Melodramatic Depictions of Violence After The Boom

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This panel hosts presentations on how, after the Boom, there is a tendency in Latin American fiction and film to depict violence in its many forms –endemic violence, gender violence, political violence, urban violence, etc.- under melodramatic plots. It seems counterintuitive to relate the terms ‘melodrama’ and ‘violence,’ but from its origins as a form of street theater in the early nineteenth century, Melodrama has been considered a mode of excess because of its tendency to radical contrasts, moral polarization, interruption of an ongoing narrative, and sensationalism in its dependency on pathos, but is mostly perceived as a tendency to fit experience into already existing narratives.
These presentations will explore how melodramatic depictions of violence produced a cultural shift from highly valued aspects during the Latin American Boom´s hegemonic years. In attention to the progressive displacement of concepts capital for the Boom, such as genealogy as a fictional trope and structural metaphor, these presentations look forward to discuss three problems. What are the melodramatic sources for visual or textual depictions of post-Boom violence? How does the spread of melodrama affects fictional writing and visual conceptualization in film? What are the effects of such depictions in relation to existent narratives of violence?

Sub Track

• Literature and Culture: Interdisciplinary Approaches

Chair

• Jose Miguel Herbozo Duarte, University of Colorado at Boulder

Individual Presentations

• Paranoia and violence in Mexican Melodrama: Tejedora de Sombras by Jorge Volpi and Post Tenebras Lux by Carlos Reygadas - Dustin A Dill, University of Pennsylvania

• The Modern Morality of Melodrama in El buscador de Cabezas de Antonio Ortuño - Juan Garcia Oyervides

• Dystopic dissensus: Melodrama and Political Violence in The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta by Mario Vargas Llosa - Jose Miguel Herbozo Duarte, University of Colorado at Boulder

• Liminal Violence: Parody of Melodramatic Discourses in 2666 by Roberto Bolaño - Javier Muñoz Diaz

Discussant

• Luis H Castañeda, Middlebury College