Magical Realism; The way my grandmother used to tell stories
Description
The following is an adaptation from M.H. Abrams' A Glossary of Literary
Terms, 6th ed. (Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1993) as
cited by Dr. Robert P. Fletcher of West Chester University.
The term magic realism, originally applied in the 1920s to a school of
painters, is used to describe the prose fiction of Jorge Luis Borges in
Argentina, as well as the work of writers such as Gabriel García Márquez in
Colombia, Gunter Grass in Germany, and John Fowles in England. These
writers interweave, in an ever-shifting pattern, a sharply etched realism in
representing ordinary events and descriptive details together with fantastic
and dreamlike elements, as well as with materials derived from myth and
fairy tales. Robert Scholes has popularized metafiction as an overall term
for the large and growing class of novels which depart drastically from the
traditional categories either of realism or romance, and also the term
fabulation for the current mode of free-wheeling narrative invention. These
novels violate, in various ways, standard novelistic expectations by drastic - and sometimes highly effective -- experiments with subject matter, form,
style, temporal sequence, and fusions of the everyday, the fantastic, the
mythical, and the nightmarish, in renderings that blur traditional distinctions
between what is serious or trivial, horrible or ludicrous, tragic or comic.
Magical Realism
A literary mode rather than a distinguishable genre, magical realism aims to
seize the paradox of the union of opposites. For instance, it challenges
polar opposites like life and death and the pre-colonial past versus the postindustrial present. Magical realism is characterized by two conflicting
perspectives, one based on a rational view of reality and the other on the
acceptance of the supernatural as prosaic reality. Magical realism differs
from pure fantasy primarily because it is set in a normal, modern world with
authentic descriptions of humans and society. According to Angel Flores,
magical realism involves the fusion of the real and the fantastic, or as he
claims, "an amalgamation of realism and fantasy". The presence of the
supernatural in magical realism is often connected to the primeval or
"magicalí Indian mentality, which exists in conjunction with European
rationality. According to Ray Verzasconi, as well as other critics, magical
realism is "an expression of the New World reality which at once combines
the rational elements of the European super-civilization, and the irrational
elements of a primitive America." Gonzalez Echchevarria believes that
magical realism offers a world view that is not based on natural or physical
laws nor objective reality. However, the fictional world is not separated
from reality either.
Background
The term "magical realism" was first introduced by Franz Roh, a German art
critic, who considered magical realism an art category. To him, it was a
way of representing and responding to reality and pictorially depicting the
enigmas of reality. In Latin America in the 1940s, magical realism was a
way to express the realistic American mentality and create an autonomous
style of literature.
Characteristics of Magical Realism
Hybridityó Magical realists incorporate many techniques that have been
linked to post-colonialism, with hybridity being a primary feature.
Specifically, magical realism is illustrated in the inharmonious arenas of
such opposites as urban and rural, and Western and indigenous. The plots
of magical realist works involve issues of borders, mixing, and change.
Authors establish these plots to reveal a crucial purpose of magical
realism: a more deep and true reality than conventional realist techniques
would illustrate.
Irony Regarding Authorís Perspectiveó The writer must have ironic distance
from the magical world view for the realism not to be compromised.
Simultaneously, the writer must strongly respect the magic, or else the
magic dissolves into simple folk belief or complete fantasy, split from the
real instead of synchronized with it. The term "magic" relates to the fact
that the point of view that the text depicts explicitly is not adopted according
to the implied world view of the author. As Gonzales Echevarria expresses,
the act of distancing oneself from the beliefs held by a certain social group
makes it impossible to be thought of as a representative of that society.
Authorial Reticenceó Authorial reticence refers to the lack of clear opinions
about the accuracy of events and the credibility of the world views
expressed by the characters in the text. This technique promotes
acceptance in magical realism. In magical realism, the simple act of
explaining the supernatural would eradicate its position of equality
regarding a personís conventional view of reality. Because it would then be
less valid, the supernatural world would be discarded as false testimony.
The Supernatural and NaturalóIn magical realism, the supernatural is not
displayed as questionable. While the reader realizes that the rational and
irrational are opposite and conflicting polarities, they are not disconcerted
because the supernatural is integrated within the norms of perception of the
narrator and characters in the fictional world.
Themes
The idea of terror overwhelms the possibility of rejuvenation in magical
realism. Several prominent authoritarian figures, such as soldiers, police,
and sadists all have the power to torture and kill. Time is another
conspicuous theme, which is frequently displayed as cyclical instead of
linear. What happens once is destined to happen again. Characters rarely,
if ever, realize the promise of a better life. As a result, irony and paradox
stay rooted in recurring social and political aspirations. Another particularly
complex theme in magical realism is the carnivalesque. The carnivalesque
is carnivalís reflection in literature. The concept of carnival celebrates the
body, the senses, and the relations between humans. "Carnival" refers to
cultural manifestations that take place in different related forms in North and
South America, Europe, and the Caribbean, often including particular
language and dress, as well as the presence of a madman, fool, or clown.
In addition, people organize and participate in dance, music, or theater.
Latin American magical realists, for instance, explore the bright life-affirming
side of the carnivalesque. The reality of revolution, and continual political
upheaval in certain parts of the world, also relates to magical realism.
Specifically, South America is characterized by the endless struggle for a
political ideal.
Common aspects of magical realist novels and films
The following elements are found in many magical realist novels and films,
but not all are found in all of them and many are found in novels or films
that could fall under other genres.
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Contains a magical element
The magical element may be intuitive but is never explained
Characters accept rather than question the logic of the magical element
Exhibits a richness of sensory details
Distorts time so that it is cyclical or so that it appears absent. Another
technique is to collapse time in order to create a setting in which the
present repeats or resembles the past.
6 - Inverts cause and effect, for instance a character may suffer before a
tragedy occurs
7 - Incorporates legend or folklore
8 - Presents events from multiple perspectives, such as those of belief and
disbelief or the colonizers and the colonized
9 - May be an overt rebellion against a totalitarian government or
colonialism
11 - May be set in or arise from an area of cultural mixing
12 - Uses a mirroring of either past and present, astral and physical planes,
or of characters
Relation to other genres and movements
As a literary style, magical realism often overlaps or is confused with other
genres and movements.
1 - Postmodernism – Magical realism is often considered, as a genre, a
subcategory of postmodern fiction due to its challenge to hegemony and its
use of techniques similar to those of other postmodernist texts, such as the
distortion of time.
2 - Surrealism – Many early magical realists such as Alejo Carpentier and
Miguel Angel Asturias studied with the surrealists, and surrealism, as an
international movement, influenced many aspects of Latin American art.
Surrealists, however, try to discover and portray that which is above or
superior to the “real” through the use of techniques such as automatic
writing, hypnosis, and dreaming. Magical realists, on the other hand, portray
the real world itself as having marvelous aspects inherent in it.
3 - Fantasy and Science fiction – Fantasy and science fiction novels using strict definitions - portray an alternate world with its own set of rules
and characteristics or experiment with our world by suggesting how a new
technology or political system might affect our society. Magical realism,
however, portrays the real world as not satisfying any definite set of rules.
Some critics include Magic Realism as one of the Fantasy genres, though.
This genre is classical 'edge' genre, both fitting and not fitting Fantasy,
depending on used definitions.
History
The term magic realism was first used by the German art critic Franz Roh to
refer to a painterly style also known as Neue Sachlichkeit. It was later used
to describe the unusual realism by American painters such as Ivan Albright,
Paul Cadmus, George Tooker and other artists during the 1920s. It should
be noted though that unlike the term's use in literature, in art it is describing
paintings that do not include anything fantastic or magical, but are rather
extremely realistic and often times mundane.
The term was first revived and applied to the realm of fiction as a
combination of the fantastic and the realistic in the 1960s by a Venezuelan
essayist and critic Arturo Uslar-Pietri, who applied it to a very specific South
American genre, influenced by the blend of realism and fantasy in Mário de
Andrade's influential 1928 novel Macunaíma. However, the term itself came
in vogue only after Nobel prize winner Miguel Angel Asturias used the
expression to define the style of his novels. The term gained popularity with
the rise of such authors as Mikhail Bulgakov, Ernst Jünger, and many Latin
American writers, most notably Jorge Luis Borges, Isabel Allende, Juan
Rulfo and Gabriel García Márquez, who confessed, "My most important
problem was destroying the lines of demarcation that separates what
seems real from what seems fantastic." The most widely read of the South
American magical realism narratives are García Márquez's novel One
Hundred Years of Solitude and Love In The Time of Cholera. Today,
magical realism is perhaps too broadly used, to characterize all realistic
fictions with an eerie, otherworldly component, such as the tales of Edgar
Allen Poe.
Painting
In painting, magical realism is a term often used interchangeably with postexpressionism. In 1925, art critic Franz Roh used this term to describe
painting which signalled a return to realism after expressionism's
extravagances which sought to redesign objects to reveal the spirits of
those objects. Magical realism, according to Roh, instead faithfully portrays
the exterior of an object, and in doing so the spirit, or magic, of the object
reveals itself.
Other important aspects of magical realist painting, according to Roh,
include:
1 - A return to mundane subjects as opposed to fantastical ones
2 - A juxtaposition of forward movement with a sense of distance, as
opposed to Expressionism's tendency to foreshorten the subject
3 - A use of minature details even in expansive paintings, such as large
landscapes
External links to magical realist paintings
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Magical Realist Painting and Franz Roh
American Magical Realist Painter Michael Parkes
Film
A minority of theorists, such as Wendy B. Faris, argue that certain films,
such as The Witches of Eastwick and Field of Dreams could be described
as magical realism, but the term is still primarily used to describe literature.
However, the term has been applied to the films of Tim Burton (Edward
Scissorhands, Big Fish) and David Lynch (Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet,
and Wild at Heart); other examples include La cité des enfants perdus,
What Dreams May Come, and Being John Malkovich.
Magical realist authors
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Sherman Alexie
Isabel Allende
Reinaldo Arenas
Francesca Lia Block
Jorge Luis Borges
Mikhail Bulgakov
William S. Burroughs
Italo Calvino
Alejo Carpentier
Angela Carter
Ana Castillo
Douglas Anthony Cooper
Julio Cortázar
Laura Esquivel
John Fowles
Carlos Fuentes
Eduardo Galeano
Günter Grass
Donald Harington
Russell Hoban
Alice Hoffman
W.P. Kinsella
Yann Martel
Gabriel García Márquez
Toni Morrison
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Haruki Murakami
John Nichols
Victor Pelevin
Tom Robbins
João Guimarães Rosa
Juan Rulfo
Salman Rushdie
Will Self
Graham Swift
D.M. Thomas
Etienne van Heerden
Derek Walcott
Magic realist painters
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Ivan Albright
Paul Cadmus
Alex Colville
Michael Parkes
George Tooker
David Acosta
Magic realism in Film
Oxygen's four best magic realist film scenes of the last few years.
Magic realism as a genre is maybe most often associated with 20th century
South American fiction writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Cinematic
magic realism, however, is a more recent, in the mainstream anyway,
phenomenon. Directors like PT Anderson, Spike Jonze, and the Coen Bros
all enjoy adding a bit of the fantastic into their films. Around the late 90s it
was the thing to do. Even TV's Ally McBeal got in on the act.
Magic realism in the cinema is about more than just frogs falling on cars in
Magnolia. Cinematic magic realism is more of an atmosphere that
permeates the entire film. Things may appear normal enough most of the
time, and events tend to follow their own twisted logic. The films are often
set in a perfectly normal, almost too normal world with just one or two
characters who don't fit in. There can also be a childish, skewed worldview,
and also a sense of a superior, overlooking power guiding events from
offscreen. There is often an omnisicient narrator. And outsider characters
eventually finding true love is common. Strange and wonderful things tend
to happen.
Maybe everyone's favourite European magic realist film of the last while
was Amelie, where Audrey Tatou's wide eyed and lonely innocent was
guided toward love by some bewitching quirks of fate. Amelie director Jean
Pierre Jeunet is reunited with the winsome Ms Tatou in A Very Long
Engagement. Again with the magic and the heart warming and also with
the moving tale of lost love and innocence etc, but this time set amidst the
carnage of the Somme battlegrounds.
Which leads us neatly to oxygen's top 5 magic realist moments [well in the
last few years anyway].
1. Blubber makes a break for it
Amelie is full of magic moments, but Blubber the goldfish attempting suicide
is possibly the most affecting. Blubber decides he just can't take his goldfish
bowl existence any more and leaps for freedom, before flopping around on
the kitchen floor. Amelie's heartless Da tries to grab him and Blubber hides
under the fridge. Amelie's Da has to get down on his knees and prod
around under the fridge with a brush. Amelie's only friend has been unable
to take his humdrum existence and has made a break for it. That has an
effect on an impressionable young girl's emotional development.
2. Donnie cheats death
Donnie Darko is a magical realist film that seems to make no sense, even
with the director's cut released last year. There's the rabbit, the time travel,
Patrick Swayze, granma death and the dying, when the engine comes
crashing down into his bedroom near the end. Donnie's behaviour has been
getting stranger and stranger and he's right, destruction is a form of
creation.
3. Edward Scissorhands makes an ice sculpture of Winona Ryder.
It's about two thirds of the way through the film, and poor Edward is still not
having much luck wooing Winona Ryder. Then he goes outside into the
cold and snow and starts chopping away at a big block of ice and soon
there's a spectacular ice sculpture of Winona sparkling in the night. She
comes out and starts to dance in the snow and the light is magical and
Edward smiles and Winona smiles, and it makes your heart melt. Then he
cuts her hand by accident and we're back in trouble again, but just for a
moment everything was perfect.
4. John Malkovich being John Malkovich
Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich. Malkovich, Malkovich. Malkovich,
Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich. While the whole of being John Malkovich
is surreal, the scene which is best representative of Magic Realism occurs
when Malkovich himself goes down the tunnel to get inside his own head
and is in a restaurant and everybody in the restaurant, the customers and
the waiters looks like him and keeps saying Malkovich, Malkovich. The
image of the stubbly Malkovich, wearing an evening dress and a string of
pearls, and pouting into the camera, is not a pretty one, but a great scene,
in a great film, and it's just won oxygen's best magic realist film scene of the
last few years.