The creation of imaginaries and the dissolution of the plot through the typification that cancels the catalysis

The example of the Garden of Eden as traditional cinema

Abstract

In this text we will start from the well-known cinematographic tension between image and narration referring to a specific case of traditional typological Mexican cinema. Characteristic of this genre is a weak plot made up of “descriptive” rather than narrative sequences, and the viewer is prompted to recognizing stereotypes, obtaining the mimetic enjoyment of recognition. To address such mimetic recognition, we will distinguish between literary and filmic imaginaries. Literary imaginaries are schemes lacking in concreteness. On the contrary, the filmic imaginaries are not at all a question of more or less vague imagination, but rather, given their photographic base, they present shreds of reality as it appears. This filmic imaginary no longer consists of images of the mere imagination, to the taste of the one who imagines them, but consists of photographic fragments of the real appearance, for which these photographic quality images tend to generate immediate approval or rejection. It may be that you read something that you don't like and then you tend to put it aside, but it is more difficult to put something aside that, although you don't like it, you didn't read it but rather see it. For analysing this genre of week typologizing narrative we resort to D. Bordwell’s theory of the story construction combining it with R. Barthes’s narrative theory of nuclei, catalysis, informants, and narrative cues.