La nota roja y el sexo | Sex & The Crime Page
A mediados de la década de 1920, el dibujante y caricaturista Carlos Neve es quien toma el relevo con ilustraciones de nota roja para el periódico El Demócrata, al mismo tiempo que ilustra cubiertas para libros. Neve comienza, además, a incluir mujeres ligeras de ropa utilizando una estética que Mercurio define como porno soft y erótica. En la siguiente década, la revista Vea lidera las publicaciones populares con alto contenido erótico e incluye en sus secciones una dedicada a la nota roja.
A partir de los años cuarenta el diario La Prensa, que todavía se publica, se funda y constituye un monopolio que durará muchos años con el dudoso mérito de ser la publicación más popular en este género que tantos lectores gustan “ver”. Desde la década de 1960 y hasta fechas muy recientes, semanarios o periódicos amarillistas como Alarma y Alerta, publicaron las famosas imágenes del fotógrafo de nota roja Enrique Metinides, El Niño.
En los años setenta el diario Ovaciones cubre ambos temas (la nota roja y el erotismo) junto a otro aún más popular: el deporte. Los lectores de esta época seguramente recordarán la famosa página 3, donde se reproducía la imagen de una chica semidesnuda en dos páginas (tamaño póster), que en numerosas ocasiones acababa decorando los talleres mecánicos. El tema erótico se actualiza con revistas como Él, Caballero, Audaz y Bravo por nombrar algunas.
No fue sino hasta fechas recientes que se dio un salto cuantitativo relevante en la prensa amarillista, cuando se incluyeron en la primera plana sexo y violencia. Éstos siempre han sido temas atractivos por el morbo que generan, sin embargo no se mostraban juntos y tan descaradamente como hasta ahora; incluso, hay quienes piensan que es inmoral la manera de presentarlos.
Desde hace un tiempo estamos siendo espectadores de una lucha fratricida entre los diarios El Gráfico y Metro, y en menor medida La Prensa, por mostrar primeras planas aterradoras con escenas de muerte y sexo, mano a mano.
La reproducción de un número significativo de primeras planas difundidas recientemente, adjuntas a este escrito, ejemplifican los temas mencionados con imágenes que serían impublicables en una gran cantidad de países, dando fe así de esta nueva y lucrativa veta periodística.
For more than a century, the crime page and erotic content have played an important role in the Mexican press. The origin of the crime page, or nota roja as it is called in Mexico, would seem to date back to the representation of macabre events in the popular prints of the great engraver José Guadalupe Posada, most of them produced for the publisher Vanegas Arroyo. Previously, according to independent scholar Mercurio López Casillas, material of this nature had been subject to censorship.
In the mid-1920s, the illustrator and cartoonist Carlos Neve took up where Posada had left off, contributing illustrations to the nota roja of the newspaper El Demócrata, while at the same time producing book covers. Neve also began to include images of scantily-clad women, in an esthetic Mercurio describes as “soft porn erotica.” In the following decade, the magazine Vea was a leader among popular publications with erotic content, which it included in the section devoted to crime reports.
The 1940s saw the creation of the newspaper La Prensa, which is still being published today. For many years, this highly popular publication had the dubious merit of holding a monopoly on this kind of material, which so many readers liked to “look at.” Starting in the 1960s and until very recently, sensationalist dailies and weeklies such as Alarma and Alerta published the famous images of the crime page photographer known as “El Niño,” Enrique Metinides.
In the 1970s the newspaper Ovaciones began to cover both subjects (sex and crime) along with another even more popular one: sports. Readers of Ovaciones will certainly remember the famous Page 3, with its poster-size image of a half-naked girl, which would often end up decorating the walls of garages and workshops. Erotic content was increasingly brought up to date in publications such as Él, Caballero, Audaz, and Bravo, to mention only a few.
It has only been in recent years that a significant qualitative leap was taken in the sensationalist press, as sex and violence made it to the front page. The subjects have always had a morbid appeal, but they have never been shown together so brazenly as they are today, in a way many regard as immoral.
We have been witnesses for some time now to the fratricidal struggle between the newspapers El Gráfico and Metro, and to a lesser degree La Prensa, which vie with each other to display the most terrifying scenes of sex and death, side by side, on their front pages.
The sampling of several recent front pages which accompanies this entry, with images that could not be published in many countries, attests to this new and profitable vein of sensationalist journalism.
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