer sangriento was released in Buenos Aires immediately after it was made. Both Vieyra and Gloria Prat, its star, were arrested on the grounds that they shot extra nudes for the foreign release. The other three films were not even released in Argentina until Pel-Mex (who had established an office in Argentina through their connection with SIFA) bought their rights after the closure in 1968 of Artistas Associados Argentinos. La venganza del sexo, made in less than two weeks in 1966, was not even shown in Argentina until 1971. It opened in Hispanic theatres in 1967 and in 1969 Jerry Intrator picked up its rights in the US, making edits that would lengthen the picture by 17 ½ minutes and releasing it for the exploitation market as The Curious Dr. Humpp. The word curious, meaning sex, is a clear reference to highly controversial banning of I am Curious (Yellow) (Vilgot Sjoman), the Swedish film, which caused a sensation at the Box office when it was finally released in the US. Vieyra’s La venganza was advertised as “the most curious picture of them all.” The problem is that this Intrator edited US version, restored by Frank Henenlotter, is the only one found today.