Borges in Hollywood: From Art House to Blockbuster Cinema

Abstract

This dissertation examines Jorge Luis Borges’s influence on contemporary cinema. I postulate that cinematic appropriations of Borges are shifting from art house to blockbuster films, facilitated partly by postmodern disruption of aesthetic hierarchies. First I analyze Christopher Nolan’s films Memento (2000) and Inception (2010) to represent the shift from art house to mainstream Hollywood. Then I analyze Diego Paszkowski’s novel Tesis sobre un homicidio (1998) and Hernán Goldfrid’s film adaptation (2013) to represent the domestic market that regards Borges as a national cultural referent. I examine and compare the treatment of Borges in both novel and film, which are laden with Hollywood references, including Inception’s influence on Goldfrid’s film. In the selected works Borges appears as an element of pastiche, which I broadly define as a collage of discordant elements that draws from past styles.

I identify postmodernism as the cultural movement that motivates contemporary cinematic appropriations of Borges. Although I do not share Fredric Jameson’s negative stance toward postmodern culture, I employ his Marxist theories on postmodernism as the cultural dominant of late capitalism to conceptualize pastiche as a marketing strategy. I propose that contemporary cinematic pastiches of Borges signal a film industry desperate to overcome exhausted narrative forms.

I argue that the pastiche of Borges in the selected works is motivated by the desire to capitalize on his cultural capital and explore new modes of narration. It yields a new type of Hollywood blockbuster, a marketable hybrid of art house and mainstream entertainment that allows Inception to preserve the intellectual sensibilities in Memento. For the domestic market, it attracts a Borges-informed audience while allowing the film to honor a celebrated author. I review other critical perspectives to address Jameson’s concerns about the blurred high/low culture division and highlight the positive implications of a cinematic pastiche of Borges. I conclude that Borges inspires innovative film narratives; in turn, commercially successful film adaptations of Borges keep his work relevant and expand his reader base to include never before accessible markets.