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Casting Masculinity in Spanish Film

Negotiating Identity in a Consumer Age

Mary T. Hartson

The rise of consumerism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries radically changed the way we perceive ourselves and the world around us. And, as it has throughout history, the social construct of “ideal” masculinity both reflects and responds to that lived reality, helping individuals adapt. Through a close study of Spanish film of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this book investigates hegemonic, or dominant, masculinity in the wake of dramatic consumer changes that occurred in Spain. It explores the ways in which masculine identity as represented in Spanish film positions itself in relation to desire and consumption, focusing especially on representations of hegemonic masculinity from the almost 40 year dictatorship of General Francisco Franco through the transition to democracy and into the early 1990s.

Using psychoanalytic theory as employed primarily by Todd McGowan and Slavoj Žižek, this book analyzes cinematic representations of hegemonic masculine models, along with those portrayed as less favorable, to understand how political, social and economic changes in Spain in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries affect the process of masculine identity formation. In the shift from a “society of prohibition” to a “society of commanded enjoyment,” hegemonic masculinity as represented in Spanish film changes dramatically, initially organizing itself around prohibition and self-renunciation in the early Franco dictatorship and later, with neoliberal reforms and mass media promotion of consumerist values starting in the 1950s, reorienting itself around desire and enjoyment (embodied, for example, in the sexually promiscuous, fashionable young man of the 1970s). Personal pleasure and the satisfaction of one’s desires replace submission, obedience and self-abnegation—leading to a reconstruction of masculine identities in a social context that appears increasingly fragmented, plural and individualistic. The primary innovation of this text involves the repositioning of consumerism as a fundamental force in the formation of Spanish masculinity and showing how widely disseminated masculine models serve to accommodate political, social and economic demands.

Lexington Books

Pages: 214 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½

978-1-4985-3711-7 • Hardback • September 2017 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-4985-3712-4 • eBook • September 2017 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

Subjects: Social Science / Popular Culture, Social Science / World / Europe, Social Science / Culture, Social Science / Men's Studies

Casting Masculinity in Spanish Film

Negotiating Identity in a Consumer Age

Hardback

eBook

Summary

The rise of consumerism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries radically changed the way we perceive ourselves and the world around us. And, as it has throughout history, the social construct of “ideal” masculinity both reflects and responds to that lived reality, helping individuals adapt. Through a close study of Spanish film of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this book investigates hegemonic, or dominant, masculinity in the wake of dramatic consumer changes that occurred in Spain. It explores the ways in which masculine identity as represented in Spanish film positions itself in relation to desire and consumption, focusing especially on representations of hegemonic masculinity from the almost 40 year dictatorship of General Francisco Franco through the transition to democracy and into the early 1990s.

Using psychoanalytic theory as employed primarily by Todd McGowan and Slavoj Žižek, this book analyzes cinematic representations of hegemonic masculine models, along with those portrayed as less favorable, to understand how political, social and economic changes in Spain in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries affect the process of masculine identity formation. In the shift from a “society of prohibition” to a “society of commanded enjoyment,” hegemonic masculinity as represented in Spanish film changes dramatically, initially organizing itself around prohibition and self-renunciation in the early Franco dictatorship and later, with neoliberal reforms and mass media promotion of consumerist values starting in the 1950s, reorienting itself around desire and enjoyment (embodied, for example, in the sexually promiscuous, fashionable young man of the 1970s). Personal pleasure and the satisfaction of one’s desires replace submission, obedience and self-abnegation—leading to a reconstruction of masculine identities in a social context that appears increasingly fragmented, plural and individualistic. The primary innovation of this text involves the repositioning of consumerism as a fundamental force in the formation of Spanish masculinity and showing how widely disseminated masculine models serve to accommodate political, social and economic demands.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 214 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½

978-1-4985-3711-7 • Hardback • September 2017 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-4985-3712-4 • eBook • September 2017 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

Subjects: Social Science / Popular Culture, Social Science / World / Europe, Social Science / Culture, Social Science / Men's Studies

Author

Mary Hartson is associate professor of Spanish at Oakland University.

Table of Contents

Introduction – Masculinity and Consumerism in Spanish Cinema
Chapter 1 – Hegemonic Masculinity under the Dictatorship
Chapter 2 – Breakdown of the Hegemonic Male Model
Chapter 3 – The New Spain: Desire and Commodification of the Spanish Body
Chapter 4 – Individualism, Alienation and Adaptation
Conclusion

Reviews

This discussion of a key set of tensions around Spanish masculinities on film will be of value to students of Spanish film at all levels. It is not only a useful and exceptionally full survey that covers many canonical films but also an elegant introduction to key issues in masculinity studies and in critical gender studies more widely. It represents a finely tuned and accessible complement to existing film historical work, especially in relation to the films of the 1940s to 1960s, and has its own instructive focus on how prohibitions and taboos, desires and the consumption of goods and images play out on screen and in society.
— Chris Perriam, University of Manchester

Casting Masculinity in Spanish Film

Negotiating Identity in a Consumer Age

Mary T. Hartson

Casting Masculinity in Spanish Film

Negotiating Identity in a Consumer Age

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