{"id":68820,"date":"2012-10-20T12:20:15","date_gmt":"2012-10-20T15:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=68820"},"modified":"2017-03-03T16:57:03","modified_gmt":"2017-03-03T19:57:03","slug":"an-artistic-tradition-borne-of-tensions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/an-artistic-tradition-borne-of-tensions\/","title":{"rendered":"An artistic tradition borne of tensions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"DANIEL BUENO<\/span>In \u201cThe Lost Halo\u201d from his collection Paris Spleen: little poems in prose, <\/em>Baudelaire tells of a poet who, hastily skipping through a muddy street, allows his halo to drop from his head into the mire. But rather than retrieving the aureole, he confesses his relief to a passerby: \u201cNow I can stroll about incognito, do mean things, launch into debauches, like ordinary mortals. So here I am, just like you, as you see.\u201d So he who \u201csips the quintessence\u201d and \u201cdrinks the ambrosia\u201d now realizes that he must willingly leave his aura in the \u201cdirt\u201d in order to live the new times. As writes University of S\u00e3o Paulo\u00a0 (USP) sociologist Sergio Miceli in an article published in Pesquisa FAPESP<\/em>, \u201cIn 19th century Brazil, we already have the beginnings of a dialogue \u2013 brought about by a burgeoning press – between \u2018high\u2019 and \u2018low\u2019 cultures. After all, without commercial products like newspapers, the fruit of a rapidly-emerging culture industry, there would have been no place for figures such as Machado de Assis, Lima Barreto or Jo\u00e3o do Rio. Paradoxically, it was a movement within the \u2018low\u2019 culture that spurred the creation of \u2018high\u2019 literary works.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the researcher, leaving the aura in the \u201cdirt\u201d and creating art through media that are not imbued with \u201cambrosia and quintessence\u201d became characteristic of the development of Brazilian culture. \u201cOur culture,\u201d says Miceli, \u201cis the result of this complex interaction of \u2018intellectual\u2019 and \u2018elevated\u2019 elements with the media of the culture industry. It is a relationship marked by tension: at times harmonious and at others openly hostile. This relationship between \u2018high\u2019 and \u2018low\u2019 culture is typical of Brazil. In Argentina, for example, the culture industry weighed much less heavily and its influence took a long time to affect the society.\u201d\u00a0 To understand this dilemma from a novel perspective, the sociologist brought together a group of academics and initiated a research project titled Development of the intelligentsia and the culture industry in contemporary Brazil. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe understand,\u201d says Miceli, \u201c that a genuinely critical history of Brazilian culture must show the links between strategic outflows of erudite cultural creativity and the expansion of dynamic sectors of the culture industry that are, in general, incorrectly viewed as mere redoubts for the vulgarization of intellectual creativity, entirely removed from the high culture.\u201d Miceli likens the national culture to a two-way street: \u201cWe have intellectuals and artists forming new paths and idioms within their various media throughout each historical epoch. At the same time, transformations within the culture industry keep lending new attributes and meaning to the works of these creators.\u201d\u00a0 The project\u2019s most innovative feature is the dialogue it stimulates about how the erudite culture and the culture industry interact, blending the interests of the intelligentsia and commercial media. According to Miceli, \u201cHistorically, our culture emerged from the inextricable bond between intellectual and artistic projects and the structural conditions that render these projects viable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miceli\u2019s group sought to break through the analytical barrier imposed between the popular and erudite cultures to underscore their periods of divergence and continuity, the constant struggle between defensive biases, the negotiations overseen by businesses and corporate leaders, and the development of language, ideas, standards, authors and their works. \u201cThus it\u00a0 is possible,\u201d says the sociologist, \u201cto appreciate the situation of dialog and conflict these writers and artists faced, especially those subject to the circumstances of history and the conditioning factors of the media and the means by which their works were circulated and received.<\/p>\n

\"\"DANIEL BUENO<\/span>To try to get an understanding of all of this, the research projects that, were gathered from an initial impression, had little relevance one with the other. This apparent incoherence, however, served to illuminate the subtle nature of the interactions:\u00a0 the link between Lima Barreto and newspaper articles concerning the senseless criticism of the work of Paulo Coelho, and, beyond the transformations that occurred in the contemporary press, the advent of the regional novel, the divas of the S\u00e3o Paulo theater and, finally, the current issues that the \u201cshantytown films\u201d examine. \u201cIn each of these historic periods,\u201d according to Miceli, \u201cthe creators of erudite culture relied on material that was formatted and delivered via the commercial media, much as the foundations and genres of the culture industry drew sustenance from the so-called high culture.\u201d\u00a0 It was one of the trajectories that began with the expansion of the press and illustrated magazines, was thrust ahead with the entrepreneurial surge in publishing, and culminated in the trend-setting developments in the theater, radio, television and cinema \u00a0\u201cIn these cycles, each transformation within the various media stimulated changes in the intellectual life of the nation, thereby creating between the creators and their patrons a bond that illuminated the substance of our culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fashions<\/strong>
\nMarking the project\u2019s beginnings is the work of University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP) historian and anthropologist Lilia Schwarcz on Lima Barreto: \u201cThe new journalistic medium changes the contours and forms of literature, and Lima Barreto is held up as an extraordinary example of this development. In Barreto, we find at once the erudite critic who opposed literary fashions and those that pandered to the popular culture, together with the writer who struggled to find his place in the world of letters,\u201d says Schwarcz.\u00a0 In this ambivalence lies all of the cultural tensions that marked this formative epoch. \u00a0\u201cIn the Brazil of that time,\u201d Schwarcz adds, \u201cwhat was popular and what was erudite had not been clearly established, and Lima Barreto is part of this context: as both creator and creature of his work.\u00a0 He combined the moments, the space for transmission, thereby lending even greater ambiguity to these bonds.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the publishing boom of the 1930s and 1940s, the modernist movement emerged in Rio de Janeiro and S\u00e3o Paulo, introducing new themes with its advent. This publishing phenomenon was largely based on the sale of very viable products like the regional novel, which managed to reach newer and larger audiences. Most important were those novels whose authors and story-lines could be traced to regions \u2013 like the Northeast, or even the south – little known to most Brazilians, and penned by such writers as Jorge Amado, Graciliano Ramos, and \u00c9rico Verissimo, among others. \u201cAlthough Modernism was a phenomenon that typically emerged in Rio de Janeiro and S\u00e3o Paulo, its avant-garde principles could fully take hold only after the country\u2019s other regions were incorporated. It was from \u2018beyond\u2019 the two metropolises the new truly came,\u201d University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP) sociologist Maria Arminda do Nascimento reminds us. \u00a0Reviled by elitists of the modernist movement like Carlos Drummond de Andrade, for whom Graciliano Ramos was a \u201cfifth-rate writer,\u201d or Oswald de Andrade, who referred to others as \u201cnortheastern cattle,\u201d the northeastern writers were able to adapt to the culture industry\u2019s new demands while at the same time, describe the social conditions of the time, and thereby question modernization through the lens of both literature and politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe forces of modernization were insufficient to alter the social structure and overcome it, and they lacked the strength needed to adapt to the new dynamic. This tension gave rise to the social and regional novels of the decade of the thirties,\u201d says Nascimento. \u00a0Furthermore, it was in this context and during the same period that artists became involved with the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), according to\u00a0 sociologist Marcelo Ridenti of the University of Campinas (Unicamp). \u201cIt was a relationship that took deep root in our culture,\u201d says Ridenti, \u201cone that fashioned the language of a utopian dream of an alternative society that sought a viable political project that could overcome inequalities.\u201d This relationship was very tenuous however: \u201cOf course, it was not merely a militant movement that sought to transform knowledge into power. The interests of the party had to be heeded. But it would be unfair to say that it was merely manipulation of the intellectuals by the communist leadership. The relationship offered advantages to both,\u201d Ridenti adds.<\/p>\n

\"\"DANIEL BUENO<\/span>\u201cEqually subtle was the bond between the social sciences in S\u00e3o Paulo and the divas of the stage,\u201d says Unicamp anthropologist Heloisa Pontes. According to the researcher, between 1940 and 1970 there were many links between the theater, the intelligentsia and the urban scene, represented by the figures of the Brazilian Comic Theater (TBC), Arena and Oficina. \u201cThe theater was the precursor. In the plays of Nelson Rodrigues, Guarnieri, and Jorge Andrade, among others. The stage presented Brazil in a way that the novel did not and that the social sciences would only achieve much later. This academic analysis, however, originated with a group of intellectuals, including D\u00e9cio de Almeida Prado and Antonio Candido, who were active social critics prior to going to college.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pontes adds that it was the stage rather than the social sciences that served as a vehicle for the culture industry, where a dialog first began surrounding transformations that would put an end to the traditional agrarian order in Brazil and signaled the emergence of an urban-industrial society based on wealth generated by immigrant labor. \u00a0At the other extreme of the thematic as well as temporal spectrum was the phenomenon of cultural interaction repeated through the successes enjoyed by the author Paulo Coelho and the reviews to which he fell \u201cvictim.\u201d \u201cWith him,\u201d says University of S\u00e3o Paulo sociologist Fernando Pinheiro Filho, \u201cthe book becomes a highly-profitable commodity. Furthermore, as an author and international celebrity, he merges the frontiers of popular and erudite culture. \u00a0\u00a0Coelho reveals the interplay of the erudite and the commercial, even through the criticism he receives regarding the degree of literary legitimacy he deserves.\u201d \u00a0According to the researcher, the popular writer exemplifies the employment of many-faceted means of expression. \u201cHaving erudite origins, they are recycled through the commercial media, appropriated by the entertainment industry\u2019s fictional productions, and then, oddly, converted to objects of intellectual reflection for academics.\u201d\u00a0 According to Pinheiro Filho, the great irony lies in the efforts of renowned critics to \u201cunmask\u201d Coelho. \u201cThe problem is that they try to achieve this through an inadequate intellectual device, which would be appropriate in the case of a Machado de Assis, but in this case has nothing to do with the author\u2019s position or his literary aspirations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same mistake can be found in the \u201cintellectual\u201d analyses of films that deal with violence in the shantytowns (favelas)<\/em>. As relates another USP sociologist, Esther Hamburger: \u201cWe ran the Beto Brant film, The Trespasser<\/em>, along with the television series Ant\u00f4nia. The critics\u2019 enthusiasm for Brant\u2019s film was not shared by the community, where the people found that they were more accurately represented in Ant\u00f4nia<\/em>. The audience of the outlying districts, then, viewed these films from the point of view of the residents themselves. \u00a0Rather than a criticism of the S\u00e3o Paulo elite, as the intellectuals viewed the film, the people of the favela <\/em>saw in it yet another disparagement of their community, one that ignored the improvements that they had achieved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newsbeats<\/strong>
\nThe newspapers return to the project\u2019s spotlight with S\u00e3o Paulo State University (Unesp) sociologist Alexandre Bergamo, who analyzes the press from the point of view of the \u201csons of beats.\u201d According to Bergamo, \u201cIt\u2019s like the younger generation, that of the 1980\u2019s, the university graduates, who were hired by the older newsmen. The clash within this new product of our culture industry shows what changed in the newsroom during this period, especially with the reinvention of reporting and the news story, both now considered central to the concept of originality and how we view ourselves.\u201d \u00a0The researcher notes the gradual erosion of the reporter\u2019s status owing to growing rifts within the journalistic profession. \u201cJournalism,\u201d he explains, \u201cbefore considered an \u2018intellectual\u2019 endeavor, is now defined in terms of its \u2018technical\u2019 function.\u201d Bergamo adds that \u201cintellectual\u201d positions are increasingly assessed in terms of the authority and autonomy attained in academia far from the pressures and the jargon that, paradoxically, characterize the more bureaucratic and less-prestigious positions in journalism, thereby closing the cycle whose course began in the days of Lima Barreto. Baudelaire had it right: \u201cIn a place where death comes galloping from all directions, it seemed better to lose my badge than to get my bones broken.\u201d<\/p>\n

Project<\/strong>:
\n<\/em>Development of the intelligentsia and the culture industry in contemporary Brazil (n\u00ba\u00a02008\/55377-3<\/a>); Grant mechanism<\/strong>\u00a0Thematic Project; Coordinator<\/strong>\u00a0Sergio Miceli Pessoa de Barros \u2013 University of S\u00e3o Paulo; Investment<\/strong>\u00a0R$ 549,453.60 (FAPESP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Intellectual creations and the culture industry through blows and kisses","protected":false},"author":370,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[261],"coauthors":[684],"class_list":["post-68820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities","tag-sociology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/370"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68820"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=68820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}