Replaying Carlitos: Chaplin, Latin American Film Comedy and the Paradigm of Imitation

Abstract

In his landmark study Hybrid Cultures, Néstor García Canclini rejects originality and its opposite – imitation – as inadequate analytical paradigms for Latin American cultural practices. This paper argues for a reevaluation of the imitation paradigm, arguing that it should be understood neither as a synonym of colonial subordination (as García Canclini implies) nor, in Homi Bhabha's sense, as a dangerously ‘destabilizing’ sign of ‘partial presence.’ Glissant's concept of détour (diversion) is perhaps a more appropriate mode of analysis, since it captures the ‘playful’ oscillation between the extremes of mimesis outlined by García Canclini and Bhabha. Latin American film comedy's relationship with Hollywood from the 1930 through the 1950s – and specifically its wide-ranging treatment of Charlie Chaplin's work – illustrates such mimetic ‘diversions.’ From outright impersonation to homage and quotation, spanning the Chaplinesque adaptations of Cantinflas, Tin Tan, and Luis Sandrini, and the multivalent parodies of Brazilian chanchadas, Latin American film comedy of the period used imitation as a shifting, elastic, and critical trope revealing local and national subjects' contentious links with hegemonic models.