Sunday, December 09, 2012

Frida Kahlo and Eyegiene: Permutations of Subjectivity in the Televisual Age of Sex and Race

Original posting, May 2009...

As I move forward pulling together the final elements of my new manuscript, Eyegiene: Permutations of Subjectivity in the Televisual Age of Sex and Race, a follow-up volume to Tex[t]-Mex, I have decided to include a chapter on seeing in the work of Remedios Varo, Jorge Luis Borges, and Frida Kahlo--to be truthful, it is a revision and update of a conference paper I delivered 17 years ago, "Surreptitiously Watching the Voyeur’s Mirror: Fragmented Notes on Eye/I Addiction Culled From the Autobiographical Works of Jorge Luis Borges, Frida Kahlo, Jacques Derrida and Remedios Varo" for the Addiction and Culture Conference (Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, California, March 1996). A book was birthed out of that conference but I never got my act together in time to submit anything for it--check it out here. In any event, as a placemarker, I wanted to share the plates from The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait that will provide the focus of my chapter--the uncanny, funny, and dynamic "ojosaurus" sketches:
I will try to come back later and sketch out my own thoughts on this striking composition. 
You can peek inside the Kahlo diary here.

Mexican Cinema Villain Extraordinaire: Maricruz Olivier

Las villanas me dieron fama. La gente ha detestado a mis malditas: sólo cuatro en mi carrera. Sé que no me detestan a mí. En la mente de la gente no me quedé como villana, si no como actriz. Cuando hice "Teresa", no faltaba quien me parara en la calle para darme consejos: Muchachita no seas mala hija. Pórtate mejor con tus padres. Otras personas me decían ¡qué horrible comportamiento! Detrás de todo esto había un la está interpretando...
-- Maricruz Olivier, 1983 ("El castillo de las estrellas")

Click to enlarge



Here she is in a scene from Las Pecadoras, The Sinners

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