Public Spectacles of Violence

Rielle Navitski is Assistant Professor of Theatre and Film Studies at the University of Georgia and coeditor of Cosmopolitan Film Cultures in Latin America, 1896–1960.

• A Note on Usage  ixAcknowledgments  xiIntroduction 1Part I. Sensationalizing Violence in Mexico1. Staging Public Violence in Porfirian and Revolutionary Mexico, 1896–1922  312. On Location: Adventure Melodramas in Postrevolutionary Mexico, 1920–1927  85Part II. Staging Spectacles of Modernity in Brazil3. Reconstructing Crime in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, 1906–1913  1234. The Serial Craze in rio de Janeiro, 1915–1924: Reception, Production, Paraliterature  1675. Regional Modernities: Sensational Cinema Outside Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, 1923–1930  199Conclusion  247Notes  259Bibliography  297Index  315

“Public Spectacles is an artful and enthralling reflection on the interaction between urban visual culture forms and the violence of modernization. An excellent text to assign to advanced students.” - Jessica Stites Mor (EIAL) “Public Spectacles of Violence is an important contribution to the historiography of Mexican and Brazilian cinematography and of Latin American silent cinema in general. A must for researchers and students interested in the early cinema of Brazil and Mexico.” - Pablo Alvira (History) “Public Spectacles of Violence is essential for scholars of Latin American cinema. It offers conceptual and methodological tools that students and scholars of cinema, cultural studies, or history might use to approach the eternally resonant topic of violence and its symbolic representation.” - Georgina Torello (Cinema Journal) "[Navitski] has provided new insights into the perception of sensational violence as a mark of modernization, and into the close relationship between journalism and film. This book will be of interest to students and researchers working on early Latin American cinema; the relationship between American and Latin American film; and film and cinema as an expression of Latin American nationalism. For readers outside of film studies who are interested in spectacles of violence, the book presents invaluable research on the roots of the sensational public treatment of violence that we continue to see in Latin American media today." - Corrie Boudreaux (The Latin Americanist) "Public Spectacles of Violence is a compelling, convincing, elegant, and exemplary work of the emerging yet momentous field of Latin American silent cinema studies. It is a great read, a crucial contribution to its sub-specialty and to cinema studies in general, and representative of some of the best new scholarship in the area." - Ernesto R. Acevedo-Muñoz (Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature)