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Mock Classicism
Latin American Film Comedy, 1930–1960
by Nilo Couret
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Book Presentation:
In Mock Classicism Nilo Couret presents an alternate history of Latin American cinema that traces the popularity and cultural significance of film comedies as responses to modernization and the forerunners to a more explicitly political New Latin American Cinema of the 1960s. By examining the linguistic play of comedians such as Cantinflas, Oscarito and Grande Otelo, Niní Marshall, and Luis Sandrini, the author demonstrates aspects of Latin American comedy that operate via embodiment on one hand and spatiotemporal emplacement on the other. Taken together, these parallel examples of comedic practice demonstrate how Latin American film comedies produce a "critically proximate" spectator who is capable of perceiving and organizing space and time differently. Combining close readings of films, archival research, film theory, and Latin American history, Mock Classicism rethinks classicism as a discourse that mediates and renders the world and argues that Latin American cinema became classical in distinct ways from Hollywood.
About the Author:
Nilo Couret is Assistant Professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan.
Press Reviews:
"Comedy in classic Latin American cinema has long been neglected and undertheorized. In this lively written and brilliantly argued volume, Nilo Couret uses the untranslatability of comedy as a thread through which to unravel fundamental contemporary debates in film and cultural studies. Recovering and 'mocking' classicism, this volume makes a remarkable contribution to our understanding of Latin American cinema and culture."—Ana M. López, Professor of Communication, Tulane University
"The book's theoretical insights have far reaching consequences for film studies as a discipline, engaging with central concerns such as spectatorship, embodiment, and the spatiotemporalities of film, television, and radio. Through the concept of 'critical proximity,' Nilo Couret offers an original discussion of comedy and suggestive frameworks for reconceptualizing irony and camp."—Neepa Majumdar, Professor of English and Film and Media Studies, University of Pittsburgh
See the publisher website: University of California Press
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