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Día de los Muertos and Hauntology with Cristina Cruz González
139 Plays3 years ago
In celebration of Día de los Muertos we are joined by Dr. Cristina Cruz González to talk about the visual legacy of the holiday and the importance of the spectral within visual cultural. This episode is a haunting reminder that even though the spooky season is coming to an end, we are constantly engaging with ghosts.
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Transcript
Introduction to Hauntology and Dia de los Muertos
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello, hello, and welcome to Art Pop Talk. I'm Bianca. And I'm Gianna. Just when you thought Art Luin was over, we are throwing a special surprise your way. That's right. Don't get rid of your spooky decor just yet, because today we are talking about hauntology and Dia de los Muertos with the one and only Dr. Christina
Gianna's Boston Adventures
00:00:21
Speaker
Cruz Gonzalez.
00:00:23
Speaker
You've heard me talk about this Hontology seminar for way too long. So now we are bringing the seminar to you. Let's art pop talk. Hello, Gianna. Hi. I'm in a new space right now. I know. It's so weird to see you with a different background. It is a much messier background. When we have the recording with Christina, you'll see that it is
00:00:53
Speaker
just a blank wall. But right now Gianni for the intro, she gets the messy guest room vibe with Ollivander scratching out the door because he's not used to like closed doors in the apartment ever. How is Mr. Ollivander handling the new apartment? You know, he really loves it actually, like I think he's like adjusting very well. And
00:01:16
Speaker
he we have these like great windows everywhere so i think he's really enjoying looking at all the all the windows because we're right by boston common so we have like a bunch of people walk by all the time we're on like a pretty main street by the park and there's always people like walking their dogs you know in the park or just like people running and today we john and i were recording this intro on halloween and um today there was like a big
00:01:44
Speaker
race, like a costume race. So people were like running in their costumes and stuff like that. And so Ollivander got like a very good look of all these people dressed up in wacky colors and costumes today. And he was just like, looking down the window one person after the other. Oh, so stimulating. Yes, he has a lot to look at watching, which is nice. Yes, he gets to people watch like all day.
00:02:10
Speaker
And he's enjoying all the, he really likes the new rug we bought for the living room too. He enjoys like sleeping on that most of the time. Kitten. I'm not going to be able to see kitten on Christmas. You're not bringing him, are you? I don't know. I don't think I will. I think he'll be able to keep Andrew some company. Okay. Yeah. But you can come up here and visit. Yeah.
00:02:36
Speaker
You just got done visiting with Miss Audrey Kaminsky. Heard that was a good trip. I did. It was very fun. She was my first guest in the new city. So Audrey and I went to a live show, which was pretty exciting to go to to enjoy some live theater. And actually this coming week on Wednesday, Andrew and I are going to see Hadestown.
00:03:05
Speaker
I don't know what that is. It's the new big Broadway show, but it's actually showing in Boston. So we get to go see it in Boston, which is exciting.
Impact of Dr. Gonzalez in Art History
00:03:20
Speaker
So yeah, we'll be enjoying some theater this week as well.
00:03:24
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like Boston or just some of like, not like smaller East Coast cities, but cities that aren't New York, you get a lot of those good like preview shows before they like make it to Broadway too. So that'll be fun to look out for like in the future. Yeah, I know that Boston does do a lot of previews for Broadway shows. So that's something that I had mentioned Andrew to which I'm excited about. But it seems like concurrently there's like
00:03:50
Speaker
obviously the main production in New York, but it's also showing here. Interesting. Well, let us know how that goes.
00:03:59
Speaker
All right, well, I am very excited about today's Art Pop Talk. I think it is a good combination of prior APT Art Leween. So you all are going to get to me, Dr. Christina Cruz-Gonzalez, who was a professor of art history for both Bianca and I at OSU, and just an incredible person and mentor and educator to both Bianca and I. So we're just so incredibly honored to have her on the podcast.
00:04:28
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like Gianna and I have talked about the influences of this class for so long. And it was really just one of those full circle moments that we love to have here at APT. And talking with Christina was fantastic. And she's so brilliant and amazing. And she's an amazing art historian and instructor. And I just really valued the time that I spent with her throughout my collegiate years.
00:04:57
Speaker
It was just, she was so influential to me and I know she was to you as well. And looking back that class, hauntology in particular really influenced the way that I started to view the world as I left grad school. And just thinking about how influential that was and then getting to speak with her here on the podcast was
00:05:17
Speaker
was amazing. So you guys are just going to love this episode. And even Gianna was like saying, she feels like she got kind of a secondhand experience from the class when I was always talking about it. And now I feel like the art pop tarts are also going to get a hauntology seminar, you know, little teaser, if you will, and hopefully, you'll be able to, to either take a hauntology seminar,
00:05:42
Speaker
or course wherever you are, or Christina throughout the episode has a lot of different recommendations for you all as well, which we will link in our resources page for you guys. So you can do a little investigating on your own.
00:05:55
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I think as you said, Bianca, there's something about this episode that felt extremely humbling to me. As you mentioned, I felt like I did learn so much secondhand. And I think it is that humble reminder that you truly don't know who you're affecting.
00:06:14
Speaker
and the ideas that you're putting out to the world and when you actually have those people that are excited about that and then sharing those with other people in your field or that share that common interest. I mean, that's exactly what happened to me and it literally has evolved into this broad scope of vocabulary and concepts that I still use today and still exploring. So truthfully, Christina has no idea. I just feel like everyone we bring on the podcast is like, you have absolutely no idea.
00:06:44
Speaker
It's really,
Dr. Gonzalez's Art History Insights
00:06:45
Speaker
really like how much you have changed my life. Yeah. Yeah. So, and I also, I mentioned it in the interview with Christina, but we do talk about hauntology so much and how like we are still learning about it and peeling off these layers. And I think I do want to keep in mind, we do talk about these concepts so much, hauntology, like consumerism, feminism.
00:07:09
Speaker
And I never want those things to just be a one-off. It's ontology, it's ontology, it's ontology. It's feminism, it's feminism, it's feminism. Our perspective on it, and even just in our conversation with Christina, it totally skewed my viewpoint about how I view certain works of art, in particular, death portraiture. So it's just one of those moments where you love to learn and discover new things. So I hope you guys get as much out of it as we did.
00:07:38
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And we are also going to link some, like I said, resources for you guys provided by Christina in the conversation. And throughout the week, we'll be posting images and resources from her as well. So we are going to take a little break. And whenever we come back, we will be joined by the brilliant, phenomenal, amazing Dr. Christina Cruz Gonzalez.
00:08:33
Speaker
Hello, Christina, welcome to the show. I am just, I'm so excited that you're here. Gianna and I, first of all, can't talk about hauntology and spooky stuff without thinking about you. And it is just truly an honor to have you here on this show. So can you introduce yourself to the Art Pop Tarts? Sure, I'm thrilled to be here. I'm Christina Cruz-Gonzalez, and I'm an Associate Professor of Art History at OSU.
00:09:01
Speaker
Well, Christina is literally the most wonderful art history professor I've had in my entire life. So little fangirl moment over here. I can still change your grade to an A. Thank you. OK, I'm not going to argue with you. Christina, would you please talk with us a little bit about your research interests in the field of art history?
00:09:27
Speaker
Sure. So in art history, I specialize in the early modern period, which is 1500 to 1800, roughly. And I concentrate mostly on Spanish America, which includes what today is Latin America and the Philippines, but also parts of what is today part of the United States, right, the Southwest area, and Florida as well.
00:09:56
Speaker
And so I look at visual culture from that perspective, mostly sacred images and miraculous images, images that don't just exist for us to view, but actually perform, do something, right? They heal, they protect, they sometimes deal with a paranormal in unusual ways.
00:10:17
Speaker
Um, so we talk about this paranormal activity within art history. We've talked about it on the show and last year during Halloween is where Gianna and I really got to talk about the influences that we've had that I've had because of your hauntology seminar. And I just, I am always telling people about this seminar. Like I went into it being like as a scaredy cat.
00:10:41
Speaker
kind of scared to take a class about ghosts, but coming out of it, it was so amazing. So because of that seminar, I not only found this deep appreciation within this kind of new sector of art history, but I really began to appreciate the spectral in our everyday lives. So before we start getting into the nitty-gritty of this kind of spooky subject, can you talk about the importance of examining the spectral within art?
00:11:10
Speaker
Sure. So that seminar, and I've only taught it one time, I'd love to teach it again, was designed as a graduate
00:11:18
Speaker
seminar, which is why you were in there. But we also had a few undergraduates that kind of strays students. And they had no idea, you know, what they were getting themselves into. It was hilarious, right? So I think from their perspective, we were just going to talk about ghosts and, you know, maybe Netflix and some more popular stories that deal with ghosts. And they had no clue that there's this whole kind of disciplinary take on
00:11:48
Speaker
you know, basically the spectral, right? What is kind of absent, but still present, a kind of trace and in between.
00:11:59
Speaker
And so they looked at the reading list and they were like, Oh shit, what are we going to do? Right. And they liked them best. We're like, Oh, you know, we made a mistake. We didn't know it was a real course with tons of reading. And so I think like everyone came to the course, myself included, you know, from our own vantage points. And, um, and then the course kind of worked together to, um, bring in those different perspectives and allow students to kind of
00:12:28
Speaker
carry on with their own avenue and line of inquiry in terms of the research. So some people did write papers on that Netflix series. Other people were like more taken by trauma and how it is that we study trauma.
Engaging with Hauntology and Trauma
00:12:42
Speaker
So hauntology, this is a word that's coined by Derry Dah. So that gives you an idea of kind of the level of kind of critical inquiry that we were dealing with. You know, hauntology is basically the study of
00:12:58
Speaker
what is not kind of materially or ontologically always within reach. You know, so it could be the absent, the spectral, it's sometimes called, the trace. Oftentimes it's something aligned with trauma. And so what I loved about our course were the field trips and going to Tulsa, for example,
00:13:24
Speaker
and looking at where the race massacre took place, right? So kind of studying and viewing and experiencing this area, but also meeting with artists like Crystal Campbell and seeing how artists are kind of producing works that respond to that haunting, to that trauma, to the absence and how they're kind of working to make a present in a way.
00:13:54
Speaker
And so as an art historian, this is, you know, I love this idea because, you know, in my own work, trauma is very present with the conquest of Mexico. But I think for some other students in the course, they thought of it also in terms of kind of the genocide.
00:14:13
Speaker
of indigenous communities within our own United States and in Oklahoma in particular. So how can we as historians deal with these acts and with artistic responses to these acts in a way that's ethical and responsible, but also when the odds are so against us, right? Because many of these historical events are driven precisely by
00:14:38
Speaker
you know, erasure and the goal of erasure and it's real, right? So kind of how do you delve into
00:14:45
Speaker
projects and archives and artworks that deal with absence. So it was a very complicated course, definitely a graduate level course. The undergrads got off easy by doing their reports on Netflix. But honestly, I know very little about, you know, these films and these series. And so I wanted to learn that bit also and seeing how popular culture
00:15:14
Speaker
kind of works with some of these ideas and massages them and kind of curates them for a wider audience. And they're quite smart about it, right? And so that was really cool and really good.
00:15:30
Speaker
Yeah, I finally just watched Scream for the first time after we had our discussion with Lynn last week. And just all of these ideas that Scream is presenting, and like I used to take it for granted, you know, it's just a scary movie that's like, you know, not really doing anything in terms of visual culture or film history and things like that. But it's just so self involved and just situates itself.
00:15:55
Speaker
within its own genre and lineage, just like different pieces of art do, just like any other piece of visual culture does. So I think this is just like super fascinating. Yeah, I agree. And it's also such, it's such, I mean, it's just another word that we can add to our vocabulary that adds such a great entry point and another perspective to look at the variety of topics that you just suggested.
00:16:23
Speaker
we can talk about it in the physical world but also in the artistic world and how you just stated to handle that responsibly but for my own purposes too you know I was not in this class but I made a joke for our last Halloween that I learned so much secondhand from Bianca and from this course that I really really
00:16:41
Speaker
used it very strongly in my senior show. So that class really did affect even the students that weren't in there. But because it provided such an entry point for myself being ignorant to this terminology before this class, how would someone who doesn't have that background in art history or any visual training start to engage with ontology? And you did mention seeking out those pop culture references too.
00:17:09
Speaker
Yeah, so I think everyone engages with ghosts in some way, right? Because you could be my age and remember watching, you know, Poltergeist for the first time, or you could be, you know, 20 years old and watch these Netflix series, or you could be playing the Ouija board, you know, I hope not too often.
00:17:31
Speaker
and engage with the spectral that way. So ghosts are like really present in our imagination, right? Ghostbusters. So we already do it on some level, but we don't really think about it. And we don't really kind of critique it. And also as art historians, because we're so invested in what's visually present, we hardly wanna give any space
00:17:59
Speaker
to absence. How do we step up there? What looms? And so it's difficult for us as art historians, but I think for any student or reader who wants to kind of begin a serious journey into this, I would begin with, for instance, Toni Morrison's Beloved.
00:18:23
Speaker
And our course read that. For many students, I would say most, it was their first time reading this book. And it was traumatizing, I think, for many people. It's a tough book, but it's like a real kind of you're jumping into ghost and the ghostly and the spectral and the traumatic when you're reading that book. If you want a more kind of academic
00:18:52
Speaker
critical take on hontology, I would suggest Sadaya Hartman's Venus in Two Acts, which is also a reading that we had in the course, and it talks about
00:19:05
Speaker
the archive and the relationship between violence and the archive and how we as readers and historians and archivists deal with this kind of repository without re-inscribing the violence that basically lays at its foundation. And this is very important for
00:19:29
Speaker
folks, whether you're dealing with colonial Latin America and the conquest and the kind of genocide involved with that or with slavery in the United States. So those two texts, you know,
00:19:45
Speaker
Toni Morrison's and Sadiah Hartman, I would say should be at the beginning of one's kind of entry point into this topic for sure. And then maybe the Poltergeist and the Netflix. In the absence of ghosts.
00:20:00
Speaker
is something that really does fascinate me because in the midst of spooky season, we've talked about so much that Bianca and I are such scaredy cats. And I was talking with my partner, Phoebe, and he kept saying, but why are you scared? What is the why? What is this metaphorical hold that these hypothetical ghosts have over you?
00:20:21
Speaker
And I think that was just it. Whether it is a literal sense or a metaphorical sense, it's still something that I am engaging with and something that I am fearing. Even if it is real or unreal, I'm still having a physical and bodily reaction to it.
00:20:38
Speaker
Right. I'm a scaredy cat too, by the way. So anything freaks me out. I still get freaked out just thinking about certain films, not even watching them. But if I just think about The Exorcist, I'll be totally freaked out and I'll be able to sleep. I'll have to turn the lights on and it's all over.
00:20:59
Speaker
But it's interesting that that was, you know, your partner's response. Like, why bother you? Or what is it about it? You know, that's scary. That makes you scared you can't.
00:21:09
Speaker
I kind of was in a similar situation where I was really afraid of a neighbor once when I lived in Mexico City. And she kind of put a hex on me and I didn't know what to do. And she was kind of, you know, from my perspective, really insane. And so I talked to family members that
00:21:31
Speaker
you know, have more experience with what to do in these situations. And they said, well, you know, you could try this, you put a bucket of water at your door every night and in the morning, you know, you toss it and you can refill it at night time. And then you could also get a particular kind of wood and make a cross with a red ribbon and put it on the inside of your door.
00:21:56
Speaker
And you could also, you know, they started listing different things for kind of combating this witchcraft. And then at the very end, they said, or you could also not believe. And, you know, that's also an option and nothing could happen basically to you if you don't go with that option. Wow, okay, I could also not believe. That is fascinating.
00:22:23
Speaker
Yeah, Jenna, I also like what you brought up just in terms of I think that my very best friends who are like, you know, big horror lovers and they love that.
00:22:33
Speaker
sense of adrenaline that they get when they feel scared. But I think something that was also brought up in the class is not everybody feels the effects of trauma. And I think what was great about the course is how we talked about trauma being ingrained in people's DNA. And that is this absent presence that it's a type of ghost, but it is physically embedded within you. And so some people are going to experience
00:23:02
Speaker
fear differently based on their DNA. And I think that was another really interesting thing just to put fear and trauma and hauntology in a new perspective.
Dia de los Muertos: Celebration of Life and Death
00:23:16
Speaker
You cannot believe, and that's an option in some instances, but sometimes it's bound to you in this way. Yeah. It's real, and there's no denying it. It's kind of living it. Right, right.
00:23:31
Speaker
So speaking of ghosts and the impact that they have and how they live with us today, I was wondering if you could talk with us about the visual legacy of Dia de los Muertos in art and art history. Sure. So we're upon one of the most important holidays in Mexico and in many countries in Latin America, increasingly. And so that is Day of the Dead, November 1st and November 2nd. For many people from Mexico, particularly
00:24:01
Speaker
They'll say it's their favorite holiday, actually. It's a very joyful event. It's a celebration. It's a time when we remember the people who have left us in this world and we welcomed them back, basically, on the 1st and the 2nd of November in a party. So it's not an individual affair. It's a real kind of communal kind of memory making, a performance of that memory.
00:24:30
Speaker
I think lots of people have seen the film Coco and it's a very cute, Disney, Pixar film and whatnot. It's also really sad and true at its core. I think it really conveys the meaning of the dead very well. Remember me, this is a pact, right? Day of the Dead kind of canonizes that pact we have
00:24:56
Speaker
with the people we love who have left us, that we will remember them and we will kind of materialize that as much as possible on November 1st and November 2nd. So this takes the form of music and food, community and altar making, right? And having this big kind of colorful altar in one's home or in one's kind of public square oftentimes,
00:25:25
Speaker
where pictures of the dead could sit and be venerated and come to life to some extent. So it's not this ghoulish, scary event. It's a very kind of happy event. We want the dead to visit us on these days because we want them to kind of get that taste of life that they once had, if only for the short period, and we want to be there for it. We want to be there for them.
00:25:55
Speaker
So in our history, usually everything is kind of pushed under the umbrella of Day of the Dead iconography. Any skeleton is kind of a different way of the dead. That's a tall order, basically, because not every skeleton is related to Day of the Dead, but it is related to a philosophy of death that maybe is shared
00:26:25
Speaker
by and large in Mexico. So, you know, death as being something that is not just accepted, but lived with, ridiculed, made fun of, popularized, you know, death is something that is kind of essential to life in Mexico and in many shapes and forms. But I don't want to forget, and this is a part that maybe not a lot of people know,
00:26:55
Speaker
who have an experienced day of the dead, that it's also very political in many ways. And so this is where it becomes really fascinating for me as an art historian, if we were in Mexico City right now, we would not just kind of visit these altars and see a kind of sacred ephemeral production
00:27:16
Speaker
We could also see very kind of political altars as well that have been conceived by different artists that are kind of responding to some crisis in the country. And it could be kind of assault on women, for example, and there could be an altar that speaks directly to that.
00:27:35
Speaker
to women's rights in the country, or it could be as it was when I lived in Mexico City some seven, eight years ago, an altar that is demanding that the government do something about the 43 disappeared, the 43 teacher
00:27:54
Speaker
training students that were kidnapped and executed and the government was in responding to the demands of more information on this. So many artists kind of took advantage of the Day of the Dead celebration to install these very poignant altars that were experienced by a public as well.
00:28:19
Speaker
So I would say that the first artist to really kind of popularize this death political imagery is Jose Guadalupe Posada and he was a kind of newspaper illustrator and he would make these kind of calaveras, these death images that are very much alive in order to criticize the
00:28:43
Speaker
government regime, the dictator regime at that time. And he would do so in a very kind of biting way that was also hilarious that they utilize death imagery. But you could see that same kind of death imagery in, of course, Coco most recently, but also classic films like Serge Eisenstein's, Que Vida Mexico.
00:29:09
Speaker
beautiful Russian film and the director was obsessed with Mexico's obsession with death and wanted to capture it in these vignettes as well. In art history also with some of our more popular artists from the 20th century like Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, they also deal with death and in fact I just saw
00:29:33
Speaker
the Frida Kahlo film with Salma Hayek the other day. And there's a lot of that kind of death references in the film as well. And the kind of very particular Mexican relationship to death is not just referred to in her artwork and in this film, but also in the music and in the soundtrack that's very kind of cleverly used for it as well.
00:29:59
Speaker
What I find so interesting about this holiday is not often do we find performative or cultural works of art that
00:30:09
Speaker
I guess that we acknowledge that take place in such a private setting as well as a public setting. I feel like when we were just talking about more well-known, just like visual performative works of art, they take place on a public scale, because that's kind of the point of them. That's the point of your performance. But the fact that they can take place so publicly, so politically, but then internally for you and your family and that private aspect, I find super interesting.
00:30:36
Speaker
And I think also just in terms of hauntology, I find it interesting because hauntology or being haunted is so loaded and I think it so often has that negative connotation to it. Like if you're being haunted by something, it's like not good, right?
00:30:52
Speaker
But, and maybe you can elaborate for us then, I think hauntology is a little bit more broad in that manner, just because you're haunted by something, especially in the scope of the visual cultural history that we're talking about today. It's not always a negative thing. So my question for you is, how does Dios de los Muertos connect to the field of hauntology? And should they be considered in the same realm? Or should we kind of take them bit by bit separately?
00:31:20
Speaker
I think they could be considered, they could also not be considered in the same realm. I could see how there's some overlap and how pentology might be useful for studying absence and how absence is made present, and also studying a femoral kind of alter productions, both in the private sphere and in a kind of public square and what they mean for each community, the kind of personal,
00:31:50
Speaker
home, but also the kind of civic community as well. But I think there's limits to hauntology in that case for the reasons that you mentioned, because Day of the Dead is two days, basically, right? And it's a kind of celebration that's very much delineated by the living.
00:32:17
Speaker
not by the dead, right? So we are kind of prescribing it, who we choose to put on the altar, what kind of wax or flowers or types of food we leave on the altar. The dead have very little say in Day of the Dead in a way, whereas hauntology, that's not the case in a way. There is a kind of more of an agency
00:32:44
Speaker
I find that's granted to the absent in ontology, weirdly than in Day of the Dead. Day of the Dead is a celebration that is really orchestrated by the living. And it's kind of therapy, I think, for the living as much as anything else.
Hauntology vs. Dia de los Muertos
00:33:07
Speaker
So I think ontology may be useful, but not
00:33:13
Speaker
entirely perhaps. That is so fascinating. When I think so often of other forms of like death portraiture, death works of art that's constructed by human beings, that really does make me consider hauntology a little bit. I was looking so much at death portraiture and the coming about of photography and I remember we talked about that
00:33:33
Speaker
um last year but how that is really constructed by the human being for the human being to like honor that dead person it's not really like we know that it's a hoax we know that this like floating angel or this guy that coincidentally might look like Abraham Lincoln wink wink like isn't really this haunted spirit it it's for us it's constructed by us so that's that's such a key way to look at it go ahead
00:33:59
Speaker
Oh, no, just thinking about like this idea of curation also is like really interesting and thinking about like the connections between art history because I think that like many of us who study this have this like innate response to want to like fit things nicely together or like, you know, make something presentable in that way. And I think what you just said is such an interesting
00:34:20
Speaker
I don't know, way to think about the two differences, how ghosts act upon us as spirits and as presence in whatever form, but then how we curate the experience of ghosts and spirits. And that's so wild. I love it. Yeah, I don't want huntology to just be like a one off like I don't I want us to think about it like
00:34:43
Speaker
more critically, and even if I think back to our prior conversation, I think we were considering it in that way, those death portraiture in that hauntology scope, but that's such an interesting and new way for us to look at it.
00:34:58
Speaker
Awesome. You know, I'm very taken with the work of Titus Kafar, who has done these amazing portraits that show benefactors or these kind of elite white males, you know, looking out onto their private estates and whatnot. And he's literally kind of peeled these away to reveal like servants and
00:35:26
Speaker
enslaved members of that whole kind of retinue and in a way kind of peeling back the layers to reveal the spectral. And so I think that one could think about that process as a practicing artist and what it means to peel back layers and make the absent present
00:35:50
Speaker
if only through trade, but also think about it as an intellectual exercise as well as historians, you know, and how we do that, how can we do that, basically.
Cultural Narratives and Spectral Themes
00:36:03
Speaker
Yeah. So is there anything that we haven't asked you about Dia de los Muertos or Hontology that you absolutely want our listeners to be aware of? Well,
00:36:16
Speaker
Not especially so, but there is this kind of idea in Mexico at least for
00:36:28
Speaker
There's Day of the Dead, and that's a celebration, as we've explained. But there's also this fixation with things that scare you as well. So just because Day of the Dead is happy doesn't mean that this is a country that doesn't get scared.
00:36:49
Speaker
Often. So I'm interested in these stories that are kind of designed to, in a way, deal with trauma, but also to kind of scare contemporary audiences. And La Llorona is one of these stories. La Llorona is, to put it in its simplest terms, is a woman who's a ghost, who goes around the land, kind of wailing,
00:37:16
Speaker
and crying over her dead children whom she drowned out of frustration and desperation. And there have been sociological and kind of historical studies of this tale that it has pre-Hispanic roots, but it's also a story I think most would agree that is born of the conquest, right? Because it's always this told as this indigenous woman
00:37:45
Speaker
who's in a fit of rage or dejection over her husband, sometimes described as a conqueror, as a Spaniard, or as a landowner. So it's about miscegenation in a way, maybe violence, but also infanticide. And the kind of wailing that she does and moaning for her children is very eerie. And in a way, this female ghost
00:38:15
Speaker
is a kind of mother, a kind of goddess, and a kind of virgin Mary in all in one, right? That's one is kind of wanting, but is always unable to really grasp. And La Llorona is very popular in Mexican culture, but also in other parts of Latin America now. And as a child, you're told the story, basically,
00:38:45
Speaker
as a warning to not kind of go off into the dark, you know, to stay by your parents' side. If you don't stay with me, La Llorona is going to get you, right? And you know exactly what your parents mean. You could almost hear the ghost. So you're not going to wander off too far. And it's made its way into popular culture as well in just kind of representations, but also in music.
00:39:12
Speaker
So I'm interested in music, you know, lately and how music could kind of convey the spectral as well. And La Llorona is a song that's been kind of arranged and performed since probably traditionally for a very long time, but formally since the 1940s.
00:39:34
Speaker
and very famous composers or singers have sung it, Chavinavargas, but also Lilo Downs. More recently, Joan Baez sings a version of the song as well. And it has a different effect depending on who's the person singing it.
00:39:53
Speaker
And it's probably not coincidental. I don't know if you guys know the band Beirut, but Beirut also has a song called La Llorona and they're from New Mexico.
00:40:06
Speaker
And La Llorona is also very eerie on that album and kind of plays on these kind of Oaxacan notes as well. So music cannot be ignored, you know, Day of the Dead, Spectrality, Hontology, The Paranormal. There's also a soundtrack to that. So it's a kind of multi-sensorial sphere that we're dealing with.
00:40:37
Speaker
This is fun for me because I was just talking about immersive art today at work. So that's definitely been on my brain. But we did talk about the performative aspect of it, the ritualistic aspect to it. But even just thinking about
00:40:54
Speaker
music in a Western sense or Western cinema sense with the arrival of Squid Games. I've been hearing a lot about the music and the soundtrack to this new show and how we are so triggered by these two notes and how it's like we're
00:41:11
Speaker
like an animal like trained to hear a sound and like we know we're gonna like get a treat for like hearing the sound. Like we hear these two eerie notes and we're instantly gonna be like triggered by that and know that this is what the tone is and I know exactly what I should be feeling because of that and it's this very like sensory like traumatic curated response. It's super weird and I think that's probably as bad as creepy as it can get.
00:41:39
Speaker
But Christina, you did just tell us a little scary story. But we like to end the show on a fun question. So we were wondering if you did have a favorite ghost story or if you have a favorite scary movie that you wanted to share with us. Well, that was my favorite scary story La Llorona. There are also kind of funner ones that border on just
00:42:01
Speaker
you know, being ridiculous, like the goat sucker, the chupacabras, if you're from, you know, the southwest, particularly Texas and northern Mexico, you'll remember from like maybe two decades ago, that this is like a, you know, quasi goat like animal that would feast like a vampire on
00:42:24
Speaker
unsuspecting people and, you know, suck their blood out or whatnot. And it just got really ridiculous, you know, the tales of this apparition of this goat sucking bees. And, and, you know, we did with it what we always do we made fun of it. I don't know if there were memes at the time, because this is quite a
00:42:47
Speaker
you know, many years ago. But if it happened today, for sure, there would be, you know, memes of it and we would be ridiculing the whole notion. That response, that kind of comedy, the laughter, the laughing at death and the laughing at what otherwise scare you is also something that I find kind of worth studying, right? That
00:43:14
Speaker
that kind of way of dealing with the unknown.
Ghost Stories and Historical Narratives
00:43:19
Speaker
I deal with the paranormal all the time because in what I study, it's not just charges of idolatry that continue during the colonial period in the 16th, 17th, 18th, even 19th centuries. The idol is never fully vanquished. It's always around the corner. It's always being hidden.
00:43:44
Speaker
behind altars, but also with witchcraft and these accusations of witchcraft and Some of them are kind of creepy. So my favorite kind of creepy story is my own I was in an archive in Mexico City in the Inquisition archive at the General archive of the nation and there was a case I was following about a woman who was accused of
00:44:15
Speaker
kind of conjuring up the devil and she went into a church with a man and she was spotted by a servant who was at the door and kind of witnessing all this and the two went in
00:44:26
Speaker
and went to the altar, turned the crucifix upside down, disrobed to the waist. And according to this witness, this woman who was leading chance, she also started marking different kind of diagrams on her body and on the man's body as well.
00:44:48
Speaker
They continued to chant and pray what the servant said was to the devil quite clearly. And then they got some cotton balls and wiped off the designs from their body and clothed, left the church and locked it up. And so the servant gives this testimony and not only that, but kind of turned into the authorities, the cotton balls that were left behind with the
00:45:19
Speaker
you know, black ink on them or whatnot that was wiped from the bodies. And so the Inquisition file had a little envelope with these cotton balls. And so I took them out, looked at them, felt them. And, you know, as a historian, I thought, oh, this is so effing cool. You know, this is great. As someone who's invested in material culture, I thought that was fantastic.
00:45:44
Speaker
as a scaredy cat, I was like, oh, I'm touching the devil. Is the devil still here? So yeah, so that was kind of a freakish experience and I kind of couldn't wait to wash my hands figuratively, literally, you know, after that experience.
00:46:03
Speaker
Oh my gosh, that is an APT story for the books. Truly, the bravery it takes to have been able to do that. I would, I've, nope, I would have left it in the envelope. I'm out. See you later. Research over. It's so important. Yeah, like I don't need to, the research isn't worth it.
00:46:28
Speaker
It's so frustrating that one I'm just I'm so glad that like you powered through and you didn't give in like Bianca and I would because I get like so frustrated with myself like the more that I'm like so interested in all this stuff but like I can't do it alone like if I was in an archive by myself with some ghosty artifacts absolutely not like that would not happen like I would need to like hire someone to just sit with me and
00:46:54
Speaker
And I feel like that would be a good gig to have for a little bit. So with a scaredy cat, learn about some ghosts. Sometimes ghosts are not so kind of malign. And sometimes they're just like any voice that speaks to you in an archive, you know, and it could be a ledger that you're reading through. And then there are little details that you're like, so happy have been included. And you almost imagine this, you know,
00:47:21
Speaker
kind of civil servant putting together these inventories or ledgers, and this person is speaking to you, you know, from 300 years ago or whatever, and you're like, thank you. I really need to know that that was done, you know, with feathers. This is very helpful for me as an art historian.
00:47:41
Speaker
So there's a kind of dialogue in place that is really beautiful in many respects between yourself and the dead when you're in an archive.
Travel and Exploration Encouragement
00:47:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. That's such a lovely way to like humanize the process as a historian as well as you just said.
00:48:02
Speaker
Christina, we could not be more grateful for you to be here with us today. We've been trying to get you on the pod for a while, so we are so excited and so honored. Is there anything else before we let you go that you'd like to share with our listeners today? Anything exciting that you have coming up or that you want to plug?
00:48:19
Speaker
Well, I just went to Mexico City last week. I was there for a couple of weeks. I just returned. And I was interested to see what types of celebrations would be taking. Well, first of all, I was interested to see if it still existed. We've been in our pandemic bubble, kind of in isolation. And one almost wonders, is the world still there? And so it was nice to hit on a plane and nice to be in this sprawling metropolis
00:48:49
Speaker
20 million plus people. And to be reassured that indeed it still exists, the world is still there. And cities like Mexico City, I'm sure every major capital has not just survived, but it's doubled down and has committed to thriving.
00:49:06
Speaker
And you could feel this energy and it was so beautiful to feel, so alive. And so it was the best research trip that I could have taken. It was really wonderful. I want to encourage everyone to, whether it's Mexico City or Rome or New York or
00:49:27
Speaker
you know, anywhere, you know, to make those trips and to kind of be reaffirmed that we're not just survivors. We're also going to double down and we're going to thrive. And so that is one thing I would like to leave you all with, but also because it's homecoming weekend. I want to wish everyone a happy homecoming and wish our football team luck against Kansas. And and I hope everyone enjoys the weekend.
Conclusion and Listener Interaction
00:49:57
Speaker
I love it. Christina, thank you so, so much for being here today. If you have any questions for our special guest, you can always email us at artpoptalk at gmail.com. We're on all the social media platforms at Art Pop Talk. And if you like this content and you want to hear more, you can donate to our Buy Me a Coffee account, which is in our link tree on our website. And with that, we will talk to you all next Tuesday. Bye, everyone. Hi, everyone.
00:50:27
Speaker
Art Pop Talk's executive producers are me, Bianca Martucci-Vinc. And me, Gianna Martucci-Vinc. Music and sounds are by Josh Turner and photography is by Adrian Turner. And our graphic designer is Sid Hammond.
00:50:59
Speaker
you