Indies

Amy's comments developing Megan's invocation of the "trace," provide -- among other things -- a window of opportunity through which to envision possible allegorical readings of the film Erendira:

Megan's comments regarding the idea of leaving a "trace" made me think about the Indian laborers, who also do not leave much of a trace in the film (particularly in the subtitles). In the movie, for example, we have some sense of the Indian labor needed to erect the elaborate tents, but for the most part that labor and the laborers are invisible - we really only see them during the scenes where Erendira and her grandmother are transported from place to place. The subtitles further erase them by frequently not translating the word "indios" and instead relacing it with a much vaguer word usually indicating scoundrels or peasants.

The marginalized Indians combined with Ulysses' blonde hair and "explorer's name," makes me wonder about the role of colonialism in the film.

The fact that we consistently see the indios without being encouraged to see them as people with agency suggests that we might interpret the film as an extension of the colonialist project. On the other hand, we could say that the film does a pretty good job of making us see what the narrative doesn't want us to "see." The details in the margins of the frame -- see my previous entry about rhetorical "flourishes" -- parallel the details in the margins of the story. Like the flores that do nothing to advance the plot, the indios are present to us, but with an absence of significance.

I'm being deliberately provocative in coupling flores and indios here, because they represent two extremes in the film's visual detailing.

To be sure, Erendira must work harder to work off her debt because the indios have to be paid. But the clothing and accessories of her grandmother must presumably be paid for the same way, since all the grandmother does is live off the surplus value generated by Erendira's prostitution.

Here's one way of putting the question I've been stumbling towards in this entry:

Are the film's visual details "incidental" or not?

I like what that word "incidental" could do for us in relation to 100 Years of Solitude's procession of micro-narratives too, though I'll have to give more thought to its deployment.

Comments

[Christian]

As a Media Arts grad, it's hard for me to agree that there are any Incidental visuals in a film, the whole concept of mise-en-scene falls on its head if this is the case. But comparing it to 100 Years of Solitude makes for an interesting argument about the value and potential value of what are seen as incidental visuals or narratives. In both cases, I think we are dealing with a relative impossibility of connecting every visual/story into a sort of unified theory about the text.

I find that more often the speed of film causes the majority of people to ignore visuals except for the most blatant of images (train going into a tunnel for example), however in a text we often get into a situation where a reader will say "oh I know this means something but I don't know what, so I'll just move on."

Visually Erendira is a fairly sparse film, meaning that is does not have a mise-en-scene that is incredibly rich. Being so limited, it is hard to think the filmmaker would permit for any superfluous images to enter the film.

For a film maker to try and bring Marquez vision to the screen, I believe there is a need to overcompensate on symbolic visuals in order to try and capture some of the essence of the original text.