Blood Circuits by Jonathan Risner

Author:Jonathan Risner [Risner, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781438470757
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2018-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

HORROR IN THE HANDS OF PUNK: HORROR MADE RAW

Raw film aesthetics in Latin American and Argentine cinemas have often been conceived either through New Latin American Cinema and its various manifestos or strains of contemporary neorealist films. For instance, in their well-known essay “Towards a Third Cinema,” Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas juxtapose Third Cinema against “the perfect work of art, the fully rounded film structured according to the metrics imposed by bourgeois culture, its theoreticians” (48). In contrast, “[o]ur time is one of hypothesis rather than of thesis, a time of works in progress—unfinished, unordered, violent works made with the camera in one hand and a rock in the other” (Getino and Solanas 49; my emphasis).38 Similarly, “ ‘New Argentine Cinema’ was heralded by critics at home and abroad as the genuine, ‘raw’ expression of its own moment: a cinema that, because of the way it experienced crisis as a daily reality of production, became a document and a mode of critique of the present not just through the objects of narrative but also embodied in the very form of cinematographic expression” (Andermann, New Argentine Cinema 157).

Punk/horror does not step outside and circumvent the Argentine neoliberal economic crisis described by Andermann. Punk/horror is part of its milieu. Yet, punk/horror production is not “experienced as a crisis.” Instead, as described previously, punk/horror production emerges from a love or yearning for cinematic production that pays no mind to a material crisis that would bemoan one’s inability to secure funding and make a commercial film. Punk/horror’s raw aesthetics, in turn, are not the result of crisis à la New Argentine Cinema, but rather a choice. Moreover, Argentine punk/horror interjects a range of unrefined aesthetics into Argentine cinema as well as Argentine horror. Gorevisión, for example, makes no attempts to hide the low-budget nature of its productions.39 The films’ image and sound quality are generally poor and lack any concern with retakes, realistic special effects, and lighting. Any attention to continuity editing is negligible. Goreinvasión thoroughly illustrates this disinterest in high production values and “good” cinema, while often mocking the notion of high-brow tastes, “cine independiente” (“independent cinema”), and Argentine cinema’s dependence on INCAA to produce a film. Goreinvasión functions as a self-reflexive “making of” a slasher film under the auspices of an on-screen Gorevisión production team directed by the hilariously pompous Roger Franco (Ezequiel Hansen). The film crew is joined by an uninitiated and austere film intern who frequently questions the director’s and crew’s actions until he commits suicide by shooting himself in the mouth. By the film’s end, although Franco admits to a crew member that the entire production is a farce, the slasher film is complete. Goreinvasión, like the majority of other films directed by Magariños, foregrounds and even flaunts its unpolished nature. An “Advertencia” (“Warning”) appears in the opening credits: “Hemos mantenido la pesima [sic] calidad original de esta cinta infumable, para que la experiencia sea equitativa a su visionado original. Disfrutenla [sic] en familia” (We have maintained the

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