Travessias (Dec 2019)
The Myth of Che Guevara in Photography and Cinema
Abstract
Che Guevara is to this day an image that is distinguished by its ubiquity. Che wearing a beret, looking to the horizon, represents the myth surrounding Guevara's figure and is one of those easily recognized images around the world. More than fifty years after Ernesto Guevara's death, Che's image surprises us with its ubiquity. Che resurfaces in T-shirts, photographs, movies, and in many other ways, including as a non official saint in La Higuera, Bolivia. Executed in October 1967, his image seems to survive and multiply in detriment of his body, which, coupled with the commercial and religious use of Che's image, leads some scholars to advocate the complete emptying of his political meaning. However, considering that myth for Barthes (1991) is a two-level semiological system in which the second depends on the first meaning for survival, I question the rhetoric of annihilation of political meaning based on the analysis of how two films – The Motorcycle Diaries (DIARIOS, 2004) and El Che: Investigating a Legend (EL CHE, 1998) - recreate Che Guevara. I also analyze the relationship between Che's myth and two photographs - Alberto Korda's and Freddy Alborta's - relating them to the films.
