O ritual de Zé do Caixão: considerações sobre o espectador ideal em delírios de um anormal (1978), de José Mojica Marins

Abstract

This proposal aims to understand the construction of the ideal viewer in Delírios de um anormal (1978) in relation to the notion of ideal viewer worked by David Bordwell (1985) and Augustus Schlegel (1965). In Bordwell, we take the term spectator as an ideal entity that possesses cognitive capacities similar to a human being, being the exterior to the work, there would be an understanding of the construction of the narration of a film in a continuous interaction between style and plot, as the latter interacts with the story. Moreover, the plot would control the flow of information for the construction of the story through the style. This process turns to the ideal viewer, because it would perform constant inferences in the understanding of what is presented. Schlegel understands the Greek tragedy chorus as the ideal viewer. In everyday life, the chorus refers to a group of people who would accompany important transactions in ancient Greece. The hypothesis is that the ideal spectator in Delírios de um anormal is Zé do Caixão, that is, he would not be external to the film, nor abstract as the viewer understood by Bordwell, nor just a kind of intersection between an audience as perceived by Schlegel. There would be a convergence of the notions of both spectators, although with peculiarities peculiar to the gravedigger Zé do Caixão. In his actions in Delirios, the gravedigger appears in diegetic reality, in dreams, and in scenes from other films, those previously recorded by José Mojica Marins. For the analysis of the ideal viewer, we will use the construction of the plot, considering the style and the story, and based on the analysis, we propose a deepening of the composition of these aspects of the film. Finally, besides fostering research on spectatorship and cinematic experience, there would be the possibility of displacing the term viewer from the general field, locating it as a possibility between the film-commonplace division.