DOM CASMURRO AND THE UFOS: A CANONICAL TEXT AS PULP FICTION

Resumo

The trend of rewriting canonical works of fiction as “mash-ups” – a term used to describe the remixing of music, video-clips and films in the internet –of mass literature genres has reached Brazil. In 2010, four novels were published which added the supernatural and the grotesque to works by Machado de Assis, José de Alencar and Bernardo Guimarães. Zombies, vampires, witches and extraterrestrial beings become part of the action, or in the case of Dom Casmurro e os discos voadores, the main focus of this discussion, characters in the plot. The overpowering influence of cinema and television over the younger generations has taken its toll. Authorial decisions must be made whether or not to adhere to the resources of audiovisual media, in order to attract readers who have been nurtured in them from infancy. We argue that such decisions would have been the cause of the proliferation of hybrids of high and low culture, of canonical texts coupled to science-fiction, Gothic terror or other genres, which have a stronger impact on the grand public. Sales rates have been significant, though not at best-selling levels, similar to those in the U.S. It is indisputable, however, that the atmosphere of suspense and wonder created by the insertion of genres of popular culture, plus the inevitable seriocomical effects created by the juxtaposition of high and low art have been a sure step toward the popularization of the classics. The fact that the four books were written in answer to publishers´ demands lends support to our argument that social and economic factors are involved.