Download representing masculinities in spanish film introduction

Representing Masculinities
in Spanish Film
Introduction
Inma Cívico-Lyons
ary and multicultural. Men are seen by
modern sociologists as “the product of a
complex system of factors and forces which
combine in a variety of ways to produce
a whole range of different masculinities”
(Edley and Wetherell 37). Hegemonic masculinity, or as Robert Hanke defines it, the
“social ascendancy of a particular version or
model of masculinity that operates on the
terrain of common sense and conventional
morality that defines ‘what it means to be
a man’” (190) is understood as one more
variety of masculinity, and one that is in
crisis. This much talked-about “masculinity
crisis” is revealed as a line drawn between
an understanding of men as subjects, and
the established definition of men as the
beneficiaries of hegemonic masculinity.
This crisis in masculinity is also addressed
in Spanish film, where stereotypes of the
Iberian macho are being challenged. As
Barry Jordan and Rikky Morgan-Tamosunas
contend regarding cotemporary Spanish
film, “The assault on traditional notions of
masculinity constitutes a significant trend
in contemporary Spanish cinema.” Film
representations of traditional masculinity
reveal not only its destructive consequences
for women and men, but also “demonstrate
that male identity is fragile, provisional and
constantly under threat” (140-1).
Juan Bruce-Novoa states that film is one
of the most important modes of representation, and “delivering convincing portrayals
of identifiable cultural performance is at the
heart of filmmaking” (3). Film is a popular
medium which weighs heavily in people’s
Embedded within the broadening
panorama of gender studies, the last two
decades of the twentieth century witnessed
a rise in the study of men and masculinities.
Drawing from feminist investigations into
gender as a system of power, men studies
began an inquiry on different and varied
male experiences, as well as on the significations of these experiences within specific
cultural frames. In addition to the literary
study of male character representation, the
significance of images of men in advertising,
television, and film were also examined.
Since the 1990s, and thanks in part to Judith Butler´s inquiry on issues of gender
performance, work on representations of
masculinities on screen began to take on
more importance (Powrie et all 1-2).
Today, images of men continue to be
investigated as sites for the construction
and deconstruction of males within cultural
imaginations. Our purpose in this issue of
Post Script is to offer careful consideration to
questions of Spanish film representations of
masculinities and masculine identities. We
look to examine how, in light of traditional
definitions of Spanish masculinity, which include the Iberian macho archetype, Spanish
films work out and negotiate assumptions
regarding masculinity.
An overwhelming number of current
sociological investigations espouse the concept of masculinity as socially constructed,
encompassing practices that change with
cultural/historical shifts; therefore, the
examination of masculinity in Spanish film
calls for approaches that are interdisciplin-
Volume 30, No. 3
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Post Script
imagination. If we consider masculinity as
a cultural performance, then, through different modes of representation, film contributes
to the production and reproduction of, as
R.W. Connell affirms regarding the social
environment, “expectations,” “ stereotypes,”
and “role models.” Be that as it may, and
due to the historical, political, and social
shifts that occurred in Spain during the 20th
century, many Spanish films offer intriguing representations of men: from images of
males that fit the hegemonically prescribed
way of masculinity to the so-called “deviant” forms of masculinity, or masculine
identities which have been displaced from
the center of the hegemonic paradigm. The
Iberian macho, a stereotypical representation of Spanish men that has dominated the
cultural imagination, and which portrays
Spanish men as strong, powerful, and subjugators of women, has also been revised in
cinematic representations.
Following Stuart Hall’s definition of
“identities” as “points of temporary attachment to the subject positions which
discursive practices construct for us” (6),
masculine identities are represented in film
as products of the always changing natures
of history, language, and culture, and thus,
the masculinity crisis is also represented.
Connell defines masculinity as a “personal
practice which cannot be isolated from its
institutional context,” and emphasizes the
importance of three institutions for the organization of gender: the state, the workplace/
labor market, and the family (599-602). And
it is irremediably within the context of the
state, the workplace, and the family that
film representations of masculine identities
are considered by the authors represented
in this issue.
Just as questions of masculinity are
analyzed in this issue, so are the cultural
artifacts, themes, and stylistic conventions
of cinematic tendencies, such as Neorealism, Hollywood classical film, and Spanish
popular cinema. Film genres such as the
musical and the melodrama weigh heavily
on both the spectators’ and government’s
expectations, and produce a variety of dis-
Volume 30, No. 3
courses to which male protagonists either
adhere to or reject. All the authors in this
special issue demonstrate the importance
of film genre and cinematic conventions for
the representation of gender tensions and
gender constructions.
The masculine identities represented
in the films featured in this issue echo the
tensions and negotiations that are required
to either submit to or resist the powers at
large. A major event in 20th century Spain
is the Civil War of 1936, which resulted in
the establishment of the Franco dictatorship.
A vast majority of films allude directly or
indirectly to the Civil War and the dictatorship as memories that resist erasure, perhaps
because their consequences are still being
felt today. Men were at the forefront of
the dictatorship’s nationalist project. As
heads of the state, the workplace, and the
family, men were in charge of preserving
the ultraconservative political and religious
values mandated by the Franco regime. A
hegemonic concept of men represented in
films during the early Franco regime (1940s)
included traits of strength, courage, dominance, and Catholicism. However, as the
dictatorship strengthened its hold, the image
of the no-longer-needed “warrior” began to
appear as obsolete, and a more “feminized”
image of men began to appear in films of the
1950s. Edgar Neville’s El ultimo caballo (1950)
shows subtle indications of a subversion of
the Franco regime’s recommendations for
masculine identity. The article analyzes film
trends of the 1950s such as Italian Neorealism and Hollywood film conventions, which
combined with literary modes of representations (the “sainete”) and themes such
as the peculiar masculinity of Cervantes’s
Don Quixote de la Mancha, offer a portrayal
of masculine identity characterized by vulnerability and displacement from the norm
advocated by the political powers. This
model of masculinity that would certainly
be “considered undesirable by previous
film standards,” points the way towards the
modern male model of capitalism in his economic dealings and in his relationship with
the other gender. Even though the model of
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Post Script
and stability of heteronormative patriarchal
ideology.” The author studies the sexual
ambiguities that male figures represented in
musical films. Dapena studies coded signs
throughout the film that reveal a “different” type of masculinity, an “otherness that
is revealed indirectly” through the film’s
mise-en-scène, as well as through “physical
gestures, sartorial choices, the exhibition of
cultural tastes, and a generalized anxiety
of all things sexual.” Even though the film
creates a space for the representation of
a non-normative, non-conformist type of
masculinity, the final scene, permeated by
fear of punishment and castration, reveals
the impossibility of a different kind of masculinity within the heteronormative system
of Franco´s Spain.
The decade of the 1960s in Spain was
witness to the “most accelerated, deepseated social, economic, and cultural transformations in Spanish history” (Borja de
Riquer 259). The country’s opening-up led
to an increase in tourism and emigration.
In this era of “Desarrollismo” [Developmentalism], Ana Vivancos in “Failure to
Deliver: Alfredo Landa in the Wonderland
of Spanish Development,” analyzes the role
of the popular actor Alfredo Landa and his
very popular film comedies as sites for the
representation of the conflict between tradition and modernity, basic plot in Landa’s
comedies. Vivancos characterizes Landa as
the body where Spanish masculine contradictions are inscribed; a place that reenacts
the tensions between gender and politics
during the decades of the 60s and 70s.
Landa represents the flawed masculinity
of the average Spaniard, a caricature of the
Spanish ideal of masculinity. The playingout of gender tensions in Landa’s films
analyzed by Vivancos unveils the failure of
patriarchal authority, a masculine authority
undermined by the feminine.
El mar, a film studied by Dean Albritton in “On Infirm Ground: Masculinity and
Memory in El mar,” explores a de-centralized
type of masculinity that does not conform to
traditional portrayals of men as strong and
robust. The sickly and homosexual male
masculinity represented in this film differs
from previous cinematic representations of
men, the happy ending would appeal to
general audiences, and would also satisfy
government regulators in their attempt to
offer to the rest of the world a modern, more
liberal image of Spain.
Federico Bonaddio’s “Being Good:
Manliness and Virtue in Gonzalo Delgrás
El Cristo de los faroles (1957), studies tensions
of masculinity as represented by the musical
film genre and the melodrama. In its interrogation of what makes a good man, the film
sets Catholic morality in direct opposition to
traditional models of masculinity. Through
this film, the author explores the transition
from war films, prevalent in the 1940s, to
films of home and family. The domestication of Spanish men becomes a necessity in
Spain’s new relationship with the world at
the end of the 1950s. Notwithstanding the
notion of change and progress, the representation of masculinity in this film conceals
ideology’s deception. The domestication
of the sexually promiscuous male protagonist ends with a terrible punishment from
“above,” the death of his son. As Bonaddio reveals, the film’s beginning and end
in the Plaza del Cristo de los Faroles with
high and low angle shots from above and
beneath Christ’s cross, “convey a sense of the
characters’ and the spectators’ subjection to
a higher principle, a divine will.” This film
portrays the submission of masculine subjectivity to the moral principles dictated by the
political powers and the Catholic Church.
A detailed account of masculinity at
odds during Franco’s time is given by Gerard Dapena in “Diferente: Queering Spanish
Masculinity.” Dapena explores a littleknown cult film directed by Luis María Delgado in 1961, and starred by Alfredo Alaria,
“the first self-proclaimed homosexual in the
history of Spanish cinema.” A musical and
melodrama film, at a time when the folkloric
musical was in decline in Spain, Diferente
offered a worldlier, cosmopolitan flavor
to Spanish spectators. Unlike many of the
musical films produced in Spain during the
40s and 50s, this film resists the “continuity
Volume 30, No. 3
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Post Script
All the authors represented in this issue
chose to study films that describe resistance
to traditional models of men as prescribed
by the powers at large, especially the Franco
regime and the Catholic Church. In an attempt to transcend traditionally established
models of masculinity, these films represent
masculinities displaced to the margins of the
hegemonic model; masculinities that transform themselves along with history, culture,
and language; masculinities fragmented
and ambiguous, at odds with the dominant
culture. In their representations of cultural
discourses of masculinity, these films define
masculinity as a cultural manifestation which
equally affects men and women; a set of
impositions upon male and female subjects
which the institutions of power manipulate.
Political, social, and gender tensions are represented as male protagonists attempt to survive a world in crisis by either submitting to
or resisting the impositions of power through
forces such as institutionalized religion, political mandates, and the socially prescribed
behavior for men and women.
body in El mar is at the root of a masculinity
that destabilizes the popular discourses of
war and violence as inherent to the masculine
model. El mar examines the lingering memories of the Spanish Civil War in the Spanish
society of the postwar. The film is an adaptation of a novel of the same name by Mallorca
author Blai Bonet published in 1958. The fact
that film director Agustí Villaronga decides to
create the film in 2000 speaks to the lingering
effects of the Spanish Civil War of 1936 and
the Franco dictatorship in today’s Spanish
society. The author contends that popular
discourses of masculinity, violence, and war
are unsettled by portrayals of sick masculinity. Civil war and dictatorship as symbols
of infectious diseases that undermine the
masculine body is a powerful metaphor that
also embodies the impossibility of purity and
cleanliness. Both masculine protagonists in
El mar, in the attempt to cleanse their bodies
through water and prayer, see themselves as
trapped within a violent past they cannot escape. The film begins and ends with the same
images of a sick man’s prayer for mercy. This
circular structure illustrates the unfeasibility
of a cure; a cure which, as the author suggests,
can only be achieved through the telling and
retelling of these stories.
In many ways, the circular structures
of some of the films analyzed in this issue
mirror a pervasive model that represents the
futile struggles of men against prescribed
masculine standards. Models of hegemonic
masculinity in modern Spain, which incorporates dominance over women and gender
discrimination, seem to linger in circles
traditionally dominated by men. Cynthia
Miller’s interview with filmmakers Gemma
Cubero and Celeste Carrasco is testimony
to such prevalence. Cubero and Carrasco’s
film Ella es el Matador (2009) explores gender
inequalities inside the hyper-masculine world
of bullfighting through the portrayal of two
female bullfighters, Maripaz Vega and Eva
Florencia. The documentary is, in Cubero’s
words, a “feminist project,” and in the course
of this venture there was a disclosure about
masculine dominance, a fact that resists
elimination in democratic Spain.
Volume 30, No. 3
Works Cited
Connell, R.W. “The Big Picture: Masculinities in Recent World History.” Theory
and Society 22.5 (1993): 597-623.
Edley, Nigel and Margaret Wetherell. Men
in Perspective: Practice, Power and Identity. London: Prentice Hall/Harvester
Wheatsheaf, 1995.
Hall, Stuart. “Introduction: Who Needs
Identity?” Questions of Cultural Identity.
Eds. Stuart Hall and Paul du Gay. London: Sage Publications, 1996. 1-17.
Hanke, Robert. “Redesigning Men: Hegemonic Masculinity in Transition.” Men,
Masculinity, and the Media. Ed. Steve
Craig. London: Sage Publications, 1992.
185-98.
Jordan, Barry and Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas.
Contemporary Spanish Cinema. Manchester and New York: Manchester
UP, 1998.
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Cinema. London: Wallflower Press,
2004. 1-15.
Riquer, Borja de. “Adapting to Social
Change.” Spanish Cultural Studies, an
Introduction. Eds. Helen Graham and
Jo Labanyi. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.
259-282.
Novoa, Juan Bruce. “Hispanic Film: An Introduction.” Post Script: Essays in Film and
the Humanities 16.1 (Fall 1996): 3-4.
Powrie, Phil, Ann Davies and Bruce Babington, Eds. “Introduction: Turning the
Male Inside Out.” The Trouble with Men:
Masculinities in European and Hollywood
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