Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-mwx4w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-14T21:48:14.443Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 2 - The Transnational Model of Popular Illustrated Magazines: Three Case Studies from Brazil (1900–20)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2022

Get access

Summary

The transformations of the periodical print culture in the Western world at turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century marked the emergence of the popular illustrated magazine, which can be considered one of the early forms of mass media. It was a period when magazines became consolidated, as media enterprises focused upon a mass number of readers and consumers. These well-printed, inexpensive publications carried a large amount of advertising, and featured photographs, illustrations, caricatures and texts produced by a regular, professional editorial team. This watershed moment was to start in the United States and Europe and then quickly spread to other countries in the Americas, consolidating a transnational model of magazine publishing. This chapter focuses on three case studies from Brazil that explored this model in the first decades of the twentieth century. I will argue that this new readership was in tandem with a growing emphasis on contents with which the unprecedented mass readership could connect and identify. The new popular magazine model fostered new narratives of the Brazilian nation, focusing on the mixed-race, urban individuals from the working and lower middle classes (and their cultural practices) rather than the Romantic image of the indigenous as the personification of the nation throughout the nineteenth century.

From a structure dependent upon local readership, magazines became consolidated in the beginning of the twentieth century as media enterprises focused upon consumers nationwide, which can be explained by a change in the way advertisers were reaching consumers. In the nineteenth century, the sales stream flowed from manufacturer to jobber to retailer to consumer, and advertising was, to a great extent, limited to the last part of this stream. And because the retailer's market was local, not nationwide, the media used to advertise in periodicals were those with close-to-home circulations, rather than the nationally or regionally distributed magazines. This is one of the main reasons for nationwide magazines not carrying a large amount of advertising before the turn of the century.

These new popular illustrated magazines appropriated and engaged with the periodical print culture that emerged in the nineteenth century.

Type
Chapter
Information
Magazines and Modernity in Brazil
Transnational Networks and Cross-Cultural Exchanges
, pp. 37 - 56
Publisher: Anthem Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×