El Club del Clan and the Struggles over Cultural Taste
In the second week of March of 1964, Ramón “Palito” Ortega, age twenty-three, performed on six television shows and at eighteen social clubs, news on him occupied more than seven thousand column inches in newspapers and fanzines (including six covers), his songs were broadcast nine hundred times on the radio, and he received a thousand letters from fans.48 Observers were shocked by the success that Ortega and other singers on the television program El Club del Clan had achieved: they had completely flooded the mass media with their images. Mass culture had become juvenilized as the 1960s went on, and the sounds, images, and styles deployed in the enlarged media landscape conveyed youthfulness and sweetened optimism. By no means was it a local phenomenon; rather, it was part of an increasingly transnational repertoire of youth-based cultural consumption. In Argentina, the juvenilization of mass culture and El Club del Clan as the incarnation of a “new wave” of idols and fans served as the main reference points for the first systematic criticisms of the culture industry and its supposedly alienating effects. Journalists, filmmakers, and a plethora of other observers likewise projected onto the young idols and fans anxieties related to the “masses.” Equally important, criticism of the “new wave” was the territory on which struggles over cultural taste occurred.
Promoted by RCA, the youth ensemble performing on the television program El Club del Clan was instrumental to the juvenilization process. The story of that ensemble dates back to 1960, when RCA’s executive Mejía arrived in Argentina to search for “young talent.” In 1962, Mejía had already chosen a dozen youths, changed their names, and shaped their personas to mold them into a clan of “happy youth.”49 The clan aimed to represent a microcosm of the Argentine youth and their musical tastes. For example, “Tanguito” Cobian sang tangos; Chico Novarro and Raul Lavié sang tropical rhythms and boleros; and Jolly Land, the “Americanized young woman,” sang pop songs. Violeta Rivas, for her part, performed translations of Italian pop songs, while Johny Tedesco sang rock and did the twist, and Palito Ortega, the representative of “the interior provinces,” sang boleros, folkloric music, and performed the twist. El Club del Clan, broadcast from late 1962 to late 1963, achieved unprecedented ratings. It bears noting that, while in countries like France the diffusion of youth music had radio programs and magazines (like Salut les copains) at its epicenter, in Argentina it was television that paved the way for the youth explosion.50 The difference might be partly explained by the pervasiveness of television in Argentina. In 1964 Argentina there were 68 sets per 1,000 inhabitants, while in France there were 53, in Mexico,33, and in Brazil, 29.51 Most fundamentally, as media historian Mirta Varela has shown, local television had begun to produce a “modernizing façade” that went hand in hand with the representation of the “modern family” as a site where the generational gap, as a marker of renewal, was represented as a low-intensity conflict.52 El Club del Clan fit within and contributed to that framework: it conveyed a sense of cultural renewal around the young “idols,” represented intergenerational conflict in terms of musical styles, and solved the quandary by integrating—as entrepreneurs did—rock/twist, the music for the young within the family, into a continuum of local and international rhythms.
El Club del Clan became the center of a network of records, radio programs, fanzines, and movies. In 1963, RCA launched three LPs that compiled the songs performed on the television show. As a marketing strategy, the retail price of the LPs was reduced to one-fourth that of the average album, which resulted in one million copies being sold.53 The firm also launched the most successful soloists in the local and regional markets: Ortega’s records, for example, were on the top of the Mexican, Peruvian, and Chilean charts in 1964 when his albums constituted 50 percent of the record sales of RCA in Latin America.54 In Argentina, as a result of the television show and its soloists’ success, the records of “domestic origin” jumped from 60 percent of the total sold in 1962 to 75 percent in 1963.55 These records permeated the radio airwaves as well. At least six radio programs, broadcasting fifteen hours per day in Buenos Aires, concentrated on youth music in 1964.56 Those sounds were reinforced by the omnipresent images of El Club del Clan’s singers: fanzines like Antena—the most widely read—carried interviews and pictures, while its publisher launched Nuevaolandia to target the fans of the “new wave.” Fans also had the chance to watch two films, El Club del Clan (1964) and Fiebre de primavera (1965), both directed by Enrique Carreras.
What were the traits of El Club del Clan as a text that navigated through and juvenilized mass culture? It was a music-based, youth-led text that celebrated contained fun, youth as a value per se, and family life. Whether twists or boleros, the songs were meant for dancing rather than listening. In contrast to what was perceived about rock in its early days, the performers on stage danced in an orderly fashion that suggested a controlled enjoyment. Other elements of their body language reinforced the conveyance of fun: with the exception of Palito Ortega, they always smiled. Why did they smile? The song “Qué suerte” (How Lucky) gives some clues,
Qué suerte que tengo Luckily I have
Una madre tan buena Such a good mother
Que siempre vigila That always looks after
Mi ropa y mi cena. My clothing and dinner.
Qué suerte mi padre How lucky, my father
Callado y sereno, So quiet and serene
Qué suerte saberlo How lucky, I know he is
Tan justo y tan bueno. So just and so kind.
Qué suerte el amor. How lucky, love.
Qué suerte la escuela. How lucky, the school.
Qué suerte que esta noche voy a verte. How lucky, tonight I’ll see you.57
“Qué suerte” could have been the anthem of El Club del Clan: it condenses sweetened optimism, reinforces traditional imagery surrounding gender roles (a caretaker mother, a quiet father who makes “just” decisions), celebrates romantic love (while concealing any reference to sexuality), erases perceptions of “rebellion,” and does not challenge even the most questioned institution, the school. Written and composed by Palito Ortega and Chico Novarro, “Qué suerte” was performed by Violeta Rivas. She played the “girl next door” character who told everyone how lucky she was to be a girl in love. El Club del Clan promoted cultural conservatism, barely hidden by a patina of youth renewal. Unlike the sexualized imaginary that permeated the lyrics to the songs and the self-presentation of the youths of the Brazilian ensemble La jovem guarda, and unlike the practical questioning of conventional ideals of womanhood epitomized in the Italian Rita Pavone’s notoriously androgyne figure, El Club del Clan delivered explicit mandates: conform to established gender roles and family values and “have fun”—in an orderly way.58
Shot from El Club del Clan, Palito Ortega. Museo del Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken Archive.
El Club del Clan also produced the framework for the emergence of particular young local celebrities: Ramón “Palito” Ortega occupied the center stage, perhaps because he projected the romance of hard work, upward mobility, and national integration. Initially, Ortega competed for popularity with Johny Tedesco, whose youth image reverberated in his clothing and his performed musical styles, the twist and rock.59 Ortega prevailed in the popular preference despite the predictions of RCA. Music producers explained afterward that Ortega sang better and composed his own songs: he was, in their view, a popular creator.60 Plausible as it might be, this explanation circumvents the fact that Ortega’s larger appeal consisted of the ways in which the interweaving of his artistic persona and life story resonated in the public milieu. As repeated in countless interviews, the Ortegas lived in a sugar mill in Tucumán province, where the father worked as an electrician and the kids labored as newspaper sellers or cane cutters. Ortega migrated to Buenos Aires at the age of fifteen, where he worked in badly paid jobs and used his sparse free time to learn the drums and guitar. The tale of humble origins and hard work intersects with an extra element: RCA �
��discovered” Ramón, baptized him Palito, and allowed him to display his artistic virtues.61 The tale re-created ingrained ideas of success through popular music. In contrast to the old tango idols’ stories, however, Ortega’s narrative began by emphasizing that he represented the “unprivileged interior provinces” rather than Buenos Aires.62 While El Club del Clan integrated the young within the family, Ortega promised to unite the nation under the banner of popular (i.e., youth) music.
At the same time that Ortega consolidated his popularity, other “young talent” emerged and produced controversy. For example, Roberto Sánchez—aka Sandro—shaped his public persona along sexualized rather than romantic lines and so tested the limits of what was permissible in the juvenilized mass culture of the early 1960s. Sandro was the son of a working-class family in Greater Buenos Aires who soon developed a fascination for rock music, and particularly for Elvis Presley. In 1963, when he was only eighteen years old, Sandro gained access to a record studio with “Los de Fuego”—a band from his neighborhood. Sandro invoked ideas of passion and “disorder” both in musical and sexual terms. Sandro’s style heavily borrowed from Marlon Brando’s, including the use of leather jackets, cigarettes, and motorbikes. Fanzines used to depict Sandro as part of an “irascible youth [juventud iracunda]” and contrasted his persona to Palito Ortega’s.63 While Sandro also gained access to social clubs and television programs, his style sometimes clashed with customary understandings of “manners and morals.” In 1964, when performing in one of the most widely viewed television programs of the decade, Sandro danced, making contortions that the producers dubbed “obscene.” Sandro was dismissed from the program and soon thereafter relaunched his career as an admittedly sexy ballad singer, becoming famous throughout Latin America in the early 1970s. One decade before, though, his was an uncomfortable presence in the juvenilized mass culture dominated by El Club del Clan.
The idols of El Club del Clan, and mainly Palito Ortega, instigated an unprecedented growth of fans. As media scholar Cornel Sandvoss put it, “fandom” refers to the “regular, emotionally involved consumption of a given popular text.”64 Who were the fans of the “new wavers” and how was the consumption of the text, or idols, shaped? In sociodemographic terms, journalists pointed out that “Palito’s kingdom” reached working-class and lower-middle-class neighborhoods across the country.65 However, not all fans engaged in the same level of involvement. Ricardo, a former working-class boy from Lanús, recalls that he purchased records, watched television shows, and went to live shows as much as he could because he “liked dancing.”66 Ricardo “liked the new wave,” invested money and time in following his idols, but was mostly interested in the opportunity to have fun. Others related to the idols in a more committed fashion, as in the case of the participants of fan clubs. While some boys took part, the clubs chiefly appealed to girls, who exchanged pictures and records. The girls of Johny Tedesco’s club, in addition, went so far as to hold knitting sessions to provide their idol with the sweaters he wore.67 While they shaped a community—something that perhaps allowed many to outwit the continuum of home and school, or home and job—these girls built their fandom practices by drawing on deep-rooted notions of femininity. As the mother of the song “Qué suerte,” the girls “took care of the clothes” of Johny, who many fantasized about as their boyfriend. All in all, the girls and boys (like Ricardo) did not subvert the messages of having fun and conformed to traditional gender roles and family values that El Club del Clan forcefully endorsed.
Perceived as an unparalleled occurrence, the sweeping visibility of the singers of El Club del Clan and their fans awoke reactions across the political and cultural fields. Left-wing militants and cultural critics underscored the perils the “new wave” presented to any revolutionary project. As had happened since rock’s early days, Communist youths worried about the imperialist menace over the younger generation of workers, whom they conceived of as the ultimate target of their activism. The “U.S.-dominated” music industry, television, and advertising agencies, an observer pointed out, had created a “poison termed new wave” that threatened to make youth drowsy.68 A young letter writer further asserted that the “new wavers” represented “the screen that the oligarchy needs to dominate the country,” although he remained confident about the youths: “They will resist: boys and girls will keep their pants on [se pondrán los pantalones] and no new wavers will prevent them from doing so.”69 Left-wing cultural critics, for their part, were not so convinced of the possibilities of resisting the “new wave.” In one of the most widely read essays of the 1960s, Juan José Sebreli mapped out the daily habits of different social classes. When discussing the middle class, Sebreli reckoned that the “new wave” had positive effects: the vigorous celebration of youth it promoted, he asserted, served to split ingrained patriarchal norms. When his analysis centered on the working class, the positive effects vanished. Working-class youths, he asserted, seemed to be only interested in “twist dancing,” and he feared the “alienating effects” of such texts as El Club del Clan might have on them.70
Rodolfo Kuhn’s third movie, Pajarito Gómez, una vida feliz (1965), brought the relation between the “new wave” and cultural alienation to center stage.71 Pajarito Gómez tells the story of the creation of a popular idol. The story begins with an interview where the idol’s biography is invented to fit a tale of humble origins and hard work, which is meant to mimic Ortega’s story. When a journalist—paid by the record company—asks him about his childhood, the idol recalls his house in a slum and the mistreatment he received at home, yet those memories are just the visual binding of the sequence: the overlapping aural binding is the journalist’s voice, who notes, “So, he grew up in a poor, cheerful home; his mother and teacher were his first loves; he liked singing as a pajarito [little bird]. Pajarito Gómez, a happy life.” The idol loses his name, his biography, and his agency: he becomes an “industry” puppet. The “industry” invents a romance with a female “new wave” singer and organizes a contest among fans whose prize is to spend twelve hours with the idol. The chosen fan—a girl from a provincial town—finds that talking with the idol is impracticable beyond clichés. In his only display of “agency,” he attempts to rape her, which acts as a reinforcement of her disillusion. That Pajarito cannot transcend the “machinery” is confirmed when he dies in a train crash. His death is still another chance for the “industry” to make profits. Equally important, the movie’s final sequence shows how fans react to Pajarito’s death. At his funeral, hundreds of youths cry, until one decides that the best way of paying homage to him is dancing, and they all end up dancing the twist around the corpse.
The movie built on and amplified broader discussions over the so-called machinery that produced, manipulated, and alienated idols and fans alike. Most reports on El Club del Clan, certainly, centered on the production of popular idols and on the profits that producers and agents made in that process.72 Pajarito Gómez nonetheless went beyond unraveling the idol-side of the story. Director Kuhn and scriptwriter Francisco Urondo argued that they tried to show how “pseudo-artistic forms” were deployed to “alienate people.”73 An entire tradition of thought on modern culture reverberated in Kuhn and Urondo’s authorial intentions, notably the theses set forth in Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), which pointed out the alienating and totalitarian effects of what they termed the “culture industry” under monopoly capitalism. The book, though, had not been translated into Spanish, and the concept of culture industry was not in use in the early 1960s, before most sociologists and cultural critics became interested in analyzing mass culture.74 Yet it is probable that, like other intellectuals, Kuhn and Urondo were familiar with the work of other thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School—such as Herbert Marcuse—who engaged with the problematic of alienation as well, and whose work was known in the country. In any case, as film critics pointed out, Pajarito Gómez was one of the first systematic critiques of mass culture
in Argentina.75 Throughout the course of its development, mass culture had become juvenilized. Talking about it thus meant talking about youth.
Pajarito Gómez and the commentary on the “new wave” employed gendered metaphors to represent idols and fans as “masses.” The interpretations of the “new wave” that focused on the machinery largely worked with the dichotomies between activity (the “industry”) and passivity (malleable idols/fans), and between high (“true artistic,” liberating forms) and low (“pseudo artistic,” alienating forms). As cultural critic Andreas Huyssen has noted, beginning in the mid-nineteenth-century, mass culture had been conceptualized in terms of passivity and inferiority, thus endowing it with the attributes associated with the feminine.76 In the Argentina of the early 1960s, the uses of that gendered language in referring to the “youth mass culture” intersected with other images. In the popular humor magazine Tía Vicenta, for example, the “new wave boy” was depicted as effeminate: he was devoid of the initiative to begin dating, was afraid of inviting girls to dance, and seemed to be interested only in clothes and haircuts.77 Unlike other, more “virile” forms of popular music—such as tango—singers and fans of the youth-led music were described as feminine. That imagery was reinforced through the deployment of terms like “hysteria,” a perceived feminine pathology. Thus, the disk jockeys that programmed “new wave” music on the radio were baptized “the fathers of hysteria,” and the depictions of live shows were full of references to “scenes of sudden hysteria.”78 As sociologist Joli Jensen has suggested, the portrayals of fandom are haunted by images of deviance, like the one of the hysterical crowd.79 These portrayals related to the anxiety that the “masses” incited upon their eruption into the political and cultural arena, an anxiety now projected onto the “young masses.”
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