The eternal Black Night of "O estranho mundo de Zé do Caixão"

Abstract

Fifty years ago, filmmaker José Mojica Marins created his character Zé do Caixão (Coffin Joe), which became a cultural phenomenon via one of the most peculiar transmedia projects ever created in Brazil. Born in 1962 on the silver screen, his creation soon transitioned to a popular television series shown on TV Tupi of São Paulo, followed by a third film, a box office success, and then a comicbook which was also highly successful. This article aims to reflect on the projects across these three media between 1968 and 1969, which had the common title "El extraño mundo Zé do Caixão" [The Strange World of Coffin Joe]. All the scripts were written by screenwriter Rubens Francisco Lucchetti, who has reinvented the creature of Marins and the horror genre by introducing the image of the character in the Brazilian collective imagination. Based on studies of François Jost and Theodor Adorno, and from the historical contextualization and the importance of the content of the first edition of the comic, we discuss how the terror was fictionalised in such a way as to give the work its contemporaneity and longevity as both an artistic creation and a product of mass culture.