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Paulo Francis (Rio de Janeiro, September 2, 1930 – New York City, February 4, 1997) was a Brazilian journalist, political pundit, novelist and critic. Francis became prominent in modern Brazilian journalism through his controversial critiques and essays with a trademark writing style, which mixed erudition and vulgarity. Like many other Brazilian intellectuals of his time, Francis was exposed to Americanization during his teens. In his early career, Francis tried to blend Brazilian Nationalist Leftism in Culture and Politics with the ideal of modernity embodied by the USA. He acted mostly as an advocate of Modernism in cultural matters, later becoming embroiled in Brazil's 1960s political struggles as a Trotskyist sympathizer and a Leftist nationalist, while at the same time keeping a distance from both Stalinism and Latin American populism. After spending the 1970s as an exile and expatriate in the US, in the 1980s he forsook Leftism for Americanism's sake, performing a sharp political turn into aggressive conservatism, defending the Free Market and political liberalism, and became an uncompromising anti-Leftist. In this capacity, he estranged himself from the Brazilian intelligentsia and became mostly a media figure, a role that entangled him in a legal suit until his death in 1997. Critical evaluations of his work have been made by Midia scholar Bernardo Kucinski and historian Isabel Lustosa. ==Early life and career (1930–64)== Born as Franz Paul Trannin da Matta Heilborn into a middle-class family of German descent,〔Ana Carolina D Escosteguy,org. ''Cultura midiática e tecnologias do imaginário: metodologias e pesquisas''.Porto Alegre: EDIPUCRS, 2005, ISBN 85-7430-505-7 , p. 185.〕 Francis received his early education in various traditional Catholic schools in Rio de Janeiro. He attended the National School of Philosophy (at the time a general humanities course) of the University of Brazil in the 1950s, but dropped out before graduating. In college, he was admitted into the student troupe (''Teatro do Estudante'') managed by the critic Paschoal Carlos Magno,〔Isabel Lustosa, ''As trapaças da sorte'', p. 251〕 with whom he toured northeastern Brazil. On the trip, he was shocked and disgusted by what he described as poverty, backwardness, (an ) unawareness of welfare and civil society."〔Francis, ''O afeto que se encerra'', memoir, quoted by Kucinski, ''Paulo Francis'', pg.92〕 Inspired towards a stage career after that trip, Francis tried to become an actor in Rio de Janeiro during the early 1950s. Although he received an award as a rising star in 1952, he did not pursue the career: according to Kucisnki, because he lacked talent;〔Kucinski, "Paulo francis", 89〕 according to his former mentor Paschoal Carlos Magno, because his interests were directed firstly towards political activism.〔"I must say that for a man with Francis' abilities and world-views it was very difficult to be an actor"-Paschoal Carlos Magno, 1973 interview, reprinted in Jaguar and Sergio Augusto,orgs. ''O Pasquim- Antologia: Vol.III, 1973–1974'', p. 101〕 From the start of his career, Francis saw himself not as an entertainer, but as a public intellectual intent on social change. In his own words, he had returned from his Northeastern Brazil tour "sure of the need for a social revolution".〔Quoted by Lustosa, ''Trapaças da Sorte'', 252〕 Deciding on a stage management career, Francis went to Columbia University, where he studied Dramatic Literature, mostly attending the classes of the Brecht scholar Eric Bentley. He also became acquainted with the work of the critic George Jean Nathan. Eventually, he dropped out of Columbia.〔Cf. Alexandre Torres Fonseca, "Paulo Francis, do Teatro à Política: 'Perdoa-me por me traíres'", M.Sc. dissertation, History Department, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 2001, pg.41; Francis later used to say that he had "refused" to write a thesis under Bentley's sponsorship, as well as receiving a PhD in Political Science at Indiana State University during the 1970s, out of "tedium and a lack of respect" for academic life – ''apud'' Torres Fonseca, ''Paulo Francis, do Teatro à Política'', 41〕 During his time in the United States, Francis joined a host of Brazilian intellectuals who, during the 1940s and the 1950s, forswore any abstract and aristocratic European concept of "civilization", meaning mostly French Belle Époque culture, in favor of an American model, which equated modernization with cutting-edge technological development (Fordism) and mass democracy, understood as the necessary material basis for social change, which Francis expressed through a personal mix of pro-Americanism and Left radicalism.〔Isabel Lustosa, ''As Trapaças da Sorte'', 258/260.〕 His embrace of what he saw as American pragmatism led Francis into a lifelong militant empiricism and scorn for theory. According to Kucinski, Francis was always open about his boredom with the academic method of intellectual analysis, describing it as conventional and unimaginative.〔Kucinski, ''Paulo Francis'', 87〕 He always preferred his role as a journalist to that of an scholar. As a scholar, he was prone to what many saw as excessive intellectual pretensions: in the words of one of his critics, psychoanalyst and writer Maria Rita Kehl, Francis never doubted, as he had supposedly understood everything even before realizing what actually happened.〔Maria Rita Kehl, quoted by Kucinski, ''Paulo Francis'', p.82〕 He was also repelled by what he saw as the rhetorical obscurity of 1960s Structuralism, striving instead for "a simple, learned prose, with a clear language".〔Carlos Eduardo Lins da Silva, ''O adiantado da hora: a influência americana sobre o jornalismo brasileiro''. São Paulo: Summus, 1990, p. 109〕 In a late interview, he would proudly describe himself as "not () a scholar who pens treatises. I'm a journalist who discusses on the facts of the day, political and cultural happenings".〔Paulo Markun, ed., ''O melhor do Roda Viva''. São Paulo, Conex, 2005, Volume 2, ISBN 85-7594-055-4, p. 115〕 This mode of work, according to critics such as Kehl and Kucinski, would shape his writing throughout his life. These same critics saw in it a signal of an inability to perform sustained intellectual work and a tendency to rely on flashes of wit and borrowed erudition (the use of incessant quotes and ''bon mots'') something that would make him prone to mistakes and imprecision.〔Various examples are offered in support of this thesis: in an article purporting to offer a list of masterworks of world literature, available at (), Francis lists Thucydides' ''History of the Peloponnesian War'' and then goes on to describe the Athenian demagogue Cleon as a ''Spartan'' leader – or ''Führer'', to be precise...(site accessed May 11, 2011)〕〔In another famous mistake, Francis wrote, in a critique of the film ''Tora! Tora! Tora!'', that Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had been present at the preview of the film – a mistake so gross that "Yamamoto" became for a time a slang for silly journalistic mistake: cf. Paulo Eduardo Nogueira, ''Paulo Francis'', p. 96〕〔Kucinski, ''Paulo Francis'', pg.85〕〔As early as 1962, the playwright Nelson Rodrigues would describe Francis as "an obsessive illiterate who has a need to see ignoramuses everywhere" and living proof of Brazilian cultural achievements, in that "one who never got beyond The Count of Monte Cristo, yet writes a column"- Nelson Rodrigues, ''A Pátria de Chuteiras'', Rio: Nova Fronteira, 2014, ISBN 978-85-209-3818-8〕 According to Kucinski, his "absence of careful research, established facts, precise information () became eventually – through excessive generalization and lack of patience () – downright bigotry".〔Kucinski, ''Paulo Francis'', 85〕 His acquaintance with contemporary American criticism had prepared him for the important role he played in Brazilian theater, which at the time was in a feverish process of cultural modernization, mostly in the sense of a thorough Americanization of cultural values.〔Lustosa, ''As Trapaças da Sorte'', 257〕 This process had begun after the 1945 fall of the Getúlio Vargas dictatorship, and lasted until the 1964 military coup. After a time as a director between 1954 and 1956 during which he staged five plays, with moderate success,〔Kucinski, "Paulo Francis", 89〕 in 1957 Francis started to write as a theater critic for the newspaper ''Diário Carioca''. He was soon praised for his defense of a modern approach to staging. The Brazilian stage had been characterised by provincial bickering between rival troupes, as well as a strict attachment to Classic European conventions. With various other critics, such as the theater scholar Sabato Magaldi and the Shakespeare translator and expert Barbara Heliodora, Francis strove for social and psychological realism on the Brazilian stage, expressed in his association of Brecht's work to George Bernard Shaw's and Sean O'Casey's (ignoring, in the process, the anti-realist stance of Brechtian theater and submitting it to method acting conventions).〔Maria Silvia Betti, "Critica norte-americana e debate cultural no teatro brasileiro da década de 196/70:apontamentos introdutórios". ''Aurora'' 1:2007, available at ()〕 In his own words, what he proposed was to approach staging as above all, an ''intellectual'' task: "to strive, on the stage, to find an equivalent for the feeling of unity and total expression one finds while reading a text".〔"A arte de dirigir 1", ''Diário Carioca'', July 29, 1961, as quoted by George Moura, ''Paulo Francis: o Soldado fanfarrão'', pg.62〕 At the same time, he sponsored, with editor Jorge Zahar, the publication of a collection of translation of foreign plays that would form a canon on which a future Brazilian modernist dramaturgy would develop.〔Kucinski, "Paulo Francis", 90〕 Within this intellectual framework, Francis acted as a cultural nationalist, supporting contemporary rising Brazilian playwrights such as Nelson Rodrigues and Gianfrancesco Guarnieri and actors such as Fernanda Montenegro and was generally respected for doing so.〔Moura, ''O Soldado Fanfarrão''〕 However, he remained noted for his compulsion towards unconsidered behavior and personal attack, as in a quarrel with an actress in 1958, in which he reacted to what he supposed to be a hint about his (supposed) homosexuality by writing so demeaning a piece of libel he was slapped in public by the actress' husband.〔Cf. Kucinski, "Paulo Francis",84〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Paulo Francis」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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