Literary excursion into the discomfort zone: a study of the adaptation from textual to visual representation in Gambaro's El desatino.(Critical Essay)

Introduction

Griselda Gambaro's fame as a brilliant Argentine dramatist overshadows her work as a skilled novelist. It is not well known that a portion of her acclaimed works are adaptations for the stage from narratives written earlier. For example, Gambaro's short story, El desatino, was published in 1963 in a collection of short narratives, but her pivotal work is its dramatic adaptation performed in 1965 with the same title. In the decade of the 1960's, working in close association with the Instituto Torcuato di Tella, this dramatist focuses on the artistic experimentation introduced by a group of Italian playwrights collectively referred to as the Theater of the Grotesque, or teatro del grotesco.

This analysis of Griselda Gambaro's El desatino, from the perspective of its evolution from textual narrative to its dramatic performance for the stage, traces the grotesque elements with respect to the dichotomy of truth and fiction as seen in the perception of reality. Gambaro problematizes the conventional notion of a unified vision of reality and challenges the reader/spectator, external to the texts, to a new way of "seeing." Her works challenge the pervasive blindness to cultural contradictions she finds prevalent in Argentina's society.

Looking beyond Argentina, we find many historical characters and historical events that transcend the mundane character of every day life, projecting the extreme images of an unconventional over-sized reality (1) beset by contradictions. This conveys a special meaning to the term "colorful" in the descriptive phrase "colorful Latin America" often used to denote the continent. Many intellectuals have become aware that Latin American reality has been associated with irreducible contradictions which have served to differentiate the cultural framework of the New World from the Old World. Although the "colorful" aspect of Latin American culture can be a highly marketable commodity, it has come under scrutiny. The notion of "difference," which exhibits itself in a contradictory reality, can easily slip into inequality / inferiority and become ingrained as part of cultural identity, sustaining an ideology of oppression. Much of Latin American contemporary literary production can be seen to communicate, with a sense of urgency, the need to undermine the pervasive ideology of oppression imbedded in the notion of "difference." Accordingly, conventional methods used to depict the unconventional reality of the New World aim to offer a critique of the cultural contradictions that have been tacitly accepted as the norm.

The focus on cultural contradictions resonates as both universal and particularly Argentine in character. In the case of Argentina, simply taking a look at a map will present us with contradictions when we consider the country's physical size and location. Argentina's natural hegemony over the region, by virtue of being the largest Spanish-speaking nation in the continent, is contradicted by her remote geographical position occupying the southernmost territory and, consequently, being the most removed from the cultural and economic centers of the New World. The peripheral status of this area extends beyond its geography and it is traceable to its historical origins. Records documenting the projects of exploration and conquest of the early sixteenth century (2) reinforce the marginal status of this portion of the continent. Unlike Mexico, in Central America, and Peru, in the Andean region, that had the wide-spread reputation of having hidden treasures, the Southern area along the Plata region held no particular interest for the Spanish crown since there were no confirmed reports of deposits of gold or silver, and the Indian population was wild and unusable--inutil--for labor. Typically, Spaniards arrived to this area, coming from Mexico or Peru via Chile, en route to other more exciting points. Early travelers cris-crossed the land searching for routes to the elusive Orient. Understandably, these factors had considerable bearing on the exploration movement as well.

While Mexico fell under Spanish dominance in 1519, and Peru became subdued in 1532, the Plata region was not to be included in the exploration effort until much later. The area was considered to be of such little importance that the Spanish crown itself was unwilling to invest money and resources into its conquest and exploration. It was not until 1536 that the Spanish King gave permission for a private venture to be carried out by Pedro de Mendoza which, although unsuccessful at first, began the arduous task of developing the region. It was at the rather late date of 1580 that the city of Buenos Aires was established as a permanent community. Interestingly, the bulk of the labor of exploring and developing the new lands was not done by Spanish-born men sent by the crown, but mostly by young men of Spanish descent born and raised in the American continent, whose character was already markedly different from the men that conquered and explored the Northern part of the continent. These men exhibited a rugged sort of independence and uncompromising individualism, placing priority on survival. Paradoxically, the peripheral status with respect to its geography produced a peripheral status in a psychological sense. This resulted in a curious mixture of ambivalent feelings towards other European newcomers. Being removed from the European sphere of influence brought about a contradictory national identity characterized by both a desire to embrace European values, and become a champion of European civilization, as well as fierce pride and unrestrained patriotism. In addition, an isolationist attitude and the inherited fatalism of her Hispanic heritage contrived to mar the Argentine character with a sense of pessimism; an attitude that holds that events are beyond control, exacerbated by the feeling that threat from immediate danger could come from within as well as from the external world.

To summarize, abundant natural resources and Argentina's natural physical superiority did not in themselves provide for a leading role among the other American nations. The historical events that would define Argentina's cultural fabric tended to exacerbate, rather than resolve, the contradictions of her origins. Modern Argentina is known for its strongly nationalistic fervor (3), but at the same time, Argentina can be seen as a highly sectoral society where various cultural groups coexist without being assimilated into the dominant cultural framework; her reality problematized by a basic ambivalence with regard to her destiny, circumscribed in the Argentine contradictory cultural identity. Moreover, the Spanish crown's early neglect of her development has served to produce an idealized vison of the Old World and has conditioned the country towards an alignment with Europe which has produced a yearning for traditional values and has deepened her isolation in the Americas. Isolation has developed fierce independence characterized by a non-compromising attitude. Argentina's cultural identity, therefore, is marked by the oppositions tyrant / victim, elitism/dependency. What these multiple perspectives have in common is that they are centered on violence as an operative framework. These considerations are of fundamental importance as we approach Argentina's cultural production.