El recolector de colillas de cigarrillo en la historia de la literatura, la prensa y la cultura visual

Abstract

Among the various people making their living off of the street, the junkman has monopolized the attention of a number of researchers. Among the various types of junkmen is the collector of cigarette butts. Cultural representations of this social type have not as yet been analyzed. The aim of this article is to reclaim this figure from oblivion. He is represented in a multitude of literary, journalistic and visual representations of the 19th and 20th centuries. Subject to aestheticization, he appears in Spanish costumbrism (Estébanez Calderón), French boulevard press and Spanish lithography (Daumier), sculpture, Spanish novels of the twentieth century (Cela) and film. In the latter case, this article has tracked the presence of the cigarette butt collector in two films of Charlie Chaplin (The Guy, Lights of the City), in the documentary Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, Walter Ruttmann, and the film M, a city looks for a murderer, by Fritz Lang.