El camino de las heroínas en tiempos de ciencia ficción

El 2020 no fue nuestro mejor año. Nunca habíamos vivido en estado de cuarentena global, nunca habíamos visto a los países más ricos tan vulnerables, nunca habíamos temido de modo tan acuciante por nuestros seres queridos. Nos enfrentamos –continuamos en esa batalla– al COVID-19: el “enemigo invisible”. De la noche a la mañana naufragamos en un escenario propio de la ciencia ficción. El cariz premonitorio de Virus (Sung-su Kim, 2013), Contagion (Steven Soderbergh, 2011) y Epidemia (Wolfgang Petersen, 1995) se hizo carne. El miedo a la muerte y a la enfermedad escapó de la “silver screen” y el mundo cambió para siempre. Fue la ciencia ficción –independizada del relato fantástico– la que a lo largo de la historia se nutrió del pánico a la invasión, la hambruna, el contagio, las consecuencias de la actividad nuclear, los bombardeos, las catástrofes inesperadas. Todos relatos donde la muerte ya no espera “al final de la vida sino que se precipita por proximidad” (Rodríguez Alzueta, 2020, p.81). Al igual que otros géneros y subgéneros cinematográficos encontró su origen en la literatura, y vale subrayar que la primera obra reconocida como tal es Frankenstein, novela escrita por una mujer (Aldiss, 1973). Con el advenimiento del cine, el enamoramiento fue inmediato. Desde Le Voyage dans la Lune (Georges Méliès, 1902) la ciencia ficción se ha establecido en la pantalla grande –y chica– y no deja de expandirse y diversificarse. Sin embargo, también hay que decir que la representación de la práctica científica no ha sido una de las más mimadas por el cine. El tratamiento de la tecnociencia “parece dotar a guionistas y directores de cierta patente de corso para presentar, a menudo, una imagen de la ciencia que nada se corresponde con la realidad” (Moreno Lupiáñez, 2007, p.1). Y ahí desfilan los estereotipos del “alquimista aprendiz de brujo”, el “genio despistado”, o el “científico loco, malo y peligroso” (Haynes, 2003). Si esta es la imagen recurrente del hombre dedicado a la ciencia, ¿qué quedará para la mujer en un género donde “lo masculino” ha mantenido un lugar de privilegio? Cineastas y películas de todas las épocas, empezando por Fritz Lang y su autómata en Metrópolis (1927), pasando por The Stepford wives (Frank Oz, 2004), incluso Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) y muchos ejemplos más, se han fascinado por presentar a la mujer como creación científica, “fantasía propia de una sociedad patriarcal que sueña con someter a la mujer al dictado de los hombres” (Dos, 2010, p.32). Difícil búsqueda será la de eruditas investigadoras, precisas y objetivas con un rol protagónico, donde los descubrimientos se dan a partir de su intelecto, como estandartes de soluciones matemáticas, físicas, médicas. Mujeres como sujeto simbólico y no como objeto. “Durante el siglo XX el cine se constituyó en un medio que masificó valores, comportamientos, ideologías y relatos sobre la sociedad urbana y la modernización de las culturas, con la capacidad de incidir en la configuración del sentir y pensar” (Acosta Jiménez, 2018, p.52). Con esta premisa presente y comprendiendo el cine como documento, lugar de la memoria y del imaginario colectivo, trataremos de acercarnos a los diferentes “fines del mundo” que nos ofreció el séptimo arte para dimensionar el lugar de la heroína de la ciencia ficción. Porque después de todo, el coronavirus también “nos arroja al gran ruedo en el cual importan sobre todo los grandes debates societales; cómo pensar la sociedad de aquí en más” (Svampa, 2020, p.18).

Desarrollos urbanos para futuros distópicos: de Metrópolis a Cyberpunk 2077

El videjuego Cyberpunk 2077, desarrollado por CD Projekt RED, está ambientado en Night City, una megalópolis que el jugador puede recorrer con una libertad inédita, lo que unido a una perspectiva en primera persona propicia una sugestiva experiencia inmersiva. Pero al recorrer Night City, el jugador descubre una ciudad que le resulta familiar, tanto en su diseño urbano y arquitectónico como en la naturaleza de su población, ya que la megalópolis de Cyberpunk 2077 recoge toda una iconografía de la representación urbes distópicas en distintas disciplinas artísticas que se puede rastrear hasta Metrópolis (Metropolis, Fritz Lang, 1927), y que reflejan tanto las intuiciones de sus creadores sobre cómo serán las ciudades del futuro como sus inquietantes reflexiones sobre la urbanidad de su tiempo.

Cinema's Doppelgängers

Cinema’s Doppelgängers is a counterfactual history of the cinema – or, perhaps, a work of speculative fiction in the guise of a scholarly history of film and movie guide. That is, it’s a history of the movies written from an alternative unfolding of historical time – a world in which neither the Bolsheviks nor the Nazis came to power, and thus a world in which Sergei Eisenstein never made movies and German filmmakers like Fritz Lang never fled to Hollywood, a world in which the talkies were invented in 1936 rather than 1927, in which the French New Wave critics didn’t become filmmakers, and in which Hitchcock never came to Hollywood. The book attempts, on the one hand, to explore and expand upon the intrinsically creative nature of all historical writing; like all works of fiction, its ultimate goal is to be a work of art in and of itself. But it also aims, on the other hand, to be a legitimate examination of the relationship between the economic and political organization of nations and film industries and the resulting aesthetics of film and thus of the dominant ideas and values of film scholarship and criticism.

Shifting Paradigms

Two of Weill’s first compositions written for U.S. audiences show the composer mixing German and U.S. aesthetics, sometimes in awkward ways. His first Broadway show, Johnny Johnson (1936), combines aspects of U.S. musical comedy, German expressionist drama, and neue sachlich ideas. Although not a commercial success, critics were supportive, and it led to other opportunities. The composer also tried his hand at a film musical with You and Me (1938), directed by Fritz Lang. They tried to combine a Hollywood gangster story with a Brechtian Lehrstück, but the result proved confusing for U.S. audiences. Both projects show a composer in the process of adapting to a new culture.

Religião em movimento: Recriação da Bíblia no cinema

Os pesquisadores dos textos bíblicos debatem intensamente sobre questões teórico-metodológicas. Definir os métodos da exegese bíblica, seu alcance, limites, ferramental conceitual, etc. é uma das tarefas fundamentais da área. Soma-se a esse esforço, nos últimos anos, a contribuição dos estudos de recepção da Bíblia. Dá-se dessa forma atenção aos processos de interpretação do texto Bíblico em diferentes linguagens (nas artes, por exemplo), temporalidades e culturas. Neste artigo discutimos aspectos da interpretação da Bíblia no cinema. Mostramos as implicações da transformação do texto em imagem em movimento. Propomos que, no entanto, se trata de muito mais que uma forma específica de recepção do texto bíblico. A Bíblia é submetida a muitas transformações semióticas em sua recriação fílmica, manifestando e atualizando assim sentidos potenciais do texto antigo. Não se trata, nesse sentido, de uma recepção particular, mas de um potencializar os sentidos do texto que só podem efetivamente serem articulados e experimentados na experiência audiovisual cinematográfica. Apresentamos esse processo de articulação de sentido do texto bíblico, um texto mito-poético antigo, na linguagem técnica e moderna do cinema numa breve análise de aspectos da interpretação do filme Metropolis (Dir. Fritz Lang, 1927).

Fritz Lang

A visual artist who studied architecture, Viennese-born Fritz Lang (b. 1890–d. 1976) began his career as a scenarist for UFA before moving into directing scripts cowritten with his eventual wife, Thea von Harbou. During this period, Lang made several masterpieces of Weimar cinema, including Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922), The Nibelungen (1924), Metropolis (1927), and his first sound film, M (1931). The second major period of Lang’s career was during the golden age of Hollywood. Lang had a tendency to self-mythologize and told many versions of a story in which Joseph Goebbels invited him to be the head filmmaker for the Nazi regime. Lang claimed he fled Germany the same night. While this narrative is largely disproven, Lang (whose mother was Jewish) did leave Germany in 1933, a departure that severed both his marriage and professional relationship with Harbou. Lang journeyed to Hollywood, where he would spend the next twenty years working studio to studio, directing twenty-two films with intermittent critical and commercial success. His first film there, Fury (1936), dealt with themes of law and justice, which carried through to his final film in Hollywood, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956). Perhaps his greatest contributions in Hollywood are his films noir, such as The Woman in the Window (1944), Scarlet Street (1945), and The Big Heat (1953). Lang’s Hollywood period has been the subject of major critical debate. In the 1950s and after, French critics (both in Cahiers du Cinéma and elsewhere) argued for his status as an unappreciated auteur working in the Hollywood system, whereas other critics had argued that the quality of Lang’s output dramatically dropped after he left Germany. The New Wave filmmakers’ love of Lang perhaps reached its apogee in his being cast as a character called Fritz Lang in Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt (1963). These critical reappraisals resulted in attempts to link Lang’s Weimar and Hollywood periods. He would return to Germany in the late 1950s to direct his final three films, all of which were related to his earlier Weimar-era work. Although Lang is now regarded by many as an auteur in the same vein as Alfred Hitchcock, until more recently he received considerably less (in quality) scholarly analysis than the British director. Lang continued granting interviews and sharing his own thoughts on his work and career until his death in 1976.

ReFocus: The Films of Paul Leni

Silent-era film scholarship has all too often focused on a handful of German directors, including Fritz Lang, F. W. Murnau and Ernst Lubitsch, but little attention has been paid to arguably one of the most influential filmmakers of the period: Paul Leni. This collection – the first comprehensive English-language study of Leni’s life and career – offers new insights into his national and international films, his bold forays into scenic design and his transition from German to Hollywood filmmaking. The contributors give fresh insights into Leni’s most influential films, including Waxworks (1924), The Cat and the Canary (1927) and The Man Who Laughs (1928), and explores such lesser-known productions as The Diary of Dr. Hart (1918), Backstairs (1921) and the Rebus film series (1925–7). Engaging with new historical, analytical, and theoretical perspectives on Leni’s work, this book is a groundbreaking exploration of a cinematic pioneer.

The war hero

This chapter explores Power’s work within the genre of the war film, which began around the time that Britain entered World War II. Even in war-themed films, elements that had made Power a recognisable star image were present, only now positioned within a wartime setting. His familiar witty dialogue, wide grins and charm with the ladies from earlier comedies and musicals are overtly displayed in A Yank in the RAF (Henry King, 1941) and Crash Dive (Archie Mayo, 1943), despite much of the latter taking place onboard a submarine with a crew made up exclusively of men. This chapter examines Power’s four war films in chronological order to help illustrate the development of a newfound masculinity and maturity in Power’s screen image, which advances from his cocky self-assuredness and incessant womanising in his first war film, A Yank in the RAF, through his psychological issues in This Above All (Anatole Litvak, 1942), to his more stable and understanding relationship in his last war film: American Guerrilla in the Philippines (Fritz Lang, 1950).

EDWARD SCISSORHANDS MOVIE AND ICONIC COSTUMES

The birth of fantastic cinema and the birth of cinema took place hand in hand. Fantastic cinema, the first examples of which were seen during the silent cinema periods, has become a cinema genre that has developed its ability to fascinate the audience with the emergence of sound cinema. The process that started with The Thief of Bagdad, shot by Douglas Fairbank in 1924, and Die Nibelungen, the same age production of Fritz Lang, has been reflected in the costumes by focusing on different subjects until today. Since the costumes in the films produced in the fantasy genre are as effective as the movie, they have also affected the sectors that are thought to be closely related. Fashion, music, textile, clothing, space design, etc. Apart from these, it is clear that shoes, bags, hair, accessories have the potential to establish, influence and reform a new lifestyle. The costumes that identify with the character also influence the viewer and trigger the commercial sector. In this paper, Edward Scissorhands movie costumes, symbolic meanings and effects on characters will be revealed, which is one of the examples of Fantastic Film of Holwwod Cinema, in 1990, directed by Tim Burton. And also; afected areas outside the cinema sector will be determined through examples. Keywords: Fantastic cinema, scissorhands, costume

Distancias. Hacia un régimen estético-político de la imagen-movimiento = Distances. Towards an Aesthetic and Political Image-Movement Regime

Se interpelan las tensiones en las distancias entre sentidos estéticos y discursos políticos a partir de analizar las revoluciones técnicas y estéticas que se produjeron en la cinematografía de la década de 1920. Para ello se analizan tres largometrajes: Metrópolis, de Fritz Lang (1927), Berlín. Sinfonía de una ciudad, de Walter Ruttmann (1927) y El hombre de la cámara, de Dziga Vértov (1929). En ellos la ciudad se presenta como escenario donde los cuerpos se mueven, narrado por un conjunto de imágenes cuyo montaje se proyecta como el compás armónico de un régimen estético-político de la imagen-movimiento. En el hiato entre educar con la mirada y educar la mirada se trasluce la distancia entre lo que Jacques Rancière denomina como la «estética de la política» y la «política de la estética». Lo cual, confrontándolo con Walter Benjamin, posibilita observar las distancias entre imágenes, entre técnicas, entre originalidades y reproducciones, entre la estética y la política.AbstractThe aim is to analyze the distances between aesthetic senses and political speeches by technical and aesthetical cinematography revolutions happened in the 1920s. This is observed at three feature films: Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), Berlin. Symphony of a Metropolis (Walter Ruttmann, 1927) and The Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vértov, 1929). At those films the city is exhibited as a scenario where bodies are moving, narrated by a set of images whose assembly is projected as the harmonic compass of an aesthetic-political regime of the image-movement. In the hiatus between educating with the gaze and educating the gaze itself, the distance between what Jacques Rancière called as the «aesthetics of politics» and the «politics of aesthetics» is studied. Confronting this with Walter Benjamin’s theory, it is possible to observe the distances between images, between techniques, between originality and reproduction and between aesthetics and politics.