A place for professors of Spanish Literature to complain about or defend the field.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Che
Has anyone seen Steven Soderbergh's recent movie on Che Guevara? It had a short run in selected theaters and was several hours long. It's supposed to be out on DVD about now.
It looks like that version is not yet available on Netflix, unfortunately. One can see The True Story of Che on Google video (which I was going to show in my culture and civ class). It looks fairly well made.
Surprisingly, it is in my local video store (Hastings). Democracy Now did a nice little segment on Che a couple years ago on the fortieth anniversary of his death that I showed to my culture class.
Are we talking Democracy Now with Amy Goodman? That's a great show.
To me Che Guevara is one of those pop-culture products like Bob Marley, Evita Peron, and Frida Kahlo that is so chopped up and resold that it belongs now more to international youth culture than to Latin American culture. Maybe it would be fun to do a unit on Latin America as a consumer product.
To be sure. Yet, it remains that an effective way to attract the interest of students to Latin American issues is via these iconic (and yes often over-marketed) figures.
One chicano poster artist made a poignant statement about the commercialization of Che's image: http://www.rage.net/~greg/files/che-nike.jpg
As a non-fan of Che the person, I don't see myself lining up to see Che the movie. However, even non-fans can delight in the ironic commodification of the marxist revolutionary.
As a non-fan of the Che person you might appreciate that film whose link I pasted above, as it offers a very even-handed treatment of its subject; it mentions, e.g., how Che seemed to enjoy executing Cuban soldiers during the push toward Havana.
Yes, Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. Thank goodness for the internet. I used to listen to her radio program in my car on the way to Harvard Westlake. I can now hear it and see it on line (is that one word now?) Juan Gonzalez did a very good show. You probably can find it in their archives.
I started watching The True Story last night. Excellent. I like teaching Che to get past the legend and T shirt. It works well with my students who only know him as a T-shirt or cigar.
8 comments:
It looks like that version is not yet available on Netflix, unfortunately. One can see The True Story of Che on Google video (which I was going to show in my culture and civ class). It looks fairly well made.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=che+guevara&emb=1&aq=f#
Surprisingly, it is in my local video store (Hastings). Democracy Now did a nice little segment on Che a couple years ago on the fortieth anniversary of his death that I showed to my culture class.
Are we talking Democracy Now with Amy Goodman? That's a great show.
To me Che Guevara is one of those pop-culture products like Bob Marley, Evita Peron, and Frida Kahlo that is so chopped up and resold that it belongs now more to international youth culture than to Latin American culture. Maybe it would be fun to do a unit on Latin America as a consumer product.
To be sure. Yet, it remains that an effective way to attract the interest of students to Latin American issues is via these iconic (and yes often over-marketed) figures.
One chicano poster artist made a poignant statement about the commercialization of Che's image:
http://www.rage.net/~greg/files/che-nike.jpg
As a non-fan of Che the person, I don't see myself lining up to see Che the movie. However, even non-fans can delight in the ironic commodification of the marxist revolutionary.
As a non-fan of the Che person you might appreciate that film whose link I pasted above, as it offers a very even-handed treatment of its subject; it mentions, e.g., how Che seemed to enjoy executing Cuban soldiers during the push toward Havana.
Yes, Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. Thank goodness for the internet. I used to listen to her radio program in my car on the way to Harvard Westlake. I can now hear it and see it on line (is that one word now?) Juan Gonzalez did a very good show. You probably can find it in their archives.
I started watching The True Story last night. Excellent. I like teaching Che to get past the legend and T shirt. It works well with my students who only know him as a T-shirt or cigar.
Interesting ideas all... I guess it's a good hook. Plus the girls must love it because they get to watch Gael Carcía Bernal in Motorcycle Diaries.
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