Overview

Drawing on the cinematic oeuvre of Ripstein and Garciadiego to reconceptualize the idea of the sordidThe sordid is not an ideology, an affect, or even a form of taste or sensibility. It is, Agustín Zarzosa argues, an image and an evocation of the process of degradation. The Sordid Image: The Naturalist Cinema of Arturo Ripstein and Paz Alicia Garciadiego offers the first sustained study of this pivotal filmmaker-screenwriter pair, drawing on their multidecade collaborations to reframe an enduring problem of film theory: how to represent marginalized people. Together, Ripstein and Garciadiego have constructed a recognizable cinematic world filled with social outcasts, characterized by self-degradation and unreason, and set within squalid environments. Inscribing the Ripsteinian universe within the literary and cinematic traditions of naturalism, this book theorizes the notion of the sordid to examine the partners' unique and epoch-defining films. We can, Zarzosa contends, understand the sordid as a cinematic image, with its specific components and pleasures, recasting questions of authorship, mise-en-scène, spectatorship, genre, and language.

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Reviews

""Sophisticated and erudite, The Sordid Image is a significant contribution to film studies, filling an essential gap in the existing bibliography with its impressive originality."" —Luis Duno-Gottberg, Rice University

""Sophisticated and erudite, The Sordid Image is a significant contribution to film studies, filling an essential gap in the existing bibliography with its impressive originality."" —Luis Duno-Gottberg, Rice University ""Ripstein–Garciadiego's riveting spectacles of debasement compel Zarzosa to revisit one of cinema's abiding questions: how to represent subjects who inhabit the fringes of society. His ambitious, erudite, and engaged study offers a fresh take on cinematic naturalism."" —Bhaskar Sarkar, University of California, Santa Barbara

Author Information

Agustin Zarzosa is an associate professor of cinema studies at Purchase College. He is the author of Refiguring Melodrama in Film and Television: Captive Affects, Elastic Sufferings, Vicarious Objects.

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