Public spectacles of violence : sensational cinema and journalism in early twentieth-century Mexico and Brazil / Rielle Navitski.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Navitski, Rielle, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--Mexico--History--20th century.

Motion pictures.

Motion pictures--Brazil--History--20th century.

Sensationalism in motion pictures.

Violence in motion pictures.

History.

Brazil.

Mexico.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xiv, 325 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2017.

Summary:

Rielle Navitski examines the proliferation of cinematic and photographic images of criminality, bodily injury, and technological catastrophe in early twentieth-century Mexico and Brazil, which were among Latin America's most industrialized nations and later developed two of the region's largest film industries. Navitski analyzes a wide range of sensational cultural forms, from nonfiction films and serial cinema to illustrated police reportage, serial literature, and fan magazines, demonstrating how media spectacles of violence helped audiences make sense of the political instability, high crime rates, and social inequality that came with modernization. In both nations, sensational cinema and journalism-influenced by imported films-forged a common public sphere that reached across the racial, class, and geographic divides accentuated by economic growth and urbanization. Highlighting the human costs of modernization, these media constructed everyday experience as decidedly modern, in that it was marked by the same social ills facing industrialized countries. The legacy of sensational early twentieth-century visual culture remains felt in Mexico and Brazil today, where public displays of violence by the military, police, and organized crime are hypervisible.

Contents:

Sensationalizing public violence in Mexico

Staging public violence in Porfirian and revolutionary Mexico, 1896-1922

On location: adventure melodramas in postrevolutionary Mexico, 1920-1927

Staging spectacles of modernity in Brazil

Reconstructing crime in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, 1906-1913

The serial craze in Rio de Janeiro, 1915-1924: reception, production, paraliterature

Regional modernities: sensational cinema outside Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo

1923-1930.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Navitski, Rielle. Public spectacles of violence.

ISBN:

9780822369639

082236963X

9780822369752

0822369753

OCLC:

956339825