LATINOAMERICAN TV NOVELS AS A CULTURAL, MEDIA AND IMAGE PHENOMENON

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At the beginning of the twentieth century the era of progressive technological development has started and the new concept of “real” emerged, but the real events become the basis for the upgrade of the media industry. Technological revolution in the twentieth century led to the expansion of mass communication, radio, film, print, television, internet and other means of media that became available in every household. Latin American TV novels based on realistic narratives combine in a characteristic way the world of reality and fantasy supporting the system of social, ideological and political values. They become globally popular genre of television distribution outside the framework of Latin American countries. The global phenomenon of Latin American TV novels is processed in this work by critical analysis with special emphasis on their media, cultural and social aspects.

RITUALS AND PUBLIC EVENTS AS THE CONNECTION BETWEEN CHAOTIC AND MYTHOLOGICAL-DRAMATIC IN MODERN SOCIETY

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In the past, rituals, ceremonies, festivals, spectacles, social dramas and mythological symbolism were strenghtening social connections between members of the same clan, tribe or community. In the same time, they were preparing people to solve problems of survival, how to change social regulations and laws in evitable social development.

Deeper symbolism of this “journey” of the man through time and space with his rituals and public events represent the moving from Chaos to Logos. Rhytm of social activities and human consciousness needs harmonising and control of constant changes of thoughts and emotions. Social dramatising, public events, also secret rituals and ceremonies are moderating the consequences of this transfer from archaic and mythical man to “new” rational and logical member of social order.

The concept of game and playing helps people and society to meet the problems of traditional and modern rules and regulations. Two basic kinds of rituals and public events are relevant – events-that-model and events-that-represent; these extend social communications and connections between the individuals, and improve or destruct old and new structures of society and political system.

The ancient principles of ritualization, mythological symbolism or techniques of magical, religious and social control also live in the modern world, tied to positioning of power and one`s place in the hierarchy of the community. Mythological and ritual symbolism today can be a very strong manipulator and controller of the mass and groups, but also can facilitate the change of unnatural or inequitable social relationship. Modern social and political experience can be enriched and improved with the mythological symbolism and ritual interpretations, it can help us to overcome our perception of contradiction between the rational and irrational world in ourselves and around us.

RITUAL AND DANCE MEMORY IN ORAL CULTURE

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It is not by chance that individual art forms appear in specific time periods. Art satisfies certain human needs but is also connived with the dominant technologies which determine their time. Marshall McLuhan approaches the phenomenon of art from the point of view of deliberating human extensions and their influence on the human experience. The artistic (in this case, dance) is deliberated on the level of understanding technologies that are and are not available to Man.

Dance is seen in the context of its importance for the understanding of preliterate civilizations. This is a context in which it is more crucial to understand the advancement of the preliterate human spirit than possible outlines of the artistic in the dances of early civilizations.

The hypnotic quality of contemporary mass media also has its sources in the hypnotic roots of seduction by dance of the dances dating from the time of preliterate civilizations. Hence the connection between the seduction dances and hypnotism of contemporary mass media and their technological roots of which McLuhan writes. Deliberation on dance once again raises the question of correctness of the path of human civilization based on the directions of technologies. Therefore the deliberation on dance requires distance and deflection for the thought which does not wish to be imprisoned.

REVITALIZATION OF IBSEN’S “PEER GYNT” IN OSLO TODAY: INTERTEXTUALITY IN A SCENE

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The text explores possibilities of revitalization and translation of Henrik Ibsen’s play into an open form of performance. On the example of Peer Gynt, first perfomed on September 17, 2009 at the Oslo Nye Centralteater, common grounds of the 19th century drama and contemporary cultural context are considered. Ibsen’s drama Peer Gynt, directed by Svein Sturla Hungnes is, according to critics, staged as ”a modern, urban version”. The analysis singles out the key intertextual elements of a new reading and performing Ibsen in the context of media culture. Relying on Roland Barthes’s theoretic views from the essay “The Death of the Author”, our text focuses on stage/performance and viewer/participant communication.

SPECTACLE OF ILLNESS. ON THE ROLE OF MEDICAL SCIENCE IN LIFE OF CONTEMPORARY MAN

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In this paper the author tries to analyze some aspects of the relation between contemporary human and health. The central problem is transformation from the individual health care, which every human has towards his/her own health, to the system health care. This process is conducted in its social, cultural, economic, media and technological surroundings that we call spectacle. Essentially, this paper is based on the work of Ivan Illich, Guy Debord and Lidia Gajski. Each of these authors has contributed to the inquiry of the problems that we try to show in the given context. Firstly, Ivan Illich, criticises the institutions of industrial society which make enormous harm to the people because they transform subject from human to system. Secondly, Guy Debord makes a profound analysis of the spectacle as a creator of false consciousness of the human life. Thirdly, Lidija Gajski, gives us a brilliant analysis of contemporary health system that shows us the role of profit in the healthcare. The other dimension of this paper is connected to the problems of science and its role in the life of contemporary human. Central point of our critique is to show the reductive dimension of contemporary science which ignores other aspects of human spirituality in search for truth. The problem of the role of science in the medical care has two dimensions. The first one is connected to the problem of financing scientific researches while the second describes the problem of reduction of rational reasoning in the process of healing, in which the science disappears and the profit takes its place. The problems of the spectacle therefore attain a central position for the following interpretation.

CONTEMPORARY CITY AS A SPACE OF SPECTACLE: STAGE OR SCENE

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The appearance and utilisation of cities significantly changed at the end of the 20th century. The city has become an arena which, thanks to the global changes, the IT society and the need for prestige among many cities around the world, as well as different shaping of the norms, culture of behaviour and the typification of lifestyles, has been transformed into the urban stage. By increasingly accepting scenographic characteristics, contemporary city has become the space where market ideology directs and determines means of communication, but also the way we perceive things. In the process of the characterisation of the contemporary city special place has been dedicated to the relationaship between the physical structure of the built environment, theatricality of buildings and the urban spaces, as well as the spectacle and urban and spacial shaping of performing events. However, in order to experience the urban space, we also need the ability to percieve the city scenographically. This is how the spectacle becomes one of the most important elements of the city life and an important factor that characterises contemporary city.

SOCIAL SPECTACLE AND POSTDRAMATIC THEATRE: BLENDING

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This paper examines the influence of media context on the language and structure of contemporary postdramatic theatre. The field of my research is postdramatic theatre, as defined by Hans-Thies Lehmann, authors such as Gledališče Glej, Forced Entertatainment, Rene Pollesch, Constanca Macras, Nicolas Stemann, Robert Lepage, Andras Urban. These authors are very well aware of the changes in social and cultural context due to the mass media influence. Their, most radical, reaction to these changes is transformation of traditional theatre language which includes the break from linear narrative, using different modes of technology etc. That is the way to problematize general spectacularization of society, tendencies to become visible, public, popular. Authors such as Pollesch, Macras, Stemann and others use parody, theatralicity and autoreflexivity in order to deconstruct media context and its basic notion of spectacle. Using technology in their work is also the means to define problem of social and cultutral alienation induced by media domination. All these topics are explored in this paper in which I analyze the postdramatic theatre as a new theatre language, complex and ambivalent.

SPECTACLE AND MEDIA CULTURE

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With the aim to analyze the reality-media culture-spectacle relationship the author focuses on the visual theories of Guy Debord, Michel Foucault and Jean Baudriard. In media and spectacle, virtual reality is recognized as a crucial assumption of the contemporary communication, its advantages and disadvantages. In the attempt to enter the visual world, the author re-evaluated certain substantial culturological concepts of the media sphere, and briefly scrutinized notions relevant for the essential understanding of the visual in the visual culture.

THE SPECTACULAR BODIES IN THE WORKS OF EDWARD BOND: RELATIONSHIP TO THE HUMAN BODY IN THE WESTERN CIVILIZATION

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This paper will analyze how human bodies, often caught in the spectacles of war, appear in the opus of the British playwright Edward Bond, in his trilogy from the eighties known as The War Plays as well as in his more recent works such as Coffee and Crimes of the 21st Century. The underlying thesis of Bond’s work is that the Western Civilization’s attitude to the body, made spectacularly visible in war, actually matches its traditional peace-time relationship to the people. In the dominant discourse of society common people are seen as Red, Black and Ignorant, precisely as the title of the first play of Bond’s War Plays trilogy suggests. They represent the silent majority, disregarded, exploited and invisible until the moment when their ravaged bodies become conveniently spectacular, the world and media sensation, displayed on the cover pages of newspapers, invoked as subjects of great concern by provocative headlines in the news programs, made objects of scientific analysis, used as metaphors of lost humanness in critical texts, etc. The sudden (hypocritical) concern for the victims of war is staged in order to keep hidden West’s real lack of concern and respect for human life, which are the underlying cause of war.Bond sees this paradox as the expected outcome of existence in unjust societies. Never abandoning his radical quest for justice he has spent his entire writing life studying the causes and effects of war and violence. The move away from them requires true understanding of what he calls “text, subtext and metatext of our situation. The metatext of Red Black and Ignorant says that it takes a lot of culture to make us killers”.

For the theoretical framework in this paper Bond’s own comments, notes, critical texts and poem will be used, as well as the ideas of cultural analysts and historians Michel Foucault and Howard Zinn.

FILM SPECTACLE AS DISCOVERY OF THE OTHER

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The text deals with film spectacle as a medium of meeting and construction of the other in the processes of cultural globalization. Kurosawa is seen as an author who created his films in the period between two epochs and in the space between two cultures, and in doing so, substantially modifies both. The article tends to show that nowadays the processes of mixing of different cultures are inevitable, that the tradition in any form of contemporary cultural creativity could not resist them, and that the technology as such crucially determines basic dimensions of this encounter. The view of film spectacle here is a positive one, i.e. it is seen as a medium facilitating intercultural language, and only after that, as a source of stereotypes and prejudices about the other. A special attention is given to the place and role of female characters in Kurosawa’s samurai movies, where they are interpreted as a subtext of an intercultural communication.