Towards an autonomous aesthetics of social realism : the film field in colombia

(1)

Towards an Autonomous Aesthetics of Social Realism: The

Film Field in Colombia

Master Thesis

Cultural Sociology

15-08-2017

University of Amsterdam

Lina Correa Muñoz, 11243120

(2)

2 To my mother.

(3)

3

Literature on cultural fields departs from the premise that a cultural field can be considered as such once it has acquired a relative autonomy from external pressures; that is, once it is governed by its own logics or rules, not reducible to those of other realms, such as politics, the economy, etc. The theoretical and methodological basis of this perspective has been provided by Bourdieu (1996), who understood cultural fields as being profoundly

embedded in the realm of power and class relations, and one of whose main objectives was to account for the emergence of a pure gaze in the arts, particularly in literature.

In this conceptualization, social or realist art is that which makes “no distinction between the political field and the artistic field” (p. 91). At best, realism is considered to be the seed of a pure gaze, that is, a first step towards a condition (which is inevitably a class condition) in which the real is evoked through form (Bourdieu, 1996). Realist art is then approached as a moment of a larger process aimed at the conquest of art for art’s sake, that is, a process going from hierarchization (enacted by bourgeois art) to autonomization (Bourdieu, 1996). If realist art is defined by its lack of autonomy, it looks like every cultural field, by definition, aims at the dissolution of realism. It would thus appear that an autonomous realist aesthetics is a meaningless notion or at least a concept entailing a profoundly contradiction endeavor.

However, there are good reasons for revisiting Bourdieu’s dualist theoretical view on realism from which it hardly occupies an ambiguous locus. Zimbler (2009) maintains that considering realist art only as a condition “for the coming-into-being of autonomous art” (Zimbler, 2009, p. 600), overlooks that realism can be considered as “a mode of literary production in its own right” (Zimbler, 2009, p. 602). He suggests, for example, that art can be valued in political terms and that it is difficult to subordinate such a political evaluation to either the heteronomous principle or the autonomous principle of

hierarchization. In a similar vein, Lamont (1992) states that one of Bourdieu’s weaknesses is the tendency to subordinate morality into the category of hierarchization. Alternatively, she continues, one might consider the moral realm as being relatively autonomous, which would involve adopting a more open (non-dualistic) approach towards the symbolic realm of social life. In order to overcome a relation of mutual exclusion between cultural and

(6)

5

social boundaries, Lamont (1992) suggests adopting the more general category of symbolic boundaries (within which cultural and moral boundaries, among others, could be included), as well as studying the degree to which those boundaries are permeable or lasting, how they are dissolved, activated, etc. (Michèle Lamont & Molnár, 2002).

Both Lamont (1992) and Zimbler (2009) call for more malleability in the theoretical models used for understanding cultural fields; that is, they advocate for models that allow us to understand cultural fields as being involved not in a dualist relation of inversion, but in a more “multi-directional” way (Zimbler, 2009, p. 612). Then, Bourdieu’s lack of theorization on social realism should not discourage one from studying social realism; on the contrary, it could be seen as an opportunity for addressing it as a substantial scope of analysis.

This thesis is about the place occupied by realist art in cultural autonomization. Through a historical discourse analysis of film magazines, I study how a tentative autonomization process in Colombian film has affected the development of a realist aesthetics. The case of Colombian film is a good opportunity for analyzing the position of realism since it is widely acknowledged that a realist aesthetics, favoring the depiction of violence and social marginality, has prevailed in the country’s film history (Echeverri, 2015a, 2015b; Osorio, 2010; Suárez, 2009; Zuluaga, 2013). In fact, one critic once said that there has been an “insatiable relation between violence and Colombian film” (Chaparro, 2010c, p. 51)3_{. Another critic stated that violence and marginality have been the}

“thread that runs through a good part of Colombian film”4_{(Osorio, 2010, p. 120).} In addition to clarifying the position of realist art, this thesis seeks to make a

contribution in two respects. Firstly, it tries to fill a gap in the literature on Colombian film consisting on a tendency to document the past and discuss the ‘major works’ (H. Martínez, 1978; Rivera, 2010; Valverde, 1978). One important contribution in this respect, which rather constitutes an exception, is the study on film criticism carried out by Zuluaga (2013). Drawing upon theoretical perspectives from cultural studies, he studies the role played by film critics in the construction of a film canon. He finds that film critics tend to analyze and talk about a given corpus of movies in which “the obsession with social reality, the trauma of violence, [and] the fascination by the marginalized as concrete expression of the

(7)

6

constructed a dominant narrative which privileges the representation of violence and marginality and in which the analysis of films is “overdetermined by their political and economic context” (Zuluaga, 2013, p. 92). Critics, he continues, have enacted a discourse on national identity and violence that reproduces an essentialist view on the country. Zuluaga’s study represents a move forward (in relation to previous literature on Colombian film) inasmuch as it highlights the active role that critics play in the power dynamics of Colombian film. However, sometimes the line dividing historical accounts and film criticism in his analysis is quite fuzzy (for instance, he states that such discourses prevent film from developing an own language).

The second gap this thesis could also contribute to fill consists on a tendency to focus on the emergence of fields with high competition levels and market-based logics (Kersten & Bielby, 2012; Mariette, 2010), overlooking how field formation also takes place in contexts with, for example, a strong presence of the state. Indeed, a sub-field of restricted production of films whose audiences are critics, producers, and film festivals exists in Colombia largely because of the state, and the relation between intellectuals and the state in this country has not been a static, but a dynamic one. For example, Colombian films

produced in the 1970s have been described as activist and as having a “Marxist political influence and a greater tendency to documentary” (Rivera, 2010, p. 15). In this stage state censorship played a key role in Colombian film and the relation between critics and filmmakers, on the one hand, and the state, on the other, was completely fragmented

(Pineda, 2015, p. 76). While in the 1980s Colombian film had a tendency to depict violence taking place in rural areas, in the 1990s it shifted to depicting films occurring in urban contexts (Osorio, 2005). This implied that the depiction of political violence occurring in rural areas was replaced by a depiction of violence (such as drug trafficking and organized crime) occurring in urban areas and in which there was an “absence of the state” (Osorio, 2010, p. 31)6.

My analysis of cultural autonomization will focus on film criticism since critics are key actors in the constitution (discursive production) of cultural fields (Baumann, 2001; Ferguson, 1998; Janssen & Verboord, 2015). I will try to understand how critics “fabricate meaning” (Griswold, 1987) and if such fabrication has had an impact possibly contributing to the weakening or strengthening of social realism. My research questions are: Has

(8)

7

Colombian film aesthetics gone through an autonomization process? If so, what has been the role of critics in this process? Ultimately, my main interest is to answer the question: What is the locus occupied by social realism in a (tentative) process of autonomization of Colombian film?

In the next pages, I elaborate on the concepts that will guide my analysis, namely, cultural autonomization and the place of social realism in cultural fields; the relation between art and the state; and the role of critics in cultural fields. Then I give an account of my data and method. Next, I provide a brief note on the social and political context in which the study is embedded. I then display my results and, finally, I discuss them in the light of other research and examine their theoretical implications.

(9)

8

Theoretical Framework

Since this thesis aims at studying the locus of realism in cultural fields, I first deal with the issue of autonomization, that is, with the issue of how field formation occurs. Then I give an account of the theoretical place of realism in Bourdieu’s conceptualization of cultural fields. Here I focus on the concept of reality, and how this reality is differently enacted by both the “realists of the second bohemia”, on the one hand, and Flaubert and Baudelaire, on the other. I end this segment on realism by pointing out the limitations of Bourdieu’s model in the light of contemporary research. Next, I deal with the issue of state intervention in cultural fields. Last but not least, I touch upon the role of critics in the process of cultural autonomization, with a focus on the constraints placed upon them, but also on their enabling and active role.

Cultural fields

Cultural fields are webs of economic, political, and symbolic relations in which cultural activities take place (Bourdieu, 1993; Ferguson, 1998). The logics and patterns that can be found in cultural fields are better understood as inversions of the logics governing other realms, such as those of the economy or the political system (Bourdieu, 1993). In other words, cultural fields are structured insofar as they are relationally opposed to other fields. For a cultural activity such as film to be considered as constituting a field, it has to have achieved a relative autonomy from external pressures (Bourdieu, 1993; Ferguson, 1998); in other words, it has to be governed by “its own laws” (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 48). A cultural field then can be considered as such when it is based on particular logics or forms of belief, non-reducible to economic logics, etc. in other words, a cultural realm can be said to be autonomous, that is, it can be said to constitute a field, to the extent that it subverts the “dominant principle of hierarchization”, namely, economic profit, dependence on political interests or ‘cultural authorities’, etc. (Bourdieu, 1993). Nevertheless, that autonomy is always relative since cultural fields are permanently affected by political and economic logics (Bourdieu, 1993).

Within cultural fields, there are sub-fields (Bourdieu, 1993). One of them is that of restricted production, which is defined as opposed to the large-scale production subfield.

(10)

9

This later is “symbolically excluded and discredited” (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 39, emphasis in original). These two subfields are relationally defined since they operate within a constant tension between autonomy and heteronomy which structures cultural fields. I will further elaborate on this point in the next sub-section. Acquiring autonomy then has to do with making a “clear” division between the fields of large scale and restricted production (Bourdieu, 1993). Autonomous sub-fields are in other words governed by a “charismatic economy” (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 40), which is always relative: “there are economic

conditions for the indifference to economy” (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 40). Cultural fields are structured in hierarchies in which autonomy and heteronomy struggle (Bourdieu, 1993).

The boundaries of fields are never fixed, but are always subject to struggles in which “what is at stake is the power to impose the dominant definition of the writer” or artist (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 42). In other words, different actors tend to claim a monopoly over the legitimacy of cultural products(Bourdieu, 1993). Belonging to a field is defined by the “fact of producing effects within it” (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 43). Then, social scientists are concerned with describing the struggles for imposing the legitimate definitions of cultural products and with describing the boundaries that individuals create by participating of those struggles (Bourdieu, 1993). Key to the study of boundaries is the constant interplay

between the symbolic realm and the realm of social structures or between symbolic and social boundaries (Michèle Lamont & Molnár, 2002). For symbolic boundaries to have a salient impact on concrete social practices, there has to be a large agreement or consensus upon them (Boone, Declerck, Rao, & Van Den Buys, 2012; Michèle Lamont & Molnár, 2002).

Researchers tend to explain the acquisition or expansion of autonomy of a cultural field as the result of the gaps and tensions of the very practices and institutions of that field (Rao, Monin, & Durand, 2003), elements external to the field, such as economic expansion, increase in education coverage (Bourdieu, 1996), and the way in which practices,

institutions, and events relate to legitimating discourses (Baumann, 2001; Ferguson, 1998). Usually, the focus is on how those elements articulate with one another creating balances of forces.

If one considers film in Colombia as a field in formation, rather than analyzing “the structure and logic” of the field, one would have to analyze the conditions of emergence of

(11)

10

this field (Ferguson, 1998, p. 599). This implies to show how different elements (such as institutions and practices) work together in order to consolidate such a field (Ferguson, 1998). In making sense of the emergence of fields, one also has to consider the role played by existing macro-cultural discourses, their availability and legitimacy (Lawrence & Phillips, 2004) as well as written texts, which are said to have a key role in cultural autonomization since they function as anchoring elements of fields by setting agendas, debates, and social relations (Ferguson, 1998, p. 611).

Bourdieu (1996) argues that a high level of autonomy of a given field is evidenced by the “mechanisms of competition (…) which authorize and favor the ordinary production of out-of-the-ordinary acts” (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 68). But if the premise that artistic fields, in their struggle for autonomy, are constituted “in and by an opposition to a ‘bourgeois’ world” (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 58), that is, the market and the consequent life-styles associated with economic profit, what then occurs when a field emanates from a setting in which competition is low and there is a strong presence of the state? Heise & Tudor (2007) applied Bourdieu’s concepts of consecration and autonomization in order to understand the legitimation of film as art in two contexts, one of which had a strong presence of the state: Brazil. They carried out a transnational study of the ‘film art movement’ in the 1920s and 1930s and contrast the social and political conditions of possibility explaining the

emergence of a ‘film for film’s sake’ movement in Britain, which did not take place in Brazil. Among those salient factors that help consolidate film as art in Britain, they include: the creation of film societies and networks of distribution, the development of a screening infrastructure, and the creation of ‘art-house cinemas’ (p. 177). In Brazil the lack of consolidation of a film field is explained by a “limited economic development, poor distribution infrastructure, nationalism, and increasing state intervention” (p. 181). They characterize the film produced in Brazil during the 1960s as “inevitably politicized” since, coming from the 1930s, the field had been immersed in a highly authoritarian political regime. In summary, the emergence of an art film movement in Britain is explained by the creation of associations and channels of distribution and exhibition, whereas the non-existence of an art film movement in Brazil in considered to be the result of state intervention.

(12)

11

In stating that state intervention had a disruptive effect in the film field in Brazil, Heise & Tudor (2007) restate Bourdieu’s argument that autonomy is linked to competition and the expansion of the market. But in the case of Colombian film, for example, a

significant and stable increase in production which has taken place from 2003 on, has been accompanied by the state financial support (Acosta, 2009; Echeverri, 2017; Rivera, 2010, 2014; Zuleta, Jaramillo, & Reina, 2003). Some critics even talk about a “New Colombian Cinema” and highlight the diversification of film languages, styles, narrative structures, and genres (Echeverri, 2015a, 2015b). Thus, could one do more than simply stating that fields with a strong state presence are governed by heteronomy and are by definition non-autonomous?

I will return to the issue of the relation between art and the state, which is crucial for this thesis, in the third segment of this theory section. For the time being, I would like to touch upon the way how ‘social’ or realist art is positioned in cultural fields.

The locus of ‘Social realism’ in cultural fields

Bourdieu (1996) defines social art as the type of art making “no distinction between the political field and the artistic field” (p. 91), that is, a realm that lacks autonomy. Realism is associated with the depiction of certain contents or themes; with drawing lessons from art products and to criticize the “immorality” and “indifference” of art products (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 105). Since Bourdieu is interested in explaining the genesis and emergence of a pure gaze, in this conceptualization, social art or realism is understood as a moment of a larger process aimed at the conquest of art for art’s sake; that is, a moment of a larger process going from hierarchization to autonomization (Bourdieu, 1996). If social art is regarded as a step towards art for art’s sake, it would be useful to touch upon what this latter concept means.

Art for art’s sake refers to a way of perceiving and appreciating cultural goods which enacts the point of view of the dominant classes. It is both a product of given social conditions and an element involved in the reproduction of such conditions (Bourdieu, 1993). Enacting an art for art’s sake view, that is, a pure gaze, implies being acquainted with conventions of appreciation that favor certain “indifference and detachment”

(13)

12

(Bourdieu, 1996, p. 110) and certain “freedom with respect to the moral proprieties and humanitarian conformities” (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 111). What makes art for art’s sake peculiar is a concern, not about what is depicted, but rather about the act of depiction.

However, this does not amount to affirming that art for art’s sake involves a concern about representation at the expense of reality. Indeed, “it is not sufficient (…) to affirm (…) the primacy of pure form that, becoming an end in itself, says nothing other than itself” (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 106). This leads one to consider two different ways in which the word

reality is used by Bourdieu in The rules of art (1996). On the one hand, he uses the word

reality in order to mean mundane, everyday life. He states, for instance, that the realists of the second bohemia could not enact an autonomous conception of art since they were “blinkered by the question of the relations between art and reality, between art and

morality” (1996, p. 109, emphasis mine). On the other hand, Bourdieu refers to the (effect

of) reality that is evoked in art for art’s sake. In this sense, for example, Baudelaire and Flaubert enact a kind of “realist formalism”, that is, an aesthetics that:

wants to abolish the distinction between form and substance, style and message: [Baudelaire] demands of poetry that it integrate the spirit and a universe conceived as a reservoir of symbols whose language can capture the hidden meaning by drawing on the inexhaustible depths of the

universal analogy. (1996, emphasis mine p. 107).

From this latter perspective, form is not something divorced from reality, so to speak, but rather a vehicle through which the real can be read and apprehended:

it is in and through the work on form that evocation (in Baudelaire’s strong sense) is effected, the

evocation of this real which is more real than are sensory appearances given over to a simple realistic description […] the work of writing is not a simple execution of a project, a pure imposition of form onto a pre-existing idea (…), but a veritable search, similar in its way to that practised by initiatory religions, and destined in some fashion to create conditions favourable to the evocation and the growth of the idea that is none other, in this case, than the real. (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 108, emphasis mine)

A differentiation between these two senses of the word “reality” (that of realism and that of realist formalism) reminds one that the understanding of what is real (and,

(14)

13

accordingly, of what a faithful representation of reality would be) varies based on the position occupied by those who seek to evoke reality through art and on the manner in which the social hierarchy is addressed by them: while realists wanted to “reverse” an objective hierarchy of subjects, advocates of art for art’s sake wanted to eliminate it (1993, p. 208); which is to say that while realists rejected bourgeois art (Bourdieu, 1996),

advocates of art for art’s sake rejected both bourgeois art and realism.

Bourdieu’s model on autonomy and heteronomy is useful and has been used by many researchers. For example, Mariette (2010) has showed how many film directors who make ‘social films’ are in an ambiguous position since they are involved in a tension

between political commitment and artistic recognition: on the one hand, they are committed to the realities they depict; on the other hand, they also distance themselves from political commitment so as to gain artistic recognition (Mariette, 2010, p. 161). But Mariette has also shown that in the 1990s-2000s film directors made use of the repertoire provided by anti-globalization movements and humanitarian activists in order to alleviate that tension: this repertoire allows them to be “socially engaged” while, at the same time, it helps them maintain “their independence from politics” insofar as they are not linked to specific political parties (p. 167). It then seems that morality has a key role in the interplay between art and politics. To take another example, Roussel (2010) shows how contemporary films and directors in the United States can express ‘engagement’ in a more ‘depoliticized’ way, by addressing films both as tools “for producing questioning all” while being “outside of the divisions structuring the institutionalized political game” (p. 147).

Since Bourdieu addresses realism in literature as a “partial, and failed, revolution” (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 208), it is “disregarded” in his conceptualization (Zimbler, 2009, p. 601). Because realist art does not look for economic profit nor a pure gaze (Bourdieu, 1996), in other words, it seeks “neither love nor money” (Zimbler, 2009), it is said to be in an ambiguous position in cultural fields (Bourdieu, 1993, 1996). According to Bourdieu (1993,1996), art for art’s sake came to be an aesthetic revolution since it objected the link between “aesthetic value and moral (or social) value” (Bourdieu, 1996, p. 105); that is, it became an aesthetic revolution when it delineated a strong boundary between ethics and aesthetics.

(15)

14

However, the lack of an explicit theorization of social art makes it difficult to understand how art could be valued in other terms, like political terms. For example, Zimbler (2009) finds several difficulties when trying to apply Bourdieu’s dualistic model into the literary field in South Africa. According to him, three factors “prevent political art from being collapsed into a general category of the heteronomous” (p. 606). In the first place, the audiences of political art are neither a restricted community of producers nor large audiences whose role is evaluated in terms of the increase in profit, but rather a large audience which holds “the ultimate repository of political power and (…) change” (p. 605). Second, due to the relevant presence of the state, authors were more seen as collaborators than as competitors. Finally, state censorship not only prevented books from being published and distributed (p. 606), but most importantly, “ensured that, beyond the more obvious division between commercial and political art, the distinction between political and pure art would also be preserved” (p. 612). He argues that just as it is difficult to “reduce the autonomous principle” to the market, it is also “difficult to reduce the political principle to the principle of the market” (Zimbler, 2009, p. 606).

If social art is conceptualized as an endeavor which by definition lacks autonomy, one might expect a weakening of realism in studying the formation of a film field in Colombia. However, literature shows that realism continues to be the dominant style in Colombian film (Echeverri, 2015a; Osorio, 2010; Zuluaga, 2013). The critic Echeverri (2015a) even talks about a “new realism” or a “metaphoric realism” which has emerged in the late 2000s and is characterized by a subtle, indirect depiction of violence and

marginality.

Even if autonomy and heteronomy are useful terms for understanding struggles or balances of forces, the findings of Mariette (2010), Roussel (2010), and Zimbler (2009) suggest that one could understand autonomy as involving not necessarily “a belief in art for art’s sake” (Zimbler, 2009, p. 615). The lack of theorization on social art makes it difficult to understand how art could be valued, for instance, in moral terms. Instead of subsuming or subordinating morality into the category of the heteronomous, one can alternatively consider morality as having a relative autonomy (Michèle Lamont, 1992). Morality usually has to do with issues such as “honesty, work ethic, personal integrity, sexuality, religiosity, solidarity and consideration for others” (Michèle Lamont, Schmalzbauer, Waller, & Weber,

(16)

15

1996, p. 34). However, rather than encompassing a single set of fixed characteristics, morality should be seen as encompassing diverse dimensions which (might) vary according to the country or context of analysis (Michèle Lamont, 1992).

The relation between art and the state

State intervention in cultural fields is diverse and can take many forms. It can be external or indirect, for example, when it deals with issues such as copyright and property regulation, or when it protects “the rights of non-artists who claim to have been annoyed or inconvenienced by what the artist does” (Becker, 1982, p. 180). Peterson & Anand (2004) argue that the symbolic realm of cultural fields can be affected by the systems of

production, evaluation, and distribution of cultural goods, and they offer a description of 6 “facets of production”, which make up such systems. These facets include law and

regulation, industry structure, market, among others. Key is that changes in one of those aspects of the production process “can start a cycle of destabilization and reorganization in the entire production nexus” (p. 318). From a production-of-culture perspective, state intervention could be addressed, for example, as creating a kind of monopolistic system of production and distribution and, therefore, creating a particular configuration of the

elements of the field.

State intervention can also be more internal or direct. For example, it can support particular cultural products, censor or suppress them (Becker, 1982, p. 180). Becker (1982) suggests that when the state is only one among other financial sources, artists have a relative

autonomy to choose from those financial sources or look for alternative ones; but when the state has a dominant position (Becker, 1982), constraining and coercive become more relevant since “artists must take into account as a constraint what the government will and won't support” (Becker, 1982, p. 184). In this regard, Lena & Peterson (2011) introduce a distinction between (music) genres developed in political contexts, on the one hand, and genres developed in market contexts, on the other. The first kind of genres, which they also call “politically purposed genres” can, in turn, be divided into two types: those financially supported by the state, “which benefit from national distribution and legal protection” (p. 574), and those financially supported by a group opposite to the state (which are also called

(17)

16

“anti–status quo” genres since they aim to critique “the existing sociopolitical and economic order”) (p. 574). What make these genres different from market-based genres, they argue, is that there is a clear political intention of those who financially support them.

This distinction is a significant breakthrough, since it points out that fields with a high presence of the state do not follow the same logics as those of highly competitive, market-based fields. Lena and Peterson’s analysis could also be interpreted as an

affirmation of Bourdieu’s conceptualization, since they suggest that the closer to the state a genre is, the more it tends to be politically purposed, that is, the more heteronomous it becomes, since it becomes political in content.

It should be noted that Lena and Peterson’s analysis (just as Heise and Tudor’s for the Brazilian case) is mostly based on contexts in which state support operates in

authoritarian political regimes, attacking freedom of expression. One might well ask if

state support necessarily translates into politically purposed art or if that depends on particular political regimes or configurations. Is the ideological content of a genre an automatic/immediate reflect of the interests of those financing them? What if state support gives a space of opportunity for developing autonomous conventions? This thesis will try to make a contribution in this respect.

While state institutions can be seen as obstacles for the development of cultural autonomy (Bourdieu, 1996) and as having a disruptive role in fields (Heise & Tudor, 2007), they can also be regarded as guaranteeing freedom for artists and having an enabling role (Alexander & Rueschemeyer, 2005). In more secular, non-authoritarian regimes, the state tends to support the creation of cultural products when they are perceived as contributing to the development of national interests (Becker, 1982), especially when it comes to national identity. One could then address government support as affecting fields in many ways depending on the extent to which it interferes in them or monopolizes them.

The role of critics

Critics are mediators between the production of art products and their audiences (Janssen & Verboord, 2015). If the value of cultural products exists “by virtue of the (collective) belief which knows and acknowledges it as a work of art” (Bourdieu, 1993, p.

(18)

17

35), critics are individuals endowed with the power to add symbolic value to cultural products through discourse (Bourdieu, 1993). Their work consists in the application in concrete cases of aesthetic systems previously developed by aestheticians (Becker, 1982). In other words, critics play a key role in the discursive production of the value of cultural products (Bourdieu, 1993): their statements, rather than describing an existing condition of the cultural products inquestion, produce such condition and, accordingly, cause real efects in the field (Bourdieu, 1993). The material conservation of works of art (in this case, films) is inevitably linked to the symbolic conservation of such works (Bourdieu, 1993).

Critics’ work operates within certain constraints (Becker, 1982). They can be dependent upon the expectations and presuppositions that they share with the members of the social groups to which they belong (Griswold, 1987). Their power is also limited since they inevitably make use of given sets of repertoires and cultural schemas inscribed within wider discursive contexts, such as auteur theory (Allen & Lincoln, 2004). Allen and

Lincoln (2004) show how film critics are often obligated to draw on the repertoire provided by the dominant discourse within film theory, that is, the ‘auteur theory’: “much of [critics] cultural authority derives from their ability to frame their aesthetic judgments about films and directors within the context of an established cultural schema such as auteur theory” (Allen and Lincoln, 2004, p. 878). Critics’ evaluations are usually based not only on the internal characteristics of the texts they address (films, in this case), but also on extra-textual information, such as the producers’ affiliation, etc. (Janssen, 1997).

Highlighting the constraints within which critics’ work operates does not amount to denying their active role in the production of symbolic value. Indeed, they have more than a passive role in relation to aestheticians: critics might contribute to transforming

conventions of appreciation (Kersten & Bielby, 2012) and they also have the power to reshape their own position and status as legitimate evaluators (Bourdieu, 1993).

The criteria critics use in order to evaluate cultural products can vary (Janssen, 1997), depending, for instance, on their institutional affiliation, but their legitimizing power always imply reaching consensus (Baumann, 2007). In other words, critics have the power to define conventions (Becker, 1982), on the one hand, but because “in repeatedly taking a dissenting view, a critic risks his status of literary expert” (Janssen, 1997, p. 295), their

(19)

18

evaluations are also dependent upon other critics’ evaluations and conventions. Criticism is then a deeply collective endeavor.

The definition of the legitimate aesthetic conventions of a cultural field affects the relations that the different actors of such a field undertake. Thus, critics’ work can also help create groups (Becker, 1982, p. 131). That is to say, their work has a stabilizing and

integrating role in the cultural field at both symbolic and organizational levels: in reinforcing symbolic boundaries between what is aesthetically valuable and what is not, they are at the same time making “regular patterns of cooperation possible” (Becker, 1982, p. 134) and reinforcing or reshaping social boundaries (Michèle Lamont & Molnár, 2002).

Critics also help “select creative talent” (Janssen & Verboord, 2015, p. 440). In creating a consensus about what deserves to be called art and what does not, critics are also involved in discussions about allocation of resources (Becker, 1982). In other words, the symbolic recognition that critics help define can be turned into economic capital (Bourdieu, 1993): critics, together with aestheticians, provide the means by which artists and “art works justify their existence and distinctiveness, and thus their claim to support” (Becker, 1982, p. 164). In a field in which state support is definitive, critics could help select the films that would be financed by the state. Even if these mediators ‘work together’ in order to create a certain consensus, the symbolic production of the cultural products is always involved in struggles for legitimacy (Bourdieu, 1983). In other words, critics do not form a single or homogeneous group; there are different types of criticism competing against each other for achieving legitimacy (Rosengren, 1987).

If an increase in film production has taken place in Colombian film during the last years, one might then expect that critics have had an active role in this scenario. An increase in film production and the propensity to depict marginality and violence, as noted in the introduction, have been two recurrent claims on the literature on Colombian film. But these two statements, taken together, do not seem to fit into Bourdieu’s conceptualization of social realism. One might then expect that if realism persists, it is because Colombia is currently going through an intermediate stage which will result in an art for art’s sake conception. Alternatively, one might question the very premise that art for art’s sake is the necessary outcome of social realism and consider, for example, that morality has had a significant role in order to explain how films have been valued.

(20)

19

Data and Method

Sample

The data consisted of two types of texts: 1. Film critiques*,

2. Chronicles on film festivals, reports on film production and legislation, essays on the history of Colombian film, interviews with filmmakers and with other critics.

Film critiques were regarded as my primary sources of analysis. The other texts were regarded as secondary sources and were intended to achieve two goals: first, to provide the background or contexts of meaning in which those film critiques were embedded; second, to make inferences about events of the past (like film festivals, state regulation and legislation, film releases, etc.). Both types of texts were found in film magazines published in Colombia between 1970 and 2015. As part of my secondary sources I also included books on the history of Colombian film and film production

consulted in the Library specialized in Film and Audiovisual media from the Film Archive of Bogotá. 1970 was chosen as the starting point since in the 1970s there was a “boom” of film criticism in the country, as well as a “growth of film-clubs” (Ramos & Quintero, 1979, p. 32). 2015 was chosen as the closing date since I wanted to grasp critics’ discourse in a period of time when film production significantly increased (that is, after 2003).

Magazines, instead of newspapers, were chosen for several reasons. First, film production in Colombia has been precarious for most of its history and newspaper critics tended to focus on Hollywood blockbusters; specialized magazines, on the contrary, tended to deliberately include sections on Colombian film in spite of its precarious production. Indeed, Mora (1978) stated that unlike newspapers “specialized magazines tended to address the problem of national film as their central theme” (Mora & Romero, 1988)7_. Second, since my intention was to conduct a historical analysis, magazines also allowed me to make inferences about past events. Third, magazines allowed me to capture a richness of

*_{In the 1970s, critics tended to group films and analyze them according to certain criteria they defined. It is}

only in contemporary criticism (after 2000) that films started to be reviewed individually. For practical purposes, I consider a critique to be any text including analysis and evaluative comments on films, no matter if they are addressed individually or as part of a wider corpus.

(21)

20

information (not only critiques, but also reports, chronicles on Colombian film, interviews with filmmakers, etc.). Thanks to this variety of sources, I was able to capture not only the way how critics framed Colombian films, but also how they referred to themselves, to other critics, to filmmakers, to audiences, to the state, etc. As a matter of fact, these secondary sources became crucial throughout the process of analysis: my original intention was to grasp a possible shift in the aesthetic evaluation of films, and there was indeed a shift. But I soon realized that shift could not be successfully understood without articulating it to relations of cooperation and negotiation between different actors in the field, and those secondary sources allowed me to capture such relations.

Magazines also provided critics with the possibility to express their view points with certain freedom. For example, in 1974 the first editorial of the magazine Ojo al cine read: “[in this magazine] we hope to be useful for that viewer who is aware of information, to guide them in a way not provided by press criticism, which is inevitably episodic and private” (p. 1)8. Finally, there was a practical constraint that discouraged me from analyzing newspapers: they are not digitalized (with the exception of one newspaper); therefore, consulting the hard copies of those newspapers, selecting the texts, and then digitalizing them, would have taken much longer than the time frame that this thesis allowed.

Data Collection

First, I consulted the catalogues of three libraries: The Biblioteca Especializada en Cine y

Medios Audiovisuales – BECMA from the Cinemateca Distrital de Bogotá (Library

specialized in Film and Audiovisual media from the Film Archive of Bogotá), The Luis Ángel Arango Library, and the library of the Fundación Patrimonio Fílmico Colombiano (Colombian Film Heritage Foundation). A search was carried out with the key words “cine” (film) AND “Colombia” in serial publications. A total of 17 magazines were found. From them, I selected those magazines published during the period of time of analysis (1970-2015). After a quick review, I eliminated those magazines aimed at dealing with

international rather than Colombian films (such as Toma 7, which is entirely focused on Hollywood blockbusters). As a result, a total of twelve magazines were selected. They were published in different time periods (see Table 1) by both public and private entities.

(22)

21 Table 1. Magazines consulted and their publication period

Once I chose those magazines, I started selecting the documents that would be analyzed. That selection was carried out according to three criteria: First, they had to be texts on films depicting social marginality (this allowed me to focus on discussions about social realism). Since there is no database of realist films (they are only classified as fiction and non-fiction), whether or not a film was depicting marginality was determined by paying attention to critics’ own words (since labelling films as ‘depicting marginality’ has been quite frequent). When that was not clear, I consulted the synopsis of the film in the database of Proimágenes, the Colombian institution whose purpose is to promote public policies for the development of a film industry in the country†. Second, they had to be texts on

Colombian films, that is, on films produced in Colombia (this task was facilitated by the fact that magazines have had specific sections dedicated to Colombian film). The third criterion was that the film critique included not only a summary or synopsis of the film, but also a critical comment (either negative, positive, or both of them). They were a total of 231 texts: 97 critiques and 134 secondary sources (see Appendix for a list of the documents analyzed. Primary texts are highlighted in yellow color).

†_{The database can be consulted in:}

http://www.proimagenescolombia.com/secciones/cine_colombiano/peliculas_colombianas/resultados_pelicul as.php?nt=1

(23)

22 Analysis

Codes and semantic relations were created by using Atlas.ti. I departed from an initial coding schema which sought to apprehend four aspects or dimensions:

1. How films were framed in relation to its social and political context, 2. critics’ comment on the depiction of marginality in film,

3. critics’ mention of filmmakers as subjects embedded in particular social and political contexts, and

4. critics’ mention of filmmakers’ as creators (whether or not their trajectories were mentioned, their views were quoted as part of the review; their style was described, their authorship named, etc.).

Open coding was also part of the process so as to enrich the original schema. For example, I realized that from early times, critics used to position filmmakers and

themselves in relation to the state. Thus, a state dimension was added to the coding schema. In fact, the role of the state in the field, which was not covered by my initial coding

schema, turned out to be of key importance in my analysis.

I analyzed the texts in its chronological order and carried out two rounds of coding, during which the initial coding schema was enriched. I paid particular attention to

evaluative comments (negative/positive), and different colors were attached to each code depending on whether they were referring to positive or negative evaluations. That facilitated the subsequent creation of semantic relations.

I tried to follow an abductive path, trying to have a distanced or critical stand towards my theory (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012), especially since this theoretical

framework was produced in a social context quite different from that of this study. Indeed, while during the first round of my analysis I realized there was a shift in the criteria critics used to analyze films (from content-based evaluations to an assessment based of form) and that seemed to confirm Bourdieu’s theory, addressing my categories of analysis in a careful and reflexive way allowed me to see that ‘social art’ and realism not only continued to exist, but also persisted in tandem with an analysis of films more based on form.

Before displaying my results, I provide a brief note on the social and political context in which the case of study took place.

(24)

23

Social and Political Context

Colombia gained independence from the Spanish Empire in 1810. During the

nineteenth century there was a dispute between two main political currents: on the one hand, conservative and reactionary leaders who positively valued the legacy of the Spanish colonial regime and who viewed Catholicism as the main element of morality and national integration; on the other hand, positivist leaders who tended to negatively view the legacy of the Spanish colonial regime and who advocated for the implementation of modernization policies based on ideas of order, progress, and science. Both sides were formed by

members of elites and reproduced discourses that segregated women, and indigenous and black peoples.

Those currents were the roots of the two main political parties existing

in the twentieth century: Liberal and Conservative. Towards the middle of the century, a strong confrontation between these two parties led to very high levels of political violence taking place mostly in rural areas. In order to alleviate this political violence, the two elitist parties agreed to alternate power every 4 years and established a political regimen called

Frente Nacional, taking place from 1950 until 1978. Although this regime partially reduced

the levels of violence, social exclusion deepened (Bushnell, 1994).

In the 1960s, when communist guerrillas emerged (not only in Colombia but also in other countries of the region) and in the context of the Cold War, the United States

introduced in Latin America an interventionist policy called Alianza para el progreso. Around the same time, the Cuban Revolution triumphed; socialism was seen as a real possibility in Latin America, and violence was seen by many as a legitimate vehicle for achieving social change (Pineda, 2015, p. 101). During this time, Colombian intellectuals displayed a very leftist political orientation. They used to see Colombian political elites as enacting the interests of the interventionist regime of the United States. Intellectuals argued that this interventionism was not only political and economic, but mainly a cultural and ideological. In this context, intellectuals were seen as agents of social change committed to socialist revolution (Builes, 2013).

This political violence, together with social exclusion and a high concentration of land-ownership (rooted in the economic and social structures of the Colonial era) are the

(25)

24

main factors that explain an armed political conflict that emerged in the middle of last century between the Colombian government and communist guerrillas. That armed conflict persists today (although a peace agreement between the government and the oldest and biggest guerrilla force was concluded in 2016). In other words, the state has not exercised a monopoly over the legitimate use of force (not even today) on the territory of the country. In addition, government institutions are weak (Berrío, 2013) and Colombians have had a tendency not to follow rules and to display a great feeling of mistrust towards the state.

Colombia has been a peaceful country at the international level (since it has not had significant inter-state political conflicts), which contrasts with the high levels of violence that have taken place inside the country (Berrío, 2013).

In the mid-20th century, a series of relevant social changes took place in Colombia. In the first place, there was a process of urbanization: whereas 30% of the population lived in cities in 1938, that proportion rose to 52% in 1964, and to 67% in 1985 (Bushnell, 1994, p. 374). There has also been a process of religious diversification in which other religious groups have been gaining ground in the religious field, most of which are Pentecostal churches (Beltrán, 2013), and the political violence from the 1950s was replaced by a new upsurge of violence due to drug trafficking in the 1980s.

After 2000, the middle class has gradually increased: from 16% in 2002 (Angulo, Gaviria, & Morales, 2013) to 55% in 2015 (Montoya, Moreno, & Pérez, 2017). Colombia has still a strong stratification system, one of the world’s highest rates of income inequality (Galvis-Aponte & Meisel-Roca, 2014), and its social mobility is lower than that of other Latin American countries (Angulo, Gaviria, Páez, & Azevedo, 2012).

(26)

25

Findings

This section is structured as follows: I first argue that the film field is a field in formation by giving a brief account of film production and state regulation. I also show how in the 1970s critics discursively constructed ‘Colombian film’ as a problem that had to be addressed (A field to be made). In the next section, I address a shift over time in the way critics discursively positioned the state in the field (Blurring the boundary between the

identities of intellectuals and the state). Then a series of factors of opportunity and

institutionalization possibly favoring the constitution of the field are presented (Creating a

space of opportunity for a film aesthetics). After that, I articulate the previous two segments

are articulated and argue that the shift in relation to the state together with those factors of opportunity triggered a relation of cooperation and negotiation which, in turn, resulted in a series of stabilizing effects upon the field (Stabilization as the result of a joint effort). Then I move on to consider the elements conforming an autonomous aesthetics of film (A

depoliticized, autonomous aesthetics of film), and show how that discourse, in spite of its

conquest of autonomy, has not led to an abandonment of realism, but coexists with it (Towards an autonomous aesthetics of realism).

(27)

26

A field to be made

In this section I argue that the film field in Colombia is a field in formation. Although film production has been unstable for most of its existence, a continued growth can be seen after 2003. This section is divided into two segments. The first part gives some film production figures (from 1970 until the early 1990s). The second part shows how critics tried to make sense of this unstable production by discursively constructing Colombian film as a problem in the 1970s and 1980s.

Figures on production (1970- mid 1990s)

The first Colombian feature length film, El drama del 15 de octubre, was released in 1915; it was the only movie released during that decade. From then on, film production will be characterized by a lack of continuity (H. Martínez, 1978). In the 1920s 16 feature-length films were released, the number declined to 3 in the 1930s, then it slightly increased to 10 in the 1940s, and in the 1950s there were 6 releases (Fundación Patrimonio Fílmico Colombiano, 2006).

Although the first law designed to promote and formalize the Colombian film industry was launched in 1942 (Fundación Patrimonio Fílmico Colombiano, 2006), it was never regulated (Mora & Romero, 1988). Rather, the Ley del Sobreprecio (Overcharging Act) was the first piece of legislation having a significant impact in the production of films. The Overcharging Act was launched in 1972 and it was aimed at promoting and regulating a national film industry. It sought to do so by promoting the production of short films through an extra fee on movie tickets (Fundación Patrimonio Fílmico Colombiano, 2006). That extra cost was split among producers (40%), exhibitors (40%), and distributors (20%) (King, 1994, p. 296), and it was mandatory for every theater to exhibit these short films prior to the exhibition of every feature-length film (feature films were mostly commercial films from Mexico and the United States). Indeed, while in 1976 there were 395 screens in the country, they were mainly exhibiting films from Mexico and the United States (Ruiz & Marulanda, 1976).

As a result of the Overcharging Act, production increased: a record figure of 756 short films were produced between 1970 and 1984 (C. Álvarez, 1989, p. 135). In 1981, the

(28)

27

critic Carlos Álvarez (1989) would say, however, that out of those 756 short films, only 10 could be said to have an acceptable quality (p. 135). In spite of this increase in production, it could not be said that there was an industry at that time. The critic Martínez (1978) stated that there were not technicians, capital, nor a solid infrastructure (H. Martínez, 1978, p. 332).

In 1978, the Compañía para el Fomento Cinematográfico —Focine (Company for the Promotion of Film) was created. Through Focine, the state provided a system of soft loans, that is, “a below-market interest combined with longer grace periods for repayment” (G. Martínez, 2008, section Case Study Colombia, para. 4). Since its goal was to promote an industry, Focine’s model also encouraged the involvement of private investment capital in the financing of movies. As a result, there was in the 1980s what has been called a first boom of Colombian film taking place in the 1980s (Echeverri, 2017; L. Álvarez, 1996) due to Focine’s support: 29 feature length films were produced between 1978 and 1993 (see Graph 1), which was a significant amount for the field at that time (G. Martínez, 2008).

Graph 1. Colombian films produced between 1979-1992.

Source: Zuleta, Jaramillo, & Reina (2003)

A frequent claim made by producers and critics was that Focine focused on developing a strategy for producing films, but largely neglected the issue of how those

(29)

28

movies would be distributed and exhibited. Indeed, those films produced by Focine could not reach a large part of Colombian audiences, the return on investments was not achieved, there were many financial losses, and, as a result, many filmmakers were not able to pay off their loans (Mora & Romero, 1988). Focine’s model failed and very soon, in 1981,

production slightly declined (see Graph 1). Other factors that were put on the table so as to explain the failure of Focine’s model were the tight market of Colombian film and the low price of film tickets (Mora & Romero, 1988).

In order to face this situation, Focine changed its policy in 1983: it stopped being a lending institution and began financing the full cost of the movies without the input of private investors (Mora & Romero, 1988). This had an impact after 1984 when production slightly increased (see Graph 1). Although Focine disappeared in 1993 after the

introduction of neo-liberal policies (Martínez, 2008) and corruption allegations, from then on the Colombian state addressed Colombian film as something that needed to be preserved no matter if a recovery of the investment was not achieved: henceforth, “only the state could invest in a product that would not reach its economic recovery” (Mora & Romero, 1988, p. 33)9. The dependency of the field on state support can be observed when considering that after Focine started decreasing its support, in the late 1980s, film

production declined significantly and became basically non-existent in the early 1990s (see Graph 1). Film production remained very low during the 1990s, but began to rise in the early 2000s. Since then, it has been continuously growing, as I will show in the section Stabilization as the result of a joint effort.

Since film production in Colombia has not been a profitable, but a very risky business, a legitimizing discourse (conducted to a large extent by critics) has been key in this context: as I will develop in a subsequent section, in discursively constructing an idea of why state financial protection is needed, can help ensure the field’s stability. Now I deal with the issue of how critics constructed this inconsistent film production as a problem that had to be addressed.

The discursive construction of the field as a problem

When production raised, critics used to talk of the birth of Colombian film (C. Álvarez, 1989): since production was not continuous, but constantly interrupted, in the 1970s and

(30)

29

1980s critics used to state that Colombian film was permanently being born. The

inconsistent film production did not prevent critics from trying to make sense of the film field. In 1974, for example, a critic stated that Colombian films were more important “for their quality than for their quantity” (Mayolo & Arbeláez, 1974, p. 30)10_.

Critics actively constructed the lack of production as a problem that needed to be addressed. For example, after the publication in 1978 of the book Historia del cine

colombiano (History of Colombian film), whose author was the critic Hernando Martínez,

there was a dispute between the critics Alberto Aguirre and Hernando Salcedo in the 1980s. The controversy revolved around whether or not one could speak about something called “Colombian film”. On the one hand, Aguirre argued that there was not a real film industry so that one could not really speak of something like Colombian film. Salcedo and other critics, on the other hand, tried to make sense of the lack of an industry by arguing that Colombian film had more to do not only with those movies produced in Colombia, but in a deeper sense, with those films produced in the country which also had an own thematic and a certain coherence, usually associated with national culture. For example, a critic stated that there was a difference between a national industry of film and national film: “the facts show that an industry was very far away. Instead, a ‘national film’, with isolated but representative and artistically rich films, was tangible” (C. Álvarez, 1989, p. 38)11_.

What was at stake here was the very definition of what Colombian film was, together with judgements about possible, desirable ways ahead for the future: when commenting on marginal film, Mayolo & Arbeláez stated that “the incipient development of (…) marginal film, especially of documentary, offers particularities that need to be accounted for if the aim is to explore the possibilities for the development of Colombian

film” (1974, p. 27, emphasis mine)12. In doing that, critics created a boundary between what had to be preserved and what did not.

One way of making sense of Colombian film in the 1970s, was to group films according to several categories that critics created. In this stage, critics used to write their pieces often in the form of historical overviews or reports of national film. Many movies were then valued as part of retrospectives in which critics literally narrated a story about what Colombian film was. Films were grouped according to: their generation, their professional training, the technical developments of the time and the format they used

(31)

30

(16mm film, 35mm film, video, etc.), among others. In contrast, from 2003 on (and

especially after 2010, when film production increased as never before, as I will show later) films tend not to be reviewed or analyzed in groups, but rather individually.

Another way of making sense of Colombian film was to state what made it different from Latin American film: while in the early 1970s critics tended to talk about Colombian film in relation to Latin American film and emphasized their similarities (for example, they were similar in the sense that they had a common colonial past, etc.) together with a sense of solidarity among these countries, from the mid-1970s on, similarities between Colombia and other countries were no longer accentuated. From then on, critics created a story about what made Colombian film different from that of Latin-American: Colombian films were then considered to be not only those produced in Colombia, but those showing a certain originality and whose purpose was depiction and reflection of a national culture:

a radical distinction should be drawn between the Colombian industry of film production and an authentically national film. The national film must be understood in relation to a purpose, to a spirit of creating, developing, and rescuing national values. (Mora, 1978, Cuadro,6,28-36, p. 33)13 There was also a selective process in the movies critics reviewed. They tended to review the films that they liked, but this selectiveness was not always the result of high competition, since sometimes when there were not ‘good’ Colombian movies to talk about, critics, instead of criticizing films they did not like, preferred not to talk about Colombian film at all. Indeed, at this stage (when film production was almost insignificant) there was a tendency not to talk about Colombian films in negative terms: some critics tended to state that, since Colombian film was very fragile and needed to be protected and fostered, and they had a condescending attitude towards it.

These discussions are an indication that critics were not referring to an existing Colombian film, but they were actively involved in the very creation of that definition. A lack of a consolidated industry was then framed by critics as a space of opportunity, a space where filmmakers could, if not innovating, at least experimenting and exploiting their creativeness.

A stability in the field would not be reached before 2003, when state

(32)

31

This cooperative effort, however, was made possible by a series of factors that I will explain in the next sections. One of those factors was a shift in the way how the state was discursively positioned in the field by critics.

(33)

32

Blurring the boundary between the identities of intellectuals and the state

Traditionally, there has been in Colombia a strong boundary between the identities of the intellectuals, on the one hand, and the state, on the other (Builes, 2013). In this section I will show that from 1970 to the late-1990s there was a shift in the way how critics discursively positioned the state which gradually blurred that boundary. This blurriness made possible a cooperative relation between state representatives, on the one hand, and critics and producers, on the other.

In order to facilitate its understanding, I divided this discursive shift into three stages, which are intended to be a guidance, rather than representing real separate periods: a radical discourse in which state was positioned as fundamentally different from

intellectuals (1970s), a more moderate discourse in which the state is seen as needed, but addressed with caution (1980s), and a discourse in which the state is less named or is absent (1990s). In the next paragraphs I will address each stage in turn.

State as fundamentally different from intellectuals

In the 1970s, filmmaking was considered to have an essentially political character. In 1980 the critic Carlos Álvarez stated that “the art work is not above social classes nor apart from them. It is always a manifestation of a given class” (Cuadro,3,1-5, p. 5)14. In this stage, the boundary between politics and film was blurred. This can be more clearly seen when considering the use of the term ‘marginal’ in this context. The term “marginal” was used in two senses during the 1970s: first, to describe a kind if film that depicted social marginality whose purpose was to denunciate social exploitation and the official discourses the

government and the dominant class enacted. From this perspective, marginality in film had to do with the filmic depiction of those individuals living in poverty (and who enacted a reality on the margins of the ideals of progress and modernity in the country). Second, the term ‘marginal’ was also used to refer to the very position that that type of film occupied in the system of production and distribution of film; marginal films were those excluded from the regular system of production and distribution. Interestingly, in both cases (marginality as the theme of films and marginality as the position that type of film had in the market of film), the term was relationally defined by critics as the inverse of the dominant social and

(34)

33

political institutions. In other words, there was in critics’ discourse a homology between the position of marginal and poor individuals in society and the position of those films and filmmakers in the field of film production; critics and filmmakers were basically trying to make use of their symbolic power (especially because this was a period of crisis and instability) in order to subvert the social order.

As a consequence, critics encouraged the production of film to be marginal or independent from the state. The state was seen as an enemy of both the working classes and the filmmakers. Since artistic value was not different from political value, films were considered to lack artistic value to the extent that they were the expression of the interests of the government and the dominant class. Thus, critics explicitly condemned institutional, official films through which, they argued, the Colombian government intended to promote a “touristic” and “official” idea of what the country was like. Those films were defined as privileging the ideological view and interests of the government and dominant classes. There was then a strong boundary between the identities of intellectuals and the state.

Because marginal films were low-budget films, they often exhibited poor technical conditions, which was positively valued by critics in many cases. In the 1970s Cuban film was seen by a sector of critics as an example to follow. Some Cuban filmmakers argued for an “imperfect film”, that is, a type of film deliberately careless of technical quality and more concerned with the content of it, with the class interests it enacted, and with the extent to which artists’ expressions were articulated with class dominance (Aguirre, 1978). It was not that a low technical quality was considered desirable, but that technical precariousness was seen as less relevant in relation to more content-related issues. What is more, technical limitations were sometimes seen as conferring a “particular style” upon filmmakers. Even a critic like Hernando Salcedo, who used to make a clear distinction between “the social” and “the filmic” and who sometimes criticized the excessive politicization of movies, after being asked about the function of Colombian film at that moment, said: “I believe [its function] should be basically a critical one; then, if you want, an artistic one; but first and

foremost a critical one. Critical of institutions, critical of all this official field that

surrounds us” (Rodríguez, 1976, p. 55, emphasis mine)15_.

Critics discursively opposed a genuine, ‘marginal film’ (also referred as: ‘political film’, ‘film of denunciation’, ‘critical film’) to official, institutional film. In contrast to

Towards an autonomous aesthetics of social realism : the film field in colombia

Towards an Autonomous Aesthetics of Social Realism: The

Film Field in Colombia

Contents