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Queer
Bodies in Contemporary Spanish Cinema
Santiago
Fouz-Hernández
Durham
University
Reino
Unido
Dominant cultural
representations of the homosexual body as somehow feeble
and diseased have abounded (and still abound) in the
history of world cinema, and Spanish cinema is no
exception. Drawing on recent scholarship in the fields of
queer theory and film studies, this paper will discuss the
representation of the male homosexual body in recent
Spanish films. The discussion will be illustrated with key
examples from well-known films by Eloy de la Iglesia,
Pedro Almodóvar or Ventura Pons through to more recent
and lesser known cases.
The main concern here is to
explore strategies of gay self-representation and to
contrast them with mainstream tactics that may be devised
to organize and structure the bodies being shown. Both
strategies will be explored as conflicting means of
influencing the audience. Recent and drastic changes in
the Spanish legal system with respect to homosexuality (from
incarceration during the dictatorship to equal rights
including marriage and adoption since 2005) have
undoubtedly contributed not only to improve visibility but
also the gradual integration of the homoerotic gaze into
mainstream film and media (although not always in a very
favourable light, as Llamas (1997) argues). In the long
path from de la Eloy de la Iglesia’s tormented
homosexuals to seamlessly integrated queers of Albacete/Bardem/Menkes
or the adult types of Vera’s Segunda Piel (1999) or Pons’s
Amic, Amat (1999), it is possible to identify a thorough
investigation of the means by which a gay character can be
visually constructed in mainstream Spanish film.
The influence of Almodóvar
both in terms of the stylization and character-development
(especially in La ley del deseo (1987)) cannot be
underestimated, as shown in Perdona Bonita… pero Lucas
me quería a mí (dirs. Félix Sabroso and Dunia Ayaso,
1996). In this generally poorly received but highly
relevant film, the male body takes centre-stage and
becomes the recipient of many of the physical anxieties
usually associated with gay men (fatness versus fitness,
promiscuity, vanity and so on).
Drawing on queer theory and
existing studies of gay representation in Spanish cinema
(such as Smith (1992); Llamas (1995); Martínez-Expósito
(1998); Fouz-Hernández and Perriam (2000 and 2007); Alfeo
Álvarez (2000) or Mira (2005)), this paper focuses on
recent developments perhaps best illustrated by the
controversial Cachorro (dir. Albadalejo, 2004), where the
naked large bodies of the so-called ‘bear’ men are
boldly displayed and celebrated.
Rather than attempting a
history of the problematic representation of homosexuality
on the screen, this paper explores the visual rhetoric
of such representations. Hence we focus on the strategies
devised to organize and structure the bodies being shown
as well as the means by which they influence the audience.
Inevitably, the paper draws on queer theory and
scholarship, but it does so on the understanding that this
theoretical body needs to be appropriated (and sometimes
even reformulated) by the culture-sensitive critic if it
is going to be used for the analysis of a non-Anglo-Saxon
cultural object, and must therefore inevitably take into
account recent developments in queer discourses from
Spain.
About Santiago
Fouz-Hernández
Santiago Fouz-Hernández
lectures Spanish Cinema at the University of Durham (UK).
He is co-author of the recent book LIVE FLESH: THE MALE
BODY IN CONTEMPORARY SPANISH CINEMA (London and New York:
I B TAURIS, 2007) and has published articles on issues of
gender and sexuality in recent Spanish and British cinemas
in journals that include Men and Masculinities, Romance
Studies and Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies
as well as contributions to various books. He has also
co-edited a collection of essays on performer Madonna (Madonna's
Drowned Worlds; Ashgate 2004) and a special issue on the
male body of the journal Studies in Hispanic Cinemas, of
which he is also reviews editor. He is currently
completing the edition of a book on the male body in world
cinema, forthcoming in I B Tauris and provisionally
entitled MYSTERIOUS SKIN: MALE BODIES IN WORLD CINEMA.
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