El destape del macho iberico : masculinidades disidentes en la comedia sexy (celt)iberica
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Creator
Caceres Garcia, Juli.
Description
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Georgetown University, 2008.; Includes bibliographical references.; Text in Spanish, abstract in English and Spanish. In 1970, at the twilight of Franco's dictatorial regime and the beginning of the transition to democracy, the Spanish cinematic comedy takes a sudden turn toward the sexual. The protagonist of these new comedies is often a male character habitually deemed the "macho iberico," the prototypical Spanish macho man, whose persona, according to most critics, is harmonious with Francoist definitions of manliness. This notion of the juxtaposition of masculinity and national identity still inhabits the collective imaginary in today's Spain, as some films from the late 1990s and the beginning of the new millennium show. In my dissertation I contend that the purportedly hetero-normative masculinities that appear in the Iberian sexy comedy can be read, on the contrary, as the very dismantling of Francoist values and ideals. Primarily leaning on gender studies, in chapters one and two of this dissertation I explore two of these erotic comedies from the early 1970s (Los dais de Cabirio and Aunque la hormona se vista de seda respectively) to show that the main characters' attempt to perform an ideal masculinity in late-francoist Spain destabilizes and even defies any notions of Spanish compulsory heterosexual masculinity that the francoist discourses would endorse. In looking back to the 1970s, the contemporary films that I analyze in chapters three and four (Torente: el brazo tonto de la ley and Torremolinos 73 respectively) also emphasize the impossibility to reconcile Spanish identity and masculinity. However, whereas it can be argued that the films of the 1970s strived to push forward onto the audiences the mentioned heteronormative Spanish masculinity, the main characters of the contemporary films I analyze completely disavow the idea of a monolithic exemplary Spanish masculinity. In fact, they open the space for new non-heteronormative or even dissident masculinities to replace the former. Ultimately, this dissertation points out the role or Spanish popular cinema in offering new and unprecedented understandings of the complex interplay between Spanish national and sexual identities.
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http://hdl.handle.net/10822/553233Date Published
2008Type
Publisher
Georgetown University
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