He was white. White as forgetting. He was free.
Free as joy. He was illusion, liberty, and emotion. He filled and dominated the mountains and plains nearby. He was a white horse that filled my youth with fantasy and poetry.
The Latin American Boom
Characteristics
- During the 1960s and 1980s, Latin American artists, such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez,Julio Cortazar, and Mario Vargas Llosa began incorporating magical realist into their work.
- They were experimental modernists who wanted to do something that had not been done before.
~Magical Realism: focuses on infusing the imagination with was one deems to be real
~Surrealism: Concentrates on the imagination, free from rational thought.
Characteristics
- The story is set in an ordinary world, but occurrences are not always explained logically.
- Objects and settings within the story may take on lives of their own. (The island)
- Contradictions, inconsistencies, and ambiguities make the reader question what he/she truly believes.
- Matter-Of-Fact Narrative
- Interweave fantasy and reality seamlessly
Background
Magical Realism
~The term "magic realism" was first introduced by Franz Roh, a German art critic, who considered magic realism an art category.
~According to Roh, magical realism was a way of , "representing and responding to reality and pictorially depicting the enigmas of reality" (Moore).
~ In the 1940s Latin America, magic realism was a way to express the realistic American mentality and create an autonomous style of Literature.
What is it?
~ A literary genre or style from Latin America that incorporates fantastic or mythical elements into otherwise realistic fiction.
~It presents the extraordinary as everyday occurrences.
~ It has contradicting perspectives: one based on a rational view of reality and the other based on the acceptance of the supernatural as the prosaic of reality.
*Prosaic: taking an ordinary and unimaginative form*
Magic Realism in Films
One Hundred Years of Solitude
- Has an obvious sense of fantasy
- The film has themes which are similar issues in the "real world," such as racism. (i.e. "No Colored People Allowed" signs)
- The mother is going through a divorce, while David and Jennifer are challenged with typical issues that teenagers often face. (i.e. insecurities, romance, ect.)
- The schism between reality and fantasy is well defined.
- The movie is set during WWI in India and New York.
- After her father is drafted for the war, the main character, Sara Crewe, is moved from her home in India to a boarding school for girls in New York.
- She tells stories about an Indian prince who defeated a beast. It is obvious that these stories are only fables. These tales make the rest of the film seem more believable.
- The historical context of the film is accurate and provides in depth details of Indian culture and New York during 1914-1918.
- The film portrays the power of a child's imagination.
- The element of magical realism is more evident in this film than in Life of Pi.
- Sara and Pi both give long back stories to the plot of the book.
- The film combines realistic and unrealistic elements well enough to make it difficult to decipher between what is real and what is not.
- Just as in Life of Pi, the Indian character does not exist.
- Although magical realism did not technically arise in any one work of literature, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's work, One Hundred Years of Solitude, seems to have been the style's first well-developed work
- In the work, the lives of seven generations of the Buendia family in a land called Macondo is documented
- There are parts of this land that are created as well as founded leaving the reader to decide what is real and what is not
- This novel was able to achieve a distinctive sense of magical realism in its contrast between the mundane and the novel
- There are simple tasks such as cleaning and work given the same amount of attention as levitating priests
Mi Caballo Mago
- A young girl escaping a window ledge by crossing a wooden plank in pouring rain may seem unrealistic if the viewer had not seen the rest of the film.
- The other events in the film lead the viewers into believing that this too is possible. (i.e. the magic feast.)
Chac Mool
- Mi Caballo Mago is a short story written by Sabine R. Ulibarri in 1919
- The story is told as the narrator recalls it from his youth
- As a fifteen year old boy living on a farm, he sees a white horse once and then becomes fascinated by it
- The horse fills all of his dreams and thoughts until he decides to find it again
- Rumors appear that it returned and after significant pursuit he captures it, but finds it is gone the next day
- This story blurs the lines between fantasies and reality
- The boy's image of the horse as a majestic animal becomes a magical creature that could just be an attraction for the boy to escape his seemingly menial and mundane life
- Chac Mool is a short story written by Carlos Fuentes in 1954
- Chacmool is a term given to mesoamerican sculptures that featured reclining figures with their heads up
- water imagery and associated with Tlaloc, the rain god
- On a rainy day, a regular man goes into a shop for a regular purpose and the owner gives him a chacmool statue. He puts the statue in his basement and it becomes alive overnight. Eventually the statue becomes tired of the real world, goes into the river, and becomes a statue once more
- The story attaches commonplace behavior to a supposed god, masking the incredulous situation with the reality of having a person like Chac Mool around entails
- Like a god, he expects all food to be brought to him and all of his other needs to be taken care of by this man
- Instead of panicking that he came back to life, he obliges when the statue is in his house and his world
- This shows the blind behavior that ensues when one accepts a fantasy for reality
Magical Realism & Religion
Magical Realism
Magical Realism in American Literature
- Magical realism is found in various books and movies but seems to relate to religion
Similar traits of both Magical Realism and various religious beliefs:
- 1) A "magic" which cannot be explained by natural law
- 2) A description of common and everyday phenomena described as marvelous
- 3) It causes the reader to merge the two views of reality
- Everything is illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer is a contemporary example of how magical realism is present in American Literature
- In the novel, Jonathan Safran Foer goes on a journey to find the woman that could or could not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis during the second world war
- As he pieces together the elements of her past, he fills in blanks using his own imagination and eventually needs to confront the conflict between what he creates, what he believes, and what actually took place
- Pi describes his religion & life as interconnected just like magical realism connects the magical with the mundane
- All the stories that Pi hears interest him because these imaginative tales have now become Truth to him
- Just like Magical Realism tells stories in a truthful manner so the reader in captured between realms of reality
Elizabeth Englehart
Jackie Serrano
Kellie Howard
Sarah Paez
- Pi seems to describe religion as a story- a story he likes and prefers to live in
- Just like Pi's idea of religion, Magical Realism allows us to see our everyday life as valuable, with new possibilities
- It can boost our lives everyday, and knowing that something magical is in our lives makes everyday less "boring"