Kitsch Tropical: Los medios en la literatura y el arte en America Latina (review)

In her meticulously researched book, Kitsch Tropical: Los medios en la literatura y el arte en América Latina, Lidia Santos creates a clever critical examination of the aesthetics pertaining to the concepts of kitsch and cursilería in the Latin American context Approached as a dialectic of "bad taste," "kitsch" for Santos is innately connected to the socially-conscious cultural production of a grouping of artists, who during the twentieth century utilized the themes of media and other technological mediums in their work as subversive symbols against the established nationalisms of their countries By first encompassing a detailed study of Manuel Puig and a group of tropicalistas brasileiros, among which are featured José Agrippino de Paula and Hélio Oiticica, Santos establishes that their stylistics utilize TV and cinema as counter-discourses to the established national-popular models.

The book includes a concise contextual analysis of diverse texts from twentieth-century literature and the arts of both Spanish and Luso-Brazilian America, specifically broaching those that encompass critiques of nationalism and/ or counter nationalism Santos's discussion on the composition of cultural texts is intelligent and innovative given that she not only makes a reading of the representations of media within these texts but also observes the loaded political and ideological discourses that these texts dialogue with On one occasion, after discussing the importance of the media inclusions within texts, she dexterously discusses Globo network's marketing strategy for TV spectatorship, not avoiding a relevant discussion about their use of the masses, the middle class in particular She intelligently argues that their goal is to disseminate "their" national agenda, one which sells their view of the nation and nationalism through culture Santos's approach not only examines the precedents of national imaginaries but also questions the potential definitions of "imaginary," "imagined," "imagination" in connection to these established nationalisms Her cutting-edge bibliographic and theoretical gathering is diverse and historically comprehensive She gathers a detailed linguistic history of the words kitsch and cursi and juxtaposes their importance with what she labels "lo cursi como artificio" or cursilería as artifice.

As comparative examples for the "contra el nacionalismo" section, Santos chooses Argentina and Brazil In the Brazil section there is a continuous approximation to the economies of socio-politics pertaining to cultural material Most interesting is the consideration that Santos postulates as the "nacional de exportación," or the effort (circa 1950s-1960s) of consciously exporting the national allegories of Brazil, mostly tied to elite "high" culture Santos prefaces her study of the tropicalistas (begun in the late 1960s) by correlating that they intended to establish counter-discourses to the traditional national allegories of the 1950s and 1960s by turning to diverse narrative techniques that included the "new" mediums These techniques fluctuate between the diverse uses of pastiche, rather than parody, as Santos specifies, via the contextual use of popular cultural material (i.e., songs, poems, cinema, etc.) of the times Referring to the case of Argentina, but also making connections to Brazil and other nations, Santos observes that artists focused on establishing narratives that denounced that there was "one" national truth (201) These re-interpreted the "imaginary" transmitted by the mediums of popular culture and its correlated uses of specific alternative styles By approaching these styles, Santos's thesis succinctly moves on to display the use and understanding of "tastes" within this aesthetic Her arguements build upon the multiple characterizations of the texture of these "tastes" by explaining the inclusion of the aforementioned kitsch, cursilería, and camp Beyond this, Santos also analyzes multiple aspects of the grouping of texts she works with, specifically observing other pertinent narrative techniques and by highlighting their importance within the critical-theoretical environment of the times Some of her most interesting discussions involve explanations on narrative recycling (among other narrative styles) and the theme of consumption pertaining to popular vs elite tastes.

Perhaps the most amazing...