Session of April, 4: Graphic Humor and Newspaper Culture: the Brazilian case
In previous sessions of the course, we have already glimpsed how the origin of comics, especially in the context of a history of consumer culture (in cases such as the graphic universes of the late 19th century), has profound correlations with the emergence of its regime of circulation in periodical printed formats.
Unlike the process in which the grammars of sequential art are based on such an origin of comics (particularly in the case of periodicals dedicated to social and political satire), I prefer to adopt a distinct starting point for addressing the issue of visual humor, specially from a perspective of poetics: what we consecrate as the daily comic strip, with its graphic style and more recognized narrative and episodic organization, is something difficult to dissociate from the relationship with the regimes of periodicity typical of daily newspapers – and the eventual function they absorb from what, in previous times, was identified with vehicles strictly dedicated to satirical commentary, which consolidated a tradition in which the relationship between humorous drawing and social discourse was definitively established.
Especially with the support of Ian Gordon's ideas, we noticed how this aspect of daily periodicity conditioned the structures in which comics consolidated an interaction with readerships, later converted into commodity consumers, leveraged by this very structure of visual humor.
Let us remember, in this sense, how significant is, from the standpoint of the industrial logic absorbing visual humor to the purposes of aesthetic response, the passage between the two great models of this genre, i.e.: that of the vehicles consolidated in the second half of the 19th century (and certainly quite responsible for the consolidation of many of the main geniuses of graphic humor of the later periods) and that other that characterizes the entrance of daily newspapers, with the logic that comes to dominate over the functions of this visual drive towards laughter – as well as the respective places it can occupy in the physical space of these publications.
What separated the early American illustrated humor that appeared in Puck, Life, and Judge from the comic strip was the lack of a continuing character or cast of characters, the regular use of word balloons, a format that required weekly or daily appearances by these characters in a name strip, and a place in a mass-circulated medium, which made the form and characters consumer staples. But it was the launching of comic supplements to the Sunday editions of the New York World and New York Journal that set in motion a process leading to the distinct form of graphic narrative that eventually became comic strips (GORDON, 1998: 24)
Our predilection for the poetic perspective of the analysis of these materials of a discursivity (stylistic and narrative) of graphic humor may imply some decrease in the value attributed to such contexts of the history of the media and of the economic logics of circulation of these products. Even so, we cannot fail to consider them, in another altogether sense of their application: in the case of the history of consumer culture in North American comics of the last two centuries, what interests us is less the process commodification of graphic humor, as Gordon insists, but certainly the operations that the historian identifies as being conditioned by the industrial modalities of production and circulation of humor design.
From our perspective, even if conditioned by aspects of the economic and industrial logic that affect graphic humor, the important point to highlight here concerns the aspects of its stylistic and narrative presentation: therefore, these are problems related to a poetic approach to the phenomenon - and the fact that the logic of the characters is, so to speak, conditioned by a mode of production that demands certain economies of reiteration of models of representation (whether in the economy of the trace or in the narrative formulas).
The most important thing is that these configurations in the level
of expression are rather effective and efficacious, for reasons that are less
economic than cognitive: they refer to certain psychological frameworks of
reception that derive from reasons linked to the economic models of production
and circulation (something that Gordon highlights in this passage that has been
explored before here):
“Comic strips with continuing casts proved well suited to the task of habit formation. Their attraction lay in their unique and striking characters. To late twentieth-century readers this may seem obvious because we are accustomed to the mass media´s creation of new characters, such as Bart Simpson, with sharply defined personalities. But at the opening of the century the construction of such characters was a recent phenomenon. Comic strip artists still, however, had to give their characters voices before those characters could meet the standard of performance required of the twentieth-century personality and thus be able to achieve celebrity status.” (GORDON, 1998: 34-35)
All these preliminary things considered though, we need to narrow down this characterization a little further, when we begin our approach to the evaluation of many of these processes associated with cultural and historical consolidation of graphic humor especially in a case like the Brazilian contemporary visual culture: if we intend an approach of particular manifestations of the phenomenon characterizing the most contemporary profiles of this relationship between material and economic conditions, on one side, and stylistic/narrative options of Brazilian graphic humor, we will find some of the same variables in joint operation - but in correlations and weights considerably different from that that defines the genesis of humor drawing, as described by historians such as Gordon and Kunzle.
Therefore, there is certainly a correlation between the rise and cultural recognition of artists and creators in this field in Brasil and a certain economic and industrial system of cultural production of graphic humor in this country that conditions its circulation – simultaneously associated with vehicles and strategies for the positioning of humorous drawing, regardless of its aspect of social or political commentary. But there is a fundamental difference in this process, stemming from a certain correlation between humorous drawing and the political environment of the country, at least in the last 50 years or so, i.e.: the fact that a good part of the modern graphic humor in Brasil does not emerge in the inductive conditions of a genuinely open or democratic society, but quite the opposite.
In this sense, at least in a good part of the process in which a greater prominence of graphic humor is consolidated, as an element that even provides the recognition of some of its most admirable artists and creators (in cases such as those of Ziraldo, Henfil and, finally, Laerte), is a background of severe limitation of democratic freedoms and an equivalent restriction of information that conditions the satirical commentary - often restraining the development of a more complexifying sense of the functions associated with the production of laughter in this context, in the way they are developed under conditions of political freedom and institutional normality of liberal democracies.
It is curious, in this context, that a type of exercise in “ironic perplexity”, typical of Quino’s humor, in the case of his masterpiece Mafalda, emerged, first of all, in a context of relative tranquility of the political reality pre-dictatorship Argentina: even if we have observed, on previous occasions, that a good part of the comic grace of this character has served causes of defense of democratic freedoms, resulting from a “social memory” activated by postures and behaviors of this character (as Isabella Cosse reminds us), Quino's impression of the humor that surrounds and inspires the episodes of Mafalda derives way more from the daily life of a middle-class family in Buenos Aires, who live in a context of relative alienation with respect to the more immediate political environment - including that it has not yet manifested the harshest and most dramatic features of an extreme social and political restriction (which would worsen after the military coup of 1976).
In the same sense, the factors that emerge from this process (in which reality affecting and conditioning the production of humor cannot be defined so punctually), as in the case of the presence of a centralizing political power that restricts social dynamics, the humor that results from such conditions has a greater chance of expressing vaguer and broader aspects of that which can serve the purpose of ironic or even sardonic comments: this moving force for laughter here being something more diffuse, and associated with the daily life of vast portions of the middle sectors in complex societies - such as family dramas, economic dilemmas, even existential questions. It is in this sense that David William Foster identifies in Mafalda's own sense of irony these aspects of a disjunction proper to humor, which operates more "from inside out" (that is, from the scope of the textual constructions to that of social realities) rather than “from the outside in” (from the political realities that condition the text type of humor to be done).
The character of Mafalda is strategically foregrounded in the sense that her perceptiveness is exaggeratedly greater than that of not only the children around her but of the limited (if loving and considerate) adults in her world. Moreover, both her verbalizations and her interior monologues evince level of irony that goes beyond intellectual precocity and social maturity. Indeed, Mafalda has often been criticized as being simply the mouthpiece of the nonchild Quino, though it is reasonable to counter that the object of the strip is not documentary child psychology but artful verbal and visual representation (FOSTER, 1989: 55)
Let us analyze some examples of the humor typical of Mafalda's narrative universe, in order to realize those aspects possibly justifying the universality of her appeal, as a "talisman of democracy" - and as the most recurrent reason of the processes of social memory within which agendas of defense of freedoms in global contexts finally emerge: these are cases that play with particular sophistication around the limits and distances between the motifs of graphic humor (along the line we treated in the last two sessions of the course, as a combination of style and dramaturgy), and the particularities of political culture and social realities addressed by that very mood.
When evaluating such a relationship between the cultural and symbolic effectiveness of humorous drawing, we must consider the limits with which such pertinence of graphic humor could be evaluated, depending on the difficulties imposed by a particular political regime or social reality, for example: in the case of the historians approaching visual sources related to this phenomenon, the secondary function of these resources of pictorial satire and social criticism, stands out, to the point of converting the examples of these manifestations into pure illustrations of other orders of problems – such as the organization of the denunciations of sectors of Brazilian politics in exile, during the period of the country's military dictatorship, especially in the 60's and 70's of the last century.
Teresa Marques' text is particularly illustrative of this type of attention to the iconographic materials of visual humor, especially in the case of studies on caricature - insofar as her formulation subtracts from the visual materials the weight in which they could express a sense of poetics proper: from the outset, the authorship of the cartoons that illustrate and express the fierce satire directed against the military already connotes an important sign about the completely auxiliary function of the humorous drawing, hereby reduced to the framework of an aggressive rhetoric of the organized groups that fought against the military regime, out from exile.
The caricatures of the Brazilian military published in Marcha sought simply to depreciate the new leaders of the country. In some images they were portrayed as gorillas, and in others certain physical traits of the Brazilian military presidents were exaggerated or highlighted in order to ridicule them and thus make people laugh. Thus, some caricatures of Brazilian presidents were not dealing with a special fact, rather they were only meant to ridicule the character. (MARQUES, 2015: 364)
In this sense, the iconography that represents these visual resources of the political rhetoric of these (more than) alternative vehicles does not quite express, at least in terms of historical analysis, the degrees of sophistication that would justify a greater care in the examination of these materials, from the perspective of a historian. And, in fact, while observing some of the most recurrent rhetorical figures employed in these universes, there would even be no way to consider, in this empirical clipping of the sampling of the graphic humor of these universes or vehicles of the alternative and partisan press, how to possibly align them with other similar cases of the visual political satire of the past – like those of Charles Philippon depicting the monarch Louis Philippe as a pear.
Ilustrações, La Marcha e Informazione
In the cases examined by the historian, the identification of the military with monkeys or pigs could would not surpass a rude simplification of the rhetorical device of the metaphor, only serving the purpose of a violent mockery - hereby used in degrees of violent hyperbole and aimed at a presupposition of understanding too linked to the horizons of an equally extreme and often violent political action. Only at a later time (and with the support of more professional organizations of journalistic information and the political and editorial direction), it becomes possible to identify a more appropriate place for resources of graphic humor invested of a certain stylistic identity and a sense of recognition further away from the strict functionality it fulfilled earlier fo a rhetoric of pure mockery in partisan politics.
In such a context, one might recongize the most salient instance of this centrality of the poetic resources of Brazilian graphic humor, especially in the context of the public confrontation of the military regime installed in Brazil – which is, without a doubt, the case of O Pasquim: although representing a mere alternative journal, in terms of its conditions of production and consumption, with circulations much less significant than that of the main newspapers in the country, this humor weekly established a true paradigm of the modernity of graphic humor and political satire in Brazilian journalism, in addition to serving as a home for the creation of the greatest exponents of the genre – some of whom are still active today.
More importantly, this newspaper represented a platform for criticism and opposition to the regime, without implying in this the agendas of specific groups or political parties involved in it – but only as a space for the exercise of a poetics of visual humor, at its highest level. Published regularly between 1969 and 1991, its peak was practically in the range of its duration until the final moments of the military regime, around 1984 (with the end of the direct election campaign and the election of Tancredo Neves to the presidency) , the newspaper functioned as a platform for experimentation – voluntary or not – of what was conventionally known as the modern Brazilian graphic humor – in order to establish the model for much of what would be carried out in this field, in the years following redemocratization, including there the shifts in focus, theme, and narrative strategies and styles of humor design and its wider implications for a range of social and cultural agendas in contemporary Brazil.
The case of O Pasquim illustrates, in my view, another dimension of the historical significance of graphic humor, in its condition of potent vehicle and weapon in the protest and resistance against the end of democratic freedoms - but in a context in which its appearance implies drag. the valorization of everything that can be seen in it from a poetics of humor: this means that approaching it as a historical “source” cannot be confused with the auxiliary functions of its resource in contexts in which laughter cannot be a element of emotion proper to the judgment made against authoritarianism, on the political level.
It is in this context that a look at the stylistics of modern graphic humor in Brazil cannot neglect this relative independence represented by vehicles such as O Pasquim, in the exact measure in which its historical value is dissociated from its instrumentation by any groups of opposition to the dictatorship in the country. It is not by chance, from a historical point of view, that the evaluation of the contexts that configure a modernity of Brazilian graphic humor, in the last part of the 20th century, is due considerably less to the surrounding political environment (although it is not alienated or set apart from it, when the need to employ satire) than the history of the genre itself and its antecedents – not only in the country, but in the traditions from which it originates.
And in this particular, a central aspect of this modernity of visual humor stems from dynamics not very different from those that lead Ian Gordon to evaluate the commodification of comics and daily strips, that is: they imply an ecology of the media vehicles used in their circulation, and are considerably constrained by a consumer culture that sustains humor – but that can be assimilated by the logic of assimilation between different platforms (since we are talking about a context that, in Brazil, characterizes the culture of visual humor as intimately connected with a sub- industry, typical of alternative comics, for example).
References:
FOSTER, David William. “Mafalda: the ironic bemusement”. In: From Mafalda to Los Supermachios: Latin American graphic humor as popular culture. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1989: pp. 53-63;
MARQUES, Teresa Cristina Schneider. “The opposition to the Brazilian dictatorship abroad through cartoon and caricatures (1964-1979). In: História/Unisinos, 19 (3), 2015: pp. 358-367;
SILVA, Nadilson Manoel da. “Brazilian Adult Comics: the age of market. In: Cartooning in Latin America (John A. Lent, ed.). Creeksill, N.J.: Hampton Press, 2005: pp. 101-118;
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