ARRIÉRE-GARDE VERSUS AVANT-GARDE: AUDIOVISUAL ORNAMENTATION OR "MINIMALISM" AND "ABSTRACTIONISM" AS THE FEATURE FILM STYLES FOR POLITICAL COMFORMISM.
"The illusion of internalits is to believe that this microcosm is entirely autonomous, as if it existed outside of space and the force of gravity. A microcosm is relatively sheltered from external pressure and demands. The law is relatively independent of the demands of the prince and the public. Inside this universe, as I have said, specific interests and forms of capital and power develop; those possessing the rare competences that are engendered in this universe acquire an intrument of power in this universe and often beyond it. Fields, then, are the site of the production of specific forms of capital, of specific authority and rarity. They are also the site of specific power relations which are not relations of brute force between classes, as the externalists would have it, but power struggles taking the form of conflicts of competence, [even if?] ultimately there is no philosophical struggle, however abstract it may appear, that does not bear some relation to social conflict."
Pierre Bourdieu
Page 8. Lecture of 10 March 1988. The Interest in Desinterestedness. . Polity Press, 2024.
The enthralling Snorting-Man versus the pleasure of being Myself, directed by Jorge Luis Villacorta Santamato, seems to have an artistic avant-garde mindset behind it but, in a Third World country like Peru, it may be perceived as rearguard action by a political dinosaur. Is Peru such a paradise for most of the population that audiovisual ornamentation of this kind is socially needed? This is not the case for most social agents in the country, evidently, and it only would make sense if you belong to an isolated social cluster: an academic "ivory tower", an avant-garde movement, those who share a specific amount of economic capital, or any other club that does not take the social whole into account.
According to Pierre Bourdieu there is a field of producers and a field of consumers. Social agents who occupy homologus positions in each field find each other. Bourdieu does not extend the idea but from the perspective of this writer, the "capitalist market" resembles "a caste society." And Jorge Luis Villacorta Santamato is producing "audiovisual ornamentation" from a particular position within the Peruvian (and at the same time international) field of audiovisual production. Potentially, there are consumers in a similar position within the field of consumers, for example, himself! Which means that, at least, there is one consumer (who, by the way, is this writer, who watched the movie before writing this piece of film criticism.)
Looking at this circumstance from an optimistic perspective, I point out that ornaments are used in daily life and their production are thriving capitalists industries. In fact, the capitalists intend to start the exchange of their merchandises and accelerate their exchange rate by developing their aesthetic value (and I would add that it becomes a symbolic value, too, as well as the merchandise has symbolic value [within the Bourdeausian sense of symbolic capital] within social hierarchies) if we choose to believe the analysis developed by Wolfgang Fritz Haug:
"Commodity production has as its aim not the creation of certain use-values, as such, but rather manufacture for sale. Use-value only figures in the calculations of the commodity producer in terms of buyer-expectation which must be taken into consideration. Not only are the ends and means for buyer and seller in opposition, but the same act also takes place at different times and with different meanings for each party. As far as the exchange-value is concerned, the transaction is completed and the purpose realized with the sale itself. From the point of view of use-value and need, the sale is only the start, and is the prerequisite to the buyer's realization of purpose in the use and enjoyment of the purchase.
From out of the contradiction of use-value and exchange-value, thus distributed between individuals, there appears a tendency time and again to modify the commodity-body, i.e. its use-form. Henceforth in all commodity production a double reality is produced: first the use-value; second, and more importantly, the appearance of use-value. For, until the sale is completed (and the exchange-value has been realized), use-value figures only in as much as the buyer promises him- or herself the use-value of the commodity. From the seller's (i.e. the exchange-value) position, until the sale is effected, the commodity's promise of use-value is all that counts. Right from the start, therefore, because of its economic function, the emphasis is on what the use-value appears to be - which, in terms of a single sales-act, is liable to be no more than mere illusion. The aesthetics of the commodity in its widest meaning - the sensual appearance and the conception of its use-value - become detached from the object itself. Appearance becomes just as important - and practically more so - than the commodity's being itself. Something that is simply useful but does not appear to be so, will not sell, while something that seems to be useful, will sell. Within the system of selling and buying, the aesthetic illusion - the commodity's promise of use-value - enters the arena as an independent function in selling. For economic reasons it is only natural and, under the pressures of competition, ultimately necessary to gain technological control over and independent production of this aesthetic process.
The commodity's aesthetic promise of use-value thus becomes an instrument in accumulating money . Its opposite (i.e. exchange-value) interest elicits from the standpoint of exchange-value an exaggeration of the apparent use-value of the commodity, the more so because use-value is of secondary importance from the standpoint of exchange-value. Sensuality in this context becomes the vehicle of an economic function, the subject and object of an economically functional fascination. Whoever controls the product's appearance can control the fascinated public by appealing to them sensually."
Critique of Commodity Aesthetics: Appearance, Sexuality and Advertising in Capitalist Society.
Pages 16-17.
http://www.wolfgangfritzhaug.inkrit.de/documents/CommodityAesth-book1986.pdf
"Lo estético de la mercancía es portador de la promesa objetiva del valor de uso, basándose en la cual el comprador espera subjetivamente un valor de uso en cierta mercancía. Entendemos lo estético de la mercancía, en el sentido de nuestra definición operativa, como "lo sensible de una cosa que nos muestra su sentido".
Con esto hemos descubierto la ley fundamental de la estética de mercancías: la estética de mercancías, cuyo contenido es la promesa del valor de uso, efectúa el intercambio o compra desde la posición del valor de uso. De ello resulta que la estética de mercancías es el momento desencadenante inmediato en todo acto de intercambio o compra."
Publicidad y consumo: Crítica de la estética de mercancías.
Page 6.
- ESTÉTICA DE LA MERCANCÍA, SUBCULTURA Y CULTURA DE MASAS. Un croquis teórico.
"La estética de la mercancía comprende el inevitable esfuerzo del capital de insinuarse la dimensión simbólica-estética del modo de vida".
Page 10.
http://www.wolfgangfritzhaug.inkrit.de/documents/WAE-culturademasas79xx.pdf
- NEW ELEMENTS OF A THEORY OF COMMODITY AESTHETICS. Commodity aesthetics revisited. Exchange relations as the source of antagonistic aesthetization
http://www.wolfgangfritzhaug.inkrit.de/documents/NewElementsCommodityAesthetics.pdf
To summarize the idea, what I am stating here is that The enthralling Snorting-Man versus the pleasure of being Myself, directed by Jorge Luis Villacorta Santamato is made for himself and his friends. If you are not him or his friends you probably won't like it. If you like it, you may be in a similar position that the one he occupies. So, in a way, you are a pretentious elitist (in the intellectual field) who supports conservative narratives. If Jorge Luis Villacorta Santamato worked with Leonidas Zegarra, it was because Mr. Zegarra used to make movies in Peru and Bolivia similar to those developed in Spain under the rule of the General Francisco Franco (for example, those starring "Joselito" and films like Marcelino, pan y vino.) And those who criticized his movies in Peru, did not do it because they were "bad" films but because they supported a particular Spanish tradition instead of supporting French Illuminism and French Rationalism within the field of film criticism. Thus, it was about political statements disguised as "film analysis. (While they critized Peruvian movies from a "revolutionary" standpoint, they admired the "Hollywood classical style" represented by John Ford, preference that was equivalent to conservative political statement.)
So, from a leftist perspective, Jorge Luis Villacorta Santamato is one of those annoying guys who accept irrationality, faith, and resignation as their creed, in particular when aligned with their interests instead of following a "leftist" lead characterized by rationality, incredulity, and resistance. Making such a dumb movie truly requires having faith, being irrational, and accepting his own silliness. He seems to be happy within the position he occupies, synchronized to the capitalistic vibes that surround him.
From a formalist viewpoint, this feature film is composed of three segments:
- First segment: With a duration of 25 minutes, 37 seconds, it is the blueprint used to build the second segment. It keeps the original recorded color, the direct sound obtained during the recording, and only has 14 shots. The Snorting-Man is the protagonist (he is in an snoring man). We never seem him but we have a glance at her body while leaving the shower. We do not see his face, and he is almost unnoticable if we are not paying attention to what is going at the left side of the the screen for a brief moment. The snoring is a presence along the development as well as some pseudo "chamber music" for one instrument. There are several of these pieces for one instrument at a time and their duration varies from a couple of minutes to eight minutes approximately.
- Second segment: Begins at 25 minutes, 37 seconds (25:37) and ends at 61 minutes and 51 seconds (one hour, one minute, 51 seconds) (01:01:51). These 36 minutes and 14 seconds alter the color, proportion, and speed of the original image, even though utilize the same the same musical pieces that were heard during the first segment (in different order) plus additional ones. It is "more expressive" from a formal viewpoint, even though it are as devoid of militant political leftist meaning as the images of the first segment. These images are even more "rightist" than the original ones because the pretense of "intervention" and the appearance of "working to be original" consolidate the economic capitalist machine focused on increasing "exchange value" instead of focucing on "use-value.".
As observers, we should not be amazed at all if, at an uncertain time these kinds of productions were exalted as examples of "artistic integrity", "artistic freedom", or even "entepreneurial cunning in field of symbolic production", In the paragraph above, we have explained why, by itself, due to its formal structure that tends to increase "exchange value", this movie is already a pro capitalist statement within the art field and within the economic field. Yes, Jorge Luis Villacorta Santamato is a "socially conscious artist" but not a conscious one with the consciousness of the political "left", given that he is "exploring" how to create visual distinctiveness out of images that are socially situated and do not contribute to the recognition of social contradictions under the capitalist system. In fact, as a theoretician, this writer is competing with Jorge Luis Villacorta Santamato and social agents of his kind to create a more legitimized symbolic production: even without recurring to social forces out of the academic film (namely the "social responsibility of artists"), my argument elicits the economic capitalists interest behind creating "art" as a merchandise. Dominated by the laws of the artistic field, Jorge Luis Villacorta Santamato does not understand what he is doing. He is dominated by the "social unconscious" of a specific "artistic practice" socially situated. Because this writer considers that theoretical clarity is more important that being a capitalist zombie, this writer (a capitalist zombie himself in the academic or intellectual field) assumes that he is creating more use-value than Jorge Luis Villacorta Santamato, the artist. So, this writer is competing symbolically with Jorge Luis Villacorta Santamato and his ornaments.
There are abundant sources that would allow us and understanding of how this "unconscious" trajectory develops. Was not Thomas W. Braden the Secretary of the Museum of Modern Art between April 1948 and November 1949? After studying some sources the reader will understand what this writer is pointing out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Braden
https://assets.moma.org/documents/moma_press-release_325591.pdf
https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKbraden.htm
https://powerbase.info/index.php/International_Organizations_Division
https://2001-2009.state.gov/documents/organization/96785.pdf Pages: Document #94, November 23, 1|951 (page 215), document # 100, January 17, 1952 (page 234).
The artistic content, be it the object shape or the discourse related to it is not politically neutral when interacting with social agents.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299896885_The_Culture_of_Funding_Culture
https://grokipedia.com/page/Tom_Braden
- Third segment: The shortest one (2 minutes, 48 seconds), it is what is shown as the trailer on IMDb: with images less intervene and more digital camera movement and and distinctive musical piece tends to have a more standard audiovisual language in the sense David Bordwell uses when referring to a "classical Hollywood style." Anyway, without intention of telling a story within the frame of that "classical" standardized audiovisual model, this segment seems to look for some type of (pure?) audiovisual experience without predictable narrative support. We can assume that is a video clip created for the author's greatest glory.
CONCLUSION:
With certainty, I can affirm that Jorge Luis Villacorta Santamato is an statistically common "idiot" (in the sense used in Surrounded by Idiots, written by Thomas Erikson) within the "artistic field." And his movie The enthralling Snorting-Man versus the pleasure of being Myself (2025), interesting from a formal viewpoint, is commendable if we consider that he might be losing his time in more destructive ways. At least, he can pretend that he is "normal" within a particular space within the field of symbolic production (even when he is the only one who can consider himself "normal.")
Jorge Luis Villacorta Santamato's
Left Brain Lobe
Trailer.
The enthralling Snorting-Man versus the pleasure of being Myself (2025).
Directed by Jorge Luis Villacorta Santamato
https://www.imdb.com/es-es/video/vi1331611673/
<iframe src="https://www.imdb.com/videoembed/vi1331611673" allowfullscreen width="240" height="180"></iframe>
Full Movie
The enthralling Snorting-Man versus the pleasure of being Myself (2025).
Directed by Jorge Luis Villacorta Santamato
https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1784596505/
