In his now widely-disseminated article, Néstor García Canclini posed the following question: Will there be Latin American cinema in the year 2000? Written in the 1990s, García Canclini’s article was concerned with two simultaneous processes: on one hand, the penetration of American films in Latin America as a result of more efficient technologies such as the VCR and the internet; on the other, the subsequent impact of the consumption of American films on Latin American national cultures, given the lack of regulations in Latin America to subsidize or protect national audiovisual productions. García Canclini read these concurrent developments as emblematic of the process of globalization that links different parts of the world through the use of fast means of communication. Anthropologist Arjun Appudarai was also concerned with the effects of globalization, particularly the effects of both electronic media and diasporas on local imaginations. Indeed, the unprecedented mobility of images and people constitutes a defining characteristic of twenty-first-century globalization. Like his fellow anthropologist García Canclini, Appudarai also pointed out that the impact of transferences among different countries irrevocably alters cultures. Nonetheless, Appuradai’s views differed from García Canclini’s in that the former highlighted the resistance of local or regional imaginations to the homogenizing push brought about by globalization. Indeed, for Appudarai, imagination defined as “a form of negotiation between sites of agency (individuals) and globally-defined fields of possibility” (31) was a fundamental element in shaping the forces of resistance “between cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization” (32). Taking these remarks by these two anthropologists as a point of departure, I explore how Mempo Giardinelli’s Imposible equilibrio, a novel published in 1995, engages in a dialogue, which weighs the issues set forth by both Appudarai and García Canclini. I argue that Giardinelli’s novel reacts to a globalizing world through the use of the imagination, but with a curious twist: he deploys foreign images and formulas to underscore the effects of globalization. His cooptation of transnational audiovisual models reveals the opposing consequences of globalization: on one hand, imagination occupies a central place as it is expanded by metropolitan mass media images, while on the other, it emphasizes the distinctiveness of local cultures using imagination as a tool that challenges the push for a homogeneous world. In resisting dominant global trends, regional groups re-appropriate themes, strategies and formulas deployed for world consumption and transform them to reach wider audiences or to establish national agendas. I will address García Canclini’s concern with how American films impact Latin American literature by analyzing Giardinelli’s novel as a cultural product that bears the influence of American popular culture. I will also deploy Appudarai’s concepts to examine the ways in which Giardinelli uses imagination in a post-national era.
Imposible equilibrio: the
national and transnational
Imposible equilibrio
tells the story of a group of middle-class men and women from
Before examining the influences of American popular culture in the novel, I will briefly focus on the main characters and some of the elements that appear in Imposible equilibrio that represent the national, or the truly Argentinian–the space threatened by the consumption of transnational popular culture. To portray the national, Giardinelli chooses a community, which gathers in a coffee shop to share views on diverse topics ranging from events of national relevance to small-town gossip. The characters that make up this community embody the different ideological views of the Argentine middle-class. They hold university degrees, are entrepreneurs or work in various trades. Ideologically, they embrace political views from the extreme left to the far right. Among those who are leftists, we find Victorio Lagomarsino and Pura Solanas, both of whom were political militants in the armed groups of the 1970s, and survived the repression of the most recent Argentine dictatorship (1976-1983). In accordance with their past militancy, they both openly challenge the conformist traits of 1990s Argentine society, which they consider as evidence of the official emphasis on consumption and immediate pleasure. Another local character that shares Pura’s and Victorio’s views is Cardozo, a professional journalist and the first person narrator of this story. Although Cardozo has also been critical of the policies enforced by the administrations of the early 1990s, he fails to engage in action to resist them. While he silently cheers for the kidnappers and their wild actions, he strives to remain a neutral chronicler of the events and conversations that unfold in the wake of the kidnapping. Along with these three protagonists, we find other minor characters whose function is to give voice to other middle-class opinions. These minor characters are all part of the local closely- knit community which serves as a microcosm of the larger national community.
Many foreigners are
also part of the local community; some are descendants of immigrants.
The inclusion of these characters points to remind readers of the
multiple origins of Argentinians and puts into perspective the recent
emphasis on interconnectedness brought about by globalization. However,
as noted by Appudarai, the current increased mobility across borders
has led to a rise in diasporic subjects, mainly in metropolitan
centers, but also noticeable in previously isolated areas such as
Of particular importance among these diasporic characters is the American, Frank Woodyard, whose arrival “cuatro años y una semana” earlier nearly coincided with the installation of an official policy in favor of globalization. The neo-liberal program implemented in the early 1990s by President Carlos Menem held that the country needed to give up nationalism and embrace open-market policies to participate in global decision-making.(2) At first, Frank may be taken to represent the tenets of a free-market economy due to his foreignness and his American citizenship. Indeed, Frank’s background –war veteran, Catholic priest and professor at a local university – attests to his links to what Louis Althusser has called Ideological State Apparatus (ISAs): the State, the Church, the educational system, all institutions that influence the mindset of a given society.(3) Being a part of these ISAs that spread ideologies, Frank may have contributed to the dissemination of the logic of capitalism through war, his missionary work and his teachings. However, because he is an expatriate and he renounced his Catholic priesthood after he fell in love with Pura, Frank is also separated from mainstream capitalist ideology and the dominant religion. Therefore, he is well-received and considered a part of the local community. As a member of this community, Frank probes his affiliation to the group by resisting globalization and by being one of the characters who, along with Pura and Victorio, resist transnational solutions and kidnap the hippos.
Within this context of
foreigners living in
For the characters who reflect on movie theaters, there are significant differences between the cinemas of the past and those of the present. The former ones, the Viejo Cine Argentino and Café Cinema Lumière, are depicted as communal places where people shared the enjoyment of filmic adventures and events of the world without social distinctions.(4) Contrary to this, the remaining movie theater in town no longer serves as a point of reunion for different ages: the Biógrafo 70 is the only movie theater still open in Chaco (46), a change that is directly related to the discourse of efficiency and profit-making ushered during the 1990s when many long-standing cinemas changed management or were sold and renovated into more and smaller rooms. (5) Indeed, the Biográfo’s decadence resulted from the transference to a new owner who was intent on making a profit (a reference to the privatizations of the 1990s) and thus adapted showings to the demand for a more individualistic type of pleasure.
Despite these recent changes to the consumption of foreign audiovisual products, the conversations of the characters in Imposible equilibrio about films, reveals that both popular movies and high art have had a lasting effect on their imaginations. Although many characters declare themselves or are portrayed as lovers of “pure art,” (6) many others acknowledge the influence of more popular and commercial movies and actors, such as Tony Curtis and Liz Taylor. Curiously, what is particularly significant is the fact that whether talking of high art or popular culture, the characters do not mention any Argentine films as having any bearing on their personal, political or artistic sensibilities.(7) By contrast, American popular culture not only influences the novel’s characters, but its plot and action as well. (8) I will elaborate more on this shortly, but for now I will focus on the novel’s use of cinematic techniques.
Imposible equilibrio
primarily uses audiovisual strategies as a way to narrate a series of
improvised adventures in a marginal region. The kidnapping and flight
of the dissident characters is narrated by Cardozo, the writer’s alter
ego and also a witness and listener to his fellows group members’
reactions to the kidnapping. Another point of view narrates the flight
of Pura, Frank, Victorio and young Clelia with the hippos across
One noteworthy fact of
this division of viewpoints is that the recording that follows the
kidnappers acts a hidden camera that exposes the reality of the
Three American film
genres influence Giardinelli’s novel: action movies, Westerns and
Roadies. The formula of action movies helps structure the kidnappers’
improvised flight in the novel with its emphasis on speed and
adrenaline rush. There are several instances when the rebel characters
create spectacular violence. The first one is when Victorio bombs the
steps on which authorities are situated to witness the arrival of the
hippopotami. The second one takes place when the Scania truck that
Victorio drives crashes into police cars that were barricading the
road. These violent clashes resonate strongly with American action
movies. It is evident in Victorio’s actions that Giardinelli borrows
from action films of the 1980s the figure of “the individualistic,
ostensibly anti-authoritarian or anti-government hero” (Gallagher 12).
I will come back to the idea of the hero later, but what I want to
stress now is that in carrying out the kidnapping of the hippo,
Victorio stages a revolt that aims not only at discrediting the
government, but also at expressing his frustration about the ways that
neo-liberalism and globalization were implemented in
Among American action
movies, the novel is particularly influenced by the American war movies
of the late 1970s and 1980s, such as Deer Hunter (1978), Apocalypse
Now (1979), Platoon (1986) and Casualties of War
(1989) that were successful blockbusters in
Giardinelli further
reinforces his debt to American popular movies by using Sylvester
Stallone’s Rambo as model for the characters of both Victorio
and Frank. Frank, a Vietnam War veteran, seems to be a character that
has just stepped out of an American war movie. Giardinelli borrows from
American Vietnam-war movies the character of the disillusioned warrior
who, after fighting to spread liberal democracy and capitalism and
witnessing the human cost of war, repents of his actions. In becoming a
dissident and minority voice, Frank is a “de-territorialized” character
in American society because of his awareness of the implications of
capitalistic expansion. In a similar way, Victorio is also shaped as a
war veteran –this time of the internal fighting that took place in
Because two distinct
projects are presented in Imposible equilibrio, the novel also
insinuates the imprint of another genre of commercially successful
American movie: the Western. Among the several elements of the Western
that Imposible equilibrio adopts, most notable is the location
of the plotline in
The conflict between law and order, which in this case pits a group of social misfits against state and national authorities is another element of Westerns noticeable in the novel. The protagonists’ violation of the law also separates them from their local peers, and this separation corresponds to the individual-versus-community dichotomy that informs many Westerns, such as High Noon (1952) is a case in point where the tensions are enacted. Indeed, in kidnapping the hippopotami Frank, Pura and Victorio alienate their community of friends, a situation that resembles some Westerns, in which characters often collide with the system, or lack the support of their communities. In this regard, Frank, Pura and Victorio are the outlaws who disavow the dominant ideology, and can therefore no longer occupy the space of the civilized.
The deployment of these
Western elements as a subtext that serves to chronicle the resistance
of a group of leftist characters against the financial, cultural and
social flows made possible by globalization is not a coincidence. Quite
the contrary, the use of a genre that relies heavily on force as a
means to assert oneself transports readers to the past. As Western
scholar Robert Murray Davis explains, “Western myth is essentially
anti-modernist, for it is confined to a narrow period and is based on a
linear theory of history” (134). Precisely what the fleeing characters
discover in their flight is the fact that they have too much awareness
of the present to embrace more traditional ways of life. As they travel
in rural
The third and final popular American genre closely linked to Westerns that also acts a subtext for the novel are Roadies. Roadies are films that take place on the road and exemplify both an escape from orderly life and an instance for self-discovery. Among these films we find City Slickers (1991), Thelma and Louise (1991), and more recently, Transamerica (2005). Indeed, in Imposible equilibrio, characters flee city life using modern means of transportation. The fact that they change cars and pilot a helicopter to run away from authorities also underscores the influence of this popular genre. The physical frenzy of Roadies often mirrors the protagonists’ unresolved inner tensions. According to film scholar Mark Williams, the road movie phenomenon illustrates “the innate restlessness of the American people” (6). In Imposible equilibrio, the “outlaw” characters hit the road to experience a freedom that is denied to them in their daily life. They use technological advances to escape a society dominated by modern products.
However, it is during
their journey through the abandoned lands of rural
These rebel characters
first recognize the pervasive influence of American popular culture on
their imaginations when they break the law, and realize that their
roles seem to have been scripted, or that they are acting as characters
from certain movies. For instance, when Victorio complains about the
quagmire in which they find themselves –an improvised and tumultuous
flight–, Frank reassures him with “Vos tranquilo, Vic, Rambo pasó
peores” (139). In another instance, Victorio and his young partner,
Clelia successfully overcome a police barricade and Clelia celebrates
saying, “Igual que en las películas” (164). What is evident from these
remarks is not merely the fact that they allude to movies, but that the
characters have the opportunity to try, at least briefly, different
identities, a characteristic, as pointed out by Appudarai of the
process of contact and exchange. To use his words, “[E]lectronic media
at the same time are resources for experiments with self-making in all
sorts of societies, for all sorts of people. They allow scripts for
possible lives to be imbricated with the glamour of film stars and
fantastic plots” (3). The rebel characters of Imposible equilibrio,
use these scripts to attempt to escape what they consider an oppressive
situation. However, later and as events become more complex, Victorio
and Clelia admit that “ellos mismos son, ya, una especie de Bonnie and
So
what can we make of a novel that decries the effects of globalization
in
The novel’s open
ending, in which fantastic elements are introduced, further points to
the impossibility of resisting the global. On one hand, Victorio and
Clelia’s lives are spared a literary death, a fact read by Brown as a
sign of Giardinelli’s optimism (215). On the other, their fantastic
survival can be considered a symbolic death since they no longer
inhabit the real world. Thus, the project led by Pura, Victorio and
Frank instead of leading to a pure and frank victory –as symbolized by
the protagonists’ names– disappear in the air. This disappearance
occurs after Victorio and Clelia meet another couple: Ramiro and
Araceli, characters in Giardinelli’s novel Luna caliente
(Sultry Moon 1986) that leads them to a safe place. This encounter can
be interpreted as a return to the realm of the literary, and thus, the
nation. As scholars who focus on the spread of nationalism such as
Benedict Anderson, or those who have studied the formation of national
cultures in Latin America–here I am referring to Angel Rama – have
stressed, national literatures were crucial elements in the
nation-building process. Printed materials constituted the main means
of shaping a national identity in nineteenth-century
Notes
(1)
In her review of the novel, Marisa Avigliano has also noted the
vertiginous rhythm of the novel. For his part, Giardinelli has refered to Imposible
equilibrio as “una novelita que me sirvió para, precisamente,
cambiar de tema y cambiar todo. Nada que ver con nada anterior. Una de
aventuras, una road-novel o road-book. Puro cachondeo, persecuciones y tiros en plan
absurdo” (Roffé).
(2)
Ironically, in Giardinelli’s novel the vessel that carries the foreign
hippopotami to
(3) Similarly, Appudarai mentions that before the twentieth -century, war and religious conversions were the main forms of sustained cultural interaction between different cultures (27).
(4)
For instance, one of the characters narrates the anecdote of a Spanish
immigrant woman who thought that her whole family had perished in the
Spanish Civil War, only to realize forty years later that her brother
was alive and was one of the characters in the film Morir en
(5)
For more on this, see Ana Wortman’s “Viejas y nuevas significaciones
del cine” in Pensar las clases medias. Consumos culturales y
estilos de vida urbanos en la Argentina de los noventa (111-128).
(6) Some characters
remember, for example, Federico Fellini’s Amarcord (1973), Juventud.
(7)
Something similar happened to Argentine writer Manuel Puig (1928-1990)
who used numerous foreign films in his novels La traición de Rita
Hayworth (1965) and El beso de la mujer araña (1976).
(8)
Argentine writer José Pablo Feimann (1943) who belongs to the same
generation as Giardinelli also admits his indebtedness to Hollywood
films: “El cine de
(9)
Fernando Reati has observed that the entrapment of characters within
the national space in Impossible equilibrio bears a resemblance
to Osvaldo Soriano’s Una sombra ya pronto serás (1990). For
more detail on Soriano’s novel, see Reati’s Postales
Appudarai,
Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of
Globalization. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
Avigliano, Marisa. “La Biblia junto al
calefón. Imposible equilibrio.” July 2, 1995. http://www.literatura.org/Criticas/Cri_ImposibleEquil.html
Besil, Antonio, Elena Alfonso and Lucila
Bonilla. La economía del Chaco en la década del 90. http://www.agentia.unne.edu.ar/contenido/indiceco/Chaco.PDF
Brown,
J. Andrew. Test-Tube Envy. Science and Power in Argentine Narrative.
Lewisburg:
Desser, Davir.
“Global Noir: Genre Film in the Age of Transnationalism” in Film
Genre Reader III. Edited by Barry
Keith Grant.
Gallagher, Mark. Action Figures: Men, Action Films, and
Contemporary Adventure Narratives.
García Canclini, Néstor. “Will There Be Latin American Cinema in the Year 2000? Visual Culture in a Postnational Era. Framing Latin American Cinema. Contemporary Critical Perspectives. Edited by Ann Marie Stock,
Giddens, Anthony. Runaway World.
Reati, Fernando. Postales
del provernir. La literatura de anticipación en la Argentina neoliberal (1985-1999). Buenos Aires:
Biblos, 2006.
Roffé, Reina. Entrevista a Mempo Giardinelli,
accessed December 4th, 2006 http://www.chaco.gov.ar/cultura/literatura/mempo/mempo01.htm
Williams, Mark. Road Movies. New York/London: Proteus, 1986.
Wortman, Ana. Ed. Pensar las clases medias. Consumos culturales y estilos de vida urbanos en la Argentina de los noventa.