De-Centring Cultural Studies : Past, Present and Future of Popular Culture [1 ed.] 9781443867078, 9781443844765

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De-Centring Cultural Studies

De-Centring Cultural Studies: Past, Present and Future of Popular Culture

Edited by

José Igor Prieto-Arranz, Patricia Bastida-Rodríguez, Caterina Calafat-Ripoll, Marta Fernández-Morales and Cristina Suárez-Gómez

De-Centring Cultural Studies: Past, Present and Future of Popular Culture, Edited by José Igor Prieto-Arranz, Patricia Bastida-Rodríguez, Caterina Calafat-Ripoll, Marta Fernández-Morales and Cristina Suárez-Gómez This book first published 2013 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2013 by José Igor Prieto-Arranz, Patricia Bastida-Rodríguez, Caterina Calafat-Ripoll, Marta Fernández-Morales and Cristina Suárez-Gómez and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-4476-4, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4476-5

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

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Introduction De-Centring Cultural Studies. Past, Present and Future of Popular Culture José Igor Prieto-Arranz, Patricia Bastida-Rodríguez, Caterina Calafat-Ripoll, Marta Fernández-Morales and Cristina Suárez-Gómez

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Part I Theoretical Approaches to Popular Culture: Borderlands between Canonical and Popular Culture Chapter One Intrusiveness or Interdisciplinarity? The Justification of Critical Categories on the Ethnoliterary Frontier Mercè Picornell-Belenguer

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Chapter Two A New Kind of Popular Lyric Poetry? Collectivisation Processes in Recent Catalan Writing Margalida Pons

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Part II Popular Culture: From the Past to the Present Chapter Three From the Middle Ages to the Future: The Arthurian Legend and its Transcultural Value Carlos Sanz-Mingo

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Chapter Four A Tell-Tale Thriller: An Intertextual and Structural Insight into Poe’s Pop Marta Miquel-Baldellou

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Chapter Five Back to the Orient: Juan Valera’s “El pájaro verde” Montserrat Amores

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Chapter Six 137 Popular and Experimental Anarchist Cinema: Anarcho-Syndicalist Film during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) Antonio Prado Part III Gender and Genres: New Perspectives in Popular Culture Chapter Seven Hollywood’s Memoirs of a Geisha and the Re-presentation of Culturally-Biased Stereotypes Iria María Bello-Viruega

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Chapter Eight 169 Imagining Difference in Maggie Gee’s My Cleaner and My Driver Corneeltje Van Bleijswijk Chapter Nine Between Tradition and Innovation: Approaching Feminism in the Construction and Characterisation of P. D. James’s and Amanda Cross’s Female Detectives María del Mar Ramón-Torrijos

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Chapter Ten 197 Theoretical Foundations for a Multimodal Analysis of Print-MediaBased Advertising in Critical Perspective Eduardo de Gregorio-Godeo Part IV Popular Culture and Age Subcultures Chapter Eleven Firm and Hard: Popular Culture, Gendered Stardom and the Troubling Embodiment of “Successful Ageing” Josephine Dolan

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Chapter Twelve 247 The Twilight Saga: Gender, Consumerism and Cultural Franchises Meritxell Esquirol-Salom Chapter Thirteen Youth Culture in Spain: Two Teen TV Fictions Paul Julian Smith

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Part V Popular Culture and National/Cultural Identities Chapter Fourteen The (Re)Construction of Transylvania in Vampire Films Mihai Iacob

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Chapter Fifteen From Folk to Children’s Literature: An Ideological Analysis of the Grimms’ Contribution to the Fairy Tale Genre Gloria Bosch-Roig

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Chapter Sixteen The Changing Narrative Spaces of Slovak Television Slávka Tomašþíková

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Chapter Seventeen 339 From Elite Culture to Culture for the “New” People: The Reconstruction of Romanian Identity through the Cultural Press (1948-1964) Andrada Fătu-Tutoveanu Contributors

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Working on this volume has been a labour of love for all the editors. Throughout this long process, which started well before the 4th International SELICUP Conference was successfully held at the University of the Balearic Islands in October 2010, we have had ample opportunity to get to know each other even better. As a five-strong team, we have tried to diversify our endeavours so as to always maximise effort, and results seem to indicate that this effort has not been in vain. More importantly, however, these last two years have been rather eventful for all of us, and this editing experience has taught us that we do not stand alone in the world since we can always count on one another for help. As a result, we truly look forward to further collaborations as a team. This volume would not exist without its contributors. Thanks are therefore due to the authors of the different chapters, who have been patient enough to accept our feedback and follow our guidelines. We truly hope they will find this experience as rewarding as it has been for us. Our especial thanks go to Dr Josephine Dolan, Dr Margalida Pons, Prof Paul Julian Smith, and Dr Slávka Tomašþíková, for the trust they have placed in us and for being generous enough to share their research with all of us. Last but not least, we should like to thank everyone at Cambridge Scholars Publishing for believing in our project. They literally brought this book into being by expressing their interest in collaborating with us as early as they did. We are particularly grateful to Dr Andy Nercessian, for accepting our proposal, and to Carol Koulikourdi, Amanda Millar and Emily Surrey, for the lively, detailed correspondence and help provided at all stages. THE EDITORS

INTRODUCTION DE-CENTRING CULTURAL STUDIES: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF POPULAR CULTURE JOSÉ-IGOR PRIETO-ARRANZ, PATRICIA BASTIDA-RODRÍGUEZ, CATERINA CALAFAT-RIPOLL, MARTA FERNÁNDEZ-MORALES AND CRISTINA SUÁREZ-GÓMEZ

1. Why De-Centring Cultural Studies? There is widespread agreement that the origin of cultural studies as we know it today can be found in post-World War II Britain, although the legacy of other figures from both within and outside the UK (such as Matthew Arnold, the Leavises or several members of the so-called Frankfurt School) has not always been given its due. Historical issues aside, cultural studies gradually came into shape in an attempt to find a way to overcome the limitations of traditional academic disciplines (Wallace 1995, 508; Surber 1998, 129-134) and to highlight the relevance of cultural manifestations hitherto ignored by academia. This twofold aim already points towards the two main clashes that cultural studies has had with the university establishment, namely the departmentalisation of knowledge (resulting from the arbitrary boundaries set up between fullyestablished disciplines) and the canonisation of the objects of study of such disciplines (which in turn results in whatever lies beyond such boundaries being considered unfit for “serious” academic study). The first sign of academic recognition was the creation of the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies

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Introduction

(CCCS) in 1964, which for years led the way in the field although never quite imposing a single or coherent theoretical model (Bathwick 1992, 330-331). In fact, cultural studies may be said to remain to this day a deliberately diffuse area of academic research which (1) has quite successfully resisted departmentalisation; and (2) draws on a variety of theoretical approaches with a single aim: the interpretation of all kinds of cultural phenomena. As Walton puts it, cultural studies, rather than a discipline understood in the traditional way, “is a knowledge-producing set of practices or strategies which, rather than search for certainties, produces knowledge and diverse forms of understanding which are constantly open to further questioning” (2008, 295). This flexibility and systematic resistance of the strait-jacket of academic departmentalisation—which in many ways mirrors the complexity of its object of study—are probably two of the key ingredients of its success and expansion beyond the UK. This expansion is worth commenting on, as it spans a good many different (although especially English-speaking) countries including the United States (albeit the cultural studies label is not always used there) and Australia, and has been evidenced by the countless journal articles, books and conferences that have appeared or taken place over the last two decades. However, this has been no easy ride for cultural studies. To mention but a relevant example, the University of Birmingham’s Department of Cultural Studies and Sociology, heir to the original CCCS, was closed down in 2002 amidst great controversy. This closure can be easily read in terms of the aforementioned departmentalisation of knowledge—which cultural studies has always been a threat to—not having been completely overcome in the very country it expanded from. More specifically, this notorious incident has been interpreted as an attempt to curtail what some sociologists viewed as an intrusion on the part of cultural studies.1 If, as the example above suggests, cultural studies still faces resistance in the centre, i.e. in those very countries in which it rose to academic prominence, it is easy to imagine how much more difficult the situation must be in those other peripheral countries like Spain in which cultural studies is to be seen at best as an emergent research field. Cultural studies was still barely visible throughout the Spanish-speaking world in the early 2000s (García Canclini 1994; Gies 2000; Jordan and Morgan-Tamosunas 2000). And even if the situation is slowly changing at least in Spain— largely through the contribution of many scholars with an English philology background (Carrera-Suárez 2005; Walton 2012), there is still a long way to go before cultural studies becomes fully established in Spanish academia.

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Some of the difficulties it still faces may be seen to derive once again from the challenge that cultural studies poses to traditional disciplinary approaches to knowledge. Indeed, its holistic concept of culture (more on this below) is diametrically opposed to traditional disciplinarity. This has already kicked off interdisciplinary forces within well-established academic fields.2 Consequently, cultural studies, together with other closelyrelated approaches to cultural phenomena such as the “ethnoliterature” discussed by Picornell-Belenguer (this volume), has grown to be regarded not only as an interdiscipline but also as an antidiscipline. By way of example, many years had to pass before the University of Birmingham first offered a university degree in cultural studies. As a result and for a long time, those interested in doing cultural studies could only do so at PhD level. This was a clear attempt to avoid turning cultural studies into yet one more “orthodox” discipline. The situation could not be more different today since, at least in Britain, a great many universities offer BAs in cultural studies, but reception to this change has been mixed. On the one hand, Stuart Hall, one of the so-called “fathers” of cultural studies, and still one of its most influential theorists, has made public his mixed feelings about the success, institutionalisation and, ultimately, worldwide expansion of the field (Hall 1999). On the other, there is increasing pressure (coming from outside the UK and perhaps especially from the USA) on cultural studies to become an academic discipline if only because this will help it gain valuable visibility both within and outside academia (McEwan 2002). Whilst not completely exempt from controversy in the Englishspeaking world, the expansion of cultural studies has been harshly criticised in other territories. Such criticism has largely centred on both its alleged lack of rigour and object of study, although it could also be claimed that at the base of such accusations lies a notorious attempt to protect comfortably departmentalised knowledge. And to this day Spain remains one of those countries which, to say the least, have not particularly favoured the introduction and ulterior expansion of cultural studies. Thus, it has not been yet officially recognised by the Spanish university, with no degrees or departments to its name. Spain’s still recent immersion in the European Higher Education Area may still prove a positive influence in this regard, although the way reforms have so far been implemented, not particularly aided by the current economic recession, raises many doubts. Doubts also result from the rather pessimistic description that both Carrera-Suárez (2005) and Cornut-Gentille D’Arcy (2005) provide of Spanish academia. In an account that leaves no stone unturned, both

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authors discuss the highly hierarchical, conservative and compartmentalised Spanish university, convincingly describing how this overall situation becomes a stumbling block to promotion for those perceived not to have complied with the established conventions of disciplinary knowledge. This does not mean, however, that cultural studies does not exist in Spain. As Carrera-Suárez points out, the Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos (AEDEAN) holds annual conferences and both its conferences and its journal, Atlantis, are open to cultural studies. It is equally worth mentioning that the cultural studies panel is also one of the most popular at the AEDEAN conferences, as judged by the number of papers presented in it. Moreover, there is the still small but active Iberian Association for Cultural Studies (IBACS), responsible for the organisation of the successful Culture and Power conferences, and SELICUP (Sociedad Española de Estudios Literarios de Cultura Popular), which has also made a valuable contribution to the visibility of Spanish cultural studies and popular culture. It follows that cultural studies has somehow infiltrated the Spanish university establishment, mostly through its English departments (Walton 2012). This is hardly surprising since the same departments have also served to disseminate closely related interdisciplinary areas of research such as gender and women’s studies. What is slightly more surprising is that it is precisely English studies (which only became established in Spanish universities as recently as the 1970s, most possibly with some resent and scepticism from the more traditional areas of classical, romance or even Spanish philology) that has produced some of the most critical attitudes to cultural studies. On the other hand, the debt that cultural studies owes to English studies in Spain has also had another negative consequence. Ironically, most of the cultural studies-related research produced in Spain does not tackle Spanish or Hispanic issues but focuses on cultural phenomena from the English-speaking world. This is due not so much to lack of interest on the part of Spanish scholars but to the rules of academic promotion as applicable in Spain, since the fear exists that non-pertinent research might not be fairly taken into account in the context of e.g. research assessment exercises or job applications. This in turn goes a long way towards explaining why the best-known pieces of work in Spanish cultural studies have been published in English abroad and, needless to say, authored by non-Spanish scholars. Among these, Gies (2000) and Jordan and MorganTamosunas (2000) stand out, and mention must also be made of the pioneering work carried out by the likes of Jo Labanyi (Graham and

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Labanyi 1995) and Paul Julian Smith (2003, 2007), both founding editors of the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies. This cannot but stress the value of the present volume which, although clearly aiming at an international readership, has been conceived in Spain by an all-Spanish editorial team, and includes analyses of a wide range of cultural phenomena and materials—many of which are Spanish. Hence the suggestive title, De-Centring Cultural Studies, chosen for this volume, as it makes reference to both our own position within the discipline and the socio-academic context in which we live and work. To this an equally suggestive subtitle has been added, a justification of which shall be provided below.

2. Why Past, Present and Future of Popular Culture? As suggested above, through its holistic approach to culture, now generally considered as “everyday life” and not just the “High”, elitist “Culture” traditionally studied in university contexts (Williams 1973, 1997), cultural studies has gradually taken it upon itself to trace what Cuthbert refers to as the “the primary social—rather than natural—laws informing subjective experience in everyday life” (1996, 396). Particularly useful for the purposes of this volume are the semiotic approaches to this issue. Thus, Danesi and Perron regard culture as “a way of life based on a signifying order [...] that is passed [...] from one generation to the next” and which draws on the signifying order of a first community (“tribe”) (1999, 23). They complete the picture with a definition of “society”, which they perceive as “a collectivity of individuals who, although they may not all have the same tribal origins, nevertheless participate, by and large, in the signifying order of the founding or conquering tribe (or tribes)” (Danesi and Perron 1999, 24). Such views are particularly relevant since they highlight one of the main points that both cultural studies and the present volume make, namely the blurring of the division between “High” and “low” culture, since what matters from this perspective is not the aesthetic or artistic value of cultural materials but culture understood as “the whole system of significations by which a society or a section of it understands itself and its relations with the world” (Dollimore and Sinfield, quoted in Wilson 1995, 26). It follows that cultural studies invariably takes an ideological stance, as it conceives of culture as something both inherent to, and resulting from, a given political and economic system (Wilson 1995, 34). This easily relates to the foucauldian notion of discourse (Foucault 1984) as “language in action” (Danaher et al. 2000, 31). Indeed, Stuart Hall is

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widely held responsible for introducing the ideas of French theorists to the mainstream of British cultural studies, and this includes foucauldian theory—Foucault having excelled in disentangling “the ways in which signs, meanings and values help to reproduce a dominant social power” (Eagleton 2000, 221). In turn, this widening of the concept of culture has had another sideeffect, namely that the hitherto sacrosanct canonical literary text need no longer be at the centre of the research carried out within cultural studies. In fact, as Stuart Hall put it, much research has so far focused primarily on “‘neglected’ materials drawn from popular culture and the mass media, which [...] [provide] important evidence of the new stresses and directions of contemporary culture” (1996, 21; see also Williams 1979), thus demonstrating that “culture” is no longer synonymous with, but far more complex a term than, say, the literary canon. As an offshoot of this, the debate remains open as to how to refer to (and what academic status should be granted to) those studies inquiring into literary phenomena beyond the canon. At all events, in refusing to automatically deprive the “here and now” of academic worth and interest, rather than just wait for time (and a complex net of ideological and economic factors) to “canonise” some materials whilst burying others, cultural studies moves further away from the traditional humanities and comes up as a “history of the present” (Valdés-Miyares 2006, 1). Needless to say, such achievements have come at a price. The revaluation of “neglected materials” has been so prominent that these have arguably become the flagship of cultural studies. A simple browse through the different cultural studies programmes offered by many British universities, or the titles offered by some of the most visible publishing houses leads to one conclusion: (canonical) literature has been reduced to a clearly marginal position within cultural studies (Spiropoulou 1999, 53). Although a natural reaction in the wake of centuries of canonical tradition, this has led to harsh criticism even from certain circles within cultural studies itself. In this regard, some refer to the “banalisation” or “trivialisation” of both its contents and interests, and this criticism is perhaps most visible outside the UK (see Grossberg 2006, 22-23, who discusses the issue from an American perspective). Clearly illustrative of this critical strand is Striphas (2002), who, whilst fully recognising the merit and quality of early cultural studies research, adds that much of the research currently produced under this label is “ordinary” (an adjective that, in his view, no longer describes the object of study but research itself). Never one to mince words, Striphas largely blames the main

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publishing houses for this, adding that they are after the easily sellable and not the intellectually stimulating (2002, 441-442). Such risks do exist although they arguably apply to much of the academic world and not just cultural studies. As for the latter, and considering its output over the last few decades, it might be argued that cultural studies has come of age and that the value of literature and literary studies (as well as other artistic fields and related disciplines) has never been consciously questioned. Spiropoulou, however, calls for a rapprochement between these and cultural studies (1999, 55), making it clear that the value of canonical literature (and all other forms of “High” culture) is reaffirmed. It should be remembered, however, that such claims may be seen to misunderstand the very nature of cultural studies. Richard Hoggart himself repeatedly insisted that the belief that popular culture is worth studying does not automatically mean that it has the same (aesthetic, artistic) value as that traditionally recognised in certain key works of canonical culture (Gibson and Hartley 1998, 14-15; Schwarz 2005, 178). And this is so because, as stated above, cultural studies does not seek to analyse the aesthetic or artistic value of the materials it studies. Thus seen, those who despise cultural studies on the grounds of the little value of the materials it analyses simply demonstrate very little knowledge of what cultural studies is or does. Moreover, it might also be argued that a rejection of the canon might prove just as dangerous as a rejection of the popular since, as also suggested above, and as the present volume makes abundantly clear, the boundaries between “High” and “low” culture are all but blurred (Spiropoulou 1999, 57).

3. About this volume The present volume, therefore, offers an exciting collection of original papers whose common denominator is their rejection of (1) canonical culture as the only legitimate object of study; and (2) disciplinary knowledge as the only viable epistemological and methodological framework. In their markedly interdisciplinary approach to their respective object of study, and through their focus on the non-canonical nature of the latter, the different chapters make up a volume that showcases work on a wide range of cultural phenomena and materials whose relevance is no longer exclusively related to aesthetic issues. Thus seen, one may see this volume as an attempt to embrace the more socially relevant, mostly interdisciplinary “post-Humanities” (Badmington 2006) continuum of knowledge that the academic world is currently witnessing and to which, sadly enough, the only too often dusty environment of many (especially

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southern) European Faculties of Arts has so far proved a virtually impregnable fortress. The different chapters in the volume explore a vast range of materials from different perspectives—literature, semiotics, linguistics, film, television, gender and women’s studies—bringing to the fore the ideological content and social relevance of the materials under analysis. These chapters have their origin in the 4th International SELICUP Conference, held in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, in October 2010. It must also be stated, however, that this is no ordinary conference proceedings volume. Such a volume was indeed published in 2011 (see BastidaRodríguez et al. 2011) although the intention was already there to produce an entirely different book that somehow managed to capture the essence of this truly fruitful academic gathering. And this is exactly what the editors now present. De-Centring Cultural Studies. Past, Present and Future of Cultural Studies is a selection of chapters covering topics and addressing issues which are all tightly related to each other. Although based on, or inspired by, papers actually presented at the conference, all of the authors (including several fully-consolidated international personalities and an exciting sample of new, young academic voices) have substantially reworked their respective original papers—a process that has often involved their translation into English—to such an extent that each of the chapters in the volume can now be considered a new piece of writing in its own right. The essays in Part I (“Theoretical Approaches to Popular Culture: Borderlands between Canonical and Popular Culture”) fittingly open this volume. Drawing on the ever exciting Catalan cultural scene, Chapters 1 and 2 point to the limitations of traditional literary studies and concepts if a full understanding is to be gained of the more recent literary (and especially poetic) developments in the area. In her essay, PicornellBelenguer denounces the “neglected material” status of the phenomena she studies, thus highlighting both a lack of interest on the part of “orthodox” experts and the inadequacy of their theories and constructs to refer to a remarkably dynamic range of materials in which (popular?) art is tantamount to the expression of national and cultural identity. More specifically, by discussing slippery concepts such as ethnoliterature, ethnopoetics or ethnofiction, often associated with orality, collectivity and “indigenous” cultures, she argues that the debates over issues of authenticity and representativeness surrounding the cultural production of certain groups actually conceal an ethnocentric wish on the part of “canonical” disciplines and discourses to keep them in a subaltern,

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marginal position, which inevitably involves diminishing their cultural value. For her part, Pons further explores the situation, drawing on economic policy terminology to more adequately refer to, and account for, the latest—and crucially, popularised—manifestations of Catalan poetry. As she sees it, a full account of such phenomena will always be incomplete should it not address the extra-literary factors she fittingly focuses on in her chapter. Feeling that the “High” / popular culture divide, very much like “separating what is traditional from what is contemporary” (42), leads absolutely nowhere, particularly in the context of the often multi- or even trans-media phenomena she analyses, Pons openly embraces Raymond Williams’ liberating view of culture as a set “of social practices” and advocates an interdisciplinary, “hybridised” form of literary criticism that places ideology on a par with intrinsically literary aspects. A second body of chapters follows in the volume’s Part II, entitled “Popular Culture: From the Past to the Present”. This section further questions the borders between “High” and popular culture. In this particular case, this is done by looking back at the past and exploring how the popular culture of yesteryear has influenced and inspired later “canonical” cultural materials and vice versa. This involves a(n often comparative) revision of works that may well fall into different genre categories, which once again calls for interdisciplinary approaches. That is the case of Sanz-Mingo’s paper, which offers an overview of Arthurian production through history reminding readers of the diversity of disciplines it stems from both in “High” and popular culture—from painting, music and the decorative arts to literature, cinema and television, to name only a few—and its adaptation to the social and political milieu of each specific period. Focusing specifically on recent texts such as Bernard Cornwell’s trilogy “The Warlord Chronicles” and Joseba Sarrionandía’s Arthurian short stories in Basque, the article highlights the contemporary productivity of the Arthurian myth as well as its intercultural scope. Marta Miquel-Baldellou develops an original comparative analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s literary work and Michael Jackson’s musical production, including his lyrics, video-clips, and short films. The author finds interesting intertextual connections between both popular figures, and she approaches their common thematic interests (consumerism, love, crime, and revenge, amongst others), as well as the settings, motifs, time frameworks and discourse modalities activated by Poe and Jackson. Amores’s chapter analyses a renowned Spanish writer’s (Juan Valera, 1824-1905) literary adaptation of a folktale. Under a pseudonym, and following a trend started by some widely acclaimed 18th and 19th century

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European writers, Valera re-creates a simulacrum of the Orient and, more specifically, China, somehow making it part of the Western literary canon. Next in the volume is Prado’s contribution, which presents a detailed analysis of the role exerted by the National Confederation of Labour (CNT), an anarcho-syndicalist union, in the production of political films during the Spanish Civil War. Reviewing the most significant examples of films released during this time, and placing emphasis on their innovative character, the author provides insights into how this cinema came to represent a transition between other relevant European types of political cinema, as is the case of the Soviet avant-garde in the 1920s and Italian Post-World War II neo-realism in the 60s. A clear endorsement of interdisciplinary approaches can be seen in the chapters included in Part III, which once again look into a wide range of textual genres (film, different examples taken from the canonical-popular literary continuum, the periodical press) in order to inquire into their extraaesthetic content. On this occasion, racial, ethnic and gender issues come to the fore, as can be observed in the title of the section, “Gender and Genres: New Perspectives in Popular Culture”. In the case of BelloViruega’s article, the gender and ethnic variables are combined in a study of the film adaptation of the novel Memoirs of a Geisha. Through the application of Edward Said’s theories on Orientalism and Laura Mulvey’s conceptualisation of the male gaze, the author concludes that the Hollywood production reinforces the extant stereotypes of Asian people in general and women in particular, and that it is undeniably an audiovisual text created by, for, and with Western sensibilities. Corneeltje Van Bleijswijk’s contribution focuses on two novels by contemporary British writer Maggie Gee and the way they explore alterity and racial prejudice by reversing the stereotypes of the white master and the African servant often found in dominant culture. Using Rosi Braidotti’s theories on nomadism and bell hooks’ concept of “yearning”, Van Bleijswijk contends that through both narratives Gee is articulating her own political position by claiming what can be called “likeness under difference”, or a fundamental likeness between individuals from different ethnic backgrounds, thus suggesting the possibility of conviviality and the creation of empathy ties across cultures. The gender variable is also studied in Ramón-Torrijos’s paper, which is concerned with detective fiction, a traditionally male-dominated genre. In her case, she analyses the fictional representation of Cordelia Grey and Kate Fensler, the female detectives created by P. D. James and Amanda Cross, and focuses on the contribution these authors have made to the development of female detectives, portraying them as active and

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independent characters, and the influence they have had on subsequent generations of female detectives. Part III is fittingly brought to a close with De Gregorio-Godeo’s chapter. In presenting the main points of multimodal discourse analysis (which integrates the visual component in semiotically syncretic texts), and illustrating its application, this work provides cultural studies with a sound theoretical framework and methodology with which to “unearth” the ideological leanings of cultural materials. Although much has been written on the interpretation of meaning arising from multiple semiotic resources, in this contribution the author sheds light on how to apply common principles of meaning-making across and between different media (particularly advertisements), with the aim of disentangling the role of discursive and linguistic features in the creation of cultural phenomena. For their part, the chapters in Part IV (“Popular Culture and Age Subcultures”) offer transmedial analyses from a perspective which, although integrating variables already discussed in earlier chapters (such as ethnic affiliation or gender), clearly focus on an equally relevant identity variable and context: age (subcultures). Especially within cultural studies, the term “subculture”, which results from the attempt to study “the enormous variability of culture within some societies”, is most often used to refer to “norms that arise specifically from a frustrating situation or from conflict between a group and the larger society” (Milton Yinger 1960, 627). Taking this into account, alternative terms have been suggested (Milton Yinger put forward “contraculture”); yet “subculture” prevails in the literature. This conflictive, often rebellious nature is perhaps best seen in youth subcultures, as shown in two pioneering works that still need to be referred to today: Hall and Whannel (1964) and Hall and Jefferson (1976). The former shows how mass commercial culture and in particular pop music, in spite of its manufactured, commercial nature, can be used symbolically by the young in order to build and express a collective identity. As Walton sees it, the value of Hall and Whannel’s volume lies in no small part in that the authors “see that the rebellious teenager is a media construction but they also see that the pop phenomenon can’t be reduced only to market forces” (Walton 2008, 147) since, however formulaic and predictable, consuming pop music and culture in general is a meaningful activity for the teenager. Hence the relevance of the chapters by Esquirol-Salom and Smith. Esquirol-Salom’s contribution approaches youth culture from a feminist perspective, dealing with the extremely popular Twilight Saga. Touching upon issues of representation and, most significantly, reception,

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she argues that Stephanie Meyer’s novels and, particularly, their film versions, stand out as cultural manifestations encoded as “feminine”. The author performs an analysis of the dynamics of consumption of the texts as developed via traditional reading and viewing, but also through transmedial phenomena like fanfics or fanvids. Her conclusion is that, in the line of Hall’s “dominant or preferred meanings” (1993, 98), the traditional gender values encoded in Twilight have been commodified and unproblematically incorporated into the discursive maps of contemporary Western youth—especially girls and young women, with little room left for real, productive cognitive and / or cultural resistance. Smith’s contribution is especially relevant since, as he rightly puts it, even though much is being written on teen (sub)cultures in the Englishspeaking world, youth-oriented cultural materials in Spain have been left out of the academic discussion altogether. In his suitably transmedial study, Smith looks into two recent, highly successful Spanish TV shows without neglecting their connections with other media such as film or the Internet. Focusing on both representation and reception—the latter being one of the strengths of this interesting chapter—Smith’s acute analysis reveals the immense relevance of (transmedial and even transnational) television as a vehicle for the dissemination of (not always hegemonic) discourses on such essential identity variables for youths as ethnicity, sexuality and sexual orientation. However, in what might be regarded as a potentially shocking coup d’effet, Part IV opens with a chapter that does not focus on youth but on ageing and old age, providing fascinating insights into the discourses at play in today’s (trans)mediated Western societies. Dolan’s comprehensive account focuses on the iconicity of media stars to reflect on the different (and gendered) meaning and expectations that Western discourses have placed on old age. Through this, the latter is gradually yet inexorably revealed not as a natural given but crucially as a social construct that has in many ways victimised millions of individuals. Finally, Part V (“Popular Culture and National / Cultural Identities”) addresses yet another relevant variable in today’s notably (trans)mediated, increasingly globalised societies: national identity and its links to (popular?) culture forms such as film, folk tales, television and the periodical press. It has been reported that “the idea of a common national culture is heavily under attack” (Hjarvard 1993, 72). Balibar localises part of the problem in “the role of the nation” and, it could be added, the changing role of the state (1996, 369). There are, as he notes, “‘old’ nation-states searching for a new role on the world stage; infranational entities with their fictive ethnicity attached to their name […]; and

De-Centring Cultural Studies: Past, Present and Future of Popular Culture 13

supranational entities” (Balibar 1996, 373). Such factors as the growing availability of travel, the increasingly mobile nature of today’s population, as well as the widespread use of IC technologies (resulting in increasingly mediated societies) may all have played a role in the possible destabilisation of formerly solid national identities. Still, there is evidence that national identity remains crucial in today’s western world. This is partly due to the fact that media representations are influential channels for the birth and reinforcement of discursive constructions (Coleman 1998; Brewer et al. 2003; Slater et al. 2006; Simon and Jerit 2007) whilst textual genres, however widely available internationally, always present countryspecific features (Foster 1991; Barker 1999) that somehow firmly root them within the limits of the imaginary communities (Anderson 1991) that nations are. The first chapter in this part, by Mihai Iacob, beautifully illustrates some of the main tenets of identity theory. As Hall puts it, “all identities operate through exclusion, through the discursive construction of a constitutive outside and the production of abjected and marginalized subjects” (1996, 15). It is quite important, then, to realise that the moment an identity is created another community is also created only to be excluded from it. This abjected community is what cultural theory has come to refer to as “the Other”, “Otherness” being the term used to refer to the condition derived from being “the Other”. However, as Foucault has repeatedly argued, power is not stable; consequently, and as Hall (1997) would probably put it, what being a perceived member of a given imagined community means is no longer controlled (if it ever was) by the alleged members of such a community. This meaning is, on the contrary, in a permanent stage of negotiation and dialogue between the national culture and its respective Others. Illustrating this with the case of Transylvania (arguably Romania’s most visible historical region), Iacob demonstrates that the full meaning of Transylvanianness cannot be grasped unless we also consider not only how the Transylvanians see themselves but also how the Transylvanians see their traditional Others, and crucially how these traditional Others see the Transylvanians. Iacob’s paper, articulated around the politics of representation in vampire films and in the line of others included in this volume (e.g. Bello-Viruega’s), adapts Edward Said’s theories on Orientalism, in this case in combination with Maria Todorova’s conceptualisation of Balkanism, to explore the relationship between real referents and fictional signs in the building of Transylvania as a locus of identity construction and reinforcement for the Romanian imagined community. Drawing on examples that cover over one century—from Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) to Tatopoulos’ Underworld

14

Introduction

(2009), he makes a case for the unidirectional vectorisation of the influence between historiographic, journalistic and political texts on the one hand and Gothic fiction (literary or filmic) on the other. For her part, Bosch-Roig re-visits the folk tale, already studied by Amores in Part II, exploring the powerful connections between this genre and the rise and consolidation of German national identity. In her essay, she traces the transformations carried out by the Brothers Grimm on the folk tales they compiled in their attempt to combine Romantic aesthetic ideals with the new nationalist ideology sustaining German society and their wish to educate the reader. By examining the different types of sources they used and their successive thematic revisions when drafting the texts, the author reveals to what extent their contribution was significant in the creation of the fairy tale genre for children as we know it today, which has been popularised again in recent decades through new cultural forms like the cinema. The next chapter, by Slávka Tomašþíková, takes us to a different medium—television, this time—and a different cultural context: postcommunist Europe and, more specifically, Slovakia. She draws on narrative theory to provide an interesting account that chronicles what seems to be a universal tendency—a gradual shift from the “information” to the “communication” poles of the televised narrative continuum, although especially exacerbated in both its narrative and visual forms in the post-communist reality of Central and Eastern European countries. Her informative report, aided by her acute observations, once again evidences how textual genres, no matter their nature, adopt distinctively unique forms across different cultural contexts; and, perhaps more relevantly, points to the media dissemination of (in this case) Western discourses which have changed those territories formerly under Soviet influence well beyond recognition. It is precisely this Soviet influence—in this case disseminated through the medium of the periodical press—that makes a link between Tomašþíková’s paper and the last chapter in the volume, authored by Andrada Fătu-Tutoveanu. Focusing on the two crucial decades following the end of World War II, the author convincingly argues that, upon the imposition of a process of Soviet “mimicry”, Romania’s cultural press was effectively used as an instrument of the new regime’s cultural and identity policies. Ironically, and as opposed to the cultural reality portrayed by Picornell-Belenguer and Pons in the opening chapters of this volume, this Sovietisation, which was meant to draw culture closer to the masses, led to artificially popularised cultural forms that, rather than accurately reflect

De-Centring Cultural Studies: Past, Present and Future of Popular Culture 15

the feelings of Romanian society, can now be read as simulacra of an (imposed) identity that never truly caught on among the Romanian people. As this brief overview suggests, the present volume aims at making a valuable contribution to the cross-discipline of cultural studies. The book builds up a substantial body of evidence so as to convincingly argue for the blurred division between the High and lower forms of culture, the case being made by referring to and providing close readings of a wide range of materials (most definitely one of its strengths), produced both in the past and in the present and spanning different geographical territories. The inclusion of materials from beyond the English-speaking world (with a special focus on Spanish culture), together with the contributors’ diverse origin, may also contribute to one fundamental task, namely making it known that cultural studies also gets done in Spain and other countries outside the cultural studies mainstream. Finally, the interest of this collection lies in no small part in the novel, interdisciplinary approaches that the authors take to their object of analysis. Offering theoreticallysound methodological proposals and, especially, analyses of their texts, the different chapters revolve around one key concept in cultural studies, namely, identity, most visibly exploring three of its variables: nationality and sense of place, gender and—clearly pointing the way to the future— age. In doing so, the volume not only places itself at the cutting edge of research produced in the field but also makes itself appealing to a fairly wide range of readers. More specifically, the volume should be of interest to both academics and students in the following fields: British and American studies, Spanish studies, European studies, cultural studies, film and television studies, gender studies, sociology and literature.

Works cited Anderson, Benedict. 1991 (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised Edition. London and New York: Verso. Badmington, Neil. 2006. Cultural Studies and the Posthumanities. In New Cultural Studies. Adventures in Theory¸ eds. Gary Hall and Clare Birchall, 260-272. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Balibar, Étienne. 1996: Is European Citizenship Possible? Trans. Christine Jones. Public Culture 8: 355-376. Barker, Chris. 1999. Television, Globalization and Cultural Identities. Maidenhead: Open University Press / McGraw-Hill. Bassnett, Susan. 1998. The Translation Turn in Cultural Studies. In Constructing Cultures. Essays on Literary Translation, eds. Susan

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Bassnett and André Lefevere, 123-140. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Bastida-Rodríguez, Patricia, Caterina Calafat-Ripoll, Marta FernándezMorales, José Igor Prieto-Arranz and Cristina Suárez-Gómez, eds. 2011. Actas del IV Congreso Internacional de SELICUP. Palma de Mallorca: Edicions UIB. Bathwick, David. 1992. Cultural Studies. In Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures, ed. Joseph Gibaldi, 320-340. New York: The MLA of America. Brewer, Paul R., Joseph Graf and Lars Willnat. 2003. Priming or Framing. Media Influence on Attitudes toward Foreign Countries. Gazette. The International Journal for Communication Studies 65: 493-508. Carrera-Suárez, Isabel. 2005. Review of (Mis)representations: Intersections of Culture and Power. Atlantis 27: 183-190. Coleman, Stephen. 1998. BBC Radio Ulster’s Talkback Phone-In: Public Feedback in a Divided Public Space. The Public—Journal of the European Institute for Communication & Culture 5: 7-19. Cornut-Gentille D’Arcy, Chantal. 2005. ‘The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain’: Insights and Imperatives on the Practice of Cultural Studies in the Spanish University. Cultural Studies 19: 318-337. Cuthbert, David. 1996. The Everyday Life of Cultural Studies. University of Toronto Quarterly 65: 393-403. Danesi, Marcel and Paul Perron. 1999. Analyzing Cultures. An Introduction and Handbook. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Danaher, Geoff, Tony Schirato and Jen Webb. 2000. Understanding Foucault. London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage. Eagleton, Terry. 2000 (1991). Ideology. An Introduction. London and New York: Verso. Foster, Robert J. 1991. Making National Cultures in the Global Ecumene. Annual Review of Anthropology 20: 235-260. Foucault, Michel. 1984 (1969). L’archéologie du savoir. Paris: Gallimard. García Canclini, Néstor. 1994. Culture and Power: the State of Research. In Culture and Power: A Media, Culture and Society Reader, eds. Paddy Scannell, Philip Schlesinger and Colin Sparks, 17-47. London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage. Gibson, Mark and John Hartley. 1998. Forty Years of Cultural Studies. An Interview with Richard Hoggart, October 1997. International Journal of Cultural Studies 1: 11-23. Gies, David T. 2000. Modern Spanish Culture: An Introduction. In The Cambridge Companion to Modern Spanish Culture, ed. David T. Gies, 1-8. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Graham, Helen and Jo Labanyi, eds. 1995. Spanish Cultural Studies. An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gray, Ann. 2003. Cultural Studies at Birmingham: The Impossibility of Critical Pedagogy? Cultural Studies 17: 767-782. Gray, Ann, Joke Hermes and Pertti Alassutari. 2001. History and Cultural Studies. European Journal of Cultural Studies 4: 259-260. Grossberg, Lawrence. 2006. Does Cultural Studies Have Futures? (Or What’s the Matter with New York?). Cultural Studies, Contexts and Conjunctures. Cultural Studies 20: 1-32. Hall, Stuart. 1993 (1980). Encoding, Decoding. In The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. Simon During, 90-103. London and New York: Routledge. —. 1996. Cultural Studies and the Centre: Some Problematics and Problems. In Culture, Media, Language. Working Papers in Cultural Studies, eds. Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe and Paul Willis, 15-47. London and New York: Routledge / The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham. —. 1997. The Spectacle of the ‘Other’. In Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, ed. Stuart Hall, 223-290. London: Sage / The Open University. —. 1999. Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies. In The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. Simon During, 97-109. London and New York: Routledge. Hall, Stuart, and Paddy Whannel. 1964. The Popular Arts. London: Hutchinson. Hall, Stuart, and Tony Jefferson, eds. 1976. Resistance through Rituals. Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. London: Hutchinson. Hjarvard, Stig. 1993. Pan-European Television News: Towards a European Political Public Sphere? In National Identities. The Television Revolution, eds. Phillip Drummond, Richard Paterson and Janet Willis, 71-94. London: British Film Institute. Jordan, Barry and Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas. 2000. Introduction. In Contemporary Spanish Cultural Studies, eds. Barry Jordan and Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas, 1-12. London: Arnold. Marsh, David. 2005. Sociology and Cultural Studies at Birmingham and Beyond. A Response to Frank Webster. Cultural Studies 19: 388-393. McEwan, Paul. 2002. Cultural Studies as a Hidden Discipline. International Journal of Cultural Studies 5: 427-437. Milton Yinger, John. 1960. Contraculture and Subculture. American Sociological Review 25: 625-635. Schwarz, Bill. 2005. Stuart Hall. Cultural Studies 19: 176-202.

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Simon, Adam F. and Jennifer Jerit. 2007. Toward a Theory Relating Political Discourse, Media, and Public Opinion. Journal of Communication 57: 254-271. Slater, Michael D., Donna Rouner and Marilee Long. 2006. Television Dramas and Support for Controversial Public Policies: Effects and Mechanisms. Journal of Communication 56: 235-252. Smith, Paul Julian. 2003. Contemporary Spanish Culture: TV, Fashion, Art, and Film. Cambridge: Polity Press. —. 2007. Spanish Visual Culture: Cinema, Television, Internet. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Spiropoulou, Angeliki. 1999. The Marginalisation of Literature in the Teaching of Culture. In Teaching Culture. The Long Revolution in Cultural Studies, eds. Nannette Aldred and Martin Ryle, 53-65. Leicester: National Institute of Adult Continuing Education. Striphas, Ted. 2002. Banality, Book Publishing and the Everyday Life of Cultural Studies. International Journal of Cultural Studies 5: 438-460. Surber, Jere Paul. 1998. Culture and Critique: An Introduction to the Critical Discourses of Cultural Studies. Boulder and Oxford: Westview Press. Tomaselli, Kenyan. 2003. Crossroads in Cultural Studies. Tampering with Tampere: Cultural Studies after Birmingham. International Journal of Cultural Studies 6: 104-109. Valdés-Miyares, J. Rubén. 2006. Towards an Anatomy of 21st-Century British Culture: Case Studies from the Newspapers. Unpublished paper. London: 8th ESSE Conference. Wallace, Jo-Anne. 1995. English Studies versus the Humanities? Cultural Studies and Institutional Power. University of Toronto Quarterly 64: 506-513. Walton, David. 2008. Introducing Cultural Studies. Learning through Practice. London: Sage. —. 2012. About us. IBACS. Iberian Association for Cultural Studies. http://www.cultureandpower.org/about-us (accessed September 29, 2012). Webster, Frank. 2001. Sociology, Cultural Studies, and Disciplinary Boundaries. In A Companion to Cultural Studies, ed. Toby Miller, 79100. Malden (MA) and Oxford: Blackwell. —. 2004. Cultural Studies and Sociology at, and after, the Closure of the Birmingham School. Cultural Studies 18: 847-862. —. 2005. A Reply to David Marsh. Cultural Studies 19: 394-395.

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Williams, Raymond. 1973. Minority and Popular Culture. In Leisure and Society in Britain, eds. Michael A. Smith, Stanley Parker and Cyril S. Smith, 22-27. London: Allen Lane. —. 1979. Politics and Letters. Interviews with New Left Review. London: NLB. —. 1997 (1958). Culture is Ordinary. In Studying Culture. An Introductory Reader, eds. Ann Gray and Jim McGuigan, 5-14. London: Arnold. Wilson, Scott. 1995. Cultural Materialism. Theory and Practice. Oxford and Cambridge (Mass.): Blackwell.

Notes 1

For a full chronicle of the Birmingham episode, see Gray 2003; Tomaselli 2003; and, especially, Webster 2004; Marsh 2005; and Webster’s 2005 reply to the latter. 2 See, for example, Bassnett 1998; Gray et al. 2001; and, above all, Webster 2001 and 2004, on the so-called “cultural turn” in sociology and other disciplines.

PART I THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO POPULAR CULTURE: BORDERLANDS BETWEEN CANONICAL AND POPULAR CULTURE

CHAPTER ONE INTRUSIVENESS OR INTERDISCIPLINARITY? THE JUSTIFICATION OF CRITICAL CATEGORIES ON THE ETHNOLITERARY FRONTIER1 MERCÈ PICORNELL-BELENGUER

On the following pages I would like to take into consideration some of the terms that, in the literary approaches produced in the last thirty years, have employed the prefix ethno- to delimit their field of study.2 These are categories that denote different degrees of interaction between literature and ethnology; different degrees, we could say, of interdisciplinarity, were it not for the abuse that this term has suffered, almost turning it into an empty word. This term fills search projects, programmes and curricula where there is scarce mention of the specific and conflictive interchanges that occur between overlapping areas. Peter Brooks warned about the dangers hidden behind interdisciplinary approaches—often erroneously disseminated under the heading of cultural studies—that do not involve any analysis of the borders between fields of knowledge, but rather an unproblematic appropriation of the critical tools, when not merely of the terminology, of another disciplinary field. What Brooks specifically writes is that: Real interdisciplinarity doesn’t come from mixing a bit of this and that, putting philosophy and penology and literature into a Cuisinart. It comes when thought processes reach the point where the disciplinary boundary one comes up against no longer makes sense—when the internal logic of thinking impels a transgression of borderlines. (Brooks 1995, 102)

In reality, even when it is enriching, the interaction between disciplines is often limited to epidermal contact that can only lead to the spread of relevant contagions in the long term. Some of the proposals that we shall be taking into consideration in this article are situated in this complex and slow contagion process. The terms used to designate them—ethnopoetics,

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Chapter One

ethnocriticism, ethnofiction—are derived from the use of the prefix ethno-, which we could consider as synecdochic, which means–– according to the strict sense of the Greek prefix––that it no longer refers to a specific association with a “community” but denominates the more abstract features (we could say, for instance, traditionalism or exoticism) that we attribute to products in which collective identity seems to be expressed in a more direct way than in the original productions resulting from the individual will of a creating subject.3 Hereinafter, I will attempt to show how some of these ethnoliterary proposals, in aiming at clearly defining an object of study that has been traditionally perceived as subaltern, can contribute to its othering and, by doing it, they help to consolidate the distance between canon and periphery that they apparently try to reduce. My reflection stems from a very simple question: what should differentiate the methods of ethnocriticism from those of mere criticism, or the object of study of ethnopoetics from that of poetics? This question makes us return to another one that has often been formulated regarding the criterion which determines the ethnic consideration of certain cultural products. Is it an inherent quality of the products or does it refer to the communities that produce them? Are there, therefore, groups which are more ethnic than others? Can a product be ethnic if it stems from the creative will of an individual artist or does it have to recreate a collective model in order for us to appreciate its ethnicity? Are pizzas an ethnic product? When a popular song is performed by Majorcan singer and composer Maria del Mar Bonet,4 does it lose any of its ethnicity in the adaptation process? Is the ceremonial exchange of kula gifts among Melanesians, studied by Malinowski, more ethnic than the ritual offering of books and roses during the Sant Jordi festivities in Catalonia?5 And, to go one step further, has this Catalan ritual exchange lost any of its ethnic authenticity as a result of its increasing commercialisation? In the interdisciplinary terminology I am dealing with, the prefix ethno- often becomes a catch-all for products to which we attribute qualities related to their collective or traditional dimension. Defined thus, ethno- often refers to the cultural production of distant others in time or space. In 1946 Vladimir Propp noted in “The Nature of Folklore” how the border between folklore and ethnography had often been defined in accordance with the foreignness of the observer with respect to the object of study, something which could lead to absurdity in the case, for instance, of a French researcher being considered a folklorist if he studied Gaelic tales, but an ethnologist if he was interested in Albanian ones. More than five decades later the use of the prefix ethno- in the consideration of objects that were

Intrusiveness or Interdisciplinarity?

25

formerly considered folkloric could be indicative of the othering of a production that was once perceived as closer, as more one’s own. It might be because of this heterological nature that ethno- products are often negatively qualified, in accordance with their difference from consumer products and, especially, from those included in “High” culture. In one of the most widely read chapters of The Predicament of Culture, James Clifford proposed a diagram to analyse the possible taxonomies to which cultural products are subjected. Adapting Greimas’s semiotic table, he drew an imaginary line that separated the “masterpiece” from the “artifact” and crossed it with an axis that would determine the authenticity of cultural products. Thus, he distinguished between four opposing categories: on the one hand, the authentic (original and singular) piece of art that is separate from the unauthentic piece of art (falsifications or reproductions of pieces of art); and on the other, the authentic artifact (the traditional object) as opposed to the unauthentic (commercial and utilitarian) one. What interests me about the diagram is not the categories it generates but how it foresees the possibility for cultural objects to circulate among them. To put it another way, this does not produce categories but positions and oppositions that provoke models of cultural reception. What I am interested in, therefore, is the dynamism which foresees, for example, that a canonical work of art such as La Gioconda (or Mona Lisa) can be parodied in the hands of Dalí or Duchamp and become reproducible art with Warhol, or be printed on utilitarian objects and, as a result, generate artifacts.6 This explains, to use an example by Néstor García Canclini (1990), how Delacroix’s paintings can inspire Michoacán ceramics. What is more, I believe it is a dynamisation that has more to do with the reception of products than with the hybridisation that García Canclini introduced in the debates on Latin-American cultural studies. In Clifford’s example, the primitivist appropriation of “tribal” designs by some avant-garde artists of the early 20th century displaces these objects from the ethnological sections in museums to rooms dedicated to art.7 The aura that––as Walter Benjamin (1983) said––would determine the authenticity of a work of art depends on the “originality” of the product but also on the convention that establishes its value and, therefore, conditions both ownership and the possibilities of public exhibition. It is a convention that in contemporary western tradition we often identify with the process of recognition by “experts” of the relevance of an individual “signature”. In short, the movement of objects and aesthetic forms between the world of art and the world of culture is of interest to my analysis because it is related to the attributions with which we characterise

26

Chapter One

the objects within them, as well as their critical appreciation. In this respect, as Clifford argues, Since the early years of modernism and cultural anthropology non-Western objects have found a “home” either within the discourses and institutions of art or within those of anthropology. The two domains have excluded and confirmed each other, inventively disputing the right to contextualize, to represent these objects. As we shall see, the aesthetic-anthropological opposition is systematic, presupposing an underlying set of attitudes toward the “tribal”. Both discourses assume a primitive world in need of preservation, redemption, and representation. The concrete, inventive existence of tribal cultures and artists is suppressed in the process of either constituting authentic, “traditional” worlds or appreciating their products in the timeless category of “art”. (Clifford 1988, 200)

If we transpose Clifford’s view to the literary field we will realise that the products classified in ethno- spaces tend to be those located in the area of “authentic artifacts”. In this framework, the critical eye that studies them tends to highlight their collective nature, their representativeness over their originality, or the focus on the repetition of the techniques employed over the experimentation with moulds considered genuine. The complexity of attributing a univocal content to the prefix ethno- in the designations I am dealing with is reinforced by the ambiguity in the use of the term “literature” in some of them. This is not only due to the difficulty of delimiting literature with respect to other discursive practices, but also to the confusion in the use of the term “literature” for an object of study and the discipline which examines it.8 The border area we are studying is a complex one, and even more so when some of the contributions located in it ignore the conquests of those preceding them. Among the different ethnoliterary terms that have sought to delimitate a specific field of study, one of the most widespread in the Catalan context is that of ethnopoetics (see Pons, this volume). This term has become widespread since the publication of a handbook by Carme Oriol entitled Etnopoètica. Teoria i formes del folklore en la cultura catalana, where Oriol (2002, 39) takes Heda Jason (1977) as a referent for the use of the concept.9 For Jason, ethnopoetics studies a verbal art transmitted from generation to generation by qualified performers in an improvisation process. According to Jason, ethnopoetic works share seven features that differentiate them from inherently literary works, namely 1) the updating of the work as a performance; 2) the direct presentation to the audience; 3) the lack of stability in the text; 4) the existence of a canon that governs the repertory and performance; 5) the limitation of genres, characters, themes, etc.; 6) the resistance to change; and 7) the artist’s dependence on the

Intrusiveness or Interdisciplinarity?

27

audience he or she is addressing. Jason’s negative characterisation with respect to the inherently “literary” corpus is based on a concept of “literature” as a finished product resulting from a process that is concluded with the publication of the literary work. This perception stems from the romantic conception of literature and is annulled if we take as a starting point the concept of literary work proposed by post-structuralist and reception theories, which in the same years that Jason was producing her taxonomy were defining the space of the literary work as a discursive framework that, in order to generate meaning, needs to be presented as open to the reader’s interpretation. Furthermore, the literary author that Jason distinguishes from the ethnopoetic performer does not produce his or her work outside of tradition but, as Harold Bloom (1975) would say, is anxiously integrated in a long history of influences, aware of a canon that even determines the possibilities for subversion and parody. I therefore feel that Jason is generalising when she writes that “high literature does not use a fixed canon, but creates new forms freely” (1977, 6) or “is not produced for the market, but rather for the sake of art and is, therefore, free to change and grow, regardless of social acceptance or rejection” (1977, 7). These statements are useful for reinforcing her attempt to define ethnoliterature, but limiting in terms of the model of literature with which it contrasts. In order to delimitate a production that is historically considered subaltern, she ends up reinforcing the aesthetics-anthropology opposition Clifford referred to, invoking an ideal of literature that is no more than a prototype or mirage. In Oriol’s manual, ethnopoetics is defined as a “verbal art” that is passed on orally, but also in writing—i.e. by e-mail—and in this process is adapted to the context where it is updated. The prefix ethno- enables the designation under a new name of products which are similar to those traditional folkloric studies had attributed to “popular” authorship and reception and which are distinct from those considered inherently “literary” in their difficulty to be assigned an “individual” author and in their forms of transmission, since they allow variation in the product, a central idea in the aforementioned article by Propp. As Oriol explains, at times paraphrasing Propp: Una altra diferència significativa entre l’art verbal i la literatura es troba en la forma de transmissió. La literatura es transmet mitjançant l’escriptura, mentre que l’art verbal es transmet majoritàriament de boca a orella. L’obra literària, un cop creada, no canvia, a causa de l’estabilitat del text escrit. [...] L’art verbal, en canvi, necessita de la presència directa del

28

Chapter One narrador i del receptor sense que hi hagi el lligam material de l’obra escrita. En molts casos, els narradors no són els creadors de l’obra, sinó els seus recreadors. Els narradors reexpliquen i reelaboren una obra que han sentit en altres ocasions, i la seva tasca no pot equiparar-se, per exemple, a la que realitzen els poetes quan reciten la seva pròpia obra. En l’art verbal, els narradors no repeteixen el text paraula per paraula, sinó que hi introdueixen canvis argumentals i estilístics. Tant si els canvis efectuats són insignificants com si són d’un major abast, en l’art verbal hi ha la possibilitat de canviar el text d’una execució a una altra, i aquesta és una diferència essencial respecte a la literatura. (Oriol 2002, 38) [Another significant difference between verbal art and literature is found in the form of transmission. Literature is transmitted through writing, while verbal art is mainly passed on from mouth to ear. Literary works, once created, do not change, because of the stability of the written text. [...] However, verbal art requires the direct presence of the narrator and receiver without the existence of a material bond with the written work. In many cases, the narrators are not the creators of the work, but rather its recreators. Narrators re-explain and re-elaborate a work that they heard elsewhere, and their role cannot be equated, for example, to that of poets who recite their own work. In verbal art, narrators do not repeat the text word for word, but instead introduce changes affecting both plot and style. Whether the changes made are insignificant or much greater in scope, in verbal art there is the option of changing a text from one execution to another, and this is an essential difference with respect to literature.]

Oriol introduces a distinction between literature and verbal art, by which the latter is identified with ethnopoetics. The same distinction is explained further in Propp’s work, who uses the concept of verbal art in a broader sense, including both literary creation in a proper sense and folklore.10 Whatever the case, I am mainly interested in noting how the distinction between literature and ethnopoetic production places us in front of a concept of literature that is often the result of an also essentialised idea of literature. In terms of variability, this is so not only because written texts gradually adapt to the evolution of writing technologies—from papyrus to hypertext—and they can be subjected to extensions, censorship or errata during the dissemination process, but also because, regardless of the stability of the written word, its meaning is always subjected to the openness that Umberto Eco (1962) or Roland Barthes (1984) placed in the hands of the reader, and that Maurice Blanchot (1959) situated in the very essence of the literary work, which is never finished but only in the oneoff event that connects the writer and the reader. Furthermore, unspecific authorship is not as distinct from ethnopoetic production as one might think. In some of his earliest contributions to Polysystem Theory, Itamar Even-Zohar (1990) proposed, in his attempt to

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offer a comprehensive study of the literary phenomenon, the substitution of the words “writer” and “reader” with those of “producer” and “receiver”. The change of terminology enabled him to make it explicit that the creator of a literary work is never exclusively the writer but rather all of the instances that contribute to its production, from the literary agent that advises on publishing schedules and the themes that works should approach to the editor who gives form to the book. Similarly, the consumers of literary works are not only the readers that decipher the texts. They are also the people who are indirectly affected by their representations (for example, the Japanese Gothic lolitas who know nothing about Nabokov). If we look in greater depth at these fissures we can find ambiguous cases of the dissolution of authorship in apparently non-ethnopoetic discourses. How can we categorise, for example, the oral telling of a novel by a reader who, after consuming the “original” text, explains it according to his or her own interpretation? Or the reformulation of contemporary songs by people who change their lyrics, maybe because they are in a language they do not know—my father singing Beatles songs whilst having a shower—or because they are performed not on the basis of knowledge of the original melody, but on later versions made of it? We all have a repertoire of recent authored songs that we only know through hearing them performed by others. In my own case, I have an inventory of coplas and boleros––i.e. popular genres of commercial music in Spanish often composed in the first decades of the 20th century––that I have never heard in their original versions, but only in adaptations by my mother, uncles or grandparents. Is this how they could end up being ethnopoetic? The borders between the products of verbal art and literary art, between what is ethnic and what is authored, once again appear unstable. We must now take into consideration that the term “ethnopoetics” had already been used in the Anglo-Saxon context differently from the way proposed by Jason and used by Oriol. In the late 1960s Jerome Rothenberg had spread the term to refer to the task he set upon himself to study and disseminate poetry; it is here that he locates productions which range from non-western ones to those by authors linked to the historical avant-garde, such as Tzara and Artaud, who were themselves interested in the poetics of communities deemed “indigenous”. Rothenberg defines ethnopoetics as a form of research that leads from the compilation of what he calls “tribal” poetry to the reflection on its connections with avant-garde production. Ethnopoetics, writes Rothenberg, is not so much a field of study as it is a creative area of action in which he himself, as a poet, participates.11 The various usages that Rothenberg makes of the term share, he says, “negatively a rejection of the supremacy of Western ideas of high art (not

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by any means the art itself) and, positively, an intention to encompass all those art forms and gestures excluded by that Western and European hierarchy” (2008, 133).12 He therefore proposes an exploration of the margins of the canon that would make it possible to extend the concept of poetry while renegotiating the limits that have ended up identifying it with western lyricism. According to Rothenberg, this exploration would enable us to question some of the pre-concepts that have conditioned the approach to the western corpus, but also to the other traditions, such as the limitation of creative collectiveness to ethnic production, of reflective subjectivity to western production, or the identification between orality and otherness that prevents a broadened view—an ethnopoetic one, as Rothenberg calls it––of written texts.13 This is, therefore, a very different definition from Jason’s and, also for Denis Tedlock, it is focused on the research of new formulas for the dissemination of literary creations other than hegemonic models.14 Tedlock is critical of the interpretations that take transcriptions into prose as a source for the study of oral literature. Ethnopoetics is a type of dramatic poetry where the silences and repetitions that transcriptions do not reflect are of major importance. So as to show their importance, Tedlock even arranges some of his articles textually by breaking down the statements into verses that have to be read on the basis of certain initial indications which mark the emphasis with which we should read capital letters and changes in font sizes or even show us where silences should be when reading. These have to be interpreted using the guide introducing them: Guide to Delivery: A line change indicates a short pause, about 1/2 to 1 second; a double space between lines, marked by ., indicates a long pause, about 2 seconds, CAPITALS are loud; small type is soft; split level-lines indicate a chant-like delivery, with each level at a separate pitch; long dashes indicate lenghthened vowels, short ones at the end of lines an interrupted delivery; repeated consonants are lengthened; other instructions are in (parenthecized italics). (Tedlock 1975, 707)

Transcribed thus, the article resembles a visual poem more than an academic text, a kind of reworking of the indications that Stéphane

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Mallarmé offered for the reading of “Coup de dés” (1897), a typographic syntax—as Michel Butor (1964) called it in reference to the French poet’s work—which once again associates, as Rothenberg would like, ethnopoetics with experimental literature. In summary, in this sense ethnopoetics involves the consideration of the interaction between literary discourse and performance, both in the production that Jason would call ethnopoetics and in contemporary authored creation. It shares with Jason’s usage the ambiguity not only of the prefix ethno- but also of a poetics that refers as much to a methodological approach to literature as to a discursive genre. Tedlock’s and Rosenberg’s proposals seek to visualise a production that is underestimated by the canon, but also to criticise the underlying ethnocentrism of a discipline like literary studies which has bestowed universality upon theories of poetry that in reality refer only to a specific model of western lyricism. This latter issue is what Arnold Krupat seeks to expose when he calls his own work “ethnocriticism”. Krupat considers ethnocriticism to arise from the need to modify the critical parameters of literary studies when it comes to accounting for the literatures he calls “indigenous”: Ethnocriticism is the name I give to a particular perspective as this is manifested on the level of critical writing. On the pedagogical or curricular level, the ethnocriticism perspective manifests itself in the form of multiculturalism, a term I take to refer to that particular organization of cultural studies which engages otherness and difference in such a way as to provoke an interrogation of and a challenge to what we ordinarily take as familiar and our own. On the level of what I will call cognitive ethics, the ethnocriticism perspective is consistent with a recognition and legitimation of heterogeneity (rather than homogeneity) as the social and cultural norm. (Krupat 1992, 3)

This involves a kind of intercultural research that has much in common with the change of viewpoint proposed by postcolonial criticism, which considers the heterogeneity that may have been concealed by the canons of literary studies. It is not, says Krupat, a new field of analysis, but rather a change of perspective that should lead to a revision of the operational capacity of the critical categories of literary studies and to the extension of the potential corpus for analysis. Sharing this methodological bias are the studies that, in the Hispanic context, have been disseminated under the name “ethnoliterature”. Two conferences held at the University of Córdoba (Spain) in the 1990s sought to provide a body for this proposal, mainly aimed at the use of texts from “High” literature as a source for anthropological analysis. It is enough to observe the number of resulting publications to note both the interest of

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some contributions and the difficulty of bringing them all together to form a common project. In some of the articles, the perception of literature as a source seems to recover the Stendhalian mirror from some antique store. In others, we find an idealisation of the function of literature, which is considered to be capable of transforming the sensitivity of the anthropologist, providing him or her with, as Fernando Riaza writes, a new path “hacia el hombre” [towards man] (1997, 143). Alfredo Jiménez (1994, 11) states that the seminar was organised in order to study from a different point of view the use of literature as a source for anthropology. He affirms that it originates from the need to search for new methods of anthropological analysis that complement or substitute the pre-eminence of participant observation as a hegemonic method for data collection: En este punto, el interrogante que me ha servido de guía para este trabajo es el siguiente: si las etnografías—todas y cualquiera de ellas—son cuestionables, por muchas razones, en cuanto a su objetividad y garantía de ser una interpretación rigurosa de una realidad sociocultural, ¿por qué hemos de excluir otras fuentes de conocimiento que no sea el trabajo de campo? ¿Por qué un autor literario—un novelista del pasado o actual—no puede ofrecernos una visión de una realidad sociocultural tan válida y lúcida, cuando menos, como la que nos ofrece un antropólogo de un presente que él conoce mediante la técnica de la observación participante? (Jiménez Núñez 1994, 12) [At this point, the question that has served as my guide for this work is the following: if ethnographies—each and every one of them—are questionable, for many reasons, in terms of their objectiveness and the guarantees they offer as a rigorous interpretation of a sociocultural reality, why do we have to exclude other sources of knowledge that are not fieldwork? Why can a literary author—a novelist of the past or present— not offer us just as valid and lucid a vision of a sociocultural reality as that which is offered to us by an anthropologist of a present that he discovers through the technique of participant observation?]

The contributions connected to this ethnoliterary proposal are especially relevant in that they imply a rethinking of the possibilities for the interpretation of literary texts and the revision of useful data for anthropological analysis. The idealised perception of the literary text they are based on does not prevent this from being presented to the anthropologist as a defective or incomplete product that, in order to provide data, has to pass through the sieve of scientific verification. Thus, the anthropologist who approaches a literary work should:

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verificar los datos esenciales respecto a temas no lógicos dentro del contexto general [así como también] reconstruir el paisaje natural y la acción del hombre sobre su entorno más allá de las pinceladas o esbozos del autor, deberá depurar los datos objetivos (históricos o contemporáneos del autor), y contrastar la posibilidad o verosimilitud de aquellos otros que se presentan como reales a fin de comprobar si pudieron ser o no posibles en su contexto. (Jiménez Núñez 1994, 46) [verify the essential data with respect to non-logical themes within the general context [and also] reconstruct the natural landscape and man’s actions in relation with his environment beyond the author’s brushstrokes or sketches, he should refine the objective data (historic or contemporary to the author), and check the possibility or verisimilitude of those others that are presented as real in order to ascertain whether they were possible or not in their context.]

This vision of literature as a source seems somewhat reductionist to me, both because of the concept of literature on which it is based and the notion of source that it implicitly defends. In the first sense, it does not take into account how literature, beyond the equivocal representation of traces of “reality” that these critics aspire to identify, is a cultural artefact in itself, designed to be consumed by a community of readers and that circulates according to a complex framework of conventions. It is an intimate patrimony for readers that seek to enjoy the beauty, the brutality or the escapist potential of the book, but also a social and economic asset that contributes to what Pierre Bourdieu calls “symbolic capital”. It is, I believe, from this point of view that it can be a relevant source for the social sciences, on the understanding that what makes a product a source does not depend on any property of this product but rather on the use made of it by the researcher.15 As expressed by historians belonging to Subaltern Study Groups, many documents for which, unlike literary ones, the need for verification is lower—archive sources, judicial testimonies, etc.— should be read in a way that takes careful consideration of the intentions of whoever wrote them. This, according to ethnoliterary scholars, should be the case when social scientists deal with literary texts.16 In the Latin American context, the term “ethnoliterature” has often been reserved for the designation of so-called “indigenous” literatures as opposed to those which form the hegemonic Spanish-language traditions. Under the heading “ethnoliterature” we can find literary works developed from the transformation of an ethnic oral tradition (Friedemann 1997, 25), which are sometimes written and signed by an individual author who, in a framework not connoted by its claim to be indigenous, we would undoubtedly classify as literature. Somehow, the term “ethnoliterature” plays the role here of maintaining stable limits for that literature

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considered indigenous, which separate it from other productions that make up a certain national canon from which it has been excluded. Thus specified, the name can become a double-edged sword: it dignifies in the eyes of researchers and the general public those works considered “folkloric”, but at the same time it positions them in a different space from those considered inherently literary, as if something undefined prevented them from having full access to this classification. The ambiguity of this discrimination—which enables the visualisation of indigenous production but at the same time annuls its full classification as national literature— indicates a problem that has been in the background of Latin American literary criticism since the early 20th century. The arguments offered focus on the possibility of a literature that enables the representation of the subaltern voice and, specifically, the indigenous experience with a minimal degree of interference, an issue that before the emergence of postcolonial criticism was already present in the writings of José Carlos Mariátegui on indigenist literature (1976) or Octavio Paz on the literature he called “foundational” (1972). In order to account for the products that emerge, on the contrary, from an intermediation process, Martin Lienhard (1992) introduces a new term in our inventory: that of “ethnofiction”. Lienhard re-examines the trace left by indigenous voices on Latin America’s written production and the way it appears in literary texts, letters and judicial testimonies. In the panorama that Lienhard presents, indigenous experience can be mediated in three different genres: a) the fictionalisation of what has been observed, which appears in indigenist literature; b) anthropology, which is the scientific reflection on the result of observation of the other; and c) the literary recreation of this other in the form of the “manufacture of an artificial ethnic discourse” (1992, 109), whose target is mainly an audience which is alien to the “exotic” culture, the latter being a practice that Lienhard specifically calls “ethnofiction”. For Lienhard, ethnofiction involves a narrative strategy used to represent subaltern discourse, a procedure for the “manufacture” of an instrumental ethnic discourse whose objective and forms will depend on the political will with which it is produced. Lienhard claims that missionaries made use of it to show the “bestiality” of indigenous people, but in the modern world ethnofictional procedures are deployed in order to positively reappraise indigenous cosmovisions in the eyes of readers. According to the definition proposed by Lienhard, ethnofiction would be a type of ethnoliterature in which the conflict of authority regarding the inscription of the voice of the other is apparently resolved through the creation of a discourse that claims to be authentically indigenous but is ultimately borne out of an unequal exchange between the

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academic author and the “depositaries” of popular knowledge. An example of the contemporary treatment of this conflict of authorship and authority are the articles by Miguel Alvarado. In the Chilean context, Alvarado promotes the need for the study of ethnoliterature, not only understood as an indigenous discourse to be compiled and analysed, but rather as a text that can be produced by what he calls “the ethnic subject himself” and that would simultaneously be of both literary and ethnographic value. Ethnoliterature for Alvarado is a new form of anthropology that necessarily rejects western scientific ethnocentrism in favour of indigenous production: Si asumimos la actual producción etnoliteraria, la que en la gran mayoría de los casos corresponde a producciones escritas, por parte de sujetos conocedores de elementos significativos tanto de la cultura occidental como de su cultura tradicional, la etnoliteratura futura no será un producto del trabajo de campo del etnógrafo en terreno o de la recopilación del folklorista, sino el producto de conglomerados culturales con sus propios intelectuales orgánicos, por esto la literatura de los grupos étnicos será ante todo textos que reivindican la particularidad, pero desde el manejo de los contenidos más sofisticados de la cultura occidental. El literato indígena probablemente será universitario, alguien expuesto a los medios de comunicación, pero que sin embargo, reivindicará su identidad étnica y procurará ser representativo de una identidad, la cual poseerá características adaptativamente reformuladas, pero no por eso menos autónomas que en el pasado. (Alvarado Borgoño 2000) [If we consider the current ethnoliterary production, which in the vast majority of cases corresponds to written productions by subjects that are aware of significant elements both in western culture and in their traditional culture, future ethnoliterature will not be the result of the ethnographer’s fieldwork or folkloric compilation, but rather the product of cultural conglomerates with their own organic intellectuals; for this reason the literature of ethnic groups will comprise mostly texts vindicating particularity, but employing the most sophisticated content management methods of western culture. The indigenous writer will probably be university-educated, somebody exposed to the media but who nonetheless vindicates his ethnic identity and strives to be representative of an identity that will be endowed with adaptively reformulated characteristics which are not for that reason necessarily less autonomous than in the past.]

After considering all this, what we could question is the pertinence of the prefix ethno- to refer to a production which is representative of a collective identity that can condition other literatures that would be hard to classify as indigenous (such as minorised or emerging literatures, such as those in Catalan, Galician or Basque, often perceived as strongly linked to

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identity issues). The ethno- denomination is here only a trace from the subaltern nature of its producers, a subset within a broader corpus that is national and not just indigenous, and which has historically diminished the cultural value that ethnoliterary writers apparently update. In conclusion, we find that the generation of ethno- categories in literary studies denotes a complex relationship with an othered production. The creation of categories to differentiate it from the prototype models of western literature is justified by certain conditions for production and dissemination that, as we have seen, are not always as specific as they seem. It seems to me that the emergence of these terms, and of many others that have not been considered in this article due to lack of space, can be interpreted as symptomatic of a clash between the limits of the hegemonic tradition of literary studies, seeking to widen their horizons in a society in which the borders between “High” culture and “popular” or “mass” culture are increasingly less stable. This is a productive clash if it contributes to the revision of pre-established tools and judgements, questioning the conventionality of literary genres or the need to review the universality of analysis categories. It would, however, be more limiting if the clash led to the emergence of new and stagnant segmentations in which to simply relocate an object of study that is still defined on the basis of its difference and that could make ethno- segmentation a mechanism for the subsidiary dignification of a literature still considered subaltern.

Works cited Alvarado Borgoño, Miguel. 2000. Elogio de la pereza. Notas y aproximaciones respecto de la posibilidad del estudio de la etnoliteratura mapuche. A Parte Rei. Revista de Filosofía 9, http://serbal.pntic.mec.es/~cmunoz11/page18.html (accessed December 27, 2011). Barthes, Roland. 1984. De l’oeuvre au texte. In Le Bruissement de la langue, 63-102. Paris: Seuil. Benjamin, Walter. 1983 (1936). L’obra d’art a l’època de la seva reproductibilitat tècnica: tres estudis de sociologia de l’art. Barcelona: Edicions 62. Blanchot, Maurice. 1959. Le livre à venir. Paris: Galimard. Bloom, Harold. 1975 (1973). The Anxiety of Influence. London: Oxford University Press. Brooks, Peter. 1995. Must We Apologize? In Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism, ed. Charles Bernheimer, 97-106. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP.

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Butor, Michel. 1964. Le livre comme objet. Essais sur le roman 130-157. Paris: Gallimard. Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture. Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature and Art. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. De Friedemann, Nina S. 1997. De la tradición oral a la etnoliteratura. Revista América Negra 13: 19-27. De la Fuente Lombo, Manuel and M. Ángeles Hermosilla Álvarez, eds. 1997. Etnoliteratura: una antropología de ¿lo imaginario? Córdoba: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Córdoba. Eco, Umberto. 1962. Opera aperta: forma e indeterminazione nelle poetiche contemporanee. Milan: Bompiani. Eipper, Chris. 1983. The Magician’s Hat. A Critique of the Concept of Ethnicity. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 19(3): 427-446. Even-Zohar, Itamar. 1990. The Literary System. Poetics Today 11(1): 2744. García Canclini, Néstor. 1990. Culturas híbridas. Estrategias para entrar y salir de la modernidad. Mexico: Grijalbo. Greimas, Algirdas Julien and François Rastier. 1968. The Interaction of Semiotic Constraints, Yale French Studies 41: 86-105. Jason, Heda. 1977. Ethnopoetry: Form, Content, Function. Bonn: Linguistica Biblica. Jiménez Núñez, Alfredo. 1994. Fuentes y métodos de la antropología: consideraciones un tanto críticas. Etnoliteratura. Un nuevo método de análisis en antropología, ed. M. De la Fuente Lombo, 229-247. Córdoba: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Córdoba. Krupat, Arnold. 1992. Ethnocriticism, Ethnography, History, Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lienhard, Martin. 1992. La voz y su huella: escritura y conflicto étnicocultural en América Latina. Lima: Horizonte. Mariátegui, José Carlos. 1976 (1927). El indigenismo en la literatura nacional, I-III. In La polémica del indigenismo, 31-39. La Paz: Mosca Azul. Mignolo, Walter. 1989. ¿Teorías literarias o teorías de la literatura? ¿Qué son y para qué sirven? In Teorías literarias en la actualidad, ed. Graciela Reyes, 41-78. Madrid: El Arquero. Oriol, Carme. 2002. Introducció a l’etnopoètica: teoria i formes del folklore en la cultura catalana. Valls: Cossetània. Paz, Octavio. 1972 (1969). Literatura de fundación. Puertas al campo 1521. Barcelona: Seix Barral.

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Picornell-Belenguer, Mercè. 2003. Política i poètica de l’etnoficció. Escriptura testimonial i representació de la veu subalterna (Doctoral thesis). Barcelona: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Available at http://www.tesisenxarxa.net/TDX-0621104-191157/. —. 2011. El género testimonio en los márgenes de la historia: representación y autorización de la voz subalterna. Espacio, Tiempo Forma. Serie: Historia Contemporánea 23: 113-140. Propp, Vladimir. 1987 (1946). The Nature of Folklore. In Theory and History of Folklore, ed. V. Propp and A. Liberman, 1-64. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press. Riaza Pérez, Fernando. 1997. De nuevo en camino hacia el hombre. In Etnoliteratura. Un nuevo método de análisis en antropología, ed. M. De la Fuente Lombo, 143-196. Córdoba: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Córdoba. Rothenberg, Jerome. 1994. “Je est un autre”: Ehtnopoetics and the Poet as Other. American Anthropologist 96(3): 523-4. —. 2002. Ubuweb: ethnopoetics. Ubuweb, http://www.ubu.com/ethno/index.html (accessed on December 27, 2010). —. 2008. Poetics & Polemics, 1980-2005. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1999. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Tedlock, Denis. 1971. On the Translation of Style in Oral Narrative. The Journal of American Folklore 84(331): 114-133. —. 1975. Learning to Listen: Oral History as Poetry. Boundary 2, 3(3): 707-728. —. 1977. Toward an Oral Poetics. New Literary History 8(3): 507-519.

Notes 1

This article has been translated from Catalan by Patricia Bastida-Rodríguez. Quotes are preserved in the source language and provided with an English translation. 2 My reflection is included within the framework of theoretical reflection proposed by the research group LiCETC (Literatures Contemporànies: Estudis Teòrics i Comparatius [Contemporary literatures: theoretical and comparative approaches], http://www.uib.es/depart/dfc/litecont/) and emerges from an in-depth examination of some issues already discussed, though in embryonic form, in my PhD dissertation (see Picornell-Belenguer 2003). 3 On the connections between collectiveness and otherness, see Krotz (2002, 58-

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59). In his volume Etnicidad. Identidad cultural de los pueblos, Joan Josep Pujadas notes the implicit polysemy and ambiguity in the use of the term “ethnic”, which determines the qualification of cultural aspects that belong to minorities or to communities that are somehow forced to defend their collective identity. Reviewing some of the uses of the concept of “ethnicity” in the sociology of the 70s and early 80s, Chris Eipper (1983, 444) ended up suggesting that there was a need to do away with the sociological terms derived from the word ethnos, which works as a catch-all to amalgamate the multiple group differences that could be mentioned. 4 Maria del Mar Bonet is a Majorcan singer who became famous as part of the Catalan musical movement known as the Nova Cançó [The New Song]. This was a group of singers and composers that, in the final years of the Franco dictatorship, vindicated Catalan culture and the restoration of democracy. Bonet’s performances and compositions have evolved from the protest songs of the 70s to Mediterraneanrooted folk music. 5 Sant Jordi’s Day (Saint George’s Day) is celebrated in Catalan-speaking regions on April 23 by giving books and roses to your loved ones. In the 70s it took on a symbolic signification associated to the defence of Catalan identity and culture. In recent years, it has become a relevant date most especially for the publishing industry, because it sets the dates for publishing and launching new volumes. This commercialisation of a symbolic festivity has produced major controversy in Catalan culture in recent decades. 6 See, for example, the many versions and subversions of the Mona Lisa on the website http://www.megamonalisa.com/ and also in the section “Mona Lisa Images for a Modern World” in http://www.studiolo.org/Mona/MONALIST.htm. 7 In this respect, see James Clifford’s considerations (1988, 215 onwards) on the exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) of a comparative sample of objects of tribal origin and avant-garde objects entitled “‘Primitivism’ in 20th-Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern”. 8 With respect to this confusion, see Walter Mignolo (1989, 42-43). 9 It has also been extended through the research of such groups as the Grup d’Estudis Etnopoètics [Ethnopoetry Studies Group], an affiliate society of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans [Institute of Catalan Studies] created in 2005. 10 Propp writes: “[f]olklore is the product of a special form of verbal art. Literature is also a verbal art, and for this reason, the closest connection exists between folklore and literature, between the science of folklore and literature criticism. [...] Thus, not only is there a close tie between folklore and literature, but folklore is a literary phenomenon. Like literature, it is a verbal art” (1987, 6). Jason also speaks of ethnopoetry as a verbal art, something that links it to literature: “[c]oncentrating on ethnopoetics as a phenomenon, we leave the realm of anthropology proper and approach the area of literary study, because oral literature is first of all literature, a work of art” (1977, 4). 11 As put by Rothenberg in an attempt to define this broad area of creation: “[t]he breakthroughs of the last 100 years in poetry and elsewhere have been marked by new approaches to language and performance. Largely this has been the work of

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several generations of experimental writers and performers, many of them now archived and available thru Ubuweb and related web sites. It fell to some of us, starting with forerunners like Tristan Tzara and Antonin Artaud, to track related but traditional approaches over a wide range of once impenetrable cultures throughout the world. In my own work I was able to bring some of these lines together in gatherings of the 1960s and 1970s like Technicians of the Sacred and Shaking the Pumpkin, as well as in the magazine Alcheringa that I co-edited for several years with Dennis Tedlock. The name that we gave this enterprise, as it applied to the world’s deep cultures—those surviving in situ as well as those that had vanished except for transcriptions in books or recordings from earlier decades—was ethnopoetic” (2002). 12 See www.ubu.com/ethno/. Also see the sections of the journal Alcheringa available at http://www.durationpress.com/archives/ethnopoetics/alcheringa/alcheringa.pdf. 13 In this respect, see especially the texts “The poetics and ethnopoetics of the book and writing” and, more specifically, “Ethnopoetics and (human) poetics”, contained in Poetics and Polemics (Rothenberg 2008, 45-53; 131-138). See also Rothenberg (1994). 14 According to Tedlock (1977, 513), the generic determination of the name “ethnopoetics” refers to the use of the term “poetry” in the broad sense that Aristotle gave to poetics, and in the English sense prior to the 17th century. See also Tedlock (1971). 15 For a justification of a literary reading of “archive” documents, see Spivak (1999, 203). 16 I have discussed this issue in Picornell-Belenguer (2011).

CHAPTER TWO A NEW KIND OF POPULAR LYRIC POETRY? COLLECTIVISATION PROCESSES IN RECENT CATALAN WRITING1 MARGALIDA PONS

This chapter aims to reflect on the new ways of collectivisation of poetry which have appeared in the Catalan-speaking lands over the last decades. The term collectivisation, taken from the field of economic policy, will be used as a metaphor to describe new settings in which I understand that, although competition in the literary market is not suppressed, the law of supply and demand does cease to be valid, in that the greater production and circulation of cultural property does not affect its decreased symbolic value. The poetics of orality, the rise of performance (from the first collective recitals during Franco’s regime to the institutionally sponsored poetry festivals, through countercultural happenings) and the occupation of public space have all brought poetry out of the private sphere which has traditionally characterised it. This shifting social sphere has promoted new ways of contact and interaction with the audience which have somehow led to the popularisation of the genre.

1. Introduction This declaration of intent is based, therefore, on two potentially problematic terms which I cannot discuss at length here but which at least help me establish the coordinates from which I am speaking: lyric poetry and popularisation. This also implies positioning myself in the debate on literary excellence, which I will refer to below. Regarding the former term, beyond the theorisations that see lyric poetry as self-communicative or

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autotelic discourse, as a subjectivised expression, as one’s enunciative act of talking to oneself or as a production with a restricted scope,2 I must position myself in the sphere of what has been called performance poetry, determined by the poet’s presence in the physical place of the enunciation—a place that becomes significant in itself—and in which the oral and aural elements take on special importance (Gräbner 2008). Paul Beasley (1996, 28), in his definition of the concept,3 briefly proposes the alternative term contextual poetry, but rejects it at once, invoking with a hint of irony the fear of arousing the anger of those critics who remain reluctant to consider extra-literary factors in the study of poetic productions. Nevertheless, it is precisely these factors that I wish to address in this chapter. To be precise, not all the cases I will discuss can be considered performances, but, even so, I use the term in a broad sense to denote poetry as a performance which enables simultaneousness in the acts of production and reception. Consequently, the term street poetry, which Kwame Dawes opposes to book poetry and which he relates to a production characterised “by an intense oral execution or performance” (1996, 3), often associated to black culture, is also to be accounted for by the theoretical framework that will inform the present chapter. In other contexts mention has also been made of action poetry (Asher, Earle and Thurman 2004; Frangione 2008), forms of stage poetry or poetic dramas—Francesc Foguet (2008, 5) and Francesc Massip (2003, 58) respectively—, public poetry (Lis Costa)4 or outside the book poetry (Theros 2010, 1), a practice which is rooted in the avant-garde of the beginning of the twentieth century and, subsequently, in the performance of the beatniks, in the spoken word, in slam poetry and in polypoetry. The notion of popularisation, on the other hand, takes us directly to the theoretically complex debate on the definition of popular culture, a term that the English-speaking world and continental Europe have used differently. As used in the former, the term has mostly focused on contemporary mass cultural forms in developed societies (and has therefore been linked to film, radio, television, etc.).5 Until recently, however, Europe has mostly focused on traditional culture. Nevertheless, the ontological impossibility of separating what is traditional from what is contemporary becomes clear when one tries to analyse products such as Hallucinogenic Espontex Sinfonia by Pascal Comelade, a particular hallucinogenic reformulation of the sardana genre; or Labatzuca’s performances. The latter involve poems recited over a mixture of traditional music and electronic bases. In this article I shall only refer to some contemporary performances that have resulted in the public

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visualisation of poetry. In order to do so, I shall follow Raymond Williams (1984), for whom culture is above all a structure of social practices, that is, a form of activity. In the context I shall be examining—the nature and consequences of the public projection that Catalan poetry has achieved in the last few decades—differences between elitist culture, mass or media culture, official or institutional culture and popular culture can be extremely subtle and confusing, especially if analysed from a diachronic perspective: such current forms as poetic battles are related to traditional manifestations like combats de glosadors [improvised Majorcan songs] (more distantly we could cite poetic slam, which involves the notion of competition and even judgement by the audience);6 and when, in The Wildest Way, Enric Casasses recites Jacint Verdaguer’s poems to the music of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” by Bob Dylan—because he considers both poets are the same: “a religious peasant and a rocker who feed on popular poetry” (Colomer 1999)—he creates a hybrid product that simultaneously belongs in the past and the present. Aside from this diachronic dimension, it is also worth exploring the question whether a non-mass consumption, minority (or should we say minoritised?) product like poetry can really be popular. It is worth remembering in this sense that some scholars (Pujol 2007, 115) propose, following Dan Ben-Amos, the term comunicació artística en petit grup [artistic communication in small groups] as one of the alternatives to the romantic notion of popular or traditional literature. Has the proliferation of recitals, actions and performances turned poetry into another (non-lyric) genre? Or are we facing the emergence of a new kind of popular lyric poetry? Either way, we must inquire into the meaning of the verb popularise: is it the provision of general access to poetry as a genre, led by an emphasis on orality and the elimination of the filters of the printed book and private reading?; or does it simply involve, on the contrary, the assimilation of the content of poems in such a way that they reach non-specialised audiences and may have an impact outside the literary world?

2. Two hybrid cases: From transmedial play to the popular avant-garde Two instances can serve as examples of these intersections. To begin with, how could we define shows like Salvatge cor [Wild Heart] by the poet Albert Roig, conducted in collaboration with musicians, choreographers and audio-visual creators? Even though Roig links it to Ausiàs March,7 and this takes us directly to Ovid, the title cannot but evoke Carles Riba,

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one of the contemporary poets whose output frequently stands amongst the most complex—or the least popular, if we want to put it that way. Yet poems gain access to circuits they would not have accessed in book format, and have been disseminated in such diverse arenas and platforms as the Casa de Cultura in Girona, the auditorium of the UGT trade union in Barcelona, the “PROPOSTA” Poetry and Polypoetry Festival and the Mediterranean Festival of Poetry. In fact, these, and not the printed book, are the spaces that the author considers the natural habitat for these texts: “some songs from Wild Heart […] will never appear in another book, it is forbidden, they are only for festa [fiesta]”, he claims (Nopca 2008, 67). For festa…Yet is this truly a festa popularising poems or elitist transmedial play? Have the texts in Wild Heart ceased to be poetry to become something else through stage projection and their combination with other artistic languages? Francesc Massip and Iban Beltran have used the term mixed typologies to designate shows where the poetic word takes shape on stage in the voice and / or movement of the performer-reciter, stimulated by a sonorous space and different kinetic, visual or audio-visual components. (Massip and Beltran, 2005, 367)

And, although for some critics this fusion does not contribute anything new,8 it is true that Roig’s words have come out of a context inhabited mainly by poets to address more heterogeneous audiences. Josep Massot writes in La Vanguardia that Wild Heart indicates the end of the lack of communication between artists, poets, musicians and people involved in the dance and theatre scenes: first, poets left their desks to find an audience at festivals and night clubs; then they were joined by musicians, theatre, dance... (2003, 32).9 This leaving of desks gives away the importance of location in poetic performance; however, the metaphor used by the journalist also gives a glimpse of the conception of the poet as an isolated being who at certain times comes out to meet with the masses. As if s/he were not a part of them. This is a conception inherited from the culture of resistance of the 1970s. Wild Heart brings poetry out of enclosed lyric poetry and places the poetic subject in an active position, “halfway between song, rhapsody and speech” (Bombí-Vilaseca 2004, 8); as a result, although it does not disappear, the subjectivity of the discourse becomes a represented subjectivity. I would say that the result is a medial fusion which, by affecting the pragmatic axis of poetic recital, also modifies the meaning of texts. Thus, the connotations of the enumeration in “Self-Portrait” by the Brazilian Manoel de Barros, which Roig incorporates in his recital, differ

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substantially depending on whether the poem is read in silence or is, on the contrary, oralised: Unes alicates cremoses Un obridor d’albes Una agulla imperdible d’agafar silencis Una rosca de vellut Un clau que remoreja Uns estiradors d’horitzons Una pala per fer munts i més munts de vent Un colador d’oblits [Some creamy pliers A dawn opener A safety-pin for fastening silences A screw made of velvet A nail that rustles A straightener of horizons A spade to shovel piles and more piles of wind A strainer of oversights]

In a silent reading, this accumulation of dis-objects is psalmodic, because syntactic parallelism reinforces the principle of equivalence, which Jakobson considered the main trait of poetic language. Furthermore, the fast eye of the reader, moving rightwards, immediately cancels out the suspense of finding out what adjective or phrase defines the properties of each of these unusual tools. On the other hand, if read aloud, the enumeration loses monotony, because each word, due to the fact that it is detached from the others, is singled out, in such a way that the surprise effect is constant. Nevertheless, to consider Wild Heart a clear instance of popular poetry is problematic, because the poems and their arrangement do not result from improvisation, neither are they presented as unfinished products, nor do they become producerly—a word coined by John Fiske (2006, 122), inspired by Roland Barthes’ terminology, to refer to the hybrid entity of texts that are at the same time writerly (that is, requiring the cooperation of the recipients) and popular (because they do not require extreme intellectual effort by these recipients). Let us now move on to the second example. Although they— literally—move in very different circuits to those frequented by Albert Roig, the immaterial spoken journals and walked journals that Carles Hac Mor and Ester Xargay have been organising since the 1990s raise similar questions regarding the nature of poetry. If Wild Heart clearly defines the distances between authors and audiences, on the other hand this distance is

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undecidable in spoken and walked journals. The spoken journal De viva veu [Out loud], inspired by an initiative at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, consisted in inviting artists, poets and anyone who wanted to do something. The invitations were absolutely open. Nobody directed or organised anything, and so everything was improvised. They were very successful in terms of attendance and lasted for hours and hours. Participants ranged from fully-established to young, spontaneous artists. Around fifteen or twenty such sessions were held, always in a different place, such as bars, book shops, artists’ studies… with no official sponsorship whatsoever (Hac Mor, e-mail, 2010; see Costa 2001, 84-86 for further information on spoken and walked journals). The word journal thus takes on the double meaning of publication and show, and the fact that anyone can take part provides it with a new festive dimension which quickly metamorphoses into new formats: out of spoken journals come forth walked journals—performative itineraries held in squares, streets or street corners of different towns and cities with certain points of contact with the situationist drift, in that, to use a metaphor by Michel de Certeau, from their wanderings, walkers spell out a text they cannot read. From these initial experiences many requests to perform spoken or walked journals arose in universities, museums and cultural centres, but “this no longer had, could not have, the spirit of the first spoken journals” (Hac Mor, e-mail, 2010). Nevertheless, and despite the fact that what started as an action has now become more strictly speaking a string of itinerant recitals of poetry or poet parades,10 the journals have continued— in the setting of the Poetry Week in Barcelona or even as sailed journals (in Barcelona, at the Ebro Delta...)—and, if we understand traditionality as a relational attribute rather than an intrinsic one, it could be said that they have become traditional. When referring to them, Hac Mor insists on seeing in them the audience’s reactions as a key element: a young girl who leans out of the window, as if hypnotised, to listen to the poems; a man with a leg cramp which does not end until the recital is over... (2005, 11). All in all, these curious types of ergodicity do not conceal the anxiety produced by institutionalisation: “Let us try not to consolidate them, to maintain the anarchy, not to become professionals” (Hac Mor, e-mail, 2010). Are walked journals popular because they happen in the street in a non-professional way, because of the type of texts that are recited there or due to the sort of audience they have? How can this be related to the research-infused, and so non-mainstream style of Hac Mor’s writings— linked since the 1970s to textualism and conceptual art—and Ester

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Xargay’s videoart? Ought we to create the hybrid label of popular avantgarde for Hac Mor and Xargay’s poetic performance? Perhaps the answer to this has something to do with their rejection of the ideas of intelligibility and purpose that artists have expressed on several occasions: on the one hand, if the aim of art is not to be understood, there cannot be easy or difficult poetry and, therefore, popularity and elitism are no longer opposing concepts; on the other hand, if artists do not adopt teleological positions, no reader will ever get lost in the paths of their work, simply because these paths lead nowhere. The former idea is well reflected in the poetics published by Carles Hac Mor in the anthology Sense contemplacions [Without hesitation]: “My writing— which is de-automatised automatic writing—can only seem difficult or unintelligible to people who look for more than there is in the materiality of the poem, in the mere concatenation of words that make it up” (2001, 107). Or in some lines by Ester Xargay which consider the circularity of art: I si les intencions que l’artista o l’escriptor desen en l’obra d’art o darrere cadascun dels mots d’un poema tinguessin un caire incestuós? (Xargay 1999) [And what if the intentions that the artist or the writer store in the work of art or behind each of the words of a poem were to have an incestuous hue?]

The latter idea is reflected in a conversation between Carles Hac Mor and Antoni Clapés which suggests an antifinalist understanding of the creative space: in art, in poetry, in fact there is no journey, or it is a journey to nowhere or to the unknown. The path is made by walking. If we were to know what will come after a step we take, we would not take it, this next step. If we were to know where we are going with our art or poetry, we would already be there. (Hac Mor and Clapés 2006, 20)

3. The popular as resistance, the shift towards the recreational, and institutionalisation Popularisation has been a recurring question in the analysis of Catalan culture over the last few decades. The origin of many of the current

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discussions on the issue is the resistentialist discourse of the 1970s, which, in the context of the late (and post-)Franco era, identifies a viable identity and culture in the act of recovery (or even creation) of a true popular culture. The Congrés de Cultura Catalana [Catalan Culture Conference] reacts against the vision of popular culture as complementing refined culture and claims that popular literature will be that which, made by and for the popular classes, is placed at their service, thus rejecting the paternalist concept of a literature elaborated by the elite who water down proposals, both in form and content, in order to be ‘understood’ by the people. (Congrés de cultura catalana 1978, 338)

However, it is also recognised that the demand for a popular culture—and thereby a literature—is very much long term and requires conditions of social progress, advanced democracy and self-government which could make access to the management of culture possible for the Catalan popular classes. (Congrés de cultura catalana 1978, 339)

Even though these declarations do not cease to be aporetic—in that they still inevitably come from an intellectual elite—they reveal the understanding of popular culture as politically committed. Popularisation also makes its presence felt in the debates on different genres. In the case of poetry, it is linked to the question of realism and political commitment. Miquel Desclot, one of the authors that Àlex Broch (2007, 19) considers to be most representative of the emergence of a new poetic process in the 1970s, argues in Serra d’Or with Emili Martínez Ballester, who accused him of obscurity and intellectualism: Ell entén la paraula poble a la manera de Brecht, és a dir: poble entès com a proletariat; del qual ell, el Sr. Martínez, s’exclou amb una magnífica demostració de paternalisme del bo, quan afirma: “Si parlem al poble, parlem-li, però que ho entengui”. Quan jo escrivia “poble” entenia estirp amb una mateixa llengua i la corresponent cultura. […] [É]s absurd voler arribar al poble des d’una tribuna, perquè a mi, essent com sóc del poble, no em cal arribar-hi, que ja hi sóc! (Desclot 1972, 27) [He understands the word people à la Brecht, that is, people understood as the proletariat; from which he, Mr. Martínez, excludes himself with a magnificent demonstration of paternalism of the best kind, when he states: “If we are to speak to the people, let us speak to them, but let them understand”. When I wrote “people” I understood lineage with one and the same language and the corresponding culture. […] it is absurd to want to reach the people from a platform, because as far as I am concerned, being

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as I am one of the people, I have no need to reach them, I am already there!]

All this helps Desclot to distance himself from historical realism: the poets belonging to the historical-political-civic-social commitment faction woke up one fine day with the quaint intention of arousing the people with poetry—the people were the ones beneath them. And, of course, the people saw them coming and would have none of it. (Desclot 1972, 28)

The reasons for the failure of the realistic current may be related to its instigators’ lack of popular awareness: the realism of Brecht or Salvat-Papasseit was a realism from within, and therefore, authentic and valid. Hence intelligent. Instead, the attempted realism of the historical-political-civic-socio-committed mummies is a realism from above, and therefore, false and incomprehensibly obtuse. (Desclot 1972, 28)

Deep down, the issue Desclot raises is the need to unify the labels from the people and for the people within a single subject of poetic enunciation. Both Desclot’s writing and the conclusions of the Congrés de Cultura Catalana are, in different ways, responses to the perception that poets are beings that are isolated from real problems and whom society distrusts. Joaquim Molas begins his article “Retòrics i terroristes en la poesia catalana de postguerra” [Rhetoricians and terrorists in post-war Catalan poetry] by saying that the history of contemporary poetry “is the history of a crisis of confidence of society towards poets and their work and of poets towards the society they live in [...]” (1977, 3); furthermore, he maintains that it is the poets themselves that mistrust language as a subject of work, which leads them to instrumentalise it and place all their emphasis on the possibilities of its content. According to Molas, an extreme situation of this instrumentalisation was the Nova Cançó [New Song] (1977, 5). For their part, Vicenç Altaió and Josep M. Sala-Valldaura point to “society’s already proverbial mistrust of poets, who are always in two minds between the ivory tower and a walk in the town square” (1979, 15) and they consider that a poet’s rapprochement to society ought to be produced outside official channels: while the cultural establishment—official critique, universities—does not devour the marginalised response, as long as it does not make the adventure kitsch or commercial, it is possible to draw poetry and society together. (Altaió and Sala-Valldaura 1979, 15-16)

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Concern, therefore, exists about the popular or unpopular nature of poetry, but this concern seems to stem from the decontextualising assumption that, for the poet, society is a mere backdrop which allows him / her to remain outside the discursive networks that make it up. Since the 1980s the debate on the presence of the poet in society has changed shape. Poets more closely linked to the countercultural and libertarian scene, such as Enric Casasses, Jordi Pope, Xavier Sabater, Jaume Sisterna and Joan Vinuesa, and bands such as O així and Sopa Negra—with performances in bars, cultural associations and prisons—give new meanings to the oralisation of the word. Well acquainted with this time, David Castillo relates them to the beat generation and dub poetry, and considers them resistant at a moment in time, the early 1980s, characterised by “the drunkenness of money and the cocaine of yuppism” (1996, 3). If public reading had been traditionally considered a simple way of representing a written text—always conceived as the original of poetic communication— now the very act of reading—or, rather, diction—is becoming increasingly central, in such a way that both the default association of poetry with writing and the hierarchies that this involves enter a process of dissolution.11 Likewise, the ut pictura poesis paradigm, as described by Ricardo Senabre (1991, 195), arguably loses some of its validity. Over the centuries, literary pleasure has gradually divorced acoustic perception to approach visual perception, and has lessened its links with music to strengthen them with painting. Performance, as Bartomeu Ferrando points out (1988), is not a sort of representation—because attributing a mimetic or reproductive nature to art clashes with the recognition of its transforming capacity—but rather, in any event, presentation. Thus, orality is no longer the physical coating of meaning: it could more accurately be regarded as its twin. Alfons Gregori, for instance, dared to link the modulations of the voice of Enric Casasses to gender tensions12 and, referring to elocution in his “Sextina”, to the expression of sexual desire.13 Even the notion of text teeters, closely besieged by the concept of script-score.14 The consideration that in literature contexts is either nonexistent or self-generated, put forward among others by critics such as Dolors Oller, becomes, thus, questionable, among other things because understanding the poem as something external to discourse is beset with many problems.15 Poetry is becoming more and more of a specific location, with a specific audience, with a speaker who specifies the meaning through intonation and gesture. The role of the recipient also changes. The presence of the audience becomes a determining element—even though, as Ferrando observes

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(1988), unlike what occurs with the happening, their participation has more to do with mental complicity than with physical performance. Paul Zumthor (1983, 64-65) argues that the function of oral poetry is related to the horizon of the listener’s expectations, and states that a collectivised poem summons up so many feelings that its initial purpose, reabsorbed by the context, is rendered irrelevant—the case of the polyvalence of the song “Lili Marleen” during the second World War is a clear example of this. In short, all the elements that make up discourse are characterised by circumstantiality, with the understanding that the term circumstance no longer has a pejorative or secondary meaning and thus becomes the idiosyncratic nucleus of the creation. The reinforcement of presentiality—the emphasis on the body of the author, on the audience, on location—causes an inevitable weakening of the meaning..., but only of the perceived meaning in its most transcendent sense. The utilitarian understanding of a public presentation that had prevailed in the previous decade does not disappear, but the concept of a self-sufficient meaning, which at times reaches the zaum of phonetic poetry, takes on more importance. It is no accident that Enric Casasses, in reference to Albert Subirats Martori, should write that a constitutional trait of his artistic personality was that the “phonetic poem […] was among his most successful, the most his, the most sincere, the one that most reached everyone, all audiences” (2003, 50). The poem alluded to was entitled “Retrodique dat vense dio vellini socromot gamperis iet m. kricopski kricocopski”. The fact that Subirats’ most popular composition should be a phonetic poem indicates that the linguistic instrumentalisation that Joaquim Molas attributed to Nova Cançó authors is no longer produced. In the 1980s, a decade characterised by strong formalistic trends, these countercultural poets distance themselves from the mainstream. They practise, as it were, a different sort of formalism, based on the phonic materiality of the word rather than on the submission of discourse to conventional rhetorical patterns. In a text originally published in 1977, the US poet Jerome Rothenberg characterises the new paradigm of performance in terms of a processual understanding of art (which no longer has anything to do with inherent aesthetic-formal characteristics, but rather with what the artistic object does), of audience participation,16 and of a new perception of time derived from the fact that the work happens at a real time (2008, 128-129).17 Within this framework, reciting poems begins to mean something else, which, in the Catalan context, often has to do with the vestiges of pop rather than with those of resistentialism. For Julià Guillamon (2004, 2), the pop of the 1960s is the result of the perception that Catalan culture must

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update its referents if its social presence is to be recovered, and implies “a vast marketing operation to discredit resistance culture”, as well as “the breakdown of the paradigm of realism and of engaged art that had survived until that time” (1989, 20). And when Guillamon himself forewords the second edition of La cosa aquella [That Thing] by Enric Casasses, he speaks about the popularist forms with which it is expressed, his preference for Verdaguer, “who is not kitsch, but rather pop” and who represents “the very essence of poetry of a popular expression” (1991, 10).18 Moreover, Mingus B. Formentor, who sees in the texts of Casasses an infrequent mixture of populism, psychodelia and romanticism, returns to the opposition between kitsch and pop: “if he were not a key voice in Catalan pop culture, we would be tempted to say that before us we have the quintessence of the kitsch poet” (1994, 118). We have moved from what is popular to pop: if in the 1970s popular culture was seen as a militant manifestation, now it seems to be perceived as a network of productions / performances which, although possibly not entirely identified with mass culture, does embrace the latter’s entertaining dimension. Casasses links its practice and the very act of poetic transmission to the physicality of the word. He puts it thus: “a poem is recited, as it always has been. It is the language. If there is no intonation, there is no poem. And there is gesture and all” (Morén 2002, 3). This crack that Casasses and others open up becomes ever wider and is transformed in the 1990s under the auspices of the concept of polypoetry coined by Enzo Minarelli in a manifiesto which, nevertheless, perhaps in an attempt to undermine the classical spirit of this sort of declaration, pays more attention to technical questions than to the social impact of the poetic endeavour. Polypoetry—a term which Minarelli considers fairer than poetic performance because, despite the multimediality it implies, it gives priority to sonorous aspects—is defined by the play with visual, phonetic, gestual, action and electronic components. According to Xavier Sabater (1990), it has a keen social meaning: arising from a necessary rapprochement to people after a time of excessively literary, intellectual and postmodern poetics, it is best materialised live and in contact with the audience. Even though the term rapprochement above is problematic, because it takes us back to the consideration that the poet is constituted outside what is social, an integration of the poem has arguably taken place in the dynamics of everyday life. Poetry has increased its public presence through a range of activities and events (festivals, assemblies, venues with scheduled seasons, musication...), which lead to the concept of collectivisation with which this chapter opened.19 The poem becomes

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valuable cultural worth. This in turn often implies institutional sponsorship, which brings about a dissociation between the poetic text and its frame: poetry in itself may continue to be a form of rebellion but, if disseminated from platforms controlled by the managers of the cultural system, this rebellion becomes, at least, relativised. Thus, for instance, the use of public space as a place of art no longer has the rebellious character that characterised the 1970s, but rather falls into programmes designed by different public administrations that are eager to make poetry reach the street, the latter having become a disconcerting stage which simultaneously exudes order (town planning, traffic regulations, the cultural agenda) and tolerates disorder (yelling, unauthorised demonstrations). The street is thus an illegible sign of a contradictory nature. It is important to note that this process in which counterdiscourses are swallowed up through neutralising incorporation cannot be reduced to countercultural, alternative poetry; it is equally applicable to that other poetry disseminated through more traditional platforms. Proof of this is the appointment of Barcelona’s Poet of the City, an Aulic distinction that is awarded the winner of the Jocs Florals and which, among other distinctions, binds the winner to writing a nuptial poem to be read during the wedding ceremonies held at the City Hall.

4. ...And the reception of all this: Between excellence and tuning Critics position themselves differently in the face of these new formats and patterns of poetic production and dissemination. Some authors, such as Francesc Massip and Ibon Beltran, warmly welcome the new fusion performances in which immediacy of contact with the audience is an essential element (2005, 370). Massip, furthermore, understands that one of the most truly free and unique phenomena in recent years is poetry’s rise onto the stage, “where it should never have come down from” (2005, 48). Likewise, he claims that Do’m by Enric Casasses is a piece that somehow manages to avoid the abuse of both non-places and nameless characters (he, she...) so frequently found in contemporary dramaturgies so as to return to the aesthetics of specification focused on Barcelona. Massip is pleased that a canonical theatre venue such as the Sala Beckett should have entrusted the task “to poets that ensure a renewed interest in the spoken word, above the servitude of the banal narrative characteristic of televised fictions” (2003, 58). In reviewing the show Wamba va!, designed by Eduard Escoffet, Gerard Altaió, Martí Sales and Josep Pedrals, Massip alludes to a new quillo20 aesthetics which embraces tuning and is sarcastic

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towards the cultural simulacrum the university may have contributed to spreading: […] [D]efugen la puresa del gènere i s’exposen a la infecció. És més, l’activen, fins i tot se la inoculen. Contaminen el vers d’estirabots escènics, ocupen el Mercat de les Flors amb automòbils tunejats amb llibres. El tuning és l’acte de transformar l’aspecte dels cotxes en operacions cosmètiques d’estètica quilla, aquí elevada a l’alta cultura gràcies a les Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, que ha proporcionat a l’espectacle estocs de llibres condemnats a la guillotina, d’aquells que recullen les bajanades que s’ensenyen a la universitat i que els seus lectors estudiants— i molts professors—mai no compren, ans fotocopien. (Massip 2005, 48) [ […] They shun the purity of the [poetic] genre and expose themselves to infection. What is more, they activate it; they even inoculate themselves with it. They pollute verse with theatrical nonsense; they occupy the Flower Market with automobiles tuned with books. Tuning is the act of transforming the aspect of cars with quillo cosmetic operations, here elevated to high culture thanks to the [academic publishing house] Publicacions l’Abadia de Montserrat, which has provided the show with a stock of books condemned to the guillotine, those that compile the nonsense taught at university and which their student readers—and many lecturers—never buy but photocopy.]

The medical-pathological metaphors that accompany the text above (infection, inoculation...) and the critique of publishers’ policies resulting in the elimination of book stocks allude to poetry embracing a new trash aesthetics, and consequently recycling and, in the terminology of Umberto Eco, use as opposed to interpretation. Similarly, in his analysis of current ways of making poetry public apart from books—videopoetry, performance, festa [fiesta] and intimate reading—Carles Hac Mor invokes the concepts of carnivalisation and contamination: Una altra qüestió són els recitals com a celebració, si fa no fa anàrquica i caòtica, dels poemes, en la qual moments esplèndids i d’altres d’abominables es barregen per formar un tot que podem inscriure en l’anomenada tradició popular del Carnaval. Aquestes “festes”, en què participa tothom qui vol, han contaminat tots els altres recitals, en els quals hi ha força intervencions que no són sinó brometes fàcils que cerquen l’aquiescència segura. Altrament, és evident que quan hom té molt d’auditori tendeix a abocar-li poemes que sap que li agradaran. (Hac Mor 2006, 9) [Another question is the recital as a celebration, more or less anarchic and chaotic, of poems, in which splendid and abominable moments blend to form a whole that could be included in the so-called popular tradition of Carnival. These festes, which are open to everyone, have contaminated all

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other recitals, in which there are many interventions which are no other than easy banter that seek guaranteed acquiescence. Otherwise, it is evident that in front of a large audience one tends to pour out poems one knows will please them.]

If Massip, Beltran and Hac Mor lay particular stress on the perversity of conceiving poetry as a pure genre, Eduard Escoffet, wearing the masks of both the poet and the chronicler, reviews the phenomenon of public reciting emphasising the importance of the audience over that of the poet: I potser, més que parlar dels poetes, caldria parlar del públic. D’una banda, perquè, tot i que ben sovint alguns puristes (“tietes del sentit”, en diu en Mor) i altres petulants fan un grup—“els altres”—amb un cert menyspreu, no hi ha gaire cosa en comú entre tots els poetes que pugen damunt un escenari a recitar. […] I de l’altra, perquè de la recepció de tot això se’n parla ben poc, encara menys que dels tramoistes que fan possible, amb recursos i suports mínims, que existeixin plataformes per alçar la veu dels poetes. (Escoffet 2002, 105) [And perhaps, rather than the poets, we ought to talk about the audience. On the one hand, because, although some purists (nannies as it were, says Mor) and other petulants quite often form a group—“the others”—with a certain disdain, there is practically nothing in common among all the poets who go on stage to recite. […] And, on the other hand, because little is said about the reception of all this, even less than about the stagehands that, with the bare minimum of resources and support, make it possible for platforms to exist from which to raise the voice of the poets.]

In rejecting the dictatorship of meaning, Escoffet is in full agreement with Carles Hac Mor, and takes great care not to put all these new poets of orality in the same group, let alone consider them other elitists.21 Instead, he believes in the potential appeal that orality has meant—which “has taken poetry to many places that were simply unthinkable before” and “helped to draw many people towards poetry” (2002, 106)—and takes pride in the fact that the bulk of the audience of his Viatge a la Polinèsia [Journey to Polynesia] should not be specialised. Other critics, however, have a more detached, perhaps more sceptical, view of these phenomena. Manuel Guerrero (2001, 16 and 23) refers to the loss of prestige and social interest that poetry experienced at the end of the 1980s, and does not see festivals or poetic readings as a symptom of public recovery, but, rather, invoking the notion of the entertainment society theorised by Guy Debord, as a way of generating passive spectators: La proliferació de recitals i de lectures poètiques, al llarg de tots els territoris de llengua catalana, des dels anys noranta, és un dels fenòmens

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Chapter Two més interessants de la poesia contemporània, que contrasta amb la davallada de les vendes i de l’edició de llibres de poesia. La poesia catalana ha guanyat espectadors passius però ha perdut lectors actius. Una constatació més de la consolidació de la societat de l’espectacle. A diferència dels anys setanta, en què el component polític i revindicatiu era essencial, a partir dels anys noranta s’imposa el caràcter lúdic i ritual en l’acte públic de la lectura poètica. (Guerrero 2001, 36) [The proliferation of recitals and poetic readings all across the Catalanspeaking territories since the 1990s is one of the most interesting phenomena in contemporary poetry, and stands in stark contrast to the drop in sales and the number of poetry books published. Catalan poetry has gained passive spectators but lost active readers. Further evidence of the consolidation of the entertainment society. Unlike the 1970s, when the political, protest component was essential, since the 1990s the recreational, ritual character has prevailed in the public act of poetry reading.]

Leaving aside whether the reader of a book really is more active than the spectator of a recital, here arises another interesting issue: must the relationship between protest and entertainment necessarily be exclusive? Can the word not serve play and contestation at the same time? In a more recent work, Guerrero (2007, 15) discusses a scenario in which poetry, practically driven back into clandestinity, needs injections of self-esteem like the recital of Catalan poetry put together by three greats of US underground culture, Lou Reed, Patti Smith and Laurie Anderson, at an event organised by the Ramon Llull Institute in New York. Paradoxically, some (in this case American) underground culture may somehow mirror the status of official or institutional Catalan culture, which speaks volumes about the peculiarity of the mechanisms of symbolic representation that operate in the Catalan literary system. Along similar lines, Francesc Parcerisas conducts a detailed analysis of the contemporary poetry dissemination outlets, poetry being a genre which, he considers, has returned to its origins, when the audience was not a reading audience but rather a gathering of different peoples who listened in town squares, in the market place or in castles, whereby we could talk about a certain “medievalisation” of our world (2002, 95-96). He welcomes the new dissemination outlets, but this does not preclude him from considering them a sort of introduction to serious reading: let deeds come after incitement, let the main course come after the starters, let us see book stalls appear at recitals, and we shall manage to turn spectators into buyers, listeners into readers (Parcerisas 2002, 102)

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It seems, then, that, albeit somehow mitigated, the written word continues to reign supreme, just as the concept survives of reading as a private act. More extreme is the perception of other critics and writers such as Jaume Aulet and Miquel de Palol, who warily observe what they understand as a demagogic provision of poetry whilst they demand excellence—a certain excellence, let us be clear about this—over and above spectaclisation. Aulet writes: Alerta, però: saber compaginar bé creació poètica i espectacle no és per si mateix un valor literari. No estem parlant de teatre. Aquesta circumstància pot dur fàcilment a distorsionar les valoracions. Hi ha poemes—poètiques senceres—que no són per ser llegides ni molt menys per ser interpretades, per la qual cosa difícilment podran treure rendiment d'aquesta plataforma de difusió. I no per això—tothom hi estaria d'acord—són menys interessants. Però també ens podem plantejar la cosa a la inversa. Pot haver-hi casos en què el poema és concebut ja directament per a ser recitat, la qual cosa ens remet, certament, a un gènere de tradició popular i, per tant, a uns paràmetres de valoració que no són els de la literatura culta. Els rapsodes més il·lustres, que segurament són també els que més arrenquen l'entusiasme del públic, ho haurien de tenir present. (Aulet 2008, 86-88) [Some caution is called for here, however: a good combination of poetic creation and spectacle does not have literary value per se. We are not talking about theatre. This circumstance may easily lead to biased assessments. There are poems—whole poetics—which are not meant to be read, let alone performed, which is why they will hardly profit from this dissemination platform. But by no means—everyone would agree—are they any less interesting for it. However, we can also consider the opposite. There may be cases in which the poem is conceived directly to be recited, which certainly takes us back to a genre of popular tradition and, thereby, to assessment parameters other than those applicable to refined literature. The most illustrious rhapsodists, which are also surely the ones that most arouse the audience’s enthusiasm, should remember this.]

This return to the distinct categories of art (the belief that there are some values that are literary and others that are not, and that it is possible to make a clear distinction between refined and popular culture) can also be glimpsed in the streams of invective that Miquel de Palol hurls from the newspaper Avui against the recitals and conferences that accommodate “alternative, fun” poetry, aimed at those who cannot stand conventional poetry, “which as everyone knows is dusty, completely boring, outdated, in short indigestible” (Palol 2003b, 7). Palol questions the educational capacity of these new dissemination platforms:

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Chapter Two Dubto molt que el resultat sigui acostar als gèneres aquells ciutadans que no hi entenen i que no els interessen; el que sí que és segur és que a partir del moment en què ens considerem obligats a vendre la poesia com si fos rap, Bach i Mozart com si fossin jazz, l’astrofísica com una atracció de parc temàtic i l’arqueologia com les aventures de l’Indiana Jones, el resultat serà que se n’allunyaran aquells a qui sí que els atreuen tals activitats, si no se’n vol dir disciplines per no espantar cap disminuït mental. (Palol 2003b, 7) [I very much doubt that the result will be to bring citizens closer to genres they neither understand nor are interested in; what is for sure is that from the moment we feel obliged to sell poetry as if it were rap, Bach and Mozart as if they were jazz, astrophysics as if it were a theme park and archaeology as if it were the adventures of Indiana Jones, the result will be that we will push away those who are attracted by such activities, not to say disciplines lest the mentally disabled should be put off.]

I agree that poetry must not apologise for keeping the format in which it was conceived and that genre / stylistic transfers per se do not guarantee communicative efficiency. Yet it would be worth remembering that not only do these recitals bring poetry close to uninterested citizens but they also open up new ways to readers who are already hooked. I do not know whether this makes me mentally disabled, but my perception of poets such as Jacint Verdaguer or Maria Antònia Salvà has changed dramatically after having them recited by the likes of Casasses or Josep Pedrals. And it has changed not only in an epidermic sense (the enjoyment of the musicality and all other predictable jouissance), but also in a more profound way, which has to do with the recognition of a subjectivity that prospers as a voice, in an indirect yet intense way, behind the description of a landscape or the painting of an everyday scene; of a subjectivity which finds its place in presence. On the other hand, it is worth recalling that, a few days before publishing the aforementioned article, Palol himself applauded another notorious pragmatically-aimed poetic recital, that conducted by Sebastià Alzamora, Hèctor Bofill and Manuel Forcano at Palau Dalmases on election silence day prior to the 2003 elections. This was a special recital because the guests of honour were the Catalan First Ministerial candidates—although it seems that the only ones to attend were Artur Mas and Josep Lluís Carod Rovira—in front of whom Alzamora, Bofill and Forcano read a text in which they vindicated the position of, and respect for, poetry and culture. “I can see here a good practice that should become an established tradition”, proposes Palol, “the poets conducting a reading to the citizens on election silence day, with a front row reserved for the candidates […], publicly summoned so that a record could be kept of all those that skive off” (2003a, 39).

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The allusion to mental disability seems to invoke an extremely circumspect concept of poetry as art. The need to distinguish the question of literary quality from the means whereby the poetry is disseminated, upheld by Escoffet, still remains a pending matter. Yet these debates are not exclusive to the field of Catalan. Hence, the poet-mathematician Jacques Roubaud, a member of Oulipo, considers performance poetry part of a calculated strategy, which he categorically calls “the erasure of poetry”, and which has become a catch-all for anything: music, declamation, theatre, acrobatics, “primal screams”..., all with a total disregard for the written word. This Roubaud considers understandable, because, as he himself puts it, if written down on paper it would be “absolutely mediocre” and “deadly boring” (2009, 25). “I have nothing against these activities”—he asserts. In the best cases, they make for a high-quality spectacle. But why call these events “poetry” as opposed to something else? Why not simply call them a PERFORMANCE? (Roubaud 2009, 25)

The old Oulipist avant-garde (oxymoron intended) of the combinatorial play on words versus the new avant-garde of the living word? This may well be the case but here also lies a strictly verbal view of poetry.22 Such views are in agreement with the opinion expressed by Agustín Fernández Mallo in his essay Postpoesía [Postpoetry], although the founder of the Nocilla project departs from a position that is totally different to Roubaud’s: research into the possible existence of poetry as a genre in late postmodernity. In this context, postpoetic poetry—antitraditional and with no revolutionary pretensions—is for Fernández Mallo a laboratory of sorts which opens up to multiple (graphic, scientific, digital) languages, thus rendering obsolete the view that orality and the possibility of declamation are the two definite elements that legitimise a poem. Thus, he claims that “there has been no more harmful practice for literature as a whole and poetry in particular than the ‘declamation’ or ‘theatricalisation’ of a text” (2009, 84). Even if he uses a concept—postpoetry—which initially suggests projection towards the future, Fernández Mallo justifies his position with arguments which have a markedly reactionary appearance: he contends, for instance, that a work should be digested in isolation because it was created in isolation, or that the reciter acts as a coercive filter that may be seen as a breach of the reader’s fundamental rights (2009, 86)—as if the support of print and the publishers’ distribution were not filters or screens between author and reader. In turn, albeit expressing a completely different point of view, Cornelia Gräbner (2007, 78) echoes some words by the British poet Lemn Sissay,

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according to whom performance poetry is dead because the spectacle factor has gained such importance that it has eclipsed the work of the word. For Gräbner, however, the controversial issue is how to understand the concept of performance, which can be seen as a show or as a tool to question social norms and / or the assertion of cultural practices. In this latter sense, performance poetry can be said to have disappeared, because it has undergone a styling process that makes it politically inoperative (2007, 81-82). The wrapping has thus been maintained, but not the core. This is possibly the true debate that should also be undertaken in the Catalan context.

5. By way of conclusion Even if Kwame Dawes considers it is its marginal nature that explains the lack of critical interest in street poetry,23 the Catalan case is completely different. In the last few decades, the diverse forms of orality poetry, polypoetry and mixed expressions of stage or dramatised poetry have aroused the interest of not only critics and academics (as evidenced by the emergence of studies and research projects) but also cultural managers eager to provide the uncertain rubrics of modernity with content. Perhaps the specificity of the Catalan case comes from the fact that in a culture of small geographic and population size the boundaries between street and aulic poetry (or, more generally speaking, between popular and institutional culture) are more perceptibly blurred. This may result in the hybridisation processes inherent to all cultural systems having an effect on not only literary artefacts but also literary criticism. The reasons for this blurring of boundaries must probably be sought in the vestiges of a resistentialist attitude that, arising as the only possible way of survival under Franco’s dictatorship, has outlived both the Franco regime and the democratic Transition, and led to cultural products being assessed with confusing (not to say clearly inadequate) instruments. Thus, the intrinsic quality criterion is often used to assess (or vilify) texts focused on the pragmatism of communicability; and, conversely, the criterion of communicability is used to read texts that do not target a mass readership. Therefore, some consider, not without some anguish, that poetry is an intrinsically difficult genre which ought to be popularised, but they fail to take into account that at certain times it can only exist as an exercise of great intellectual elaboration, which aims to establish a relationship of strangeness rather than harmony with recipients; or which, as happened during Franco’s regime, can only survive in secret. Conversely, others

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criticise the alleged lack of quality and banality of some contemporary poetic performances, failing to take into account that many of today’s poetic festes understand its humour and entertainment or inconsequential elements as a Dadaist way of questioning more organic forms of art (which performers forgo voluntarily and not out of ignorance, since they know them only too well). The debate on new poetic forms (and / or poetic dissemination) is hence formalised in both apocalyptic and integrational terms: supporters of excellence versus supporters of poetic celebration; supporters of the poetry of yesteryear versus versifugal poets. It does not seem to me at all interesting to try and position myself along either of the terms of this reductionist binary opposition (useless when it comes to reading the complexity of poets such as Dolors Miquel, Emili Sánchez-Rubio, Àngels Gregori or Blanca Llum Vidal, among many others). I would rather draw attention to another fact. The last few decades have seen a certain institutionalisation of performance and / or orality poetry, which has ended up representing by default virtually all of Catalan poetry at fairs and international dissemination platforms as well as in the main squares and local cultural exhibition spaces. This process, which has brought about a reversal of the traditional concepts of centre and periphery, also means that the land previously occupied by the first authors of countercultural poetry in the late 1970s and 1980s now lies fallow.24 I believe that dissidence still exists in poetry today. Yet it now must find its own space by fighting not quite so much an adverse but (at least seemingly) favourable political power.

Works cited Altaió, Vicent and Josep M. Sala-Valldaura. 1979. Les darreres tendències de la poesia catalana (1968-1979). Barcelona: Laia. Asher, Levi, Jamelah Earle and Caryn Thurman, eds. 2004. Action Poetry. Literary Tribes for the Internet Age. Bloomington, Indiana: AuthorHouse. Aulet, Jaume. 2008. Consideracions sobre la difusió i la recepció de la poesia catalana. In La literatura catalana en la cruïlla (1975-2008), ed. Isabel Graña and Teresa Iribarren, 75-92. Vilanova i la Geltrú: El Cep i la Nansa Edicions. Beasley, Paul. 1996. Vive la différence! Performance Poetry. Critical Inquiry 38(4): 28-38. Bombí-Vilaseca, Francesc. 2004. L’última Proposta. Avui, December 23.

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Broch, Àlex. 2007 (1985). Sobre poesia catalana. Lectures crítiques, 1973-2006. Barcelona: Proa. Cabo Aseguinolaza, Fernando. 1999. La lírica: un lugar teórico. In Teorías sobre la lírica, ed. Fernando Cabo Aseguinalaza, 9-22. Madrid: Arco. Cano, Genís, ed. 2003. Poètica de la contracultura. Barcelona: Publicacions de la Universitat de Barcelona. Casas, Arturo. 1994. Pragmática y poesía. In Avances en teoría de la literatura, ed. Darío Villanueva, 229-308. Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. Casasses, Enric. 2003. Punt suspensiu: l’obra d’Albert Subirats Martori. In Poètica de la contracultura, ed. Genís Cano, 50. Barcelona: Publicacions de la Universitat de Barcelona. — and Pascal Comelade. 2006. La manera més salvatge. Barcelona: Discmedi. CD. Castillo, David. 1996. Corsaris de la paraula. Avui Cultura, July 18. Colomer, Víctor. 1999. Enric Casasses, poeta i net. http://cac.drac.com/199901/19990129.html. Congrés de Cultura Catalana. 1978. Congrés de cultura catalana, 2. Resolucions. Barcelona: Congrés de Cultura Catalana. Costa, Lis. 1997. Viatge a la Po(lin)esia. Transversal. Revista de cultura contemporània 7: 93-97. —. 2000. El bou de la tristesa s’eixarranca. Viatge a la Polinèsia (19972000). http://www.propost.org/proposta2000/proposta2000_conflis.htm. —. 2010a. Experimental Poetry during the 1990s. Visible Language 35(1): 76-91. —. 2010b. L’oralitat com a experimentació en la poesia catalana de finals del segle XX. In Representacions de la identitat catalana en el món de les avantguardes. Catalonia 3. http://www.crimic.paris-sorbonne.fr/actes/catalonia3/catalonia3.htm. Dawes, Kwame. 1996. Dichotomies of Reading “Street Poetry” and “Book Poetry”. Critical Quarterly 38(4): 3-20. Desclot, Miquel. 1972. La ballaruga dels poemaferits o qui tingui puces que se les espolsi. Serra d’Or 152 (May): 27-28. Escoffet, Eduard. 2002. Crear alçada la veu. Reduccions 75 (January): 103-107. Fernández Mallo, Agustín. 2009. Postpoesía. Hacia un nuevo paradigma. Barcelona: Anagrama. Ferrando, Bartolomé. 1988. Performances poéticas. Valencia: n. p. Fiske, John. 1989. Understanding Popular Culture. London and New York: Routledge.

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Formentor, Mingus B. 1994. Alguna cosa sobre en Casassas. In Escriptura i combinatòria, 117-119. Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya, Departament de Cultura, KRTU. Foley, John Miles. 2002. How to Read an Oral Poem. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Frangione, Nicola. 2008. Performance Art e Utopia Concreta oltre la Multimedialità. Monza: Harta Performing. Gräbner, Cornelia. 2007. Is Performance Poetry Dead? Poetry Review 97(2): 78-82. —. 2008. Performance Poetry. New Languages and New Literary Circuits? World Literature Today Online (January-February), n. p. Gregori, Alfons. 2002. La veu d’Enric Casasses: gènere i distorsió en la poesia catalana contemporània. In Col·loqui Europeu d’Estudis Catalans, vol. 2. La literatura catalana de la democràcia, Christian Camps and Pilar Arnau, ed., 181-187. Montpellier: Centre d’Études et de Recherches Catalanes Université Paul Valéry, Association Française des Catalanistes. —. 2003. “Sextina” de Enric Casassas: un ejemplo de vanguardismo catalán. Studia Romanica Posnaniensia XXIX: 11-20. Guerrero, Manuel. 2001. Pròleg in Sense contemplacions. Nou poetes per al nou segle, 9-99. Barcelona: Empúries. —. 2003. El mito Casasses. La Vanguardia. Culturas, February 19. —. 2007. Las fronteras de la poesía. Ínsula. Revista de Letras y Ciencias Humanas 62(729) (September): 15-16. Guillamon, Julià. 1989. Cultura comestible. Lletra de Canvi 22 (October): 19-22. —. 1991. La gran via de les altures, preface to La cosa aquella, by Enric Casasses, 7-16. Barcelona: Empúries. —. 2002. El pop catalán: una edad de oro. La Vanguardia. Culturas, January 7. Hac Mor, Carles. 2001. La poètica de l’escorpí. In Sense contemplacions. Nou poetes per al nou segle, ed. Manuel Guerrero, 105-109. Barcelona: Empúries. —. 2005. De Maria Cabrera a Francesc Gelonch. Avui Cultura, June 2. —. 2006. Tête à tête: la poesia, més enllà de la lletra impresa. Caràcters 36 (June): 9. — and Antoni Clapés. 2006. Converses. Vic: Cafè Central, Emboscall i H.AAC. Marrugat, Jordi. 2006. Proposta 2000-2004. Festival internacional de poesies + polipoesies. Els Marges 79: 122-123. Massip, Francesc. 2003. “Poedrama” urbà. Avui, December 14.

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—. 2005. Poesia en escena. Avui, April 18. — and Iban Beltran. 2005. Dramatúrgies de fusió: espectacles de poeta. In I Simposi internacional sobre teatre català contemporani, ed. Josep Lluís Sirera, Sharon Feldman et al., 367-377. Barcelona: Institut del Teatre. Massot, Josep. 2003. Albert Roig da música, danza, arte y teatro a su poesía erótica. La Vanguardia, December 3. Minarelli, Enzo. 2007. La voz triunfante. Revista Digital Universitaria, 9(1) (January): 1-12. http://www.revista.unam.mx/vol.9/num1/art02/ene_art02.pdf. Molas, Joaquim. 1977. Retòrics i terroristes en la poesia catalana de postguerra. Els Marges 9: 3-6. —. 1995. Nota per a una cloenda. In El Price dels poetes: 25 anys, 129230. Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona. Morén Alegret, Helena. 2002. Enric Casasses Figueres: “La paraula, i parlar, és la matèria feta font”. Avui Cultura, December 19. Nopca, Jordi. 2008. Escriure: reescriure. Benzina 24 (February): 66-67. Oller, Dolors. 1990. Virtuts textuals. Una tipologia de la paraula poètica. Barcelona: Servei de Publicacions de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Palol, Miquel de. 2003a. El dia dels poetes. Avui, November 18. —. 2003b. El món de la poesia. Avui Cultura, November 30. Parcerisas, Francesc. 2002. Sobre el futur de la difusió de la poesia. Reduccions 75 (January): 95-102. Pujol, Josep M. 2007. Del(s) folklore(s) al folklore de la comunicació interactiva. In Els gèneres etnopoètics: competència i actuació, ed. Joan Armangué and Caterina Valriu, 97-115. Dolianova: Arxiu de Tradicions de l’Alguer / Edizioni Grafica del Parteolla. Rothenberg, Jerome. 2008. Poetics & Polemics. 1980-2005. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press. Roubaud, Jacques. 2009. Prelude: Poetry and Orality. In The Sound of Poetry / The Poetry of Sound, ed. Marjorie Perloff and Craig Dworkin, 18-25. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Sabater, Xavier. 1990. Apuntes para una teoría de la polipoesía. Intermedia. Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Facultat de Belles Arts. http://www.cyberpoem.com/text/theory/sabater_es.html. Sardà, Zeneida. 2004. Joan Colomines, entre l’activisme i l’arxivística. Serra d’Or 538 (October): 14-19. Senabre, Ricardo. 1991. Poesía y oralidad. Tropelías 2: 193-202. Serrà Campins, Antoni. 1999. La tençó popular: el combat de corrandistes, glosadors o enversadors. Els Marges 64: 5-38.

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Storey, John. 2006. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. Harlow: Pearson Education. Theros, Xavier. 2010. Poemes fora del llibre. El País. Quadern, May 13. Williams, Raymond. 1984 (1976). Keywords. New York: Oxford University Press. Xargay, Ester. 1999. Coda per torna. Barcelona Review 13. http://www.barcelonareview.com/13/c_ex.htm. Zumthor, Paul. 1983. Introduction a la poésie orale. Paris: Seuil.

Notes 1

This article is part of the research project La poesia experimental catalana del període 1970-1990 [Experimental Catalan Poetry from 1970 to 1990] (MCI, FFI2009-07086). I am grateful for the reading and suggestions made by Dr Jaume Guiscafrè and Dr José Igor Prieto-Arranz. Translated from Catalan by José Igor Prieto-Arranz. Short quotes in Catalan or Spanish have all been translated into English. Longer, indented quotes are preserved in the source language and provided with an English translation. 2 For an analysis of these theorisations, see Casas (1994) and Cabo (1999). 3 Beasly defined the concept in the following terms: “[performance poetry] is often cast in the vernacular, the everyday idiom and speech patterns of the poet”, with the particularity that “it is often the case that that accent or dialect is offered up not only as a ‘natural’ fact but as a political issue” (Beasley 1996, 29-30). For a critique of the term performance poetry, which I mention below, see Roubaud (2009, 25). 4 Costa coined this term in several articles (2000, 2010a, 2010b) and in some recent unpublished contributions, such as the presentation at the Transformacions Conference (LiCETC, University of the Balearic Islands, 2009), entitled “Poesia pública a la Barcelona dels 90” [Public poetry in the Barcelona of the 90s], and the contribution to the macrofestival Yuxtaposiciones [Juxtapositions] (Madrid, 2008, http://www.experimentaclub.com/yuxt08.htm). 5 For a full discussion of the different meanings of the term popular culture within the Anglo-Saxon tradition, see Storey 2006 (1-12). 6 In this respect, several works by Antoni Serrà Campins can be consulted on combats. Similarities to other manifestations of current poetry can be found not only in the structure of tension that these productions have but also in their performative context. Thus, Serrà explains that combats “would take place on Sunday afternoons and other holidays and, above all, on Saturday evenings and eves of holidays, so that the public could stay up and follow the show until late” and that “the owners of wineries, taverns, cafés and hostels used to organise them in their establishments to attract customers. In this case, spectators did not pay to attend, but were expected to have a drink” (1999, 9). It is not hard to draw a parallel with the poetic shows that regularly take place at Barcelona’s caférestaurant Horiginal or with the slams of Palma’s Cafè L’Antiquari.

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“I call the show “Wild Heart” after the line by Ausiàs March, “Aphrodite has a wild heart, is never a slave to anyone, is always a lady and strikes without mercy” (Massot 2003, 32; our translation). 8 Thus, Jordi Marrugat, in a critique of the DVDs that compile the materials of the Proposta festival, cites Brossa to deny the novelty of Roig by referring to the banality of the pure ecphrase: “Brossa realised that image, gesture and object are significant symbols and, as such, poetry in the making; he used them and sought collaboration with painters and musicians. Now”—he warned—“if because one makes a poem that talks about fish, the other has to paint fish tanks... I find it false and mechanic”. This is one of the reasons why, when Roig invokes in Wild Heart “a terrifying prick and the shiniest pussy” to be presented in “ways of being fucked never seen before”, while images of different sexual positions are projected, he tells us nothing new” (2006, 122). 9 Massot picks up these words by Roig: “For me, it is very interesting to link my poetry to theatrical discourse and to music, to make it more direct so that people can enter further into it. We poets are always alone, writing. And when we do something in public we want to have a good time. And this allows us to voice our words in another, more ironic, way, to play with the subject, look at them from outside” (2003, 32). 10 Or gatherings of bouetes [bulloets] (word created by Eduard Carmona to refer to an improbable hybrid of bou [bull] and poet). 11 As John Miles Foley writes, “the default designation of poetry has become written poetry. That’s why we have to prefix the adjective ‘oral’, because the unmodified noun no longer covers anything but written poetry. That’s also why we resort to other unwieldy phrases to pigeon-hole events and phenomena that our cultural proclivities have silently eliminated from consideration. Thus a ‘poetry reading’ describes a performance (from a published text, of course) before a wellbehaved, often academic audience. Thus ‘spoken-word poetry’—so redundant from a historical perspective—identifies voiced verbal art, verse that is lifted off the page and into the word of presence and experience” (2002, 30). Along similar lines, Kwame Dawes states: “[t]he dismissal of ‘street poetry’ as somehow lesser than the published poem is entirely élitist. The reason it is élitist rests in a fundamental fallacy that is perpetuated by questionable assumptions: that ‘street poetry’ is, by definition, less complex, less rigorous and less literary than the published poem” (1996, 9). 12 According to Gregori, the Casasses author-actor “often presents tremors or forced interruptions, haste to finish a poem, or unexpected, disconcerting silences that take us instead towards a body attacked by feminine hysteria, in contrast to the aggressive reactions of what the psychotherapist Luis Bonino […] calls masculine issues, legitimated or naturalised in daily practices and without pathologisation. Hence, Casasses is nearer to the scenification that Sheila Whiteley […] attributes to Mick Jagger, which breaks with ‘regulatory masculinity’ and investigates a representation of self which is, at the same time, both masculine and feminine” (2002, 183).

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“When the rhapsode-author arrives at the word mata’m a locutionary agony is produced whereby the imperative in question turns out to be barely perceptible and a harsh shudder runs through the auditorium. The idea-intuition that may penetrate in the intellect consists in relating the meaning of the poem to the climax of the sexual act. The voice reified in an external, sexualised flesh moves to the rhythm of the verses. The swaying of the corporeal matter becomes identified with the binary rhythm that floods the text. The end shall then become the orgasm of coitus” (2003, 18). 14 For Enzo Minarelli, “defining ‘text’ as the written component of a poem is inappropriate, because the definition of text concerns poetising what is written. Besides, this term refers to the text that is seen, introduced by cybernauts, that which is looked at by reading-seeing-clicking thanks to the computer mouse. In sonorous poetry, on the other hand, it will be necessary to resort to the definition of script-score, a term that is more typical of the musicological field” (2007, 3-4). 15 Dolors Oller writes: “in the case of discourse, meaning also depends, naturally, on the context, gestuality, or location of both speaker and listener, but in the case of the literary work it is evident that this context is non-existent. In fact, as well as in discourse, context is a basic factor for the construction of the meaning of words; in literature it is the work itself that creates its own context” (1990, 32). 16 Or, on the contrary, even if it may seem paradoxical, its very disappearance: “[a]long with the artist, the audience enters the performance arena as participant— or, the audience “disappears” as the distinction between doer and viewer […] begins to blur” (Rothenberg 2008, 129). 17 For the new meaning of time in oral poetry, see also Zumthor (1983, 245-261). 18 Manel Guerrero concurs: “Enric Casasses’ linguistic capacity to recover and recreate in a totally personal way the orality and rhythm of the Catalan language from the most refined registers to the most popular is really unprecedented and exceptional” (2001, 57). In a later article he insists: “orality, the search for a direct, simple, colloquial language, full of life and rich in nuances and plays, may well be the most remarkable characteristic of Casasses’ poetry” (2003, 14). Note should be taken, however, that the alleged simplicity of the language of Casasses deserves some further discussion. 19 These initiatives have been studied in depth by the Poció research group, linked to the University of Barcelona, and especially by Lis Costa (see 1997, 2000 and 2010b, among other works). 20 This is a derogatory term used in Catalonia to refer to the many immigrants of Andalusian stock that are perceived to be one of the dominant population groups in the industrial belt of many cities in the area. 21 Note should be taken that the expression “the others”, which he uses, intriguingly coincides with the title of the volume 1991 Els altres [The others], a selection of texts from the second issue of the Revista Magnètica [Magnetic Journal] published by Empúries in 1993. Titles like this show that the Catalan system proudly sees itself as othered or, to say the least, heterodox, even though this heterodoxy is being closely watched by the cartographers of the literary market.

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Both Maria Bohigas and Arnau Pons cite Roubeau in their contributions to the Sobretaula [after-lunch conversation] held in May 2010 as part of the Barcelona Poetry programme (available at http://barcelonapoesia.blogspot.com/ and at http://blocs.mesvilaweb.cat/node/view/id/168916). Bohigas considers the incompatibility of poetry and power, denounces the acritical abuse of the epithet trencador [groundbreaking] to refer appreciatively to poets, emphasises Roubeau’s defence of the poem as a linguistic art object as opposed to the rum-rum [humdrum] quality of performance poetry, and blames ignorance for the cultural policy that supports substitute products to the detriment of written works. For his part, Pons calls for hermetism or the hidden recital of poetry as opposed to exhibition strategies. Their contributions offer an in-depth analysis of the public poetry phenomenon. Yet there emerges an understanding of laughter as an exclusively dehumanising, reifying gesture (the summoning of the image of a grandmother who “splits her sides laughing” on hearing a poem about two women chopping each other into pieces, the reference to laughter which Adorno relates to environmental fascism, etc.) which I cannot share. Laughter does not have a univocal symptomatic value: it can reveal unawareness but also irony and protest. 23 “The ‘street poem’ is rarely subject to the scrutiny of critics (because these critics tend not to hang out on the streets) [...]: More crucially, since much of this kind of performance poetry is ‘underground’ and is discovered in night clubs and left-leaning avant-garde ‘readings’, its othered position renders it suspicious and often inaccessible” (Dawes 1996, 6). 24 David Castillo (1986, 3) wonders whether the band O Així was “the last relevant example” of counterculture.

PART II POPULAR CULTURE: FROM THE PAST TO THE PRESENT

CHAPTER THREE FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE FUTURE: THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND AND ITS TRANSCULTURAL VALUE CARLOS SANZ-MINGO

The title of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s most famous novel, The Mists of Avalon, published in 1983, impeccably refers to and summarises everything we know about King Arthur and his world: everything is hidden in mists, like the sacred place of the goddess in Zimmer’s novel. Unlike other popular literary characters, whether or not historical, Arthur is lost in the fog. Medieval authors are, to some extent, to blame for this unclear situation, as they were avid for developing the oral material they had at their disposal, but not interested at all in checking the authenticity of such materials. Arthur’s misty origins lie in the popular folk tradition of the British Isles, more exactly its Western fringe, from where it expanded over the continent very quickly. This is reflected not only in the number of languages and traditions where we can find Arthur, from English to Catalan, French to Galician, German to Greek, but also in the amount of disciplines Arthur has been used in: from paintings to songs, films or even decorative arts. Pre-Raphaelite paintings are famous for portraying fragile damsels in peril, popular in medieval tales, as depicted by William Morris or Dante Gabriel Rossetti, or the infamous and dangerous Morgan Le Fay, preparing a concoction in the famous canvas by Frederick Sandys. Cinema is probably one of the latest cultural phenomena where Arthur and his entourage have been represented, even though the first film with an Arthurian topic dates back to 1904 (Edwin Porter’s Parsifal). Arthurian legends have enjoyed great success both on television and on the silver screen for the last five decades. As for their decorative function, Arthurian motifs can be found in the mosaics at Otranto Cathedral in Italy and also on the walls of Ludwig II’s Neuschwanstein Castle,1 or the archivolt of Modena Cathedral. Wagner’s operas, which the Bavarian king utterly

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enjoyed, are the most famous Arthurian musical expressions, along with Isaac Albéniz’s opera Merlín (1898-1902); but they are not the first ones, since most of the medieval Arthurian ballads and romances were composed to be recited and sung. Even in the 17th century Henry Purcell created his King Arthur, or the British Worthy (1691) with lyrics by John Dryden. In 1960 the musical Camelot, based on T. H. White’s The Once and Future King (1938), became an immediate success which was eventually made into a film by Joshua Logan in 1967, with Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero in the main roles. Thus, the Arthurian tradition, especially in the last century, has come to represent basically what Stuart Hall criticises: “the things which are said to be ‘popular’ because masses of people listen to them, buy them, read them, consume them, and seem to enjoy them to the full” (Hall, quoted in Guins and Zaragoza 2005, 66). As previously stated, medieval authors were not interested in historical research. On the contrary, they were keen on updating the material if this made their patrons happy. One of the most obvious examples of this practice is that of the romances written in France in the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, where the writers were usually sponsored by the nobility. In their writings, Arthur, the brave king who travelled to the Welsh Netherworld with some of his friends to find a magical object and fight against fearsome ogres, giants and witches, becomes a secondary character whose deeds are carried out by his knights, usually of noble lineage. Why this change? As Köhler noted, the Arthurian novel was especially protected in France by those noble families, like Blois-Champagne or Flanders, who constantly opposed the monarchical ideal.2 The nobles were thus interested in being depicted as the active, forward-moving power in society, in opposition to the passive monarchy, isolated from society and its problems. In the 12th century, but before the appearance of French romances, a Welsh monk, Geoffrey of Monmouth, wrote what would become Arthur’s “official biography” in the Middle Ages: Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1139).3 Many “serious” authors, like Castilian King Alfonso X, who used Geoffrey’s text as one of his main sources for the composition of Grande e general estoria (c. 1270), considered truthful the data that Geoffrey gave, when, in fact, he had just elaborated a fantastical story to explain the development of the British Isles whenever his sources failed to bridge gaps between historical events. However, to say that the only true value that Historia Regum Britanniae has is that of creating Arthur’s biography is to misinterpret the whole text and ignore its propagandistic intentions. As his eponym indicates, Geoffrey was probably Welsh although his interests lay

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with the Norman nobility. The second edition of Historia Regum Britanniae is dedicated to the Norman bishop Alexander and to Robert of Gloucester, King Henry I’s bastard son. These two men, along with King Stephen I, were the actual bastions of the expansion of Norman culture in the Old Saxon and Celtic lands. With these dedications, Geoffrey meant to please both the Norman Church and the nobility. The third edition of his work is dedicated to King Henry II and his daughter Eleanor brought it with her as part of her dowry for her wedding with King Alfonso VIII of Castile. This edition was the springboard for the expansion of Arthurian matter in both Castile and Portugal. In the Catalan-speaking area, closer to the European area of influence, Arthurian motifs had already been used by troubadours for some decades.4 Nevertheless, the way in which Iberian authors made use of Arthurian motifs was far from propagandistic and focused more on art itself rather than on political or religious messages, although in one of the three Arthurian ballads, “Tres hijuelos había el rey”, also called “Romance de Lanzarote y el ciervo”, there might be some antiMuslim features.5 Outside Spain, and in the blurry times where the Middle and Modern ages meet, the invention of printing made possible the rapid expansion of Arthurian texts throughout Europe. Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur (c. 1470) was the first book to be printed in the British Isles and it has become one of the strongest influences in subsequent Arthurian literature and cinema (e.g. John Boorman’s Excalibur). With Miguel de Cervantes and Don Quixote (1605, 1615) chivalry novels reached their apogee, which is paradoxical, since Cervantes’s main idea was to criticise this genre for being unreal. After Cervantes, Arthurian literature was to be ignored and only used in satires or parodies. Stephen Knight has commented that, although for many scholars Arthurian literature “went underground, to re-emerge in the nineteenth century” (1983, 149), he rather believes that “it merely recreates the interests and attitudes of the literary elite of the period. The legend did not disappear at all; but it no longer fitted the ideology of that sub-class” (1983, 149). Thus, Arthur’s appearances in comic popular folklore stories became more and more frequent. His former grandness, as represented in Arthurian literature, grew to be the aim of the satires by different authors, out of which Henry Fielding and his Tom Thumb; or the Tragedy of Tragedies (1731) stands out; the mockery is evident, firstly and foremost, in the names of some of the characters of the play (Dollalolla, Noodle, Foodle, Doodle, Huncamanca or Moustacha), but also in the action: this short play has many love affairs which cause the death of all the characters, starting from Tom Thumb, devoured by a cow, and followed

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by the messenger who brings the disastrous news to court, killed by Dollalola, Arthur’s wife but in love with Tom; from here, the characters kill one another in a comic chain reaction, finishing with Arthur himself, who, as the only character left, kills himself. Even the narrator decides to kill himself as well: So when the Child whom Nurse from danger guards, Sends Jack for Mustard with a Pack of cards; Kings, Queens and Knaves throw one another down, ‘Til the whole Pack lies scatter’d and o’erthrown; So all our Pack upon the Floor is cast, And all I boast is- that I fall the last. (Fielding 2004, 37)

1. The rebirth of the Arthurian myth It was not until the 19th century that Arthurian literature reappeared in three different ways: with Tennyson’s poetry, Wagner’s operas and also with a lesser-known literary composition which is frequently forgotten: Thomas Love Peacock’s The Misfortunes of Elphin (1829), a satire in which contemporary affairs are compared to the barbarism of 6th-century Britain: “The people lived in darkness and vassalage. They were lost in the grossness of beef and ale [...] and they were utterly destitute of the blessing of those ‘schools for all’, the house of correction, and the treadmill” (Peacock 1829, 54). The industrialisation of the age and the social transformations are also echoed in the text: They had no steam-engines, with fires as eternal as those of the nether world, wherein the squalid many, from infancy to age, might be turned into component portions of machinery for the benefit of the purple-faced few. They could neither poison the air with gas, nor the water with its dregs: in short, they made their money of metal, and breathed pure air, and drank pure water, like unscientific barbarians. (Peacock 1829, 48)

With these words, Peacock precedes Coleridge in his ideas expressed in Constitution of Church and State (1837), where the British Romantic author “draws a distinction between the concepts of ‘culture’ and ‘civilization’. ‘Culture’ becomes an active, spiritual process (‘cultivation’), whereas ‘civilization’is associated with the violence of modernization” (Guins and Zaragoza 2005, 4). Peacock’s text is also one of the first ones to criticise the Church. He blames St Augustine of Canterbury for the extinction of the Celtic Christian Church, which did not follow the rules as dictated by Rome and

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adds that the Church is only interested in getting richer. In another ironic commentary, Peacock echoes the argument existing about the origin of the expression “Ynys Avalon”, meaning “Isle of the Apples” and states that “the brethren of Avalon were the apples of the church” (Peacock 1829, 101), while the monastery is described as “the most plump, succulent and rosy” in the British Isles. The abbot of Avalon himself is a plump man who drinks because his “blood runs so cold when I think of the bloodthirsty Saxons, that I take a little wine medicinally, in the hope of warming it” (Peacock 1829, 104). Thus, Peacock and, to a lesser extent, Fielding also precede and answer the complaint posed by T. S. Eliot about the cultural decline in his own age, which Eliot accredited to several factors, mainly “a levelling of social classes, the democratization of high culture, erosion of the religious faith, and the degradation of culture” (Guins and Zaragoza 2005, 5). It is obvious that Peacock described that religious degradation a century before the author of The Waste Land. This religious criticism has achieved, however, its climax in the texts produced in and after the 1970s, as will be seen below. Thanks to Tennyson, however, Arthurian literature became again popular at levels never achieved before. In fact, we are still enjoying the results of that reborn popularity nowadays. Tennyson’s famous Idylls of the King (1834-1885) were so popular that some Catalan publishers tasked the Spanish poet José Zorrilla with its translation into Spanish. However, far from translating it, he created a new work called Ecos de las montañas (1868). Stephen Knight has explained that in Tennyson’s work “there is no gap between art and society” (Knight 1983, 155) since the Poet Laureate held the opinion that the artist illustrated the problems of his age. However, it is clear that Tennyson “had a corresponding distaste, even hatred, for the mass buying public—on whom, in fact, his economic access to the influential world depended” (Knight 1983, 155). In his memoirs, published by his son Hallam, he expounded how Victorian England should sort out two very important social problems: “the housing and education of the poor man before making him our master, and the higher education of women” (Knight 1983, 156); thus Tennyson expressed his contempt for the Victorian working classes and for women. King Arthur’s death, the main topic of his idyll “The Passing of Arthur” (1859), reflects the role of a passive, obliging woman, following the ideas of the age, as represented also in other artistic manifestations of the period, such as the pictures by Burne-Jones (The Sleep of Arthur in Avalon, 1881-1898) and Archer (La Mort D’Arthur, 1861), where a dying Arthur is surrounded only by women, assisting him in his last moments. In the latter, for

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instance, Arthur lies on a beautiful garden, whilst his sister Morgan “holds his bandaged head while three other beautiful ladies […] mourn around him” (Whitaker 1990, 215). In some of Tennyson’s idylls woman becomes a representation of the problems existing in Victorian families and especially in the male psyche and the social order. In “Pelleas and Etarre” (1869), the woman represents strength and negative power: “The beauty of her flesh abashed the boy” (Gray 2004, 233), to the extent that Pelleas cannot sleep “for pleasure in his blood” (Gray 2004, 234). This “female danger” becomes more evident in another of Tennyson’s idylls, “The Holy Grail” (1869), where Percival’s sister is blamed for the downfall of the Round Table. Arthur himself confesses that: I will be deafer than the blue-eyed cat, And thrice as blind as any noonday owl, To Holy virgins in their ecstasies, Henceforward. (Gray 2004, 229)

2. Modern Arthurian literature Since the 20th century, and especially in these past decades, Arthurian literature has become one of the most popular literary subgenres. Some of these texts have become massive successes, whilst others have become the basis for the study and composition of later, and future, Arthurian literature. Amongst the first group, Bernard Cornwell’s trilogy called “The Warlord Chronicles” and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s long novel The Mists of Avalon can be perfect examples of Arthurian success. The focus here will be on the former but, whenever possible, comparisons between both texts will be drawn. Bernard Cornwell’s trilogy consists of The Winter King (1996), Enemy of God (1997) and Excalibur (1998). Arthurian scholar Alan Lupack has praised Cornwell by saying that “what he does better than any of his predecessors is to show the political conflicts in Britain and to define Arthur’s role in those conflicts” (2005, 72). Arthur is no king here, but a dux bellorum, a leader of battles, following the traditional Welsh role, and he has to fight in two main contexts: the war against the Saxons, whom he stops at the famous Battle of Mynnydd Baddon, and the internecine strife amongst the Celtic kingdoms. Interestingly, the problems of the latter reside in religious differences rather than in political ones, as is reflected in one of the dialogues that Arthur and Derfel Cadarn, the real protagonist of the story and Arthur’s

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truest friend, hold after the difficult reconstruction of Dumnonia, the kingdom Arthur governs on behalf of his nephew Mordred, still an infant. The Christians, led by a coward and sly Lancelot, here in stark contrast to the medieval hero, have rebelled against Arthur, because he has levied taxes on them. Arthur sadly expresses: “Think of all we achieved, Derfel, all the roads and lawcourts and bridges, and all the disputes we settled and all the prosperity we made, and all of it is turned to nothing by religion! Religion!” He spat across the ramparts. “Is Dumnonia even worth fighting for?” (Cornwell 1997, 396)

Cornwell’s emphasis on the religious divide in the trilogy is even more apparent than in Bradley’s text. There are five different creeds fighting for supremacy, although Cornwell highlights the bitterest enmity between Christianity, usually the negative force in the trilogy, and the Celtic religion, mainly, but not always, the positive force. There are some hints at a possible religious duality in the population, mainly Christian, but still influenced by pagan customs: “There might be few Druids left in Britain, yet in every valley and farmland there were men and women who acted like Druids, who sacrificed living things to dead stone and who used charms and amulets to beguile the simple people” (Cornwell 1996, 56). Needless to say, this affirmation must be taken with caution, as it probably is more of a reflection of the influence of the postmodernist theories of the New Age movement rather than an indication of the actual situation of religion in 5th- and 6th-century Britain. In The New Age Movement (1996), Paul Heelas comments that paganism (represented by druidism in Cornwell’s trilogy) resurrected as a contra-cultural manifestation which came together with the co-existing New Age movement at the beginning of the 1970s. Heelas holds the idea that this movement needs to “be in tune with […] some of the central values and assumptions of modernity” (1996, 129). Cornwell makes use of pagan ideas here as a reflection of the interest that several sectors of Western society show nowadays for past or alternative religions and, more specifically, those putting man in direct contact with nature. Nonetheless, Cornwell makes clear his criticism towards religious extremism rather than towards religion as such. The extremism in Cornwell’s trilogy is a reflection of contemporary society and, as Raymond H. Thompson points out, “it continues to tear apart communities throughout the world” (Lupack 2005, 102). This is exactly what happens with the different Welsh kingdoms in Cornwell’s trilogy: Arthur is in the middle of their rivalries, trying for the different factions to come to an agreement. However, as Derfel Cadarn confesses:

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Chapter Three The Christians attacked him for favouring the pagans, and the pagans attacked him for tolerating the Christians, and the kings, all except Cuneglas and Oengus Mac Airem, were jealous of him. Oengus’s support counted for little, but when Cuneglas died, Arthur lost his most valuable loyal supporter. (Cornwell 1998, 421)

This religious fight over supremacy is not a motif only taken from the New Age, since it also reflects some biographical features. Bernard Cornwell was adopted by a family who belonged to a religious sect, now extinct, called Peculiar People, which took the Puritan ideas to extremes. Cornwell grew up attracted by everything that the sect prohibited and decided to read Theological Studies as a sort of reaction. In his trilogy, two of the main characters symbolise this extremism and they are, precisely, the most hostile and unfriendly of them: Sansum, a Christian bishop, and Nimue, the druidess whom Merlin teaches. Both of them are unscrupulous people who are only interested in achieving their aims, no matter the means to do so. Sansum, who is homosexual, marries Morgan, Arthur’s favourite sister, in order to become a member of the Council of the Kingdom of Dumnonia. On the other hand, Nimue, in a bloody ritual through which she wants to restore the old gods back to the British Isles and rid them of Christians, kills Prince Gawain and she almost executes Arthur and his son Gwydre as well, were it not for the intercession of Merlin. At the end of the trilogy, which also finishes with the Battle of Camlann in which Arthur kills Mordred and the latter wounds Arthur mortally, the Christian army, hidden in the forest nearby during the fight, comes out to kill the remaining fighting men and claim victory. Arthur, who is an agnostic, but not someone against religion as such, is mortally wounded, whilst Merlin has been sacrificed by Nimue. Symbolically, the two hostile characters remain alive at the end of the trilogy. Another type of Arthurian contemporary literature is that formed by texts which have become paramount for the composition of future production in the subgenre. Within this group, several texts written in Spain stand out: Paloma Díaz-Mas’s El rapto del Santo Grial (1983), the group of short stories written in Basque by Joseba Sarrionandía in the decade of the 1980s, Soledad Puértolas’s La rosa de plata (1999), Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s Erec y Enide (2002) and César Vidal’s Artorius (2006). Each of them is important for a reason: Díaz-Mas’s and Puértolas’s works are imitations of the romances written in France in the Middle Ages, with countless adventures for the knights, enchantments and damsels in peril. Sarrionandía’s texts are an adaptation of the Arthurian legend into the Basque land and customs; Vázquez Montalbán’s novel is an adaptation, as its title indicates, of the medieval French romance by

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Chrétien de Troyes into the modern world with Barcelona as a representation of the court and the Mayan Forest as the place where the adventures take place. Last but not least, Vidal’s Artorius follows the trend of the historical novel so in vogue over the last few years, as Cornwell’s trilogy shows. Out of these texts, I shall focus on Sarrionandía’s four short stories since they probably are the great unknown for the Arthurian reader in particular and the booklover in general, and they were written originally in Basque.6 Joseba Sarrionandía is a Basque writer, famous in his homeland for his nationalist poetry (he was a member of ETA himself). He was sentenced to twenty-two years’ inprisonment in 1980, but five years later he broke free and, although his case has been closed, which means he is exempt from any crime committed, he has since been living in a secret place, probably abroad, as one of his recurrent topics is exile. Sarrionandía is the author of four Arthurian-inspired short stories whose titles in English would be “The Sun Sailing in the Blue Sky”, “That Sword in the Crucible”, “Queen Guinevere in Exile” and “The Daring Lover”. They have all been recently translated into Spanish by three Basque-speaking students of Translation at the University of Valladolid and by Jon Kortázar, Professor of Basque language at the University of the Basque Country.7 “The Sun Sailing in the Blue Sky” has Percival as its main character, chasing a white unicorn. In his chase, he faints and is woken up by a damsel with whom he falls in love and then both have a child. The damsel’s brothers observe that the unicorn seems to be looking at their sister and it is keen on being close to her; since they are willing to chase it, they lay a trap for the unicorn, whose blue eyes remind us of Percival and the damsel’s son’s blue eyes. The unicorn approaches the lady and when she is caressing it a “lluvia de flechas” (Sarrionandía 2002, 150) [a shower of arrows], as the text says, falls on the unicorn, killing it. Interestingly, the beast does not bleed: “sale agua de las heridas” (2002, 150) [water pours from its wounds], while the damsel and the blue-eyed child start crying, creating a sort of deluge which drowns the brothers, and a stream of water takes the damsel and Percival’s son away. He manages to climb to a treetop, and he wakes up at that moment: the knight was on a treetop at the beginning of the tale, trying to find an apple for a blind man. It is arguable that Sarrionandía’s political ideas can be easily inferred from his texts, as in “Queen Guinevere in Exile” (the author himself being an exile, as stated above), or in “The Daring Lover”, with the colours of Merlin’s Tshirt, as will be seen below. However, “The Sun Sailing in the Blue Sky”,

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with a circular structure, remains the most difficult to interpret and it might well be an adaptation of the Arthurian legend to Basque mythology. The other three remaining texts are set in the Basque Country, where Arthur, his jester Fool, Guinevere, Merlin, Lancelot and Galahad are living in exile. Although the characters are clearly medieval, these texts place them against a modern background (Sarrionandía mentions cars, radios or Gillette razors). In “That Sword in the Crucible”, Arthur is depicted wearing the typical Basque farmer clothes, with the famous txapela or Basque hat. This short story spins around a dialogue between Arthur and Fool, while “[e]n el techo se percibían los pasos de Ginebra, que paseaba con sus zuecos de madera, de un lado para el otro en el desván” (2002, 164) [in the roof one could hear the steps of Guinevere, walking in her wooden clogs up and down the loft]. Both of them remember the “Golden Age” of Arthur’s reign (as opposed to the “Iron Age” of his father’s) although they also mention sad episodes of the past, such as Arthur’s command to abandon all the children born on the first of May in a ship, as a way of ridding himself of his son Mordred.8 One of those children is Fool’s own son, and his memory brings tears to the jester’s eyes. They also remember how they had to kill some noblemen opposing Arthur’s crowning while they were sleeping, highlighting the carnage with the sentence “no quedó ninguno vivo” (2002, 162) [none was left alive] and how the historians who denounced this fatal deed had their books burnt. In their dialogue, there are also some comic moments, such as when Arthur asks Fool if he ever was a good knight, to which Fool replies: “el mejor caballero de todos los tiempos, el rey más franco y valiente. Galfridus Monemutensis, Chrétien de Troyes, Thomas Malory, todos lo han relatado” (2002, 167) [(you are) the best knight of all times, the most honourable and brave king. Galfridus Monemutensis, Chrétien de Troyes, Thomas Malory, all of them have said so]. “Queen Guinevere in Exile” is the story of Guinevere’s pregnancy in the Basque Country. Lancelot, knowing the rumours that link him to the queen, decides to go abroad, to Istanbul “Sí, la antigua Constantinopla” (2002, 176) [yes, the former Constantinople], as Galahad says to the queen, who does not know what or where Istanbul is, after Galahad is sent a telegram by his father to tell him he is in Thessalonica on his way to Istanbul).9 However, the queen has a liking for Lancelot’s son and it seems that by the time Arthur finds out about their affair, the meetings in the queen’s chamber have been frequent according to Fool. Arthur decides to take revenge and kills Galahad, unarmed and naked, in the snow: “He ahí, en la masa de nieve, el limpio Galahad en su sangre, rodeado ya de cuervos. Tres colores: blanco, rojo y negro, encima de un color verde

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invisible cubierto hace mucho” (2002, 181) [There he is, on the mass of snow, Galahad the clean, in his blood, already surrounded by crows. Three colours: white, red and black, on top of the invisible green, long since covered]. The description of his death is not violent, but places Arthur as a coward by attacking a man who is sleeping in his bed, unarmed. The continuation of the tale has some shocking images: for instance, Guinevere sees the birds pecking at Galahad’s lifeless body from afar, and “a pesar de las lágrimas, llega a ver un ojo en cada uno de los picos de dos cuervos” (2002, 181) [Despite her tears, she can see an eye in each of the crows’ beaks]. Arthur, at first, thinks of punishing the queen by burning her, but after a while, he decides to spare her life. In the next paragraph, we are already in June (St John’s eve) and Fool, Guinevere and Arthur are following the tradition of burning something old in a bonfire; Guinevere, tired, goes to her bedroom and “se quita la faja que le aprieta la cintura, dejando libre un vientre blanco y grueso. […] siente que el niño que está creciendo en su interior está jugando” (2002, 183) [(she) takes off her corset, too tight on her waist and frees her belly, white and big. […] She feels how the baby growing inside her is playing]. However, this tale also has some comic descriptions: Arthur is depicted doing typical farmer tasks and when he comes back from a hard day’s work, he takes off his golden crown in order to “colocarla en un estante del armario” (2002, 177) [put it on a shelf in the cupboard]; or when he asks Fool to give the oxen a wash, since: “Me voy al mercado de Vitoria […] a vender los bueyes” (2002, 178) [I am going to the Vitoria market […] to sell the oxen]. In the last of the tales Merlin is the main character. He falls in love with Enare, the daughter of Arthur’s tailor. This is basically a remaking of Merlin’s imprisonment, but in a Basque, modern and even comic background. Merlin, knowing his fate, is talking to Arthur and Guinevere at court and tells them plainly: “El amor me va a matar, así que vengo a despedirme” (2002, 194) [Love is going to kill me, so I came to say goodbye], but Arthur laughs at this. Merlin tells him he has seen his future and how Enare is going to imprison him, in a comic dialogue. Arthur tells Merlin that he is stupid if he has fallen in love with Enare, as she is just but “a puta” [a whore], to which Merlin replies: “Ay […] ¡siempre he querido tener una novia puta!” (2002, 196) [Alas! […] I’ve always wanted to have a whore as my girlfriend]. While this dialogue is taking place, the narrator explains that the tower where Arthur lives is so high that poor Perceval, every time he has to go up “suplica por un ascensor” (2002, 144) [is begging for a lift].

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Enare leaves the castle in order to go to the city on her black Arabian horse, while Merlin follows her “a lomos de su lanudo burro blanco” (2002, 146) [riding his white furry donkey] in a clear comic twist of Don Quixote. On his way to town, they can see broken-down cars on the side of the road. Merlin does not like the city because, as we can read, “los policías le piden su carnet de identidad ya caducado” (2002, 198) [the police always ask him to see his identity card and it has expired], which may be taken as criticism against the presence of the Spanish police in the Basque Country. In the city, a young boy is selling buttons (two maravedís10 per dozen) and he buys three dozens, only to find out later that “button” is slang for “condom”. Upon leaving the city, Enare and Merlin sit down under a tree with Gillette razors hanging, while a knight listening to jazz music on the radio approaches them and introduces himself as José Mari Iturralde.11 After talking to them for a while, the knight goes back to the road and thinks: “Seguro que es el abuelo de la chica […]. De todas formas, un hombre con semejante cara de idiota no puede ser mala persona” (2002, 199) [I am pretty sure he is the girl’s grandfather […]. Anyway, a man with such a stupid face cannot be a bad person]. After that, both Enare and Merlin travel to the wizard’s place where, performing an enchantment that Merlin has taught her, she imprisons him while he is taking off his T-shirt in the colours of the ikurriña, the Basque flag. As previously stated, Sarrionandía is a pro-independence Basque writer, so his literature encompasses symbolic meanings and in this case, it can be interpreted as a diatribe against the idea of Spain, personified here in Enare, which imprisons the freedom of the Basque Country. Both the texts by Cornwell and Sarrionandía are excellent examples of the popularity of the Arthurian legend today. In the case of Cornwell, the trilogy was a best-seller in the United Kingdom and the United States and it was translated shortly after its publication into different languages. Sarrionandía has successfully adapted the legend into the Basque rural area and, in doing so, has used it to criticise some current political issues, like the situation of the Basque Country within Spain. Cornwell’s trilogy also severely criticises religious extremism, examples of which can be currently seen in the news on a daily basis.

3. From text to screen As a manifestation of popular culture, Arthurian literature has made a step forward by moving from the usual cultural media to the silver screen. As Jerome de Groot stated, both television and film are “the key form for

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visualised engagement with an imagined, constructed past” (2009, 208). Arthurian cinema, which debuted, as mentioned above, with the film Parsifal in 1904, has enjoyed a few successes to date. The focus on this section will be on the most popular adaptation in the last decades. The aforementioned The Mists of Avalon was filmed into a three-part miniseries. The BBC has also been keen on recreating the Arthurian myth a few times. The fourth series of The Adventures of Merlin (also known simply as Merlin) finished on December 24th 2011 with the fifth series to begin in autumn 2012, as one of the flagships of the BBC’s Saturday evening schedule. The series focuses on the wizard’s early years and his relationship with Arthur. In 1998, the American TV channel Hallmark showed another mini series also called Merlin, in which the wizard, played by New Zealand actor Sam Neill, fights against evil in his personal quest for Nimue (Isabella Rossellini). Morgan, performed here by Helena Bonham-Carter, is a character obsessed with beauty and differently represented from the usual Arthurian texts. In another divergence from Arthurian literature, this series shows Queen Mab (Miranda Richardson) as Merlin’s antagonist. The character is to be found in Irish folklore rather than in the Arthurian tradition. All these elements clearly suggest that the series follows a New Age trend and leaves aside any literary or historical basis. In cinema, First Knight (1995) presents a free rendering of the abduction of Queen Guinevere, a typical motif in Welsh medieval literature, and, at the same time, recreates the Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot love triangle. The film was more successful thanks to the appeal of the three main protagonists (Sean Connery, Julia Ormond and Richard Gere) than because of its quality. Antoine Fuqua directed King Arthur in 2004. The film attempts to recreate the origin of the Arthurian legend within the Sarmatian traditions, as Scott Littleton and Linda Malcor tried to demonstrate in their From Scythia to Camelot (1994) and Howard Reid developed in Arthur, the Dragon King (2001). To a certain extent, the film successfully recreates a post-Roman 5th-century Britain, but there are many poetic licences, such as the inclusion of warrior women (Guinevere fights with the sword better than many men) in a society that was already strongly influenced by Roman patriarchal ideology, or the idea of the mercenary soldier linked to that of the later Arthurian knight in search of extraordinary adventures. In 1981, John Boorman filmed Excalibur, which, despite some fantastical and New Age touches, is still the best film on Arthur to date. Although principally based on Malory’s text, Boorman includes numerous pagan elements as a direct influence of the New Age movement. The film

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gets darker both in image and plot as it progresses and ends on a very pessimistic tone, but it was very well directed and the cast’s performances are excellent, with Helen Mirren standing out as Morgan as one of the central characters. As Juliette Wood has pointed out, whilst Morgan in the medieval romances had a secondary role in the chapter of the Grail Quest, in Boorman’s film she becomes the main, negative force that “frustrates the attempts of the knight to reach the Grail” (2008, 171). Hence, a feminine, pagan character succeeds in preventing the best Christian knights from seizing, or even getting to see, the Grail, in a close reflection of the New Age movement in contemporary cinema and literature.

4. Conclusion We have not yet reached the end of the Arthurian tradition. A considerable amount of works keep being published on an annual basis. Some of them, as has been demonstrated here, deviate from the usual Arthurian canon. Another example of this rupture, which has not been dealt with here due to space constraints, is the comic series Camelot 3000, written between 1982 and 1985 by Mike W. Barr, where the main characters of the Round Table become a sort of X-men in a world inhabited by mutants, traditional heroes and transsexuals. All these examples bear witness to the popularity that Arthurian literature has enjoyed down the centuries. More importantly, when we need to explain what the Arthurian tradition is we could paraphrase Guins and Zaragoza by saying that it “reflects neither a unified way of thinking nor an easily mapped path of development” (2005, 2). This sentence perfectly illustrates the fusion of traditional culture with mass culture and, at the same time, gives an answer to the concerns expressed by T. S. Eliot about the perceived cultural decline of his age as a consequence of an increasingly egalitarian society, the democratisation of culture and the lack of faith and belief in religion through the universalisation of a topic that, even rooted in tradition, only a few could enjoy. In addition, Arthurian literature is a popular manifestation in the sense that, even though it dealt with and was produced by the cultural elite, it originated in folklore. It is, then, hardly surprising that from the 19th century onwards, and more especially in the last years of the 20th century, it should have become a popular choice in the field of reading or, even more generally, entertainment. It can be affirmed that Arthurian literature will remain faithful to its popular origins whilst simultaneously, and judging from the more recent representatives of this tradition, continuing

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to integrate contemporary political, social and cultural needs into the magical realm of Camelot.

Works cited Anon. 2007 (1987). Romance de Lanzarote y el ciervo. In Spanish Ballads, ed. Roger Wright, 24-25. Warminster: Aris & Phillips. Barr, Mike W. and Brian Bolland. 2008. Camelot 3000. New York: DC Comics. Barron, Steve, dir. 2007 (1998). Merlin. New York: Hallmark Entertainment. Boorman, John, dir. 1999 (1981). Excalibur. Burbank, CA.: Warner Home Video. Cervantes, Miguel de. 1994. Don Quijote de la Mancha. Two vols. Barcelona: RBA. Cooper, Helen, ed. 1998. Sir Thomas Malory. Le Morte Darthur. Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics. Cornwell, Bernard. 1996. The Winter King. London: Penguin. —. 1997. Enemy of God. London: Penguin. —. 1998. Excalibur. London: Penguin. Díaz-Mas, Paloma. 1984. El rapto del Santo Grial. Barcelona: Anagrama. Edel, Uli, dir. 2004 (2001). The Mists of Avalon. Burbank, CA.: Warner Home Video. Fielding, Henry. 2004. Tom Thumb; or, the Tragedy of Tragedies. Whitefish, MT.: Kessinger. Fuqua, Antoine, dir. 2006 (2004). King Arthur. Burbank, CA.: Touchstone Pictures. Gray, J. Martin, ed. 2004. Alfred Lord Tennyson. Idylls of the King. London: Penguin. Groot, Jerome de. 2009. Consuming History. Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Popular Culture. Oxford: Routledge. Guins, Raiford and Omayra Zaragoza, eds. 2005. Popular Culture. A Reader. London: Sage. Hawes, James et al., dir. (September 2008- to date). The Adventures of Merlin. Series 1-4. London: 2 Entertain, 2008 (series 1), 2009 (series 2), 2011 (series 3), 2012 (series 4). Heelas, Paul. 1996. The New Age Movement. Cambridge: Blackwell. Knight, Stephen. 1993. Arthurian Literature and Society. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Köhler, Erich. 1990. La aventura caballeresca. Barcelona: Sirmio.

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Lacy, Norris, ed. 1996. The New Arthurian Encyclopaedia. New York and London: Garland. Littleton, C. Scott and Linda A. Malcor. 2000. From Scythia to Camelot. New York and London: Garland. Logan, Joshua, dir. 1998 (1963). Camelot. Burbank, CA.: Special Edition Warner Home Video. Lupack, Alan. 2005. The Oxford Guide to Arthurian Literature and Legend. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Peacock, Thomas Love. 1829. The Misfortunes of Elphin. Doylestown, PA.: Wildside Press. Porter, Edwin J., dir. 1904. Parsifal. New York: Edison Manufacturing Company. Puértolas, Soledad. 2000. La rosa de plata. Barcelona: Planeta DeAgostini. Reid, Howard. 2001. Arthur the Dragon King. The Barbaric Roots of Britain’s Greatest Legend. London: Headline. Sarrionandía. Joseba. 2002. El sol navegando en el firmamento azul. Trans. Jon Kortázar. In Cuaderno de Camelot, ed. Juan Miguel Zarandona, 145-152. Soria: Diputación de Soria. —. 2002. Aquella espada en el crisol. Trans. Arrate Ojinaga Ouro. In Cuaderno de Camelot, ed. Juan Miguel Zarandona, 161-167. Soria: Diputación de Soria. —. 2002. La reina Ginebra en el exilio. Trans. Ohiana Mariezkurrena Iparragirre. In Cuaderno de Camelot, ed. Juan Miguel Zarandona, 175183. Soria: Diputación de Soria. —. 2002. El amante osado. Trans. Nahia Zarzosa Aizpurúa. In Cuaderno de Camelot, ed. Juan Miguel Zarandona, 193-203. Soria: Diputación de Soria. Thompson, Raymond. 2002. Darkness over Camelot. In New Directions in Arthurian Studies, ed. Alan Lupack, 97-104. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Thorpe, Lewis, ed. & trans. 1966. Geoffrey of Monmouth. The History of the Kings of Britain. London: Penguin. Vázquez Montalbán, Manuel. 2003. Erec y Enide. Barcelona: Mondadori. Vidal, César. 2008. Artorius. Barcelona: Mondadori. Whitaker, Muriel. 1990. The Legends of King Arthur in Art. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. White, Terence H. 1996. The Once and Future King. London: Harper Collins. Wood, Juliette. 2008. Eternal Chalice. The Enduring Legend of the Holy Grail. London: I. B. Tauris. Zimmer Bradley, Marion. 1983. The Mists of Avalon. London: Penguin.

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Zorrilla, José. 1894. Ecos de las montañas. Barcelona: Montaner y Simón. Zucker, Jerry, dir. 2004 (1995). First Knight. Culver City, CA.: Columbia Pictures Corporation.

Notes 1

In 2010, American author Chris Kuzneski published his novel The Secret Crown. One of the side-line topics of this text is the passion that the Bavarian King had for Arthurian motifs, from the Wagnerian operas to the palace decorations and constructions. This bears witness to the flexibility of the Arthurian topics, since they can become a topic in one of Kuzneski’s works, a novel of political intrigue or, as stated in the book’s blurb, a mixture of Indiana Jones and The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. 2 For more information, see Köhler (1990, 27-). 3 Wace took Geoffrey’s work as the basis for his Roman de Brut (1155) which, in turn, would become the main source for Layamon’s Brut, probably composed shortly after Eleanor of Aquitaine’s death in 1204. Geoffrey’s text also influenced the composition of the Welsh Brut y Brenhinedd [The Book of the Kings]. Geoffrey’s text became a medieval best-seller with various editions dedicated to different important people. 4 Guirau Cabrera was the first troubadour to sing Arthur’s deeds in the Iberian Peninsula. As the entry on Iberian Literature for The New Arthurian Encyclopaedia reads, Catalan literature “was particularly receptive to the Arthurian legend and showed considerable originality” (Lacy 1996, 425). 5 This ballad uses the classical topic of shape-shifting, very popular in several Arthurian texts (see the Welsh Mabinogion, for instance), but here it has an interesting adaptation: a king turns his two elder sons into animals (a white deer and a dog, respectively), while the youngest is turned into a moor. 6 Basque is one of the oldest languages spoken in Europe and it is a language isolate, that is, it has no sister languages (unlike Spanish and Portuguese, for instance). According to the latest data released by the Basque Government in July 2012, the language is spoken by over 700,000 people in the Basque Country and Navarre. As will be seen later, Sarrionandía adapts the Arthurian world and its characters and motifs to the Basque rural world very successfully. 7 The translations of the titles are all by the author of this paper. The original titles in Basque and their translations into Spanish (in brackets) are, respectively: “Eguzkiak ortze urdinean nabegatzen” (“El sol navegando en el firmamento azul”, trans. Jon Kortázar), “Ezpata hura arsagoan” (“Aquella espada en el crisol”, trans. Arrate Ojinaga Ouro), “Ginebra erregina herbestean” (“La reina Ginebra en el exilio”, trans. Ohiana Mariezkurrena Iparragirre) and “Amorante ausarta” (“El amante osado”, trans. Nahia Zarzosa Aizpurúa). Likewise, the author has translated all quotes from these works into English from their Spanish versions. 8 This is a topic from the Arthurian legend that authors like Malory and Tennyson also used and adapted. 9 Another of the examples of modernisation of the text commented on above.

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The maravedí was the name of the currency used in several medieval kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula and later in Spain, where it was used until the 19th century. 11 One of the co-founders of a Basque literary magazine where Sarrionandía usually publishes. The mention of this actual person, along with the acculturation of the Arthurian legend in a modern Basque rural world, bears witness to the versatility and popularity of the Arthurian legend.

CHAPTER FOUR A TELL-TALE THRILLER: AN INTERTEXTUAL AND STRUCTURAL INSIGHT INTO POE’S POP MARTA MIQUEL-BALDELLOU

1. Poe and Jackson: A case of unexpected intertextuality The year 2009 will be remembered as the bicentenary of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth as well as the untimely decease of the King of Pop, Michael Jackson. Despite some initial hesitance, scholars have increasingly established links between Poe and contemporary musicians like Lou Reed, Allan Parsons Project as well as Bob Dylan (Neimeyer 2002; Peeples 2004; Rollason 2009), thus underlining the increasing blurring among different artistic manifestations and the gradual dismantling of high and popular culture that characterises postmodern literary approaches (Klages 2006). More recently, Michael Jackson seems to have been added to this list (Sullivan 2009), especially taking into consideration the late American singer’s choice of Vincent Price, the actor starring in most of Roger Corman’s films based on Poe’s tales, to participate in his universally acclaimed song “Thriller”, performing a memorable gothic and even sardonic rap. Michael Jackson’s fondness for the Bostonian writer went further than that of an avid reader as he even considered the possibility of playing the role of Edgar Allan Poe in a film. In 1999 the cinema-industry journal The Hollywood Reporter announced Jackson would play Poe in a big-budget biopic entitled The Nightmares of Edgar Allan Poe (BBC News 1999), a project which never saw the light of day. In this respect, Mark Neimeyer mentioned “plans are underway for a new Poe movie starring Michael Jackson” (2002, 219), and likewise, Scott Peeples commented on “Michael Jackson’s ambition of playing Poe” (2004, 125). Neimeyer further noticed that the script of the film revolved around characters from Poe’s works

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coming back to haunt him during the last days of his life, thus intermingling biography and fiction in what appeared could become a highly popular cultural construct. However, it was precisely Michael Jackson himself, in an audio chat held with fans to promote his album Invincible (2001), that made explicit reference to this project as well as stated his views on the American writer Edgar Allan Poe. A brief extract of the transcript from this chat session reads as follows: Chat leader: I understand you’re also doing The Nightmares of Edgar Allan Poe. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Michael Jackson: Yes. That one’s coming up. It’s about the great prolific American writer Edgar Allan Poe. Chat leader: Kind of scary guy himself too… Michael Jackson: Yes, very diabolical and very dark, but he was a genius, and his own personal life is very interesting and I read about, you know, what he had to go through to create his ingenious work. It’s a great story. (Jackson, Audio Chat VH1 Invincible, 2005)

Michael Jackson’s words corroborate that not only did he know Edgar Allan Poe but he was interested in his life and works, and even considered the possibility of playing the Bostonian writer and American icon in film at some stage in his life.

2. Parallel figures: Life, poetics and heritage Michael Jackson’s acknowledged interest in Edgar Allan Poe also seems to respond to striking similarities established between both representatives of American popular culture in terms of their life, conception of art, and even reception of their works. Both Poe and Jackson share important biographical details such as the pervasive influence of a tragic childhood, a tempestuous relationship with their respective fathers, a ludicrous depiction by the press, their assumed eccentricity and popularity as American icons, their misunderstood marriages, their troubles with alcohol and narcotics, their financial debts, and even their untimely deaths. In terms of their art, Poe was well aware of his poetics as he displayed his craft in the essay The Philosophy of Composition (1846), establishing the consideration of an effect to create in each of his works so that all details would be aimed at attaining that pre-established objective. Nonetheless, it was in his review of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales (1842) that Poe revealed himself as an actual mesmeriser, theorising about the tale and its unity of impression, claiming that “during the hour of perusal, the soul of the reader is at the writer’s control” (quoted in Van

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Doren 1986, 566). Poe’s concern about the effect created in his tales as well as the will to hold the readers’ attention under his command through his creative craft are reminiscent of popular music scholar Susan Fast’s recent comments about Michael Jackson’s capacity to hold the public’s attention by means of his music: “[t]he sounds he could make with his voice and the movements he could call up out of his body were like those of no one else, but this part of his difference, while incomprehensible, was embraceable. It was magic” (2010, 259-60). Similarly, in the course of Jackson’s memorial at the Staples Center (Los Angeles), soon after the American singer’s demise in 2009, Berry Gordy, Founder of Motown Records, commented on the way he felt when he saw Jackson’s performance for the television special programme Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever (1983): “From the first beat of ‘Billie Jean’ and the toss of that hat, I was mesmerised. But when he did his iconic moonwalk, I was shocked. It was magic”. In both cases, it seems that the effect attained on the audience responded to a carefully pre-established design which was mainly characterised by technical perfection. Poe gave account of his poetics soon after composing his poem “The Raven” (1845), enumerating the different items he took into consideration to write it, such as the attainment of a particular effect, the length, the tone, the province and the choice of a repetitive refrain. Likewise, critic Dominic Fox, contributor to the volume The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson (2009), states that, when Jackson performed on stage, emotional seriousness was held in abeyance by invention through a series of elements such as lightness, speed, and infinitesimally precise timing (quoted in Rosser 2010, 1). The unity of effect attained in both cases was ultimately pre-established through arduous application and craft, involving the total mesmerising of the reader or the viewer. Likewise, in his autobiography, entitled Moonwalk (1988), Michael Jackson explicitly referred to the nature of storytelling and the power great writers possessed so as to hold the readers’ attention. In this respect, he significantly compared the skill of songwriting with that of storytelling: I’ve always wanted to be able to tell stories, you know, stories that came from my soul. I’d like to sit by a fire and tell people stories—make them see pictures, make them cry and laugh, take them anywhere emotionally with something as deceptively as simple words. I’d like to tell tales to move their souls and transform them. I’ve always wanted to be able to do that. Imagine how the great writers must feel, knowing they have that power. I sometimes feel I could do it. It’s something I’d like to develop. In a way, songwriting uses the same skills, creates the emotional highs and lows, but the story is the sketch. It’s quicksilver. There are very few books written on the art of storytelling, how to grip listeners, how to get a group

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In clear analogy with Poe, his poetics about the unity of effect and his extraordinary ability to mesmerise audiences, Jackson reverred the ability of great writers to grip their readers by the exertion of the power of words, which enabled them to take readers anywhere they wanted within the realm of imagination. Jackson’s reflections reveal that he envisioned songwriting as a counterpart to storytelling, implying all his songs told a story and thus they could be interpreted as narratives, as actual stories coupled with music and dance. As for their critical heritage and reception, even if both were American in origin, their characteristic and outstanding differences as creators defied geographical barriers as well as clear-cut assigned nationalities. Poe was born in Boston, even though he spent a significant period of his life in Virginia, as a result of which he has also been considered a Southern writer. Despite his American origins, Poe had nevertheless been born to an English mother and an Irish father and, having been adopted by John Allan, a Scottish tobacco trader, he spent five years of his childhood in England and Scotland. His European background and education, as well as his somehow dissolute behaviour and his blatant ingenuity, often rendered him an outcast in his own nation. In this respect, Rosenheim and Rachman argued that “Poe has served as a crucial and much celebrated literary model for generations of writers and readers. In the country of his birth, however, Poe can hardly be said to be at home” (1995, ix). Hence, there has been much concern as to what extent Edgar Allan Poe could be considered an obvious representative of the American nation at the time, even if now he is definitely regarded as one of the most outstanding writers in American literary studies and, indisputably, he is part of the canon. In relation to Michael Jackson, even if born in Gary, Indiana, his stratospheric popularity was bound to defy any kind of physical boundaries in the era of globalisation. Nonetheless, issues of race have often become a source of concern in his case. No matter how many times he repeated that he was proud of being an African-American in an interview held with Oprah Winfrey in 1993, the gradual and blatant decolouration of his skin—which he claimed was due to vitiligo—was to render him in an awkward position as far as identity and racial issues are concerned. Moreover, even if both creators were American, Poe was fairly read in England during his lifetime, especially after the publication of “The Raven”, and as a result of Charles Baudelaire’s translations of his

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works into French, the European legacy of the American writer remains undeniable. Likewise, during his lifetime, Jackson was claimed to spend some periods in England and in Ireland to rest, and shortly before his death he had even planned to end his career through a series of concerts to be held exclusively in London. Both creators were thus highly acclaimed but also despised in their own nations, often as a result of social misunderstanding due to their own eccentricities and outstanding ingenuity on equal terms. Poe became a reputed editor, literary critic and tale-teller, but he mostly acquired fame through the publication of his renowned poem “The Raven”. Similarly, Jackson had also been fairly popular since his early childhood, when he sang and danced with his brothers in their family band The Jackson 5. Yet, his fame reached its peak with the release of the best-ever selling album Thriller in 1982. Despite their fame, both had to bear traumatic episodes in their professional lives. Even if hired as a reputed editor in important journals of the time such as Burton’s Gentlemen’s Magazine or Graham’s Magazine, Poe was also often debunked due to his incorrigible behaviour when he was inebriated, as a result of which he was dismissed from different periodicals. In this respect, his own editor, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, significantly contributed to stigmatising his status, as shown in an obituary note he published in the New York Daily Tribute soon after Poe’s demise: Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it. The poet was well-known personally or by reputation, in all this country; he had readers in England, and in several states of Continental Europe; but he had few or no friends and the regrets for his death will be suggested principally by the consideration that in him literary art lost one of its most brilliant, but erratic stars. (1986, 294)

Griswold’s moral reprisal seemed to respond to Poe’s dubious habits, regardless of the Bostonian writer’s undeniable talent. Nonetheless, Griswold would be in charge of editing Poe’s works posthumously, becoming one of his first editors in history. Likewise, despite being inarguably proclaimed the King of Pop, Michael Jackson also faced public exposure and stigmatisation from 1993 onwards, when he was accused of child molestation, even though he was finally acquitted on all accounts. Poe’s dismal relation with his editor somehow bears a resemblance with the fairly recently continuous disagreements between Michael Jackson and Sony Music Chairman Tommy Mottola. Jackson accused Mottola of failing to promote his album Invincible (2001) as well

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as organising a boycott against him and some other African-American musicians. Nevertheless, after the singer’s passing away, Mottola is still entitled to the rights of Jackson’s recordings, just as Griswold became the executor of Poe’s works. In any case, the legacy both Edgar Allan Poe and Michael Jackson have left is immeasurable, extending beyond the domains of literature and music, respectively. With regard to Poe, in a volume tellingly entitled Poe’s Seductive Influence on Great Writers, Burton R. Pollin claimed that “since his death in October 1849, Edgar Allan Poe has exercised a lasting effect upon the works of European and American writers of fiction and poetry” (2004, ix). Likewise, in Michael Jackson’s Memorial—broadcast worldwide in 2009—an array of celebrities and young singers paid their tribute to the American star. However, it was Berry Gordy, Founder of Motown Records, who described Jackson as “the greatest entertainer ever”, especially referring back to his extraordinary television appearance in Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever (1983), when he performed “Billie Jean” for the first time.

3. Antecedents: An insight into applied cultural and structural studies In 2009, the year of Poe’s bicentennial, many scholarly events and conferences paid homage to the Bostonian writer, offering new approaches and reinterpretations of his canonical works. Boosted by postmodernist criticism and aided by cultural studies, research on Poe and his influence on popular culture has particularly proliferated lately. Interdisciplinary approaches that focus on Poe and other artistic manifestations such as painting, cinema or music, to name but a few, have also been encouraged in recent studies and publications (Rollason 2010). Likewise, soon after Michael Jackson passed away, scholarly attention has especially shifted to the late American pop singer, engaging in issues such as constructions of subjectivity through music with a focus on gender, sexuality, disability and race. Interdisciplinary approaches to his music are also being promoted through topics comprising narratives of desire, engagement with world politics, intergenerational relationships, the spectacular body in performance, illness and its impact on music, the fantastic, as well as challenges to hegemonic constructions of race, masculinity, sexuality and gender (Fast 2009). Nonetheless, despite these cultural and sociological approaches, few studies on Michael Jackson have significantly explored his video clips and song lyrics as textualities and objects of literary analysis, that is, as actual narratives, even though Jackson drew a clear

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parallel between the art of storytelling and that of songwriting, as we have seen. Hence, in the advent of interdisciplinary studies within popular culture, a comparative analysis of the narratological components of Edgar Allan Poe’s tales and Michael Jackson’s songs would definitely bring to the floor remarkable intertextual links. Jackson’s songs and lyrics have not been studied as actual textualities, and therefore, no narratological approach has yet been devised in relation to him. Conversely, Poe’s tales have been profusely studied from a structural and narratological perspective, in addition to (inter)disciplinary approaches that range from psychoanalysis to cultural studies. Thorough structural and comparative studies about Poe have recently been published in Spain, as illustrated by Francisco Javier Castillo’s article “Espacios, ambientes y personajes poeianos” (1991), Margarita Rigal Aragón’s volume entitled Aspectos estructurales y temáticos recurrentes en la narrativa breve de Edgar Allan Poe (1998), Santiago Rodríguez GuerreroStrachan’s publication Presencia de Edgar Allan Poe en la literatura española del siglo XIX (1999), and María de los Ángeles González Miguel’s book E.T.A. Hoffman y Edgar Allan Poe: estudio comparativo de su narrativa breve (2000). According to Klages, structuralist studies become and remain relevant because they reduce “complex systems to their most fundamental parts” (2006, 32). Hence, by means of decoding the ultimate structures and elements of a text, structuralist and narratological studies encourage comparative analyses, bringing together different texts and authors and promoting interdisciplinary studies, which are considered especially relevant in contemporary approaches to Poe’s works.

4. Of words and images: A comparative narratological analysis A narratological approach to Michael Jackson’s lyrics and short films provides remarkable evidence of closely intertwined links regarding themes, characters, settings and motives that have been thoroughly studied and analysed in relation to Poe’s tales. They share thematic links such as the role of the individual in society, the inner struggle between two separate factions, their complaints about the press, the role of the artist and his art, capitalism, crime, illegitimate relations, and even race. Characters such as strong-willed women, smooth criminals, doppelgängers, men in the crowd, and jokers are also commonly found in both their songs and tales. Settings such as dark backstreets, menacing passages, dilapidated houses, graveyards, and mental journeys through time and outer space

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pervade many of Poe’s tales as well as Jackson’s video clips, and finally, motives such as physical transformations, cats, ravens, pavements resembling chess boards, mourning bands, hoaxes, as well as Egyptian tokens, are also recurrent in the works of both American icons of popular culture. A narratological approach which examines the universe of both Edgar Allan Poe and Michael Jackson may thus focus on the analysis of a series of features which are often present in structural studies such as intertextual thematic links, actants or characters that populate both tales and lyrics, common settings, shared time frameworks as well as motifs that become frequent all through the stories and songs that delineate the object of this analysis.

4.1. Intertextual thematic links Through the past two centuries, many critics have contributed different classifications of Poe’s tales according to their different subject matters. Van Doren (1986) divided Poe’s texts into tales of fantasy, terror, death, revenge and murder, and mystery and ratiocination. Magistrale (2001) examined Poe’s tales as divided into three thematic sections, mainly vampiric love stories; tales of psychological terror, homicide, and revenge; and stories which eventually gave rise to the detective tale. Likewise, Fisher (2008) outlined several common thematic frameworks which recurred in Poe’s tales, such as the urban, the medical-scientific, the psychological, and the existentialist-modernist context. Even more recently, Hayes (2009) established an autobiographical sketch of Poe’s tales identifying several patterns and motifs which shaped Poe’s universe focusing on the gothic woman, the detective, the flâneur, the recluse in a manor house and the tormented writer. A comparative approach to the universe of both masters of popular culture underlines outstanding thematic intertextual links and discourses which compile most of the subject matters that have been explored in relation to Poe up to now, as well as adding some more which arise as a result of this comparative analysis, which are mainly: 1) capitalism and consumerism; 2) escapism and dissoluteness; 3) hoaxes and humorous pieces; 4) romance and unrequited love; 5) crime and investigation; 6) fights and revenge; 7) metaphysical speculations; 8) the interaction between the individual and society; 9) gothic textualities; 10) the role of the press and social anger; 11) science and technology; and 12) the discourse of race.

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4.1.1. Capitalism and consumerism In some of his songs, Michael Jackson made (both explicit and implicit) references to his contemporary American economic context. Songs from his album Off the Wall (1979) such as “Don’t Stop till You Get Enough” and “Working Day and Night” underline a significant capitalistic discourse which compels the individual to worship consumerism and indulge in making profit for one’s own benefit, while becoming a victim and a slave of the same economic system the individual helps to create. Similarly, the song “Wanna Be Starting Something”, included in his album Thriller (1982), underlines the ethics of self-help and raw entrepreneurship which characterises capitalism and trade, making reference to the social and economic context held under a powerful Republican administration during the early 1980s. In that respect, Rosser (2010) states that Jackson became the most perfect expression of Reaganomics and the neo-liberal speculator economy. More recently, his song “Money”, taken from HIStory (1995), rebuked the prominent role that money plays in contemporary society, having acquired the status of a new religion and bringing about social hypocrisy and meanness, as the lyrics show: If you show me the cash Then I will take it If you tell me to cry Then I will fake it If you give me a hand Then I will shake it You’ll do anything for money (Jackson 1997b, 66)

In clear analogy with this discourse, with the advent of capitalism in 19th-century America, Poe also examined the dehumanisation of the individual as a result of economic and social pressures in the tale “The Man That Was Used Up” (1840). This is a satirical piece which underlines the literal deconstruction of one of the most remarkable men of the age, Captain Smith, a magnificent, rich general who worships fame and appearances, but is nevertheless mere façade, as the narrator ultimately finds out. Likewise, Poe also witnessed the gold fever that characterised the first half of the 19th century, as his tale “The Gold Bug” (1843) portrays, featuring a cryptographer, William Legrand, who eventually becomes a treasure hunter, obsessed with interpreting the codes contained in a bug and achieve wealth as a result. Similarly, in 1849, Poe also

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published his short story “Von Kempelen and His Discovery”, inspired by the Gold Rush in California, as a clear satire of the human lust for gold, which depicts the arrest of an American chemist, Von Kempelen, who has succeeded in transmuting lead into gold through the ideas of the English chemist and physicist Sir Humphry Davy. 4.1.2. Escapism and dissoluteness Michael Jackson’s first album with producer Quincy Jones, Off the Wall (1979), paved the ground for a future transition between rhythm and blues and pop, owing a great debt to the disco music of the 1970s, which essentially underlined a discourse of escapism about enjoying life and forgetting any sort of existential worries. Songs such as “Get on the Floor”, “Off the Wall” and “Burn This Disco Out”, a clear legacy of pieces composed with The Jacksons as a group, explore the necessity to take pleasure in life and lead a carefree existence, indulging in mesmerising rhythms that induce the individual to surrender and take part in pleasurable trances or reveries. Going back in time, Poe remembered his youth in England in his tale “William Wilson” (1840), a paradigmatic example of a split-personality case featuring a young narrator, fond of gambling and drinking, who is perpetually haunted by his double when he is about to indulge in committing bad deeds. The narrator gradually becomes a victim, unable to release himself from the temptation of gambling and leading a dissolute life, in clear analogy to the lyrics of songs such as “Off the Wall”, inviting the listener to indulge in pleasure and forget about responsibilities, as the following lines unveil: So tonight gotta leave that nine to five upon the shelf And just enjoy yourself Groove, let the madness in the music get to you Life ain’t bad at all If you live it off the wall (Jackson 1997b, 67)

The nocturnal pleasures found in Jackson’s song are also coupled by the narrator’s dissolute habits in Poe’s tale while he stays in the boarding house and meets his rival William Wilson: We met at a late hour of the night; for our debaucheries were to be faithfully protracted until morning. The wine flowed freely, and there were not wanting other and perhaps more dangerous seductions; so that the grey dawn had

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already faintly appeared in the east, while our delirious extravagance was at its height. (Van Doren 1986, 71)

Despite this apparent enjoyment, the other side of the narrator’s personality will inevitably make its appearance, thus foreshadowing guilt and regret as a result of shedding his inhibitions. When he beholds his antagonist, Wilson, and resolves to kill him, he gains insight into the indissoluble quality of his two sides. Likewise, this latent sense of guilt is also made explicit in the lyrics of Jackson’s song “Off the Wall”, underlining the dual nature of the individual: “gotta hide your inhibitions / gotta let that fool loose deep inside your soul / want to see an exhibition / better do it now before you get too old” (Jackson 1997b, 67). As Poe’s “William Wilson” has traditionally been considered a classic tale illustrating the figure of the double or the doppelgänger, Jackson’s lyrics in this particular song also involve the belief that an urge for enjoyment and craziness lies dormant behind an apparently grave countenance, thus acknowledging the double side of human nature. 4.1.3. Hoaxes and humorous pieces Sarcasm and irony also came hand in hand in many of Michael Jackson’s songs and even short films often related to love and romance, as is the case with “Girlfriend”, “The Girl Is Mine”, “Say, Say, Say”, and “Liberian Girl”. “Girlfriend”, from the album Off the Wall, presents a naughty young man teasing a girl and claiming he intends to inform her boyfriend that they had been dating behind his back. In “The Girl Is Mine”, a duet with Paul McCartney, both singers become rivals to gain the love of the same woman, indulging in day-dreaming, each of them stating that the girl would choose him over his rival. Similarly, in the video clip “Say, Say, Say”, included in Paul McCartney’s album Pipes of Peace (1983), both singers belong to a group of conmen who sell invigorating beverages that apparently give strength to the weakest men. Nonetheless, these deceitful partners are ultimately kind-hearted, as it is admitted they give the poor children in an orphanage the money they gain by means of dubious endeavours. Moreover, the video clip “Liberian Girl”, from Bad (1987), features many celebrities who presumably had been asked to play a role in one of Jackson’s short films. Nonetheless, to their astonishment, at the end of the film, they realise that Jackson himself had been shooting everything while they were waiting for him to make his stellar appearance, and thus, the whole event has been devised as an actual hoax. The sarcastic lyrics and plots of these songs and short films are strongly reminiscent of some of Poe’s most highly acclaimed sarcastic

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pieces, such as “Three Sundays in a Week” (1841), which presents a young suitor whose wit manages to mislead his future father-in-law and thus win his daughter’s favours. Similarly, in “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” (1840), two men court the same woman sitting on an armchair, only to find out that they are actually holding their own hands instead of those of the pretended widow. Poe’s “The Balloon-Hoax” (1844), a forerunner of science fiction, led his readers to inquire whether the actual journey had really taken place, even though it was completely invented. Finally, Poe’s irreverent tale “The Premature Burial” (1844) is also meant to be a hoax as, after enumerating several cases of people who had been buried alive, the narrator undergoes the same tragic experience, only to find out later he had just been dreaming. A similarly sarcastic and ironic tone can be detected in instances taken from Jackson’s song “The Girl Is Mine” and Poe’s tale “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling”. A hilarious rivalry between both pretenders unfolds in both texts, resulting in understated verbal fights. In Jackson’s song, this competition between rivals becomes explicit when they exchange the following spoken lines: Michael Well, after loving me, she said She couldn’t love another Paul Is that what she said? Michael Yes, she said it, you keep dreaming (Jackson 1997b, 29)

This dialogue bears a close resemblance to Poe’s story, where the narrator, Sir Patrick O’Grandison, infatuated with Miss Tracle, finds out that a Frenchman is also in love with her, and thus despondently states he “tould me, among a bushel o’ lies, bad luck to him, that he was mad for the love o’ my widdy Misthress Tracle, and that my widdy Mrs.Tracle had a puncheon for him” (Poe 1982, 518). Written in dialect, Sir Patrick O’Grandison’s reflections, despite his evident grief and resentment, often become hilarious and thus contribute to shaping one of Poe’s most sarcastic texts. 4.1.4. Romance and unrequited love From Off the Wall (1979) to his album Invincible (2001), many song lyrics by Michael Jackson portray romantic relationships with women

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from a different perspective. Some of them are fairly lyrical in their approach and resent the end of a romance, as is the case with “She’s Out of My Life” (Off the Wall, 1979) or “Remember the Time” (Dangerous, 1991), while others like “It’s the Falling in Love” (Off the Wall, 1979) or “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” (Bad, 1987) merely celebrate the experience of romantic affection. Nonetheless, most of Jackson’s love songs can be divided into two main categories according to the different prototypes of women they present. Songs like “The Lady in My Life” (Thriller, 1982), “Baby Be Mine” (Thriller, 1982), “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” (Bad, 1987) and “Liberian Girl” (Bad, 1987) refer to a pure and even ideal love, where the woman in question clearly evokes the Victorian legacy of the angel in the house. In clear opposition to these texts, songs such as “The Way You Make Me Feel” (Bad, 1987), “Dirty Diana” (Bad, 1987), “In the Closet” (Dangerous, 1991), “Dangerous” (Dangerous, 1991) or “Heartbreaker” (Invincible, 2001) give account of the ordeal the poetic persona is undergoing due to a lover’s wickedness and impiety, in clear analogy with the Victorian prototype of the fallen woman. Poe’s stories featuring women, also known as his marriage tales, seem to follow a very similar pattern due to metempsychosis, whereby submissive wives become enraged females and vice versa. In this respect, male mourners witness the transformation from angel to fallen woman in characters such as Morella, Ligeia, Berenice, Madeline, and the lady in “The Oval Portrait”. Striking parallels can be drawn between the way the grieving narrator feels in the presence of Morella and the tension the female protagonist of Jackson’s “Dangerous” creates in the singer; the unlimited ambition of Ligeia and that of “Dirty Diana”; and the secret and presumably sinful love portrayed in Jackson’s “In the Closet” and the mysterious bond established between Roderick and Madeline in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”. As a case in point, the narrator in Poe’s tale “Morella” feels entrapped as he falls under her charm, saying “I felt a forbidden spirit enkindling within me—would Morella place her cold hand upon my own (Poe 1982: 667). Similarly, in Jackson’s song “Dangerous”, the singer tries to evade, to no avail, the inescapable attraction that a deceitful girl exerts upon him, whispering: She came at me in sections With the eyes of desire I felt trapped into her web of sin A touch, a kiss, a whisper of love I was at the point of no return (Jackson 1997b, 17)

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In both cases, the female protagonists seem to typify evil and monstrosity, challenging and ultimately defying the weakening male in a display of attraction and repulsion. 4.1.5. Crime and investigation Some of Michael Jackson’s songs portray illegal deeds and lawsuits, featuring criminals, social outcasts, and dubious characters whose behaviour may be subject to moral reprobation and even legal prosecution. “Billie Jean” (Thriller, 1982) provides an account of a lawsuit in which the main character, a modern dandy, is brought to court to prove that he is the father of a beauty queen’s son. Most of the lyrics from these songs are somehow related to the hard-boiled detective genre, with outstanding examples such as the noir video clip “Smooth Criminal” (Bad, 1987), the Latino “Blood Is on the Dance Floor” (Blood Is on the Dance Floor, 1997) and the colourful “You Rock My World” (Invincible, 2001), whereby the clear-cut characterisation of criminals and detectives is subverted to the extent that it is hard to tell the difference between these two archetypes, since they both belong to the underworld. This particular tendency is strongly reminiscent of Poe’s extraordinarily-gifted detective Dupin, whose aristocratic origins are somehow subverted by his ludicrous nocturnal habits and his mysterious aura, which almost renders him preternatural. In this respect, scenes from the video clip “Billie Jean” (Thriller, 1982) bear a close resemblance to Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841). The singer walking on the pavement, which lights up after every step he takes, is reminiscent of the first scenes in Poe’s detective tale, in which Dupin and his friend take a walk along the streets of Paris. As a result of Dupin’s observing his friend looking at the pavement, he is able to trace back his friend’s train of thought despite the fact that he remains silent throughout their walk. Moreover, the moment when the singer goes upstairs to meet Billie and becomes invisible to escape from the detective seems to be in clear analogy with the puzzle Dupin and his friend must face so as to account for the criminal’s unbelievable way to flee after murdering Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter in a guesthouse. Similarly, the criminal investigation taking place in Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” (Bad, 1987) and the careful analysis of the evidence left in the crime scene somehow evoke the gruesome details reported in newspapers about the murders committed in Poe’s detective tale. The first lines of the song give account of Annie’s murder:

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As he came into the window It was the sound of a crescendo He came into her apartment He left the bloodstains on the carpet She ran underneath the table He could see she was unable So she ran into the bedroom She was struck down, it was her doom (Jackson 1997b, 82)

The reconstruction of Annie’s murder in Jackson’s song bears many points in common with the report of the murders Dupin reads in newspapers: The apartment was in the wildest disorder—the furniture broken and thrown about in all directions. There was only one bedstead; and from this the bed had been removed, and thrown into the middle of the floor. On a chair lay a razor, besmeared with blood. (Poe 1982, 147)

Later on, Dupin would discover that the actual criminal, an ourangoutang, had climbed to Madame L’Espanaye’s room and broken into her apartment through the window. 4.1.6. Fights and revenge Songs like “Beat It” (Thriller, 1982) or “Bad” (Bad, 1987) delineate stories in which two factions must solve their differences, usually starting with a fight which ends up in a dance. Evil in human nature and the desire to avenge wrong are also widely explored in some of Poe’s tales, such as “Metzengerstein” (1832), “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843), “The Imp of the Perverse” (1845), or “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846), the latter having been proclaimed as one of his most outstanding tales of revenge. Fifty years after committing a crime, Montresor still feels the need to voice the murder of his antagonist, Fortunato. Even though the reasons why Montresor decided to immure his rival alive are never explicitly stated, an ancestral feud seems to have turned them into enemies for life. As Montresor admits at the beginning of his confession, “the thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge” (Poe 1982, 274). The deprecating tone that Montresor uses all through the way to the catacombs, where he is leading Fortunato to taste his Amontillado, is also present in Jackson’s “Beat It” (Thriller, 1982) and “Bad” (Bad, 1987). The sarcastic speech Montresor delivers to snare Fortunato is illustrated in “Beat It” through the poetic

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persona’s threatening remarks: “you have to show them that you’re really not scared / you’re playin’ with your life, this ain’t no truth or dare” (Jackson 1997b, 6). Similarly, some particular lines in “Bad” seem especially reminiscent of Montresor’s speech: “the world is out / you’re doin’ wrong / gonna lock you up / before too long” (Jackson 1997b, 5). In both cases, a darkly ironic tone hides the criminal’s ultimate intentions in relation to the unfortunate victim. In addition to portraying fights as narratives of revenge, these texts go further and explore the evil side of human nature. In Jackson’s “Dangerous” (Dangerous, 1991), the narrator finds himself confessing his inability to deny what is presumed to be wicked, confessing “her inner spirit’s as sharp / as a two-edged sword / but I loved it / ‘cause it’s dangerous” (Jackson 1997b, 17). This haunting need to release rage and evil also seemed to have pursued Poe not only in his writings, but also in his personal life. This is precisely what is explored in “The Imp of the Perverse” (1845), as the narrator unfolds his thoughts about the individual’s self-destructiveness and the avoidance of moral responsibility, but also the unconscious desire to be caught so as to be ultimately redeemed. 4.1.7. Metaphysical speculations Towards the end of his career, Michael Jackson became especially concerned about the preservation of the environment, as well as his religious faith, his commitment to the welfare of humankind, and even his reflections on the afterlife. Some songs illustrating these issues are the deeply-reflective “Man in the Mirror” (Bad, 1987), the gospel-like “Will You Be There?” (Dangerous, 1991), the resilient “Keep the Faith” (Dangerous, 1991), the deeply-committed “Heal the World” (Dangerous, 1991), the lyrical “Gone Too Soon” (Dangerous, 1991), the dramatic “Earth Song” (HIStory, 1995), the mystic “Speechless” (Invincible, 2001), and the mournful “Heaven Can Wait” (Invincible, 2001). Edgar Allan Poe’s concern about metaphysics and psychology also became a latent concern in pieces such as “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” (1839), “William Wilson” (1840), “The Colloquy of Monos and Una” (1841), and “The Power of Words” (1845), in which celestial beings engage in conversation about the meaning of creation and coming-intobeing. All these works seem to contend that destruction is a necessary step before rebirth. Poe’s series of metaphysical tales, which opened with the publication of “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” (1839),

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reflected the apocalyptic visions that obsessed many Americans at the time. In 1835, due to the appearance of Halley’s comet, fears about the end of the world became common and it was believed that the Earth would eventually be consumed in a fiery ball. This apocalyptic vision is also illustrated in Jackson’s “Earth Song” (HIStory, 1995), including a litany of questions necessarily addressed to the listener, acknowledging the destruction of the planet as a result of man’s endeavours. In “Gone Too Soon” (Dangerous, 1991), the poetic persona gains insight into the afterlife and the inevitability of death and disappearance, which bears a significant resemblance to Poe’s metaphysical pieces, claiming: Like a comet Blazing ‘cross the evening sky Gone too soon Like a rainbow Fading in the twinkling of an eye Gone too soon (Jackson, 1997b, 33)

However, in addition to the change that inevitably ensues by the end of earthly existence, “Man in the Mirror” (Bad, 1987) seems to beg for an inward transformation on a more personal level, a transcendental change. At the end of Poe’s short story “William Wilson”, the narrator finds out that the antagonist that kept pursuing him when he was to commit a bad deed was simply himself. Similarly, in Jackson’s song the main voice confesses “I’ve been a victim of / a selfish kind of love / it’s time that I realize” (1997b, 60), thus unveiling an epiphanic moment by means of which he has gained insight into his own conscience and has started to live a new kind of life. 4.1.8. The interaction between the individual and society The individual’s struggle against social context and the consequent devaluation of his innocence are explored in some of Jackson’s songs, such as “A Stranger in Moscow” (HIStory, 1995), in which a passer-by walks along the cold streets of the Russian metropolis surrounded by a crowd of people; or “Human Nature” (Thriller, 1982), where the individual undergoes a transcendental experience while staring at the city at his feet. Likewise, Poe examined the interaction between the individual and the different social classes in “The Man of the Crowd” (1840). These texts have in common the fact that their narrators are constantly surrounded by crowds, and yet they still feel isolated and profoundly

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lonely. The narrator in Poe’s “The Man of the Crowd” observes an old man at a distance that avoids being alone and hides behind the mass of citizens that populate the great metropolis of London. Poe’s tale thus explores the isolation of the artist and the alienation of the individual in an urban environment. Jackson’s video clip “Stranger in Moscow” is fairly reminiscent of Poe’s tale, as the singer walks past a crowd of pedestrians on the streets of the metropolis, and these seem to ignore his presence. In Poe’s tale the narrator is both fascinated by and in awe of the old man, as he feels the unavoidable need to follow him along the streets of London. However, he eventually confronts him and stares at his face, and yet the stranger ignores him and resumes his walk. This exchange of glances between the poetic persona and the old stranger, as well as the need to observe and feel observed, is also portrayed in Jackson’s introspective song “Human Nature” (Thriller, 1982), where the singer takes a stroll around the city and finds himself “reaching out / to touch a stranger / electric eyes are everywhere” (1997b, 38). A similar scene is described in “Stranger in Moscow” (HIStory, 1995), in which the protagonist wanders around the cold streets of Moscow, dejected and lonely, stating “I was wandering in the rain / mask of life, feelin’ insane” (1997b, 81). Both lyrics evoke concealment and exposure, as the poetic persona indulges in a (seemingly desirable) state of aloofness but also feels the need to have the crowd around. 4.1.9. Gothic textualities Some of Jackson’s compositions also deal with gothic and horror themes, sometimes very explicitly, as is the case with the short films “Thriller” (Thriller, 1982) and “Ghosts” (Blood Is on the Dance Floor, 1997), which clearly pay homage to classic examples within the horror genre and, among them, Edgar Allan Poe. In the case of “Thriller”, directed by John Landis, who had recently released the film An American Werewolf in London (1981), visual references to Roger Corman’s works based on Poe’s texts are made obvious when Jackson and his girlfriend leave the theatre. While they are having an argument about the film they were watching and are standing at the gate, the viewer may catch a glimpse of the advertising poster of Roger Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death (1964), featuring the actor Vincent Price, who also significantly contributes a rap in Jackson’s song. Moreover, the lyrics of “Thriller” are also reminiscent of Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” (1842), as the singer teases his girlfriend and tries to scare her claiming “night creatures call / and the dead start to walk in their masquerade” (1997b, 89). At some

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stage in Landis’ short film Thriller, the pop singer manages to exert dominion over the crowd of living dead closing them in through his music and mesmerising movements, in clear analogy with Poe’s Prospero and the masquerade taking place in his secluded palazzo. In this respect, popular music critics such as Christopher Lynch have argued that “Jackson’s performance is like a carnival, with Jackson as the clown inviting the audience to his utopian world” (2001, 117). This dance is also echoed in Stan Winston’s short film Ghosts (1997), in which villagers from town, led by their mayor, urge Maestro, a strange man with magic powers living in isolation, to leave the place immediately. Maestro’s display of powers through music and dance charms the villagers, who easily fall under his magic spell. Moreover, the first scenes in Ghosts show a majestic raven, in clear reference to Poe’s poem, as the crowd approaches Maestro’s haunted house; a scene which is also strongly reminiscent of the first scenes in many of Corman’s films based on Poe’s tales in which the hero approaches the villain’s house, always far removed from civilisation. 4.1.10. The role of the press and social anger As an individual constantly chased by the press, some of Jackson’s songs examine personal dilemmas about being exposed to the public gaze and struggling to keep his privacy and intimate space. Lyrics such as “Leave Me Alone” from the film Moonwalker (1988), “Tabloid Junkie” (HIStory, 1995), “Unbreakable” (Invincible, 2001) or “Invincible” (Invincible, 2001) tackle these issues. As a writer as well as an editor of different publications, Poe also wrote several pieces which were interpreted as instances of harsh criticism about the sensationalism that characterised some of the most popular journals at the time. In works such as “A Predicament” (1838) and “How to Write a Blackwood Article” (1838), Poe mocked the ludicrous sensationalism and horror that characterised the writings published in magazines such as Blackwood. In “A Predicament”, the female protagonist, Signora Psyche Zenobia, is compelled to experience shocking sensations so as to learn how to write a Blackwood article. At some stage, Zenobia and her friend Pompei climb up the steeple of a church to behold the city of Edinburgh. So as to satisfy her curiosity, Zenobia stands on Pompei’s shoulders and thrusts her head in the opening of the gigantic clock so as to look down at the city. Suddenly, Zenobia feels a cold pressure at the back of her head, realising, as a result of her exaggerated curiosity, that the gigantic hand of the church clock is about to behead her.

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Zenobia’s precarious situation as a result of her curiosity as well as her subservience to the Blackwood press seems to be echoed in the equally sharp images presented in Jackson’s song “Tabloid Junkie” (HIStory, 1995), when the poetic persona openly addresses tabloids stating “it’s slander / you say it’s not a sword / but with your pen you torture men” (1997b, 83); likewise, he considers himself a victim claiming “in the black / they stab me in the back” (1997b, 83). Poe may have indulged in selfparody when writing these tales, as he harshly criticised the type of journals in which some of his tales had been published. Similarly, Michael Jackson may have felt insurmountable anguish as he struggled to acquire and retain fame while feeling the desperate need to relinquish it when tabloids insisted on damaging his public image. Jackson also complained about the dehumanisation of society in songs such as “Jam” (Dangerous, 1991), “They Don’t Really Care About Us” (HIStory, 1995) and “Scream” (HIStory, 1995), referring to social outcasts and focusing on the increasing alienation of the individual in society. As a case in point, the lyrics in “Jam” (Dangerous, 1991) read as follows: I told my brother Don’t you ask me for no favors I’m conditioned by the system Don’t you talk to me Don’t scream and shout (Jackson 1997b, 47)

Poe also explored the theme of submission to hierarchy and its ironic reversal in pieces such as “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether” (1845), in which the narrator visiting a lunatic asylum eventually discovers that the doctors are really the insane patients. And he touched upon the dehumanisation of the individual within a corrupt system of power in “Hop Frog” (1849), in which the King’s fool seeks revenge by enchaining the monarch and his aristocratic followers, thus reversing the traditionally-assumed hierarchy. 4.1.11. Science and technology Jackson’s fondness for technology, gadgets and scientific breakthroughs, especially as far as futuristic journeys are concerned, also shows in some of his video clips such as “Speed Demon” (Bad, 1987) or “Scream” (HIStory, 1995). Parallels can be drawn between these and Poe’s own attachment to science fiction in short pieces such as “The Balloon-Hoax” (1844), “Mellonta Tauta” (1849), or even his metaphysical and scientific

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volume on astronomy Eureka: An Essay on the Material and Spiritual Universe (1848). “The Balloon-Hoax” was conceived as an attempt to convince newspapers readers that a balloon flight across the Atlantic Ocean had been completed in seventy-five hours. Its technical and detailed description provided convincing details that the adventure had actually taken place. Poe could boast that he managed to convince a large number of people, especially due to the high interest in manned balloon flights most citizens had, regarding them as a scientific and technological marvel of the time. In this respect, Michael Jackson’s own dance movements have often been described as robotic and even gravity-defying, especially recalling his steps in songs such as “Dancing Machine” (1973), which he used to perform with The Jackson 5. Moreover, the spatial and shining outfits used in his HIStory Tour, his transformation into cars or even robots in his film Moonwalker, the way he was propelled into the air at the beginning of each concert, as well as his iconic moonwalk give evidence of Jackson’s love of technological gadgets. His self-image as an actual cyborg began to take shape in his song “Speed Demon” (Bad, 1987), in which a biker is thrilled by the speed that he has reached, asserting: Speedin’ on the freeway Gotta get a leadway Doin’ it on the highway Gotta have it my way Mind is like a compass I’m stoppin’ at nothin’ (Jackson 1997b, 80)

Even though the lyrics in “Scream” rather refer to social injustice in the world, the actions taking place in its video clip are set in outer space, where the protagonists live in a spaceship which looks like a comfortable mansion far removed from the Earth. “Scream” seems to foretell life in the future whilst underlining an unconscious desire to escape life on Earth. As a forerunner of science fiction, Poe also set his tale “Mellonta Tauta” (1849) in the year 2848 and, while providing an interesting satire of his own era, it also put forward some important inferences about the future. 4.1.12. The discourse of race Having lived in Virginia for a significant period of his life, Edgar Allan Poe possessed an insightful knowledge about the situation AfricanAmerican people were in during his time, when slavery was still a legal

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institution. Black characters named Pompei and Jupiter play minor roles in his tales “A Predicament” (1838) and “The Gold-Bug” (1843), respectively. Additionally, critics such as Leland S. Person (2001) have reinterpreted some of Poe’s stories like “Ligeia” (1845), “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), “The Black Cat” (1843) and “Hop-Frog” (1849) as texts illustrating the vengeance of blackness, focusing on Ligeia’s penetrating black eyes, the passionate ourang-outang’s release of his rage, Pluto’s vengeance over the narrator’s wife’s murder, and Hop-Frog’s fighting back ancestral racism when chaining together courtly aristocrats. Nonetheless, it is probably Poe’s only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), that most visibly underlines the racist colonial ideology and racialist scientific knowledge structure prevailing in his time. Conversely, being an African-American by birth, but increasingly presenting a remarkably fair complexion, Jackson had to face harsh criticism for allegedly having had his skin bleached. As a result of this public affront, he wrote the song “Black or White” (Dangerous, 1991), underlining the meaninglessness of traditionally-established racial differences in the era of globalisation and multiculturalism, arguing: See, it’s not about races just places, faces Where your blood comes from Is where your space is I’ve seen the bright get duller I’m not going to spend my life being a color (Jackson 1997b, 9)

Jackson’s video clip “Black or White”, directed by John Landis, reinforces the message disseminated in the song lyrics, as the singer travels around the globe and dances with people from different nationalities until, through spectacular morphing special effects, faces of people from different races rapidly transmute into one another.

4.2.

Parallel actants or characters

In addition to these thematic links, the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Michael Jackson share other significant narratological features in terms of actants or characters. With regard to actants, Jackson’s songs and video clips portray different typologies of characters which recur in all his albums, mainly: the dandy and the detective in “Billie Jean” (Thriller, 1982); the gangster in “Smooth Criminal” (Bad, 1987) and “You Rock My World” (Invincible, 2001); the conman or gambler in “Say, Say, Say” (McCartney, Pipes of Peace, 1983); the backstreet man in songs such as

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“Bad” (Bad, 1987) or “The Way You Make Me Feel” (Bad, 1987); the social outcast in “They Don’t Really Care About Us” (HIStory, 1995); the man in the crowd in “Stranger in Moscow” (HIStory, 1995); the doppelgänger in “Man in the Mirror” (Bad, 1987); the avenger in “Beat It” (Thriller, 1982) and the street fighter in “Bad” (Bad, 1987); the angel in the house in “Liberian Girl” (Bad, 1987), and the fallen woman in “Dirty Diana” (Bad, 1987) or “In The Closet” (Dangerous, 1991); the crankyand-isolated loner of the manor house in the short film “Ghosts” (Blood Is on the Dance Floor, 1997); the monster or transformer in the video clip “Thriller” (Thriller, 1982); the social commentator in “Tabloid Junkie” (HIStory, 1995), and the spaceman in the video clip “Scream” (HIStory, 1995) or the short film Captain Eo (1986). Interestingly enough, most of these characters also populate Poe’s tales, as is the case of his detective trilogy featuring Auguste Dupin as a dandy as well as a detective; the gambling character and doppelgänger in “William Wilson” (1840); the social outcast of “The Man of the Crowd” (1840); the enraged avenger in “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846) or “Hop-Frog” (1849); angels in the house such as Eleonora and Rowena and fallen women such as Ligeia and Morella; the loner and isolated Prospero in “The Masque of the Red Death” (1842) or Roderick in “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839); the journalist in tales such as “How to Write a Blackwood Article” (1838), and adventurers or technicians in such pieces as “The Balloon-Hoax” (1844) or “Mellonta Tauta” (1849).

4.3.

Common settings

With regard to settings, the storyline of Michael Jackson’s lyrics takes place in either imaginary or real scenarios. Backstreets on the outskirts of a city become a particularly recurrent setting with Poeian men of the crowd walking along alienating streets in songs such as “A Stranger in Moscow” (HIStory, 1995), “Human Nature” (Thriller, 1982) and “The Way You Make Me Feel” (Bad, 1987). Isolated and enclosed settings crowded with gangs such as garages in tales of revenge like “Beat It” (Thriller, 1982) or “Bad” (Bad, 1987) are also reminiscent of Poe’s cellars in “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846). Some other characters serve a term in prison, as in Jackson’s video clip “They Don’t Really Care About Us” (HIStory, 1995), while the terrified narrator in Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1843) accurately describes his anguishing feelings in his gothic enclosure as a convict. Some scenes of the video clip “Billie Jean” (Thriller, 1982) before the dandy-singer meets Billie take place in a hotel which is remarkably similar to the guesthouse where Madame L’Espanaye

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and her daughter are killed in Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), especially at the moment the singer goes up the stairs to get to Billie’s bedroom. Isolated manor houses and gothic castles also recur in Poe’s shortfiction, as is the case of the ancient House of Usher and Prospero’s palazzo in “The Masque of the Red Death” (1842). Some of Jackson’s explicitly gothic video clips, like “Thriller” (Thriller, 1982) and “Ghosts” (Blood Is on the Dance Floor, 1997), are also set in dilapidated houses where the victims are either entrapped or an eccentric recluse spends his days in complete isolation. Stages or even television sets are also commonly found in Jackson’s video clips like “Dirty Diana” (Bad, 1987) or “Liberian Girl” (Bad, 1987). In the former women play tricks on men, hiding away in glamorous limousines while the singer is performing on stage; in the latter, spectators observe an array of celebrities waiting impatiently to have an audition and soon realise they have been deceived as the video clip was meant to be a hoax. Another case in point is Poe’s sarcastic tale “The Spectacles” (1844), in which it is actually in the midst of a theatre performance that Simpson meets the deceitful but alluring Madame Lalande, with whom he will fall madly in love only to find out that she is a hideous old woman who has carefully planned to deceive him. In addition to these realistic settings, some scenarios in both Jackson’s songs and Poe’s stories are imaginary, portraying either a utopian or dystopian setting, as e.g. the video clips “Leave Me Alone” (Bad, 1987) and “Black or White” (Dangerous, 1991), which portray Jackson’s particular inner universe and yearning for cultural diversity. Similarly, “Earth Song” (HIStory, 1995) depicts Planet Earth after a cataclysm, while the short film Captain Eo (1986) and the video clip “Scream” (HIStory, 1995) take place in outer space. All these productions seem to echo imaginary and utopian settings in Poe’s tales such as “Landor’s Cottage” (1849), or metaphysical scenarios like “The Colloquy of Monos and Una” (1841), artificial settings such as in “The Sphinx” (1846), or futuristic settings in “Mellonta Tauta” (1849).

4.4.

Shared time frameworks

As far as time frameworks are concerned, most of Michael Jackson’s songs portray contemporary, classical or futuristic actions. Most of the storylines depicted in his songs are presumed to be contemporary. Nonetheless, some of his video clips disrupt this tendency, setting the actions in ancient Egypt, (“Remember the Time”, Dangerous, 1991), 1920s Chicago (“Smooth Criminal”, Bad, 1987), the nostalgic 1950s (in

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the first scenes of “Thriller”, Thriller, 1982), the psychedelic 1970s in discotheques (“Rock With You”, Off the Wall, 1979), and even the future (“Scream”, HIStory, 1995, and the short film Captain Eo, 1986). As for Poe’s tales and the time frameworks established in them, even though most of the plots are set either in an undetermined time framework or in Poe’s own 19th century, some stories go back to classical times or possess classical reminiscences, such as “The Assignation” (1834) and “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” (1839). Likewise, “Some Words with a Mummy” (1845) examines the encounter between a mummy from ancient Egypt and contemporary scientists while exchanging information about these two different periods. Poe also set some of his tales in a futuristic world, as in “Mellonta Tauta” (1849), set in the year 2848, and as a forerunner of science fiction, he also gave account of numerous artefacts and revolutionary machines which were ahead of his time in tales such as “The Balloon-Hoax” (1844) or “Von Kempelen and His Discovery” (1849).

4.5.

Recurrent motifs

Both creators’ popularity led to the identification of their art with several motifs or clichés which have pervaded through time. Poe’s tales feature characteristic tokens such as oval portraits and clocks, ravens and black cats, pavements in the city of Paris, tell-tale hearts, and men in black with a mournful look. Likewise, Jackson’s universe of lyrics and short films also features characteristic tokens that have become recurrent, such as mourning bands—reminiscent of Poe’s widowers—; crucial pictures to unravel the puzzle in “Billie Jean” (Thriller, 1982); animals such as tigers and panthers in the video clips of “Billie Jean” (Thriller, 1982) and “Black or White” (Dangerous, 1991); hats and gloves in “Smooth Criminal” (Bad, 1987) as characteristic of the gangster; paving stones that signal the messianic mental powers of the passer-by in “Billie Jean” (Thriller, 1982); and anguishing sighs preceding the tune of “Smooth Criminal” (Bad, 1987). Correspondingly, all these motifs seem to mirror Poe’s tales “Ligeia” (1838)—with its mournful widower—; “The Oval Portrait” (1842)—with the crucial transformation of the young lady in her life-like picture—; “The Black Cat” (1843) and Pluto’s unremitting presence; “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) and the transcendental significance Dupin attaches to the pavement; and “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843) and the old man’s spine-chilling sighs of terror before meeting his end. Just as Poe perfected his craft as a writer and carefully reflected on his poetics, disseminating these motifs through all of his short stories, Jackson

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also seemed to create and evolve through time, amalgamating all these tokens to create a living intertextual body or palimpsest, as Will Straw (1988) argues, wearing shining white gloves and socks as a reminder of the dandy in “Billie Jean” (Thriller, 1982), hats and mourning bands to play the role of the gangster in “Smooth Criminal” (Bad, 1987), outfits with metal belts and chains to impersonate the backstreet man in “Beat It” (Thriller, 1982) and “Bad” (Bad, 1987), and military suits and jackets in “HIStory” (HIStory, 1995).

4.6.

Functions and discourse modalities

In terms of the poetic persona in Michael Jackson’s songs, most of the lyrics present a first-person narrator, who is even homodiegetic, in the sense that he also plays an important role in the storyline in addition to narrating the actions taking place. Nonetheless, in some cases, the voice becomes omniscient, heterodiegetic, narrating events in which he seems to play no role except that of an observer. In the song “Smooth Criminal” (Bad, 1987), the poetic persona merely gives an accurate account of the evidence found on a crime scene. Likewise, Poe’s tales also feature a narrator who is crucially involved in the actions taking place, even if a few stories feature an omniscient narrator, as is the case of “The BalloonHoax” (1844), which is meant to be an accurate account of a journey. Drawing on Roman Jakobson’s functions of language, Jackson’s songs and Poe’s tales also exemplify standard functions which respectively give prominence to context, addresser, addressee, contact, code or message. Some of Jackson’s songs, such as “Smooth Criminal” (Bad, 1987), place emphasis on the context, and so their frame of reference is fairly realistic and accurate. Some other lyrics focus on the addresser and the way he feels, thus fulfilling the emotive function, as is the case of “She’s Out of My Life” (Off the Wall, 1979), in which the poetic persona dramatically unfolds his dejected sentiments as a result of unrequited love. Conversely, “Beat It” (Thriller, 1982), “Bad” (Bad, 1987), and even “Baby Be Mine” (Thriller, 1982) make explicit reference to the addressee, exemplifying the conative function, as the poetic persona tries to exert some persuasive influence over the listener. The phatic function, which underlines contact, may be clearly seen in songs such as “Jam” (Dangerous, 1991), “They Don’t Really Care About Us” (HIStory, 1995) and “Scream” (HIStory, 1995) through electrifying rhythms that hold the listener’s attention. Some other songs may be described as metalinguistic, as they focus on the code itself. Such is the case of the classic “Music and Me”, which Jackson sang with The Jackson 5. Finally, some of Jackson’s works exemplify the

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poetic function, since they mainly concentrate on the message they disseminate. Good examples of this are “Heal the World” (Dangerous, 1991) and “Speechless” (Invincible, 2001). Similarly, Poe’s texts also provide explicit instances of these language functions. Some of them are mainly referential as they point to a contextual reality. A good case in point is “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (1842), which chronicles the actual murder of a young woman in New York during Poe’s time. Some others particularly focus on the addresser, and thus become particularly emotive, like the tormented narrators in “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843) or “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1843). The voice in “The Cask of Amontillado” is in desperate need to confess his bad deed, and so needs the addressee to hear his confession, thus placing emphasis on the conative function. Demented narrators also fulfil the phatic function as illustrated in Poe’s “The Imp of the Perverse” (1845). Nonetheless, Poe was also well aware of his craft as a writer and editor and thus explicitly addressed the code and its intricacies in tales such as “How to Write a Blackwood Article” (1838). Finally, some of Poe’s stories like “The Assignation” (1834) or “The Oval Portrait” (1842) fittingly illustrate the poetic function, since they place emphasis on the lyrical message itself. These narrative functions necessarily condition the tone displayed in Poe’s tales and Jackson’s songs, which comprises graveness and seriousness in “Morella” (1835) and “She’s Out of My Life” (Off the Wall, 1979), humour and wit in “Three Sundays in a Week” (1841) and “The Girl is Mine” (Thriller, 1982), anger and revenge in “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846) and “Bad” (Bad, 1987), persuasiveness and argumentation in “The Imp of the Perverse” (1845) and “Jam” (Dangerous, 1991), pensiveness and paused logical deduction in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) and “Smooth Criminal” (Bad, 1987), and outstanding lyricism in “The Oval Portrait” (1842) and “Speechless” (Invincible, 2001).

5. Afterthought This intertextual analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s tales and Michael Jackson’s songs, video clips and short films underlines the narratological structures shared between both authors’ works as representatives of contemporary popular culture. In terms of life, poetics and heritage, these two masters seem to present many points in common. And the comparative structural study undertaken in this paper has shown striking similarities betwen the works of both Poe and Jackson which range from thematic links to discourse modalities.

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Narratological items often explored in literary structural analyses such as themes, actants, settings, time frameworks, motifs and discourse modalities may thus prove useful for comparative studies between works and creators pertaining to different disciplines. This comparative narratological analysis could also be expanded through applied studies of concrete songs and tales. In particular, close readings of Poe’s tales and Jackson’s songs show the parallels that can be drawn between “Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “Smooth Criminal”, “The Imp of the Perverse” and “Bad”, “William Wilson” and “Man in the Mirror”, “The Man in the Crowd” and “Stranger in Moscow”, “The Assignation” and “Billie Jean”, “The Man That Was Used Up” and “Don’t Stop ‘Till You Have Enough”, “The Masque of the Red Death” and “Thriller”, “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Another Part of Me”, as well as “Ligeia” and “Dirty Diana”. All in all, this comparative approach may aid in teaching narratological tools and structural analyses as well as encourage students and scholars to develop comparative, intertextual and interdisciplinary studies.

Works cited BBC News. 1999. Jackson’s Big Screen Thriller. BBC Online Network, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/514069.stm (accessed July 10, 2012). Castillo, Francisco Javier. 1991. Espacios, Ambientes y Personajes Poeianos. Revista de Filología de la Universidad de La Laguna 10: 5167. Fast, Susan. 2009. Popular Music and Society: Call for Papers. Special Issue: Michael Jackson: Musical Subjectivities. Musicology / Matters, http://musicologymatters.blogspot.com/2009/10/mj-cfp.html (accessed July 10, 2012). Fast, Susan. 2010. Difference that Exceeded Understanding: Remembering Michael Jackson (1958-2009). Popular Music and Society 33(2): 259266. Fisher, Benjamin F. 2008. The Cambridge Introduction to Edgar Allan Poe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fisher, Mark, ed. 2009. The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson. Winchester: O Books. González Miguel, María de los Ángeles. 2000. E.T.A.Hoffman y Edgar Allan Poe: estudio comparativo de su narrativa breve. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid.

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Gordi, Berri. Berri Gordi’s Eulogy. Michael Jackson’s Memorial Service, July 7, 2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vibRwe8iCk (accessed July 12, 2012). Griswold, Rufus W. 1986 (1849). Death of Edgar Allan Poe. In Edgar Allan Poe: The Critical Heritage, ed. Ian M. Walker, 294-302. London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Hayes, Kevin J. 2009. Edgar Allan Poe. London: Reaktion Books. Jackson, Michael. 1979. Off the Wall. New York: Epic Records. —. 1982. Thriller. New York: Epic Records. —. 1987. Bad. New York: Epic Records. —. 1988. Moonwalk. New York: Harmony Books. —. 1991. Dangerous. New York: Epic Records. —. 1995. HIStory: Past, Present and Future. New York: Epic Records. —. 1997a. Blood Is on the Dance Floor. New York: Epic Records. —. 1997b. The Complete Michael Jackson. London: Faber Music. —. 2001. Invincible. New York: Epic Records. —. 2005. Audio Chat VH1 Fans of Invincible. MJJ Polish Board. Powered by ASP-FastBoard. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_x0lFCIHE. Klages, Mary. 2006. Literary Theory: A Guide for the Perplexed. London: Continuum. Kramer, Jerry and Colin Chilvers. 1988. Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker. New York: Ultimate Productions. Lynch, Christopher. 2001. Ritual Transformation through Michael Jackson’s Music Video. Journal of Communication Inquiry 25: 114131. Magistrale, Tony. 2001. Student Companion to Edgar Allan Poe. Westport and London: Greenwood. McCartney, Paul. 1983. Pipes of Peace. London: Parlophone. Neimeyer, Mark. 2002. Poe and Popular Culture. In The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Kevin J. Hayes, 205-244. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Peeples, Scott. 2004. The Afterlife of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Camden House. Person, Leland S. 2001. Poe’s Philosophy of Amalgamation. In Romancing the Shadow: Poe and Race., eds J. Gerald Kennedy and Liliane Weissberg, 205-224. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Poe, Edgar A. 1982. The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Penguin. Pollin, Burton R. 2004. Poe’s Seductive Influence on Great Writers. Lincoln: Universe.

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CHAPTER FIVE BACK TO THE ORIENT: JUAN VALERA’S “EL PÁJARO VERDE”1 MONTSERRAT AMORES

Madrid, 1860. Manuel Galiano’s printing press started the publishing process for Florilegio de cuentos, leyendas y tradiciones vulgares [Anthology of popular tales, legends and traditions], whose authors appeared hidden under the initials AMS and JV. These stood for Antonio María Segovia, a journalist and writer who had already published works using his pen name El Estudiante [The student], and Cordova-born Juan Valera, who seems to have been behind the idea of this collected volume. As early as July 1856, the latter had taken his time to review the Leyenda de las tres toronjas del vergel de amor [The legend of the three oranges of the garden of love], a little book published in a limited edition by Agustín Durán, who had “restored” the well-known tale “Las tres naranjas” [The three oranges] in romance form (Uther 2004, type 408). In his remarks, originally published as one of the chronicles he submitted to “Revista de Madrid”. Cartas al director de la Revista Peninsular” [The Madrid Journal. Letters to the editor of the Peninsular Review], and clearly informed by Wilhelm Grimm’s views, Valera stated that “neither Spain nor Portugal […] have yet considered collecting their folk tales so as not to let them fade into oblivion, which would be most regrettable” (1961, 80). In that same chronicle, he also praised Agustín Durán’s erudite work as a compiler and editor of Spanish romances and asked his readers a rhetorical question: “Is there a single Andalusian boy whose loved one has never told him the story of ‘el pájaro verde’ [The green bird], which is better than any of those known and told by Queen Scheherazade?” (Valera 1961, 8081). Four years later, on 17 August 1860, he used similar words to tell his friend Gumersindo Laverde about the enterprise he had undertaken with Segovia:

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In December of the same year he writes to Laverde: “I have already written the first tale of the collection we plan to publish. Let’s see whether it finally comes out. I must write the introduction but haven’t started yet” (2002, 710).2 The Andalusian writer’s doubts about the collection’s eventual publication were a foretaste of the future of their venture. Unfortunately, only this first instalment containing the aforementioned introduction and “El pájaro verde” was to be published from Florilegio. It must be noted, however, that “El pájaro verde” probably remains the most delightful

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literary rendition of a folktale published in Spain in the 19th century, and went on to have a long, fruitful literary life.3 In his preface to the volume Cuentos y diálogos [Tales and dialogues] (1882), dedicated “To His Excellency Don Enrique R. de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas”, Valera reveals his informant’s identity: “Here you have ‘Parsondes’ —he wrote—; ‘El pájaro verde’, a folk tale that Your Excellency’s lady mother told me in a remarkably talented way and which I have but put in writing, seeking to compete with Perrault, Andersen, Musäus” (146). Valera’s tale follows type 431B* (Aarne-Thompson 1973; CamarenaChevalier 1995; Amores 1997), which Uther’s current folk tale type index omits (2004), possibly due to its limited territorial dissemination. Clearly part of the enchanted husband cycle, it narrates the adventures of a princess who must break the spell for one or several princes who have been transformed into birds or rabbits. The enchanted prince steals three garments from the princess and she succeeds in breaking the spell with the help of a peasant girl who has access to the magic place in which she can see the birds and the rabbits transform themselves back into men. Up to nine Spanish versions are known of this folktale, curiously enough mostly from Andalusia: one collected in the province of Ciudad Real (Camarena 1984, Nr 85); five in Andalusia (Folk-lore Andaluz 1981, 355357; Jiménez Romero 1990, No. 24; Larrea 1959, Nr 1; Naveros 1985, 5455; Porro, et al. 1985, Nr 20) and three from Catalonia (Amades 1974, Nrs 60 and 90; Alcover 1976, 36-37). The first faithfully recorded oral version of the tale in Spain was collected by the mother of Antonio Machado Álvarez, “Demófilo”, and published in the journal El Folk-lore andaluz [Andalusian folklore] (1882-1883). It seems likely, however, that this version was not originally Andalusian but from Badajoz, since Cipriana Álvarez collected tales not only in Huelva but also in Llerena, a village in Extremadura (Rodríguez Pastor 1998, 121; Mena Cabezas 2003). As I have stated elsewhere (Amores 1993-1994; 1996), Juan Valera’s inclination for the popular arts was not limited to merely collecting. For him it was essential that the “popular tale” should recover a certain “lasting, literary form”, as he warned in the preface he wrote for Una docena de cuentos [A dozen tales] by his friend Narciso Campillo (Valera 1878b, XIV). Valera tackled the issue of folktales in several of his critical articles, some of which celebrated their being collected and published, whilst others exclusively addressed the definition of the genre.4 In all of them Juan Valera, an expert in the works of European philologists and folklorists, disseminates the latest theories on the origin of such stories and shares his own ideas on the genre.5 For Valera, the marvellous tales like “El pájaro verde”, which he called “cuentos de hadas o de encantamientos” [fairy or enchantment tales],

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Chapter Five son sin duda, los más bonitos de todos; pero son también los menos castizos. Los tales cuentos, desfiguradas reliquias de antiguas y exóticas mitologías, y fragmentos tal vez de primitivas epopeyas, han venido emigrando desde la India, desde la Persia y desde otros países del remoto Oriente; han pasado por todas las naciones de Europa y en casi todas ellas se han naturalizado. (1968, 1047) [are, without doubt, the most beautiful of all, although also the least traditionally Spanish. Such tales, disfigured relics of old, exotic mythologies, and possibly fragments of primitive epics, have migrated from India, Persia and other Far East countries, travelled through all the European nations and become naturalised in almost all of them.]

According to Valera, the oral tradition has distorted these ancient examples of world literature, turning them into extravagant, implausible jokes. It thus takes a literary writer to restore them, as he warns in his introduction to Florilegio: “Even if old women’s tales receive some recognition, these are not considered true, perfect poetry but its embryo. Poetry can be perfected, and is even constituted by, the beauty of its form, and tales have none of it” (1965, 86). The task that Valera sets upon himself, therefore, is to turn those folktales orally delivered with “singular talent” by the Duke of Rivas’s mother into texts that could easily compete with those by the great European fairy tale writers. This can be seen as one of many possible examples of that “exoticism of the inner self” which Michel de Certeau, Dominique Julia and Jacques Revel all referred to when discussing the love of popular literature (Certeau 1980, 52) that characterised Europe in the mid 19th century. Like Fernán Caballero, Antonio de Trueba, Narciso Campillo and many others, Juan Valera appropriates a purely popular tale, suitable for any kind of readership, with the aim of converting it into a representative text of hegemonic culture. Nevertheless, Valera remained faithful to the principles of the folktale as a literary genre: Como género de literatura, el cuento es de los que más se eximen de reglas y preceptos. Conviene, sí, que el estilo sea sencillo y llano; que tenga el narrador candidez o que acierte a fingirla, que sea puro y castizo en la lengua que escribe, y, sobre todo, que interese o que divierta, y que si refiere cosas increíbles y hasta absurdas, no lo parezcan, por la buena maña, hechizo y primor con que las refiera. (1968, 1049) [As a literary genre, the folktale stands among those least prone to rules and precepts. Having said this, the style should be plain and simple; the narrator should be (or successfully pretend to be) candid, use pure, traditional language and, above all, should his narration contain incredible,

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even absurd elements, these must not seem so thanks to his good craft, magic and beauty in telling them.]

Style, narrative voice and verisimilitude are the three elements that will account for the metamorphosis of “El pájaro verde” from oral story to a long tale with seven chapters. Set in the Orient, the story tells us about Venturosa,6 a fifteen-year-old princess, and her efforts to have a beautiful green bird that has stolen three garments from her. This bird turns out to be one of the three princes converted into birds by the Khan of Tartary’s evil power. The princess, thanks to her virtuous, pure nature, will obtain help from the good wizards and so succeed in breaking the spell on the princes. The plot’s exotic atmosphere results from the writer’s idea to take the events back to their original setting. If, as mentioned above, original fairy tales are from the Orient, the Orient should then be the ideal setting for the adventures of a prince magically turned into a bird. Indeed, and to use the narrator’s words, the action in “El pájaro verde” takes place “in a very distant past” and in an “extremely fertile, vast, populous realm there in the land of the Orient” (Valera 1968, 1053). The folktale thus returns to the Orient, following a strategy sustained by the latest philological research at the time, which in turn provides the text with one of the components that, according to Valera, is generally absent from this kind of stories: verisimilitude.7 The magic events which take place in the folktale (those “incredible, even absurd things” the author refers to) can be plausible in a remote place and time, in a completely foreign civilisation (Amores 2008, 69-71), as Margarita Almela points out: La elección de una cultura alejada en el tiempo y en el espacio como marco de una aventura humana vendrá determinada—además de por sus preferencias estéticas—, por los rasgos de esa cultura que hagan más verosímil o aceptable para sus lectores el caso que se plantea. El antiguo Oriente o la Alejandría del siglo IV, por ejemplo, le facilitarán traspasar con coherencia la línea que separa lo real de lo irreal, o plantear con libertad asuntos que la moral del XIX hubiera rechazado. (1995, XIX) [The choice of a distant culture in both time and space as the setting of a human adventure will be determined—besides its aesthetic preferences—by those features in that culture which could make the story it tells more plausible or acceptable to its readers. The Ancient Orient or 4th-century Alexandria, for example, will make it easier [for the writer] to coherently cross the border between reality and fantasy, or to freely tackle issues which 19th century morality would have openly rejected.]

In this case, the distant time and place contribute to the naturalisation of the marvellous, the Orient mediating between popular and hegemonic

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culture. Nevertheless, the image of the Orient created by Valera in “El pájaro verde” is nothing but an ideological construct. In recreating this simulacrum of an ancient civilisation, in attempting to represent the other, he cannot help imposing his own Western perspective, thus structuring the story from a clearly Eurocentric location. Due to space limitations, I shall focus on one of the dimensions to this mechanism, namely the philosophy underlying the tale, even if some further remarks also need to be made to a stylistic strategy that the narrator also resorts to in order to bring the Orient closer to the Spanish reader. After a short introduction, “El pájaro verde” opens with the narrator telling us about the Queen’s death, shortly after giving birth to the little Princess, the main character in the tale. The King embraces the Queen so passionately that he accidentally suffocates her and she dies in his arms. Fifteen years later, the Princess has already reached marriageable age and the King arranges festivities so that his daughter can choose a suitable husband, but the princess’s “unfriendly, hard-to-please, cold-hearted nature” (1968, 1055) makes her display an attitude of bored indifference to all but one of her suitors, the Khan of Tartary’s son, who inexplicably inspires hatred in her. Nothing of this can be found in the oral versions of the type 431B* tales, which usually open with the scene in which the garments are stolen—the subject matter of the second chapter of Valera’s tale. On a beautiful spring morning, the Princess was combing her hair at her dressing table in a “melancholy, pensive” mood, when “all of a sudden the most beautiful bird flew in from the balcony; its emerald-green plumage and graceful flight left both the lady and her maid speechless” (1968, 1055). The bird snatches the cord the princess was holding in her hands, thus leaving her with “the strangest impression”. A few days later she leaves the dance room to tie her garter: Descubierta tenía ya su alteza la bien torneada pierna, había estirado ya la blanca media de seda y se preparaba a sujetarla con la liga que tenía en la mano, cuando oyó un ruido de alas y vio venir hacia ella el pájaro verde, que le arrebató la liga en el ebúrneo pico y desapareció al punto. (1968, 1055) [Her Highness’s finely-shaped leg was already fully uncovered; she had already pulled up her white silk stocking and was about to tie it up with the garter she had in her hand when she heard the fluttering of wings and saw the green bird come up to her, at which point it snatched the garter from her with its ivory-like beak and disappeared at once.]

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Consequently, the princess expresses her wish to “own and keep the green bird alive”. Finally, the following morning, Venturosa was thinking about her desire to own the green bird, when sacó del pecho un rico guardapelo, donde guardaba un rizo de su madre, que se puso a besar. Mas apenas empezó a besarlo, cuando acudió más rápido que nunca el pájaro verde, tocó con su ebúrneo pico los labios de la princesa y arrebató el guardapelo, que durante tantos años había reposado contra su corazón y en tan oculto y deseado lugar había permanecido. Esta vez no se desmayó la princesa; antes bien, se puso colorada, y dijo a la doncella: —Mírame, mírame los labios; ese pájaro insolente me los ha herido, porque me arden. La doncella los miró y no notó picadura alguna; pero indudablemente el pájaro había puesto en ellos algo de ponzoña, porque el traidor no volvió a aparecer en adelante, y la princesa fue desmejorándose por grados, hasta caer enferma de mucho peligro (1056) [out of her breast pocket she produced a rich locket in which she kept a lock of her mother’s hair, which she kissed. No sooner had she begun to kiss it than the green bird came up to her more swiftly than ever, touched the princess’s lips with its ivory-like beak and snatched the locket which had for so many years rested close to her heart, safely kept in such a privy place. The princess did not lose heart this time. On the contrary, her face reddened and she said to her maid: —Look, look at my lips. They have been hurt by that insolent bird because I can feel them burn. The maid inspected them yet no trace of a bite did she see. Still, the bird must have left some poison in them because the treacherous beast did not appear again and her health gradually deteriorated before she finally fell dangerously ill]

The exquisite description of the theft of the three garments, the remarkable sensuality of each scene and the increasingly erotic tone are very telling, since her being robbed of her garments and that briefest of intimate moments with the bird are followed by her increasing need to have the bird, all of which ends up with her mysterious illness, which neither the princess herself nor the wisest men in the land can account for. The princess’ desire to have the green bird and the illness caused by this unfulfilled desire are essential elements of the folktale Valera is inspired by. In the Spanish oral tales, the theft of the garments is synthetically narrated, and occasionally features indirect references. At any rate, the theft itself is varyingly attributed to a bird or rabbit, whose colour may also change (black, green, blue, yellow...). Some of these oral stories are not explicit about the girl’s infatuation, although they all refer to

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her wish to have the beautiful animal and the illness that results from her unfulfilled desire. For his part, in his literary re-elaboration of the folktale, Valera ignores Oriental ontological principles whilst directly referring to neoplatonist theories. He thus assembles the core elements of the folktale with a theoretical model which may well make it all plausible in his eyes but—I insist—has absolutely nothing to do with oriental philosophy. Thus, the princess marvels at the green bird’s beauty after the first theft; after the second, she longs to have the bird, and her longing may betoken love understood as desire for beauty, even though she remains unaware of it. In a similarly intuitive way, she instantly hates her aggressor in the folktale (the Khan of Tartary’s son, characterised by his ugliness), thus seemingly violating the principle that love is beautiful and good. Princess Venturosa longs for the green bird prior to either having it or even knowing what / who it was as a result of that intuitive knowledge which for neoplatonists is the “knowledge of the spirit”—and which the Princess seems to point to in chapter 5 when the reader learns that, thanks to a young washerwoman, she knows who hides under the green bird exterior: Este capricho de poseer el pájaro verde no era capricho, era amor. Era y es un amor que, por oculto y no acostumbrado camino, ha penetrado en mi corazón. No he visto al príncipe, y creo que es hermoso. No le he hablado, y presumo que es discreto. No sé de los sucesos de su vida sino que está encantado y que me tiene encantada, y doy por cierto que es valiente, generoso y leal. (1060) [This desire to have the green bird was no desire but love. It was and remains a love which has through dark, crooked ways entered my heart. I have not seen the prince, yet I believe he is fair. I have not talked to him, and yet presume he is discreet. I do not know about any event in his life other than he is bewitched and has bewitched me. And I take it as true that he is brave, generous, and loyal.]

Moreover, upon knowing from the washerwoman that her feelings are requited, she almost immediately recovers from her illness, as romantic reciprocity becomes applicable: according to Marsilio Ficino’s De amore, “Whoever loves dies upon giving themselves to their loved one. But they revive in the loved one at once, when the loved one receives them with ardent thoughts” (1986, 43).8 Following the structure of the folktale, the princess’s helper (donor) comes into action in the third chapter, although it must also be said that the narrator, with the naivety that according to Valera fairytale narrators must have and their characteristically “pure and traditionally Spanish” tone, tells us that so many were the tears shed, and handkerchiefs soiled, by the princess

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that the young washerwoman—who was, “to use a fashionable expression, a very friendly chick”—very often had to wash the princess’s handkerchiefs— “back then not even the most powerful would have white linen as is now common” (1968, 1057). One morning, the washerwoman is eating an orange during a small break from work when the orange falls from her hands and rolls all the way to a dark forest. The orange thus leads the frightened girl to a magnificent palace where a table has been laid with the most succulent delicacies.9 Feeling hungry, she wants to have a bite, but every time she tries to reach the food she is hit by an invisible hand and she hears a voice saying “Stay away… this is for my lord, the Prince!” Eventually, she discovers a fountain and sees three birds, “one of which all green and dazzling like an emerald”, dive into the water. Soon afterwards there appear “three young men, so handsome, finely-shaped and fair-skinned that they seemed foreign statues masterly sculpted from rose-tinted marble”. The young washerwoman, que en honor a la verdad se debe decir que jamás había visto hombres desnudos, y que de ver a su padre, a sus hermanos y a otros amigos, vestidos y mal vestidos, no podía deducir hasta dónde era capaz de elevarse la hermosura humana masculina, se figuró que miraba a tres genios inmortales o a tres ángeles del Cielo. Así es que, sin ruborizarse, los siguió mirando con bastante complacencia, como objetos santos y nada pecaminosos. (1058-1059) [who, to tell the truth, had never seen naked men and, having only seen her own father, brothers and other friends all dressed—and poorly dressed at that—could not make out how sublime masculine beauty could be, concluded that she was beholding three immortal genies or three angels from Heaven. Accordingly, without losing her composure, she kept beholding them with pleasure as venerable, not at all sinful, objects.]

She then hears the Prince sigh before Princess Venturosa’s belongings, and deduces that the remaining two birds are the bewitched Prince’s secretary and squire, after which she falls asleep. When she wakes up she finds herself in the same place where she had tried to eat the orange. Both the role played by the washerwoman and the magic object that links two different scenes—an orange in this particular case—can be seen in the folktale that Valera reelaborates. In the oral versions the young washerwoman’s role is usually played by a baker—or else just an old woman—and her daughter; for its part, the function of the orange is performed by either a loaf of bread or a donkey that the two women hold by the tail and takes them to the enchanted palace. In some of the oral versions an invisible hand may also prevent this character from eating delicacies reserved for the King. This is indeed the case in the tale collected by Arcadio de Larrea Palacín in Cadiz. In this particular tale, the baker tries to touch a pot

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and a voice asking her to identify herself beats her in the hand with a stick so that she does not eat (1959, 24). Something similar happens to the old woman in yet another traditional tale collected in Andalusia, this time by Alfonso Jiménez Romero, in which a hand tells the old woman “I am sorry, Mrs yesterday flower / but this is for the King” (1990, 100). However, the fountain that breaks the spell on the birds does not appear in the oral versions consulted, in which the birds recover their human appearance without the aid of any further object, sometimes simply turning round or taking their cloaks off. Note should be taken that the exclamation proffered by the rabbit prince in the folktale collected by Demófilo’s mother coincides with that uttered by the prince / green bird in Valera’s tale. In the next chapter, as could be expected, the washerwoman tells the princess about her marvellous adventure, upon which the latter determines that the washerwoman and her maid are to marry the prince’s squire and secretary, respectively “and you shall both be high-ranking ladies of my court” (1968, 1061). Having reached this point, it is necessary to emphasise the quality shared by the Princess, the young washerwoman and the maid: the innocence and purity of their souls, a condition which is very much in agreement with the neo-Platonist views that the story exudes and which also befits the sexual awakening experienced by the three girls. From this moment Valera leaves the folktale behind and moves on to recreate in his own way the breaking of the spell on the birds and provide the story with its dénouement. In the oral versions, the Princess is accompanied to the same place, where she can see her stolen garments and her sole presence breaks the spell on the birds, thus bringing the tale to a close. In “El pájaro verde”, however, Princess Venturosa wants to accompany her maid to this place but, upon being told that this is impossible, she asks her maid to fetch the Book of Contemporary Kings and the Astronomical Almanac. Thus, she finds out that the green bird is the son of the Emperor of China and that the Khan of Tartary, who had command over all of the Empire when the Emperor’s son disappeared, cast the spell on him. The Princess then sends an emissary to intercept the Khan’s letters so as to know what his intentions are. Already in the sixth chapter, and five days afterwards, the Khan suspects the Princess must know about the green bird and leaves with forty of his men to find the emissaries. In the meantime, Venturosa tries to gain access to the enchanted palace and sends one of his father’s generals to kill the Khan and his heralds. A bloody battle ensues between the soldiers of King Venturoso and the allies of the Khan of Tartary, which ends with the latter’s death.10 The Princess, already in possession of a letter from the Khan of Tartary written in undecipherable signs, departs with the aim of finding a hermit who knows the language the letter is written in. In the seventh (and last) chapter, Venturosa,

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her maid and the washerwoman find the hermit, who reads the letter in a magical setting. The letter says that several conditions had been met for the spell on the princes to have been broken. First, the washerwoman did not blush in front of the men’s nakedness; secondly, the bird-prince stole the garments from the Princess; thirdly, somebody was interpreting the letter; lastly, the chaste nature of the girls’ thoughts had been proved. After reading the letter, the hermit dies, and the three friends magically find themselves standing by the palace fountain. “The three of them were in love; all three were most chaste and innocent. Not even in the compromising moment of giving [their loved ones] an intimate kiss did they feel anything more than a profound emotion, all mystical and pure” (1968, 1065). The spell is thus broken on the birds and the princess’ wish comes true. As suggested above, the extended plot results from Valera’s aim to provide the text with the verisimilitude that the folktale lacks. Thus, Valera reconstructs this tale incorporating more transcendental motives that in turn provide a plausible account of the spell on the prince—an account which is completely absent from the folktale—thus building a far more complex plot. The love story between the princess and the bewitched prince thus becomes part of a greater plot that revolves around the Khan of Tartary’s ambitiondriven conspiracy to get hold of the Chinese Empire, which in turn accounts for his need to cast a spell on the prince so that the latter cannot succeed his father on the throne. The extended plot also includes the conditions for the breaking of the spell—conditions which are gradually met as the tale unfolds. It can thus be argued that those elements which are not truly accounted for or appear in a fragmentary way in the folktale are provided with literary coherence in Valera’s story. On the other hand, Valera reinforces verisimilitude by rounding off the plot. Thus, the princess is surrounded by characters who can help her (her maid, the young washerwoman, the hermit and even a foreign secretary) and a villain is created (the Khan of Tartary), supported by the countless soldiers fighting for him. Needless to say, the villain is endowed with supernatural powers, which only astuteness can eventually defeat. In essence, this is nothing but a representation of the age-old struggle between good and evil. As mentioned above, the role played by the narrator is without doubt another of the strengths of Valera’s story. This is a Cervantine voice that distances itself from the events in the plot, and whose presence, always perceptible throughout the story, is evidenced by the constant flashforwards to the reader’s here and now, with humorous results (Almela 1995, XIII). This is the voice of a Spanish narrator who knows the customs and reality of his / her country, whose aim is to bring events which have supposedly taken place in the Far East closer to a Spanish—and more specifically Madridian—

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readership. This is something that can be seen in the garment theft scenes or in those in which the washerwoman is the main character. Another example is the following, taken from one of Venturosa’s scenes: “As the new day dawned, she rose from her bed and, in her light morning clothes, wearing no corset or crinoline, more beautiful and interesting in that negligée, pale and with rings under her eyes, she left for the lushest end of the forest with her favourite maid...” (1056). As can be seen, the description of the lady in this scene—who will soon afterwards appear “in a dressing gown and slippers” (1061)—best suits a 19th-century bourgeois and not quite an oriental princess. The narrator also resorts to comparing uses and customs from time immemorial to others known by Spanish or European 19th-century readers. This strategy, visible in some of the quotes above, can be clearly seen in the following description of the palace where the bewitched princes live: Los primorosos objetos que en los salones había eran para espantar por su riqueza y exquisito gusto, no ya a la lavanderilla, que poco de esto había disfrutado, sino a la mismísima reina Victoria, que hubiera confesado la relativa inferioridad de la industria inglesa y hubiera dado patentes y medallas a los inventores y fabricantes de todos aquellos artículos (1057) [The richness and exquisite taste of the beautifully crafted objects in the rooms would have shocked not only the washerwoman, who had enjoyed very little of this in her life, but Queen Victoria herself, who would surely have acknowledged the relative inferiority of English industry, and granted patents and medals to the inventors and manufacturers of all such items]

The narrator also succeeds in providing his tale with a traditionally Spanish style thanks to the use of popular proverbs and lexical items. Thus, after the Queen’s death, the King goes into mourning for three years, but “as the proverb goes, even the longest night comes to an end, and the King, after a couple of years, shook off his melancholy” (1054) and recovered his usual amiable character. “Saraos” [all kinds of popular entertainment] were organised in the royal palace, in the course of the said events enigmas were proposed so as to seek the Princess’ favour. As for the magic fountain from which birds emerged as princes, se levantaba de medio de la taza un surtidor tan gigantesco como el que hay ahora en la Puerta del Sol; pero con la diferencia de que el agua de la Puerta del Sol es natural y ordinaria, y la de este era agua de color y tenía, además en sí misma todos los colores del iris y luz propia, lo cual, como ya calculará el lector, le daba un aspecto sumamente agradable. Hasta el murmullo que hacía esta agua al caer tenía algo más musical y acordado que el que producen otras, y se diría que aquel surtidor cantaba alguna de las más enamoradas canciones de Mozart o de Bellini. (1058)11

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[From the centre of the cup rose such a huge jet of water as that now at the Puerta del Sol,12 the only difference being that the water at the Puerta del Sol is natural and ordinary, whereas this was coloured with all the hues of the rainbow and shone with its own light, which—as the reader will have already guessed—made it a most pleasing image to behold. Even the murmur of the falling water was more musical and better tuned than that of others, so it might well be said that this fountain sang some of the loveliest songs by Mozart or Bellini.]

The story is thus provided with a most personal style which succeeds not only in amusing the reader but also in endowing an oral story with dignity— which largely derives from the verisimilitude that permeates the entire narration. Both the setting and the plot, revolving about events that emanate from the author’s imagination and which, therefore, cannot be found in the original folktale, make “El pájaro verde” a beautiful story suitably positioned to compete with those by the best 18th and 19th-century European writers that contributed to the dissemination and adaptation of the folktale. As disseminated and received in 19th-century Spain, the folktale returns to the Orient—although from a consciously western perspective.

Works cited Aarne, Antti and Stith Thompson. 1973. The Types of the Folktale. A Classification and Bibliography. Helsinki: Suomalainen TiedekatemiaAcademia Scientiarium Fennica. Alcover, Antoni M. 1976. Aplec de rondaies mallorquines. Palma de Mallorca: Moll, II. Almela, Margarita. 1989. Teoría y práctica del cuento en Valera. Lucanor 3: 89-104. —. 1995. Introducción. In Obras completas, I. Cuentos. Narraciones inacabadas. Traducciones. Teatro by Juan Valera, xi-xxix. Madrid: Turner. —. 2006. La cultura como principio organizador de los relatos de don Juan Valera. Cabra: Ayuntamiento de Cabra. Amades, Joan. 1974. Rondallística. Barcelona: Selecta. Amores, Montserrat. 1993-1994. Escritores del siglo XIX frente al cuento folclórico. Cuadernos de Investigación Filológica XIX-XX: 171-181. —. 1996. Juan Valera. De “La muñequita” a “La buena fama”: un mismo cuento en dos versiones. Anuario de Estudios Filológicos XIX: 39-56. —. 1997. Tratamiento literario de lo maravilloso en los cuentos folclóricos reelaborados en el siglo XIX. Lucanor 14: 113-128.

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—. 2008. Oriente, tan cerca, tan lejos. Los relatos maravillosos de ambientación oriental de Estébanez Calderón y Valera. In Estudios sobre el cuentos español del siglo XIX, ed. Montserrat Amores and Rebeca Martín, 55-77. Vigo: Editorial Academia del Hispanismo. Baquero, Ana Luisa. 1984-1985. El cuento popular en el siglo XIX (Fernán Caballero, Luis Coloma, Narciso Campillo, Juan Valera). Anales de la Universidad de Murcia. Letras XLIII(1-2): 361-380. Camarena, Julio. 1984. Cuentos tradicionales recopilados en la provincia de Ciudad Real. Ciudad Real: Instituto de Estudios Manchegos-CSIC. Camarena, Julio and Maxime Chevalier. 1995. Catálogo tipológico del cuento folklórico español. Cuentos maravillosos. Madrid: Gredos. Certeau, Michel, Dominique Julia and Jacques Revel. 1980. La beauté du mort. In La culture au pluriel, ed. Michel de Certeau, 49-80. Paris: Christian Bourgeois. Gómez Carrillo, Enrique, ed. 1894. Cuentos escogidos de los mejores autores castellanos contemporáneos. Paris: Garnier. Jiménez Romero, Alfonso. 1990. La flor de la florentena. Cuentos tradicionales recogidos en Arahal. Sevilla: Fundación Machado. Larrea, Arcadio. 1959. Cuentos populares de Andalucía. Cuentos gaditanos. Madrid: CSIC. Mena Cabezas, Ignacio R. 2003. Recepción y apropiación del folklore en un contexto local: Cipriana Álvarez Durán en Llerena (Badajoz). Revista de Folklore 23b(271): 6-15. Molina Porras, Juan. 2009. La posición ideológica de Juan Valera en sus cuentos maravillosos. In Ensayos sobre ciencian ficción y literatura fantástica, ed. Teresa López Pellisa and Fernando Ángel Moreno, 417428. Madrid: Asociación Cultural Xatafi–Universidad Carlos III. Naveros, Juan. 1985. Cuentos populares de la comarca de Baena. Baena: Instituto de Bachillerato “Luis Carrillo de Sotomayor”. Porro, Mª José, et al. 1985. Cuentos cordobeses de tradición oral. Córdoba: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Córdoba. Risco, Antonio. 1987. Literatura fantástica de lengua española. Madrid: Taurus. Rodríguez Pastor, Juan. 1998. Los cuentos populares extremeños en el tránsito del siglo XIX al XX. Revista de Estudios Extremeños LIV(1): 113-150. Rubio Cremades, Enrique. 1997. Los relatos fantásticos de Juan Valera. In Narrativa fantástica en el siglo XIX (España e Hispanoamérica), ed. Jaume Pont, 119-126. Lérida: Milenio.

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S[egovia], Antonio María and J. V[alera]. 1860. Florilegio de cuentos, leyendas y tradiciones vulgares. Madrid: Imprenta de Manuel Galiana, I: 1-30. Uther, Hans-Jörg. 2004. The Types of International Folktales. A Classification and Bibliography. Helsinki: Suomalainen TiedekatemiaAcademia Scientiarium Fennica. Valera, Juan. 1874. Pepita Jiménez y cuentos y romances. Madrid: A. de Carlos e Hijo, editores. —. 1878a. Pasarse de listo. Novela original. Madrid: Biblioteca Perojo. —. 1878b. Introduction to Una docena de cuentos, by Narciso Campillo, v-xiv. Madrid: Oficinas de la Ilustración Española y Americana. —. 1882. Cuentos y diálogos. Sevilla: Francisco Álvarez y Cª, editores. —. 1887. Cuentos, diálogos y fantasías. Madrid: Imprenta y Fundición de M. Tello. —. 1900. El pájaro verde. Madrid: B. Rodríguez Serra. —. 1907. Leyendas del antiguo oriente. In Novelas. Dafnis y Cloe. Leyendas del antiguo Oriente (fragmentos). Obras Completas, XII: 185-217. Madrid: Imprenta Alemana. —. 1961. Revista de Madrid. Cartas al Director de la Revista Peninsular. In Obras Completas, II: 79-82. Madrid: Aguilar. —. 1965. Introduction to Florilegio de cuentos, leyendas y tradiciones vulgares. In Obras desconocidas de Juan Valera, ed. Cyrus C. DeCoster, 81-88. Madrid: Castalia. —. 1968. Obras Completas. Madrid: Aguilar, I. —. 2002. Correspondencia. Volumen 1847-1861. Ed. Leonardo Romero Tobar. Madrid: Castalia, I. Varela Cabezas, Rodrigo. 2001. Juan Valera y el cuento tradicional europeo. Crítica Hispánica 23(1-2): 206-229. Vicens Pujol, Carlota. 2009. Cuento popular y rito iniciático. El pájaro azul en Mme. d’Aulnoy y en Juan Valera. Revista de Estudios Franceses. Cédille 5: 371-386.

Notes 1

This work has been developed as part of the research project FFI2011-24314, for which generous funding is gratefully acknowledged. Translated from Spanish by José Igor Prieto-Arranz. Short quotes have all been translated into English. Longer, indented quotes are preserved in the source language and provided with an English translation.

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Segovia encouraged Valera to write this tale, as he writes in 1904: “Segovia was my friend; he encouraged me to write and I consider him my master. […] [I]t was thanks to him that I wrote my first tale, ‘El pájaro verde’” (1968, 1340-1341). 3 This tale saw different editions: it was published, together with “Parsondes”, in the volumes Pepita Jiménez y cuentos y romances [Pepita Jiménez and tales and romances] (Valera 1874, 215-249), Pasarse de listo [Too clever by half] (Valera 1878a, 251-295), Cuentos y diálogos [Tales and dialogues] (Valera 1882, 5-56) and Cuentos diálogos y fantasías [Tales, dialogues and fantasies] (1887, 9-44). Antonio Gómez Carrillo then included it in his anthology Cuentos escogidos de los mejores autores castellanos contemporáneos [Selected tales by the best contemporary Castilian authors] (1894, 275-314). Finally, an exquisite edition was published by the Mignon Library in 1900, and was the last to come out in the author’s lifetime. 4 I have already referred to his comments on Agustín Durán’s Las tres toronjas del vergel de amor, published in 1856 (Valera 1961, 79-82); these were followed by his introduction to Florilegio de cuentos, leyendas y tradiciones vulgares (1860). His long article “Leyendas de Oriente” [Legends from the Orient], where he disseminated the latest theories on the origin of these stories, was first published in Revista de España [Journal of Spain] in 1870 (Valera 1907). And, as mentioned above, he foreworded Narciso Campillo’s Una docena de cuentos in 1878 (Valera 1878, V-XIV). His “Breve definición del cuento” [A shot definition of the folktale] came out around 1890; this was an article he wrote for the Diccionario enciclopédico hispano-americano [Encyclopaedic Spanish-American Dictionary] published by Montaner y Simón (Valera 1968, 1045-1049). He tackled the issue again in the dedication of his short novel La buena fama [The Good Fame] to Segismundo Moret y Prendergast (this novel being the 1894 literary reelaboration of yet another folktale, “La muñequita” [The little doll] (Uther, type 571C) (Valera 1968, 1105-1106). Finally, in 1896 he wrote the introduction to Cuentos y chascarrillos andaluces [Andalusian tales and jokes], which he published together with Narciso Campillo, Mariano Pardo de Figueroa (Dr. Thebussem) and the Count of Las Navas (1968, 1210-1213). 5 Ana Luisa Baquero Escudero (1984-1985), Margarita Almela (1994) and Rodrigo Varela Cabezas (2001) have all studied this dimension of the writer. 6 Translator’s note: this name carries positive connotations, as it is in origin the feminine form of an adjective meaning “fortunate”, “lucky” and, therefore, “happy”. The same will apply later to the Princess’s father, King Venturoso. 7 For a full account, see Risco (1987, 96-110), Rubio Cremades (1997, 122-123) and the more recent work of Molina Porras (2009). 8 As Carlota Vicens Pujol points out (2009, 381-382), Valera’s story clearly refers to the little Princess’s sexual awakening. This will be the first of several rites of passage Venturosa needs to go through before reaching maturity. As shall be seen, the Princess, a maternal orphan, lacks a female role model and will eventually decide to leave the palace and pass a series of tests before becoming an adult woman. 9 With regard to this episode, Margarita Almela points out that Valera is indebted to the story of Cupid and Psyche which Apuleius included in his Metamorphoses (2006, 57).

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10 Margarita Almela believes that the death of the Tartar prince may recall that “of Antaeus by Hercules”, narrated by Diodorus Siculus (Bibliotheca historica, IV, 17, 4). However, the reference might also be there to the Greek fable as filtered by Cervantes, who gives Roldán a similar death at the hands of Bernardo del Carpio (Don Quixote, I, 1 and II, 32)” (2006, 67). 11 These and other examples supporting a similar argument can also be found in Amores (2008, 71). 12 The Puerta del Sol [literally, Gate of the Sun] is one of the best-known, and busiest, squares in Madrid’s old town.

CHAPTER SIX POPULAR AND EXPERIMENTAL ANARCHIST CINEMA: ANARCHO-SYNDICALIST FILM DURING THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR (1936-1939)1 ANTONIO PRADO Film production during the Spanish Civil War has been one of the aspects of Spanish cinema history to have received most attention (Paz and Montero 2002, 227). By contrast, there has been a surprising lack of discussion of the place of this film production compared to aspects of global cinema which share similar characteristics, whether within the tradition of militant political cinema or within the tradition of films which could be described as having an experimental or avant-garde character. This article is an attempt to rectify this absence by focusing on the films produced by the anarcho-syndicalist union, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo [National Confederation of Labour], henceforth CNT. The CNT was one of the most distinctive film producers during the Civil War not only because it was the most prolific, but also because of the cinematic innovation involved in its attempt to break with the Institutional Mode of Representation (to use Noël Burch’s concept) of Spanish and international cinema up until that time. Its major contributions to this rupture are twofold. Firstly, there is the collectivist character of its mode of production, the cinematic / political logic of which would not be reformulated within a film movement until the 1960s, when it can be found above all in the manifestos and practices of New Latin American Cinema, for example, in the idea of “Third Cinema” formulated by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino’s Grupo Cine Liberación [The Liberation Film Group] in Argentina (Solanas and Getino 1973). Secondly, we discover in some of the CNT’s productions formal attempts at rupture which can be located halfway between the Soviet avant-garde of

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the 1920s and post-World War II Italian neorealism. In the same way that both of these movements reflect their respective immediate contexts, the Spanish case only becomes distinctive when it is located within the specific historical process of the military and revolutionary events which produced this form of cinema. The military uprising of 17th-18th July 1936 against the Spanish Second Republic produced a vacuum of state power after its failure to take political control in the zones where the coup failed. In its place, it would be anarchist and socialist workers’ organisations who took the initiative. The most paradigmatic case is that of Catalonia, where on 19th July the military insurrectionists were defeated and the workers’ committees, which were mainly anarchist, began a revolutionary process on a scale unprecedented not only in Spain but also on a global level, due to its collectivist character in the absence of state power. From this moment on the objective of the workers’ leaders was twofold: to win the war against fascism and to bring about the revolution. Not only did the armed people, organised into workers’ militias, become the principal sector in the antiFascist resistance during the first year of the war, but in key regions such as Catalonia, Aragon and the Levante, much of the land and many industries, companies and services were collectivised, becoming workers’ cooperatives. The means of production had now passed into workers’ control. The cinema industry was one of those collectivised. This new cinema contrasted with that previous to July 1936, which now appeared outdated and useless as a mass cultural vehicle in the new emergency situation beginning to be experienced in Spain. The existing film companies were profoundly affected. Either they were appropriated by the war’s various ideological factions, or they disappeared. Each faction which fought in the war (and not only nationalist or republican factions, but also different factions on the republican side) created its own film production company. We can say that in general there was a substantial change to the style and content of cinema insofar as cinema became a war propaganda weapon. The Marxist side produced propaganda initially through small production companies, then through the major Film Popular production company. Additionally, the Spanish Communist Party screened more than twenty Soviet films exported by Stalin, Efim Dzigan’s The Sailors of Kronstadt (1935) and Chapaev, the Red Warrior (1934) being two of the most popular (Caparrós Lera 1986, 41). With a few notable exceptions, such as Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925), the great majority of these films belonged to the style of Soviet socialist realism that Stalin had prescribed to put an end to the experimentalism of the 1920s. The

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Republican Government’s film propaganda was produced directly by the Government, the army, and in the case of Catalonia, the Laya Films production company. On the nationalist side not only private companies such as CIFESA, Films Patria, Ufilms and UCEA made a contribution, but films were also made in collaboration with the German National Socialist and Italian state apparatuses. For different ideological and strategic reasons, each one of these factions saw the continued existence of the anarchist social revolution as against its interest. If we can find this antagonism at the very heart of the nationalist side’s propaganda, we can also find it in an indirect form in successive films made by the Republican Government and communist sides. Much of the Government’s propaganda work consisted of winning the sympathy of European democracies in order to garner support for the Republic. Spreading propaganda celebrating a revolution based on expropriation and anti-clericalism was not a prudent way to win international support from bourgeois quarters. Furthermore, the communist discourse of republican unity and the need to form a professional army was reflected in its films, silencing the historical leading role played by the revolution and disseminating messages in conflict with anarcho-syndicalist premises. Both positions silenced or distorted the reality of revolution which a large part of the Republic was experiencing in the war. From the formal perspective, traditional structures were used to convey official messages in both Government and Marxist cinema, with the exception perhaps of España 1936 (1937) by Jean Paul Le Chanois and Luis Buñuel, where we can find some experimentation with montage (Sala Noguer 1993, 360). The films of utmost interest for us here, those produced by anarchosyndicalism, were produced through the collectivisation of the film industry, conducted in Barcelona through the Sindicato de la Industria del Espectáculo [Show Business Industry Union] (SIE Films) and in Madrid by the Spartacus production company and the Federación Regional del Espectáculo [Regional Show Business Federation] (FRIEP). Barcelona’s SIE Films was the most prominent of the three production companies, with more than ten thousand workers earning the same salary and receiving very advanced employee benefits for the period, such as illness, disability and retirement allowances. Besides the necessary studios and laboratories, it controlled 116 cinemas. In less than a year, in spite of the harsh conditions of the war, SIE Films produced eighty-four films, a third of all those produced during the Civil War (Díez 2003). For the anarcho-syndicalists, the ultimate function of cinema was twofold. On the one hand, the rhythm of industrial film production had to be maintained under workers’ control. On the other hand, film had to serve

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as propaganda for their message that it was necessary to both win the war and bring about a social revolution, thus counteracting the distorted representations of the revolution produced by the war’s other cinematic factions. This dual task was not easy since, in order to be able to continue producing, they had to make commercially viable films, and what the audience was most used to was the classic Hollywood style, whether in American films or in the hugely successful Spanish films of the Republican era, such as Morena Clara [Dark and Bright, 1936] and La verbena de la paloma [Fair of the Dove, 1935]. The degree of experimentation performed in the anarchist films could not therefore disregard the financial profit factor, which above all depended on what the Spanish people liked and were used to. Commercial pictures which guaranteed certain success were still screened. In fact, they accounted for the majority of films screened (Díez 2003, 66). Cinema schedules included three types of productions simultaneously. The first type consisted of war documentaries for informational purposes, such as Los aguiluchos de la FAI por tierras de Aragón [The FAI Eaglets in Aragon, 1936], Estampas de la revolución antifascista [Scenes from the Anti-fascist Revolution, 1936], a four-part series which reported the success of the anarchists in standing in line both on the anti-fascist advance of the war and on revolutionary collectivisation. The second type consisted of the anarchist programme’s propaganda films, such as the case of Prostitución [Prostitution, 1936], a documentary providing anarchist arguments for the abolition of prostitution and driving militia members away from it, or La silla vacía [The Empty Chair, 1937], a homage to the revolutionary combatants, the structure of which was an original format repeated in anarchist productions on other occasions, alternating both documentary and fiction. The third type comprised short and feature-length fiction films which worked both as entertainment and as a means of disseminating anarchist ideology, using different genres such as the musical in Nosotros somos así [This is How We Are, 1936], comedy in Nuestro culpable [Our Guilt, 1937], and melodrama in Barrios bajos [Poor Neighbourhoods, 1937] and Aurora de esperanza [Dawn of Hope, 1937] (Martín 2010). In both documentary and fiction films, distinctive formal positions were adopted in order to reflect the revolutionary vanguardist politics of the anarchist movement. Firstly, in documentary realism we find some adoption of the Soviet avant-garde of the 1920s, above all in the influences of Dziga Vertov. Secondly, in the fiction films there is the innovation of a technique which, according to José María Caparrós Lera, could be

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considered as a precursor to Italian neorealism (Caparrós Lera 1981, 328). And finally, as in the aforementioned example, there was also experimentation with a hybrid genre between documentary and fiction, fusing both modalities. These styles were a break not only with traditional cinema prior to 18 July 1936, but also with the war films that were being made. The paradigm example of Soviet influence consists of the first anarchist documentaries on the war made by the director Mateo Santos, specifically Reportaje del movimiento revolucionario en Barcelona [Report on the Revolutionary Movement in Barcelona, 1936] and Barcelona trabaja para el frente [Barcelona Working for the Front, 1936]. I will focus on the first of these because it was the inaugural one and the documentary which reflects this characterisation most intensely. We can find the immediate point of reference for this film in Leninist agitprop and the cinematic avant-garde of the 1920s. This film not only represents the inauguration of anarcho-syndicalist cinema, but it also becomes a very important eyewitness account as the first documentary to serve as a record of the war.2 It was made during the first three days after the Republican victory over the military uprising in Barcelona by militia members predominantly organised by the CNT. It reflects the frenzied moment when Barcelona was proclaimed a revolutionary city at the same time as it was being reorganised in order to mobilise the anti-fascist workers’ militias and continue the war against Franco beyond Republican territory. The distinctive way in which the acceleration and frenzy of these historical processes are captured in this report reminds us of Soviet avantgarde documentary cinema and, more specifically, of some of the cinematic premises on which Dziga Vertov based his concepts of a cinema which was a homage to both art and to the people participating in the Russian Revolution (Vertov 1922, 1923). Three of these concepts that we can find here are the cine-eye, cine-phrases, and rhythmic montage, all used in order to create an eyewitness documentary in homage to a people in control of their revolution and the fight against fascism. Primarily, we can find the emphasis on the camera’s mechanical supremacy over the human eye’s mistakes, since it provides the illusion of being capable of capturing everything at all times and in all places. In turn, each unit of this sequence of images becomes a cine-phrase with an (ideo)logical meaning once we perceive the rhythmic organisation of a montage which audiovisually reflects the heroic march of a people in control over their resources, their spaces and their history. In this way, Reportaje provides us with the sensation of an urban kaleidoscope of the end of the fighting in Barcelona on 19 July 1936, through images taken by a tireless eyewitness-camera from all the corners

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of a still-shaken city. This camera appears to capture the passing of history itself with its corresponding urgency. The sensation of historic and cinematic urgency is achieved through rhythmic montage, sustained by an incessant tempo in the succession of freshly filmed images of every type of building, street, and vehicle, and all types of people conducting all types of activity just after the combat. The advance of movement is constant. We see crowds leaving their houses after the battle, the comings and goings of curious onlookers contemplating the ruins, prisoners leaving the prisons, doctors attending the injured and, above all, the heroic omnipresence of the militia members as they moved through the corners of the city, symbolising in this way the working-class community in its new historic situation in possession of the city. We see them as the possessors of rifles relaxing while still in their combat positions, and as the possessors of the streets travelling on foot or in confiscated vehicles. They are also the possessors of countless buildings expropriated from the church, the bourgeoisie and the army. The constant sensation of frenzy and commotion is achieved through different techniques, such as the perspective shots of streets and avenues using pans and travelling shots taken on a hand-held camera from a moving car, or the stress on movement of static shots or slow pans emphasising signs of the end of the combat. However, the predominant characteristic used to create the documentary’s palpitating effect is the use of montage, which juxtaposes images synchronised to a soundtrack which evokes action and vitality, the sound of the urban environment, the din of the crowd, vehicle horns, engine noise, background conversations and, on three occasions, the moving sound of the Internationale whilst various celebratory images follow on from each other. And above all we see a succession of images underpinned by the off-screen voice of the narrator, effusively and passionately praising the exploits of the people in their fight against clerical fascism. In short, this is not only a valuable documentary as a historical record of the early moments of the anarcho-syndicalist revolution in Spain. Its rhythmic use of montage and the emphasis on Vertov’s cine-eye is an avant-garde cinematic response which makes a clear reference to its revolutionary Soviet documentary precursors. In the same way that the art of ideological montage is used in the Kino-Pravda newsreels (1922-25) or films such as History of the Civil War (1922) and A Sixth Part of the World (1926), this documentary is also a hymn praising the revolution’s protagonist, the people, who are now in control of their own destiny and history.

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According to María Antonia Paz and Julio Montero, the public was not enthusiastic about this style of film, and hence it did not fulfil its main objective, which was to mobilise the masses and to spread with urgency the military and revolutionary ideology of anarchism (Paz and Montero 2002). Perhaps it was for this reason that anarchist cinema tried another persuasive technique which confronted reality less directly. It aimed to spread its ideology and its programme using one of the styles most popular with audiences of classical Hollywood cinema, which anarchism had already tested in literature: melodrama.3 What was exceptional about this style itself was that, according to Caparrós Lera, it gave rise to a format which anticipated Italian neorealism, especially in the hands of two directors, Antonio Sau with his film Aurora de esperanza [Dawn of Hope, 1937], and Pedro Peruche with Barrios bajos [Poor Neighbourhoods, 1937]. Caparrós Lera said of these directors: […] en la década anterior a que Rossellini realizara su Paisà (1946) y Germania, anno zero (1948), y que Cesare Zabattini y Vittorio de Sica hicieran su Limpiabotas (1946) y Ladrón de bicicletas (1848), Antonio Sau y Pedro Peruche ya habían dado a luz a un estilo próximo al neorrealista sin que nadie se lo hubiera reconocido. ¡Fueron dos auténticos precursores ‘neorrealistas’ sin saberlo! (Caparrós 1981, 328) [[…] in the decade before Rossellini made Paisà (1946) and Germany, Year Zero (1948), and Cesare Zavattini and Vittorio De Sica made Shoeshine (1946) and Bicycle Thieves (1948), Antonio Sau and Pedro Peruche had already given birth to a style close to neorealism without anyone having recognised it. Without knowing it, they were two genuine precursors of ‘neorealism’!]

Caparrós Lera mentions Rossellini, Zavattini and De Sica because they are the paradigmatic directors of Italian neorealism, those with whom the movement is most commonly identified. However, to explore these parallels further, we need to be more precise. According to Ángel Quintana (1997) in his study of Italian neorealism, the majority of the films of the aforementioned directors were a response to the need to restore a collective spirit of hope with which to reconstruct post-war Italy. However, they also reflected a context of reconciliation between the working class and new national and international bourgeois forces, as already represented in Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (1945), the first film recognised as neorealist. Furthermore, this reconciliatory spirit was shaded with negativity and pessimism, as in the case of the directors Cesare Zavatini and Vittorio De Sica and their paradigmatic film Bicycle Thieves (1948), where the main character begins the film by leaving the

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mass of the people, only to return at the end having accepted defeat and becoming lost amongst the crowd. Quintana reminds us that in this neorealism, class solidarity was demolished along with the ruins of the war. In the year the film was made, 1948, the upper class was living in a world in which it had not been excessively affected by the miseries of war. The middle class was living the dream of the “economic miracle” which was to be expected of the treaties between the Italian government and the United States. Meanwhile, the working class was still wracked by hunger and unemployment, without a fighting class spirit. This context was hugely different from that of the anarchist revolution, whose ideologues expressed in their films great enthusiasm and a celebratory message for the working class, not pessimism nor messages of reconciliation between the working class and the bourgeoisie. On this point, however, it must be stressed that, despite the ideological differences, we can find similar structural formulas to those created by Rossellini and continued by De Sica and Zavattini, summarised thus by Quintana: […] para recuperar moralmente la verdad, era preciso realizar una película que planteara la maldad del nazismo, la lucha heroica del pueblo romano y mostrara de qué manera el triunfo de la libertad podría proyectarse en el futuro. El guión debía poseer una estructura melodramática, sus personajes debían ser estereotipos y despertar un sentimiento de concienciación social en el espectador (Quintana 1997, 78). [[...] in order to recover the truth morally, it was necessary to make a film which represented the evil of Nazism and the heroic fight of the Roman people, and showed how the triumph of liberty could be projected into the future. The script had to possess a melodramatic structure, its characters had to be stereotypes and it had to awaken a feeling of social conscience in the spectator.]

However, where we discover greater ideological parallels with Italian neorealism is not among the aforementioned directors, but rather in another strand which, although smaller and less well celebrated, continued to be part of the same movement. This is the current of social neorealism closest to the left-wing magazine Cinema, which reacted against the reconciliatory spirit of Italian neorealism by proposing that the movement should not be consoling the working class but liberating it from its misery. Hence, we can find films that are diametrically opposed to those of Rossellini, such as Caccia tragica [Tragic Hunt, 1947] by Giuseppe de Santis, where the individual is in alliance with the masses, in this specific case to fight against bandits who rob a workers’ cooperative. Other films exemplifying this social neorealism would be Giorni di gloria [Days of

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Glory, 1945] by Mario Serandrei and Il sole sorge ancora [Outcry, 1946] by Aldo Vergano. Given the context of the reality of Italian reconciliation, Quintana believes that the representation of class solidarity in this strand of social neorealism is solely mythical. Therefore, the anarchist fiction films of Sau and Perucho had a similar structure to Rossellini’s melodrama and a similar fighting spirit to a minor strand of social neorealism. The great difference within this latter comparison lies in the fact that the representation of workers’ solidarity in the case of the anarchist melodramas was a response to the immediate reality of a social revolution controlled by the workers. Solidarity as a dialectical engine is historical and not mythical. Finally, another of the essential similarities with Italian neorealism is the use of non-professional actors and, when going out into the streets of Barcelona to shoot the films, the rupture with studio-based cinema. As an example of these neorealist precursors, it is worth analysing Aurora de esperanza [Dawn of Hope], as it was the first CNT fiction film and the one which had the most explicit and direct message of the aforementioned social optimism. While Reportaje del movimiento revolucionario [Report on the Revolutionary Movement] appeared to take reality by storm, Aurora de esperanza is a fiction drama which is neither located in a specific place nor makes its historical context explicit. It begins with an individual playing the leading role in the character of Juan, who becomes a victim of social injustice when he is made unemployed and unable to support his family. In desperation he organises a hunger march, supported by the masses of citizens demanding justice. The climax leads to an extreme situation in which the masses take up arms prepared to take destiny into their own hands. At that moment the leading role no longer falls to an individual. It is played by an organised group which is mobilised and leads a social revolution which we would identify as consistent with anarchist ideology. What stands out in this film is the mise-en-scene which was shot directly in the streets of a working-class Barcelona in which details of everyday misery appear: beggars, workers in the dole queue, industrial settings, bosses picking workers at random, etc. Against this backdrop various characters talk about the most pressing problems of this period of social emergency, including dispossession, hunger, and wage exploitation. While we find a significant echo of the Soviet avant-garde documentary in anarchist documentary, the only reference to Soviet avant-garde fiction would be the classic role played by the people in Eisenstein’s films,

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although we do not find the ideological montage on which that avantgarde was based. What stands out, however, are similar foundations to those of Italian neorealism: the pressing social problems of the working classes were represented through techniques which aimed to reflect them in the most faithful way possible. Among these techniques we find that the dramatisation is effectively disguised through replacing the artificiality of the film studios with well-known urban settings. Furthermore, we find a lack of glamour in the use of non-professional actors whose conversation revolves around very real social situations. To this we must add a historical context with which the audience could directly identify: the experience of the social anarchist revolution. Finally, we can identify Rossellini’s formula in the use of melodrama in which stereotypical characters play a leading role in the fight for survival, whose function is to awaken the emotional identification of the spectator with the objective of their fight. In the same way that a decade later Italian neorealism would use similar techniques to depict the social emergency in post-war Italy, the reality represented in this film corresponds to a clear motivation to reflect the specific and real preoccupations of the working class during the Spanish social revolution from the perspective of the anarchists’ actions. However, the audience was not enthusiastic about this new aesthetic formula, perhaps for the following reason. According to Sau himself: La no aceptación del público hispano se debe a que Aurora de esperanza era una rotura, una renovación del cine que se había hecho hasta entonces, y el espectador no conectó–acostumbrado a otro tipo de películas–con el cambio. (quoted in Caparrós 184) [The Spanish public did not accept Aurora de esperanza [Dawn of Hope] because it was a break with the past, a complete change from the type of cinema which had been made up until that point, and the audience– accustomed to other types of films–could not connect with the change.]

According to Caparrós Lera, the next film to anticipate neorealism was Barrios bajos [Poor Neighbourhoods], which was more warmly received by the audience (Caparrós Lera 1981, 193). There has been no shortage of critics who have found anarchist messages in their interpretations of this film. However, these messages are subtly filtered since, in contrast to Aurora de esperanza, the themes did not have a direct explicit relationship to the social revolution, rather the melodramatic side was intensified through the typical intrigues of love and revenge. In anarchist circles outside the cinema industry, this film was categorised as commercial and apolitical, although within the industry it appeared to become a model to

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be followed since, from then on, fiction films would never contain such direct messages as Aurora de esperanza. Rather political messages would be more sophisticated, more subliminal, including not just melodrama, but also comedy and music (such as in Nuestro culpable [Our Guilt] and Nosotros somos así [This is How We Are], respectively). The anarchist collectivisation of the cinema industry was based on fragile structures. One of them was the adverse capitalist economic base of the cinema, since it still depended, even after the social revolution, on a dynamic relationship between production, distribution and exhibition. Audience consumption, and hence the aesthetic taste of the audience, was still a key factor. Therefore, anarchist cinematographic experimentation was not free, rather it was limited by the need to negotiate with this adversity. Hence, the apparent ideological contradiction between the initially combative agitprop of such films as Reportaje del movimiento revolucionario en Barcelona [Report on the Revolutionary Movement in Barcelona] and the melodramatic sentimentality already contained in Aurora de esperanza [Dawn of Hope] and then intensified in Barrios bajos [Poor Neighbourhoods], is not that much of a contradiction. Both trends were a response to the same aim, anarchism’s attempt to effectively spread propaganda about the ideological urgency of winning the war and bringing about the revolution. Ultimately, the most obvious adversity that surrounded this type of cinema was that it depended both on the war being won and the social revolution achieved, and both projects failed. Therefore, the short experience of anarchist cinema was abruptly aborted, as it did not have the opportunity to develop. What remains are just the beginnings of a new film experiment, the potentially avant-garde character of which did not have the time to be fully transformed. This is not to argue that these films, limited by the serious conditions of the war and the short duration of anarchist production, are of great cinematic quality, but rather to rescue as a type of cultural and historical memory an experimental and avant-garde attempt at a distinctive form of cinema in Spain, which deserves to be recognised in two ways: firstly, as part of a valuable cultural heritage of counter-propaganda and an eyewitness account of the Spanish social revolution; and secondly, as a genuine attempt to create a cinematic avantgarde at the height of the new social revolutionary order which shook up much of the Republic during the war. We should locate this cinema within the tradition of 20th-century political film, beginning in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and, as we have seen, continuing in Spain in the following decade, in a way which

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anticipated the social neorealism that achieved its greatest splendour in post-World War II Italy. As we know, both tendencies would become the key formal archetypes in subsequent attempts to create new cinematic languages capable of representing and capturing new transformations and revolutions. Examples include the experiments in images and sound conducted by the “Vertov Group” led by Jean-Luc Godard during the French May 1968 protests and the Vietnam war, and the Latin American phenomenon called “Third Cinema”, also in the 1960s and 1970s, encompassing Fernando Birri’s neorealism in Argentina, the “guerrilla cinema” of the Grupo Liberación led by Fernando Solanas in Argentina, and the experiments with ideological montage by Santiago Álvarez after the Cuban revolution. Today we are again witnessing the legacy of the Soviet avant-garde in the work of certain militant video-activists, such as that which appeared in Argentina after the economic and political collapse of December 2001.

Works cited Burch, Noël. 1969. Theory of Film Practice. New York: Praeger. Caparrós Lera, José María. 1981. Arte y política en el cine de la República (1931-1939). Barcelona: 7½. —. 1986. The Cinema Industry in the Spanish Civil War. Film and History 16: 35-46. Díez, Emeterio. 2003. El cine bajo la revolución anarquista. Historia 16 26: 50-101. Martín, Oscar, dir. 2010. Celuloide colectivo. Barcelona: Just Films. DVD. Paz, María Antonia and Julio Montero. 2002. El cine informativo (18951945): creando la realidad. Barcelona: Ariel. Quintana, Ángel. 1997. El cine italiano: 1942-1961. Barcelona: Paidós. Sala Noguer, Ramón. 1993. El cine en la España republicana durante la Guerra Civil. Bilbao: Mensajero. Santos, Mateo, dir. 1936. Reportaje de movimiento revolucionario en Barcelona. Madrid: Spanish Ministry of Culture and Filmoteca Española, 2009. DVD. Sau, Antonio, dir. 1937. Aurora de esperanza. Barcelona: SIE Films. 35 mm film. Posted September 26, 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyTv6pY_6zk (accessed September 11, 2012). Siguan Boehmer, Marisa. 1981. Literatura popular libertaria (19251938). Barcelona: Ediciones Península.

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Solanas, Fernando and Octavio Getino. 1973. Cine, cultura y descolonización. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno. Vertov, Dziga. 1986. We. A Version of a Manifesto. In The Film Factory, ed. Richard Taylor and Ian Christie, 69-73. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Originally published in Kino Fot 1 (1922): 25-31. —. 1986. The Cine-eyes. A Revolution. In The Film Factory, ed. Richard Taylor and Ian Christie, 89-97. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Originally published in Lef 3 (1923): 135-43.

Notes 1

Thanks are due to Rod Brookes, who translated this paper from Spanish into English. Quotes in Spanish are preserved and provided with an English translation. 2 In fact, when the CNT produced this film, it had not yet had time to begin the collectivisation of the industry. 3 The use of melodrama as a vehicle for anarchist propaganda was not new, since it had its literary point of reference in Spain in the dissemination of melodramatic novellas, influenced by romantic novels, during Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship and the Second Republic (above all the La Novela Ideal [The Ideal Novel] collection). See Literatura popular libertaria (1925-1938) by Marisa Siguan Boehmer.

PART III GENDER AND GENRES: NEW PERSPECTIVES IN POPULAR CULTURE

CHAPTER SEVEN HOLLYWOOD’S MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA AND THE RE-PRESENTATION OF CULTURALLYBIASED STEREOTYPES IRIA MARÍA BELLO-VIRUEGA

1. Introduction It has been said that one of the consequences of globalisation is in close rapport with the reinforcement of local cultures and identities. The spread of the idea of the global village has made countries aware of the fact that they need to carefully position their cultures in this new plural world (Ang 1996; Du Gay 1997). A film such as Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) can thus be read as an attempt to revive the old traditions of a country like Japan, which seems to have somehow lost its most valuable old customs. All over it there is some degree of nostalgia that constantly evokes a world of mystery and old traditions that remain secret to foreigners. It is this nostalgic remorse for the destruction of the old ways that gives sense to the film. In what may be seen as an attempt to bring this culture back to life, it also tries to assimilate the ancient traditions into the new global culture and make everyone participate in them. Traditionally, Hollywood has not offered very positive images of Asians or Asian-Americans in its productions. According to Benshoff and Griffin, the most common stereotype we find about Asians in Hollywood is that of the inscrutable Oriental (2004). Famous oriental characters such as Charlie Chan and Dr Fu Manchu spread the idea that Asians were somehow mysterious, exotic and cunning. Films about Vietnam, World War II and the Cold War helped to perpetuate this stereotype. The globalisation process can be said to be one of the forces that helped to change this situation. The improvement in global technologies has made it

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possible to get access to the Asian market with relatively little effort. Asian cultures have recently begun to be fashionable in Western society. Films such as The Joy Luck Club (USA; Wang 1993) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wò hu cánglóng. China; Lee 2000), Hero (Ying Xiong. China; Yimou 2002), or The House of the Flying Daggers (Shí Miàn mái fú. China; Yimou 2003) have set the mood for Asian (or rather, Chinese) cinema. It is important to note, however, that Memoirs of a Geisha is not an Asian film. Although most of the actors are Asians or Asian-American, the rest of the crew is American—including director Rob Marshall and the producers. The film was shot almost entirely in California, with the exception of a few scenes of Japanese temples. We may note as well that it is an adaptation of Arthur Golden’s 1997 bestselling novel of the same name. This can be taken as further evidence of the extent to which the film was conceived by and for Americans. Both the director and the crew have emphasised the fact that they attempted to represent a period of Japanese history just as it was. They did a good job of documentation so as to recreate the world of geishas in the 1940s. They had to create their own kimonos and hair ornaments, build the whole hanamachi (the geisha district), and train the actresses so that they learned how to behave, walk and dance like true geishas. The result is impressive and at first sight it seems that they succeeded in rendering a verisimilar vision of the life of these women. However, there are some features that make us think that although this movie aims at being neutral and present reality just “as it was”, it is actually a representation that has been created according to Western / American patterns based on certain stereotypes. In this paper I analyse the representations that lie behind this apparently neutral cover. It is structured in three parts, which cover both thematic and technical aspects. Firstly, I will study to what extent the concepts of representation, typing and stereotyping are important in this context. The second section is concerned with the idea of Orientalism, while gender issues are analysed in Section Three.

2. Representation: Typing, stereotyping and cognitive modelling According to Benshoff and Griffin, representation is a “process of presenting an image of something in order to communicate ideas or tell a story” (2004, 350). Going even further, a representation may be said to have a twofold purpose: it plays the role of the message in a communication process and it is also a construction that tries to express reality with the help of determined codes of meaning. The media need to resort constantly

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to representations to express reality. Branston and Stafford asserted that “however realistic media images may seem, they never simply present the world direct. They are always a construction, a re-presentation, rather than a transparent window onto the real” (2006, 141). For Taylor and Willis, representations are combinations of signs that help us make complex abstract concepts significant and understandable (1999, 39). For this reason they can be considered fundamental strategies related to the cognitive processes in our mind. Tied to perception and cognition, we find types and stereotypes, two of the most recurrent strategies that the media use to represent reality. Types are necessary mental constructs that help us understand the world around us (Taylor and Willis 1999, 42). Cognitive scholars have remarked that our mind is ordered according to categorisations that help analyse and understand reality (Deignan 2006; Dirven and Verspoor 2000; Green et al. 1996; Lakoff 1990 and 1993; Lakoff and Johnson 1980). The human mind has a tendency to create metaphorically-structured conceptualisations of reality and these are reflected in discourse, either verbal or filmic. Lakoff and Johnson studied the creation of meaning in relation with the cognitive processes functioning in our minds. One of their findings was that our preconceptual physical experience uses basic categorisations to deal with reality and organise knowledge. Of all the different existing categorisations, idealised cognitive models (ICMs) are those that deal with the more abstract notions. ICMs are cognitively complex units with a structure of their own that are based on abstractions coming from human experience.1 These experiences consequently pass through a filter that makes them adjust to already-existing ICMs. Language and considerations about culture are also human experiences, so they also fall within the range of influence of ICMs. Extremely important here is the correlation between ICMs and folk theories, which are specific presupposed systems of ideas that every culture has to explain the world and that are shared by most members; they are implicit in the language and unconsciously determine the thoughts and actions of speakers (Windschitl 2004, 482; Jäkel 1997, 25). Although the present study does not deal directly with ICMs, the concept is useful in that it provides a clear explanation as to the impossibility of culturallyneutral representations. The issue of neutrality in representation is addressed by Lakoff (1990), who distinguishes several types of ICMs. Pertinent to this study are the ICMs of metonymic models about social stereotypes. The most important implication is such ICMs select a specific feature of one of the members of the group and then applies it to the whole group. In other words, a person watching, for example, Puccini’s Madama Butterfly will easily assimilate

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Cio Cio San’s (Madama Butterfly’s) docility and will be subsequently likely to apply it to other Asian women. The logic behind this process is simple: the idea of Asian feminine docility comes as a natural result of direct human experience—as spectators of an opera in this case—and this information is later productively used by our mind to cope with other examples of Asian women, about whom we have little or no information at all because are beyond the domain of our direct experience. This process, though inaccurate from the point of view of reality—not all Asian women are docile—proves extremely useful for thought development. Thus, we can see how ICMs are closely tied to stereotyping. Stereotypes may be said to be a special kind of metonymic models in the sense that they contribute to the task of categorising social groups, but they usually have other implications as well. Branston and Stanford define stereotyping as a process of categorisation that in most cases implies a negative evaluation of the group that is being analysed (2006, 142). In Memoirs of a Geisha we find both types and stereotypes of the main characters. This task of encoding and decoding meanings, cognitive models, types and stereotypes so as to create representations of reality is central to the whole process of communication. Hall pointed out that the code is fundamental so that the receiver can decode the message in the same way that the sender had created it (1997, 21). Yet the encoding / decoding process is also highly dependent on cultural issues. As speakers of a certain language and members of a society, the team behind Memoirs of a Geisha may be seen to perpetuate the ICMs in their minds through this film. It is therefore highly probable that Japanese people will not perceive the stereotype of the geisha in the film in the same way as European or American people will do. The promotional posters in America / Europe and Japan reflect this culture-based conflict. The list of differences between the two posters encompasses the name of the film itself, the layout colours and the representation of the character, among other elements, all of them the result of a conscious process of representation of the figure of the geisha that has been modified according to different cultural patterns. Although both images are a close-up of the protagonist —Chiyo Sakamoto, renamed Sayuri when she becomes a geisha—the message they convey is completely opposed. The American / European poster aims at presenting an image of a modern geisha. In it the protagonist is staring directly at the audience; she is an archetype of a modern Western woman. Her racial features have been minimised to make her look more occidental: her skin is very pale, her eyes are blue and her lips are typically Western. On the other hand, the poster for Japan presents an image of a conservative geisha. Here, the close-up is not so extreme

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and there is also room for other complements, such as the umbrella, the kimono and the hair combs. It is striking to notice that, whereas one of the most important characteristics of the American poster was Sayuri’s gaze, in the Japanese poster she is looking down in a rather submissive position that does not even let the viewer see that her eyes are blue. Not only her eyes but also her dress, her hair style and the whole position of her body is rather relaxed and docile, which clearly contrasts with the tension created in the Western poster. In the case of the promotional images it is relatively easy to modify the message depending on the target viewer, but this is not the case of the films themselves. Even though the film in this case was released all over the world, no changes were introduced to adapt the message to different audiences. As a result, the final version includes features that only fit within the American context. An example of this can be found in Sayuri’s solo dance, whose aesthetics is closer to Western contemporary dance, perhaps in an attempt to please the American / Western audience who could consider the traditional dance of geishas rather anodyne and hardly understandable. Not only her movements and choreography but also her clothes and hair style are very different from those of a traditional geisha. The fact that the film contains obvious typing and stereotyping mechanisms, however, does not necessarily mean that the production team were actually aware of their existence. After all, types and stereotypes are necessary cognitive agents. It is reasonable to expect, thus, that directors and producers would have worked on geisha stereotyping with care. Rob Marshall, director of the film, declared in an interview: People think of the geisha as a prostitute, because prostitutes started wearing white makeup and silk kimonos and called themselves geishas, and the line became blurred. But the actual word means ‘artist’. Yes, they entertain men. But, more important, they’re great dancers and musicians and great conversationalists. They were also the fashionistas of their time. They were like supermodels. (Dannenbaum 2005, min 2)

In this quotation we can see how Marshall tries to change the negative ideas and prejudices that Western audiences (may) have about geishas. Throughout this work there is a latent interest in emphasising the idea of geishas as moving works of art in a floating world. To do so, Marshall uses an image that is typical of our culture—that of a supermodel. This may be said to be an attempt to re-categorise a stereotype to a foreign audience. However, this process is not so easy. Even if this film is intended to dismantle the common stereotype that equals geishas to prostitutes, it is actually creating a new stereotype, that of geishas as

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slaves. The life of these women is portrayed here as if they were prisoners without any right to choose how they want to live their lives. In this representation there is no mention of the fact that geishas enjoyed much more freedom and received a better education than most Japanese women in those days. Geisha was the only learned professional work that Japanese women were allowed to undertake. They earned money and could attend dinners in tea houses where they could take part in conversations with men, something impossible for other women.2

3. Orientalism Orientalism, a key term in the study of representations of Asian people made by the West, was first coined by cultural critic Edward Said in his 1978 work of the same name. He argued that Orientalism was not concerned with Asia but with how Westerners imagined the idea of Asia: “[t]he image of the orient became one of exotic people, seductive and sensual pleasures, and potential lawlessness—everything civilized Europe was supposedly not” (Benshoff and Griffin 2004, 117). The most typical stereotype of the Orient is that of Madame Butterfly, a docile, weak yet beautiful and fragile woman. Given the negative connotations that the term Oriental soon acquired it has since been replaced by the word Asian. The Asian-American writer David Henry Hwang declared in the afterword to his play M. Butterfly: “[i]n general, by the way, we prefer the term Asian to Oriental, in the same way Black is superior to Negro” (1998, 95). The implications of this stereotype quickly spread. Not only women’s role in society, but also the role of the whole of society, are concerned here. To the Western gaze, the East is submissive and can be easily domesticated, just like its women. This, of course, constitutes a perfect excuse to justify colonisation, as Cheung explains: The quiet Asians are seen either as devious, timid, shrewd, and, above all, inscrutable—in much the same way that women are thought to be mysterious and unknowable—or as docile, submissive and obedient, worthy of the label model minority, just as silent women traditionally been extolled. And precisely because quietness is associated with the feminine, as is the East in relation to the West (in Orientalist discourse, Asian and Asian American men too have been feminized in American popular culture). (quoted in Simal 2000, 180)

Benshoff and Griffin have pointed to the reductive nature of the term Asian since it encompasses very different cultures and nations such as, for instance, Israel, Japan, India and Eastern Russia (2004, 117). For the

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Hollywood machinery the differences between Asian cultures and nations do not seem to be relevant. In this regard, concerning Memoirs of a Geisha, there has been much controversy around the fact that the three leading roles in the film were played by non-Japanese actresses, which was received with harsh criticism from the critics.3 The producers and the director tried to explain their decision of casting three non-Japanese actresses by saying that no Japanese actress attended the auditions and that the actresses received lessons from a professional geisha.4 The reaction of the audience was heterogeneous: some people minimised the importance given to ethnicity-related issues; others felt offended after watching Chinese actresses playing the role of Japanese geishas; above all, however, there was a widely-shared view that Hollywood’s Orientalist view proved once more to be incapable of recognising cultural differences in Asia. The portrayal of Western colonisation, another thorny issue, is also treated in the film, especially at the end. In the first and second parts, the West is not prominently featured. One of the few allusions to the West is related to the 3rd Reich’s annexation of Austria. It is Mrs Nitta’s radio that gives us this example of dialogism between real history and the fictional plot.5 However, this allusion is only anecdotal. It is only after WWII that the influence of Americans in Japan is to be considered significant. Even if the film does not directly echo the real situation, before the war the influence of the West in Japan was already very important: “[a]lthough Japan was never territorially colonized, its leaders decided to promote a process of self-Westernization in order to void the threat of more direct influence. […] Instead of entering Japan through direct military intervention, the West penetrated Japanese society by becoming part of its cultural imaginary” (Darling-Wolf 2001, 281). In the light of this, Memoirs of a Geisha may be seen to exaggerate the magnitude of the West’s cultural colonisation of Japan after the war. It is true that “the years under U.S. occupation were a period of much more direct Western influence” (Darling-Wolf 2001, 282) but in the film this change is magnified. All the characters and places experience a radical transformation after the war. The impression behind this process is that the war had destroyed a traditional world that had remained uncorrupted and pure up to that moment. Nevertheless, even if the war meant a radical change, it cannot be held that the previous world was uncorrupted and free of foreign influence. This claim is easily ascertained by contrasting any pre- and post-war scenes. Even if characters try hard to recreate the world of geishas before the war, it is very clear that the mise-en-scène chosen for post-war scenes is purposely different—not only the setting and movement, but also the lighting, costumes and make-up are opposed.

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However, in spite of this lack of verisimilitude, some aspects of Japanese culture in the 1940s are considered in the film. Before the war, Western influence affected the cultural attitudes of Japanese women regarding female attractiveness. By the time the story is set, female canons of beauty had little to do with geishas, but with the American movie stars that were popular in the US: “[d]uring this period many women had their hair cut and, in spite of the exhortations of proud samurai tradition, waved and curled” (Wagatsuma, quoted in Darling-Wholf 2001, 283). Although it is almost unnoticeable, the film actually mirrors this situation in a very short scene: in the blossom-viewing party there are a few seconds in which we can see women dressed with Western clothes. This scene constitutes the only glimpse outside the geisha world and in it we can see how Japanese women actually followed Western fashion before the war. Two Orientalist strategies may at least be detected in Memoirs of a Geisha. The first one concerns the use of Japanese terms which are not translated into English. These provide dialogues with a clearly exotic flavour. Words such as sakura tree, tatsumora silk, shamisen, hataki komi, ekubo, okiya, hanamachi cannot be translated into English because they stand for cultural meanings. Language has indeed been a matter of controversy in this film. Not only the lack of language skills detectable in some of the cast but also their very different accents made the resulting product rather incomprehensible. Indeed, critics suggested that it would have been better to release the film in Japanese with subtitles in English, since it is quite difficult to understand what characters are saying in some scenes. The other strategy used to reinforce that idea of the Orient has to do with the script itself. Behind most of the text we find traces that may suggest that mystery is always present in the film. To illustrate this statement we only have to analyse the opening sentences: “[a] story like mine should never be told. For my world is as forbidden as it is fragile. Without its mysteries it cannot survive. I certainly wasn’t born to the life of a geisha. Like so much in my strange life, I was carried by the current” (Marshall 2005, min. 3; emphasis added). As can be seen, the wording here clearly alludes to that idea of Asia being a mysterious place. This also appears in the last lines of the script, which are delivered by old Sayuri: You cannot say to the sun, ‘More sun’ or to the rain, ‘Less rain’. To a man, geisha can only be half a wife. We are the wives of nightfall. And yet, to learn kindness after so much unkindness, to understand that a little girl with more courage than she knew would find her prayers were answered, can that not be called happiness? After all, these are not the memoirs of an empress, nor of a queen. These are memoirs of another kind. (Marshall 2005, min. 130; emphasis added)

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The implications of this are obvious: framing the events, Sayuri’s discourse is giving us the clue to interpret the whole story as realistic, yet simultaneously mysterious and exotic. In spite of the explicit interest in deconstructing the myths and stereotypes around geishas, the film fails in wiping out the oriental stereotype.

4. Gender Memoirs of a Geisha is mainly a women’s story, in the sense that all its protagonists are women and that it takes place in a female world. The most common stereotypes used to represent Asian women in the history of American cinema are present in the film as well. Chiyo / Sayuri, on the one hand, is the protagonist and the most developed character. The camera position emphasises the fact that she is the heroine of the film. As she grows up from poor, helpless Chiyo into smart adult Sayuri, she embodies a type of woman that can be described as reflexive, silent and glamorous. Even before she starts training to become a geisha it seems that she already has a natural predisposition to elegance and charm. She conforms to all the (supposedly) positive stereotypes of Oriental women: she is submissive, delicate, shy, exotic, mysterious and loyal to her honour. She can be said to be an incarnation of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, one of the most recurrent representations of Oriental / Asian femininity commented above. Sayuri’s antagonist, Hatsumomo, is one of the most fascinating characters in the film. Her image follows the stereotype of what Benshoff and Griffin call the Dragon Lady. According to these authors, the Dragon Lady is one of the most common stereotypes that Hollywood has used to represent Asians or Asian-Americans in film: “[t]he Dragon lady was likely to be a spy or a criminal mastermind in her own right—but along with violence she used her sexual wiles to entrap unsuspecting white heroes” (2004, 123). From her very first appearance we learn that Hatsumomo is going to play the bad character. In spite of being very talented, she has some of the defects that all geishas should avoid: she is proud, greedy, rebellious and egocentric. However, she is also deeply human, and this is perhaps her most serious fault. This is the reason why Sayuri somehow sympathises with her when, after a fire that begins accidentally but Hatsumomo feeds in a fit of jealous anger, her enemy has to leave the geisha house (okiya). This extreme polarisation of women— either angels (Sayuri) or demons (Hatsumomo), but tied together by a common bond (all female, all geishas, in this case)—shows that the film not only is race-stereotyped but also contains a heavily gendered reading.

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The traditional patriarchal discourse does not acknowledge a balanced midterm for women; they are always relegated to the extremes of bipolarity, as Gilbert and Gubar demonstrated in 1979 in their extremely influential volume The Madwoman in the Attic, where they analysed angelic and monstrous characters created by women writers during the 19th century. The discourse structures unveiled by Gilbert and Gubar through literary examples in The Madwoman in the Attic were best theorised by French feminist theorist Hélène Cixous in her essay “Sorties”, first published in 1975 and still basic to explain this issue of androcentric binary thought. Western patriarchal thought, argues Cixous throughout her text, is based on a system of dichotomies (active / passive, production / reproduction, mind / body, etc.) which are associated with traditional gender roles (male / female) and placed in a hierarchical relationship where the pole linked to masculinity is always superior (in value, in recognition, in power of various sorts) to the pole connected to femininity. Thus, “active” personalities are more admired that “passive” ones; “productive” work is paid whereas “reproductive” tasks are not; “mind” and “reason” feature higher in the social scale of values than “body” or “emotion”, typically characterised as womanly. In the process of the symbolic construction of femininity there is also a hierarchy between the extreme positions made available for women: the passive “angel in the house” has positive connotations (and, in the case of Orientalist thought, eroticised ones as well; hence the stereotype of the passive Asian female lover reproduced in Madama Butterfly), whereas the rebellious “devil in the flesh”, because she appropriates un-feminine qualities, tends to be seen as negative and, as is the case of Hatsumomo in the film at hand, to be punished for her actions. After both the protagonist and her antagonist, Mameha is the third most important character. A donor and helper according to Propp’s spheres of action (1985), Mameha is at the same time a mother and a big sister to Sayuri. She may be seen as the replacement for Chiyo’s lost sister. Sayuri’s tutor is also a mature and experienced woman that combines elegance and know-how. Together with the protagonist, she is the only good woman in the story. It is quite revealing that Sayuri’s only true friend is the character that is closest to the Western canon in terms of physical appearance. Michelle Yeoh—the actress who plays Mameha—has a rather westernised look, in spite of being of Malaysian ascendancy. Her English is also by far the most proficient. Both Mameha’s appearance and life style are associated with the West. If we compare Mameha’s and Mrs Nitta’s okiya, it is easy to see that the former character’s semi-Western appearance is far

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from coincidental. Whereas Mrs Nitta’s okiya—where Sayuri was forcibly placed when she was a child—is always dark and has a typical Japanese garden, Mameha’s home is very luminous and the furniture and decorations could be found in any Western home today. All these details seem to point in the same direction: looking Western has subtle yet positive connotations. Although the film is mainly concerned with women, the male presence still plays a dominant role. Male characters—The Chairman and Nobu San—are totally flat; we know very little about them—in fact, we do not even know the Chairman’s first name—and their psychological evolution is not even outlined. In spite of this, they exert a great influence, most often making their power evident through their gaze (which always precludes their decisions about women in general and Sayuri in particular). Scholars have attempted to account for this kind of situation in terms of how patriarchal culture turns woman into the object of the male gaze, thereby hindering the construction of a subject / agent identity for her (Benshoff and Griffin 2004; Price 1998; Van Zoonen 1994). John Berger and Laura Mulvey are two key authors in order to understand this concept. In his often cited Ways of Seeing, Berger included a now famous statement that may well be applied to the geishas in the film: [M]en act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object—and most particularly an object of vision: a sight. (2003, 47)

Mulvey’s theory, also valuable here to explain the dynamics of camera framing and character-building, is mainly contained in an essay entitled “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” and published in 1989. Here, Mulvey wrote about classical Hollywood films, concluding that all the gazes activated in them (the director’s through the camera, the characters’ when looking at themselves and at one another, and the audience’s) were codified as male, although made to pass as neutral. Price summarises Mulvey’s theory as follows in relation to the characters and their intradiegetic dynamics of looking and controlling (very obvious in the case of the Chairman’s power over Sayuri), which extend onto the spectators watching the film: Mulvey argued that the male hero in the movie acts as the ‘bearer of the look’. This means that he possesses the controlling power of the male gaze

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For Mulvey, audiences derive a kind of voyeuristic pleasure from classical cinema: “[a]lthough the film is really being shown, is there to be seen, conditions of screening and narrative conventions give the spectator an illusion of looking in on a private world” (Mulvey, quoted in Van Zoonen 1994, 90). It is thus a usual convention in Western culture and Western film to turn active women into passive objects: “[t]he act of looking is reserved to men”, claims Van Zoonen (1994, 88). In Memoirs of a Geisha there is evidence pointing to the validity of both Berger’s and Mulvey’s theses. The main male characters in the film, despite being flat creations, are the ones who have the power of looking at the women and making decisions about their present and their future. The dancing scenes in the tea houses and in the theatre, the scene at the baron’s house, or the parties with the Americans are all are clear examples of how men look at and control women and seem to confirm the male gaze theory. Mernissi (2001) provided a historical grounding for Mulvey’s male gaze by pointing out that painting was considered a male profession already in Ancient Greece and that women were banned from academies and acted only as models until the end of the 18th century. As a result of the close link between philosophy and art, beauty and passivity, both corporeal and intellectual, have become signs of femininity in Western culture. One important yet oft neglected point here is that such femininity-related stereotypes are ICMs embedded in Western culture, created for and by Westerners. The fact that one culture uses those metonymic ICMs does not imply that all cultures share the same mental schemas. In her book Scheherazade Goes West, Mernissi compared geishas with Turkish odalisques, and she reviewed the artistic representations of the latter by both Arab and Western artists. Her conclusion is decisive: the great majority of Western paintings displayed passive odalisques and traces of the male gaze, while Arab representations seemed to lack this feature and to offer more active representations of these women. Elaborating on this issue, Laura Mulvey spoke of three different gazes, as was hinted at above: “the gaze of the camera, the gaze of the characters at each other, and the gaze of the spectator toward the scene” (Benshoff and Griffin 2004, 235). We can find these three ways of looking in Memoirs of a Geisha, and it would even be appropriate to add one further gaze that goes well beyond the looks of the characters at each other: the gaze of the geisha, with its intrinsic powers of seduction. This female

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gaze, although completely minimised, is somehow present. At one point of Chiyo’s instruction, Mameha asserts the “you cannot call yourself a true geisha until you can stop a man in his tracks with a single look”. However, instead of discussing women’s power, what Mameha is trying to do here is test whether Chiyo is ready to become a maiko (a geisha in training). Hence the women’s gaze here is nothing but an anecdote within a filmic discourse (the American Memoirs of a Geisha) that is more than firmly established on traditional patriarchal discourse.

5. Conclusion In purely commercial terms, it can easily be said that Memoirs of a Geisha is a successful product and an entertaining film, its main characteristics being, as we have been trying to prove throughout this paper, that it is a Hollywood construct written according to Western, patriarchal patterns. This implies, among other things, that the script resorts to Orientalist and androcentric discourse strategies that end up reinforcing a stereotyped view of Asians in general and Japanese women in particular. The director and producers, as was explained in the introduction, took good care of certain details, recreating the 1940s geisha district atmosphere and training the actresses in the skills of these Japanese artists / escorts. Nevertheless, Memoirs of a Geisha still contains a great deal of stereotyped representations, ranging from the polarisation of the images of women to the perpetuation of stereotypes relating the East with the weak and the West with the strong. Through the application of gender, film, and postcolonial studies theories taken from the writings of influential thinkers like Edward Said or Laura Mulvey, this paper has examined specific visual and scriptwriting choices within the screen adaptation of Arthur Golden’s bestselling novel in order to prove that the film is representative of the current tension between local and global cultural politics. On the one hand Rob Marshall’s production seems to place value on the Japanese traditions by revisiting them with some degree of nostalgia. Yet, on the other hand, his manipulation of the original Asian codes to make them comprehensible and palatable to Western audiences turns the final result into a product for global consumption that, once again, like in most of the Hollywood offer, places the power to name, define, represent, and decode in the same old hands: those of the white, heterosexual, male writer, producer, director, and / or member of the audience.

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Works cited Ang, Ien, ed. 1996. Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World. New York: Routledge. Benshoff, Harry, and Sean Griffin. 2004 (1976). America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies. Victoria: Blackwell. Berger, John. 2003 (1972). Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin. Branston, Gill, and Roy Stafford. 2006 (1996). The Media Student’s Book. London and New York: Routledge. Cixous, Hélène. 2008. Sorties. In Modern Criticism and Theory. A Reader. 3rd Edition, eds. David Lodge and Nigel Wood, 359-365. Harlow: Pearson. Dannenbaum, Jed, dir. 2005. The Look of a Geisha. Los Angeles: Columbia Pictures, Dreamworks and Spyglass Entertainment. Darling-Wolf, Fabienne. 2001. Gender, Beauty, and Western Influence. Negotiated Femininity in Japenese Women’s Magazines. In The Gender Challenge to Media. Diverse Voice from the Field, eds. Elizabeth L. Tolth and Linda Aldoony, 277-318. Cresskill: Hampton. Deignan, Alice. 2006. The emergence of Metaphor in Discourse. Applied Linguistics 27(4): 671-690. Dirven, René, and Marjolin Verspoor, eds. 2000 (1998). Una introducción cognitiva al lenguaje y a la lingüística. Zaragoza: Mira Editores. Du Gay, Paul, ed. 1997. Production of Culture. Cultures of Production. London: Sage. Fabregat, Marta. 2005. Hetairas: las Cortesanas de la Antigua Grecia. Historia National Geographic 15: 23-26. Gilbert Sandra and Susan Gubar. 1998 (1979). La loca del desván. La escritora y la imaginación literaria del siglo XIX. Madrid: Cátedra. Golden, Arthur. 1997. Memoirs of a Geisha. New York: Knopf Doubleday. Green, David, et al. 1996 Cognitive Science: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Hall, Stuart, ed. 1997. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Thousand Oaks. Hwang, David H. 1998. M. Butterfly. New York: Penguin. Jäkel, Olaf. 1997. Metaphern in abstrakten Diskurs-Domänen. Eine kognitiv-linguistische Untersuchung der Bereiche Geistestätigkeit, Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Lakoff, George. 1990. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Illinois: The University of Chicago Press.

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—. 1993. The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor. In Metaphor and Thought, ed. Andrew Ortony, 202-251. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live by. Illinois: The University of Chicago Press. Lee, Ang. dir. 2000. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Los Angeles: Asian Union Movie and Entertainment, and Columbia Pictures. Marshall, Rob, dir. 2005. Memoirs of a Geisha. Los Angeles: Columbia Pictures, Dreamworks, and Spyglass Entertainment. Mernissi, Fatema. 2001. Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems. New York: Washington Square Press. Mulvey, Laura. 1989. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. In Visual and Other Pleasures, ed. Laura Mulvey, 14-26. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Price, Stuart. 1998. Media Studies. Essex: Longman. Propp, Vladimir. 1985 (1928). Morfología del cuento. Madrid: Akal. Said, Edward. 2003 (1978) Orientalism. London: Penguin. Simal González, Begoña. 2000. Identidad étnica y género en la narrativa de escritoras chinoamericanas. A Coruña: Servicio de Publicacións da Universidade da Coruña. Taylor, Lisa, and Andrew Willis. 1999. Media Studies: Texts, Institutions and Audiences. Oxford: Blackwell. Van Zoonen, Liesbet. 1994. Feminist Media Studies. London: Sage. Wang, Wayne, dir. 1993. The Joy Luck Club. Los Angeles: Hollywood Pictures. Windschitl, Mark. 2004. Folk Theories of ‘‘Inquiry:’’ How Preservice Teachers Reproduce the Discourse and Practices of an Atheoretical Scientific Method. Journal of Research in Science Teaching 41(5): 481-512. Yimou, Zhang, dir. 2002. Hero. Beijing: New Picture Film, and Elite Group. —. 2003. The House of the Flying Daggers. Beijing: New Picture Film, and Elite Group.

Notes 1

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) are members of the so-called experientialist school that emphasises the role of human experience and perception in the process of meaning creation. 2 The image of the geishas could be compared to that of the hetairas in ancient Greece. Hetairas were cultivated courtesans who enjoyed a special status of

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freedom that made them different from the rest of the Greek women, whose position in life was always subjected to their homes and the men in their families. Hetairas administered their own businesses and were the only women allowed to attend dinners (Fabregat 2005, 23-36). 3 Zhiyi Zhang (Sayuri) and Gong Li (Hatsumomo) are Chinese, whereas Michelle Yeoh (Mameha) is originally from Malaysia. 4 It may be noted that the geisha who coached the actresses, Liza Dalby, has been the only non-Asian person to become a geisha. 5 Mrs Nitta, or “Mother”, as she makes the girls in the okiya call her, is the mistress who buys Chiyo (later Sayuri) when she is still a little child. In her house she will begin her training as a geisha.

CHAPTER EIGHT IMAGINING DIFFERENCE IN MAGGIE GEE’S MY CLEANER AND MY DRIVER CORNEELTJE VAN BLEIJSWIJK

My aim in this chapter is to analyse and compare the two novels My Cleaner (2005) and My Driver (2009) written by the British author Maggie Gee. In these novels, Gee describes the particular relationship between two contemporary metropolitan women: Mary Tendo, a proud Ugandan, former immigrant and cleaner of Vanessa Henman, who is portrayed as a quintessential British middle-aged novelist. Although Gee locates those shifting power dynamics between migrant and host citizen in London and Kampala, the topics she addresses as relevant to a specific British context are currently discussed in many European countries. As we shall see, Gee does not dwell upon the typical role allocation and clichés that usually accompany the representation of marginalised characters. On the contrary, the author reflects deeply on issues concerning female interrelationship and migration following Rosi Braidotti’s claim about the necessity to recognise difference not as a mark of inferiority but of cultural diversity (1994, 256-57). In this respect, Braidotti asks a number of questions which both My Cleaner and My Driver seem to replicate: “When will we accept that internationalization begins at home? How close are we, the ‘white’ intellectual women, to the migrant women who have even fewer citizen rights than we have? How sensitive are we to the intellectual potential of the foreigners that we have right here, in our own backyard” (1994, 255). Moreover, the feminist philosopher emphasises that “[m]igrant women constitute the bulk of what we would call the “domestic foreigner” in our post-industrial metropolis. These people who speak a language and embody cultural values so different from the dominant ones tend to be forgotten in all the debates about international perspectives” (1994, 255). However, what happens when, contrarily to what is expected, the Ugandan character in My Cleaner decides that she is tired of being humble

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and tells her employer: “I am leaving the dishes for you to wash” (2006, 83)? And what happens when this challenging Ugandan character is created by a white novelist? Is Maggie Gee appropriating the experience and internal world of Mary Tendo? Is this another story of oppression and literary colonisation as the author asked when writing this novel (2009, 12)? In the following pages, my objective is therefore to examine how these novels provide possible answers for some of these questions and how these answers might throw some light on actual debates and issues around immigration, racism and, ultimately, conviviality. In this sense, Gee reworks questions of difference and multiculturalism in a new and challenging way by expanding on the implications of what the author herself calls “imagining difference”. More specifically, in her paper “Imagining Difference: Girl Writes Boy, White Writes Black” (2009), Gee stresses the similarities between dealing with alterity and the literary task of creating different worlds. She points out that all fiction involves imagining difference and recalls Virginia Woolf’s remark that “art [allows] us to enjoy our ‘unacted parts’” (2009, 12). Consequently, Gee aspires to express her whole life in her books: “politics and jokes as well as love of beauty” (2010, 175), all ingredients recurrently present in My Cleaner and My Driver. More specifically, by exploring the inner world and shifting power dynamics between the two female protagonists, the author also imagines difference in a way that draws attention towards the existence of the fluid boundaries between race, class, and even national borders. Likewise, by placing the characters of My Cleaner in London and later letting them travel to Uganda in her subsequent novel My Driver, the two novels renegotiate the traditional fixed standpoint of the outsider for both the migrant and the native. Gee forms part of a generation of English authors which includes Martin Amis, Julian Barnes and Angela Carter. Since she was chosen as one of the original twenty “Best of Young British Novelists” one year after the publication of her experimental novel Dying, In Other Words (1981), her writing has undergone many changes. She has evolved from her first interest in technical innovation in her earlier novels often described as surrealist, modern gothic and postmodern, to consider questions of personal morality in private life, moving more recently towards themes of racist violence, interracial relationship and the impact of the encounters with different cultures in novels such as The Ice People (1998) or The White Family (2002) (Jaggi 2002, 5-10; McKay 1998, 213-221). Throughout her literary trajectory, her efforts to imagine difference are evident both because she represents the inner life of someone who forms

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part of an oppressed group or nation and because she does so from the perspective of a writer from the apparently stronger or oppressing group. It was in 2003, when Maggie Gee was invited by the Cheltenham Festival to do a four-week exchange with the Ugandan novelist Ayeta Anne Wangusa, that she began working on My Cleaner (Koval 2009). Gee started writing in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, what she originally intended as a short story based on the memories of Mary Tendo’s childhood in the former British colony. Nevertheless, the story developed into a novel as soon as the author introduced Mary’s white counterpart Vanessa Henman. As Gee explains: I [...] understood that I was writing a two-hander, and that one of the central themes was not just Vanessa’s misunderstandings, but how Mary and Vanessa misunderstand each other, and also how they slowly work towards something better. Mary gets Vanessa wrong just as much as Vanessa gets Mary wrong. In short, I was writing about how both characters are dealing with difference, looking across a boundary category that at times blinds them to each other. And very soon indeed the thing I was writing had grown too long to be a short story and was on its way to being a novel. (2009, 15-16)

In the sequel to My Cleaner, My Driver, Gee unfolds the dealings and renegotiations of what had once been a master-servant relationship by creating a mirror image of Mary’s and Vanessa’s previous adventures; thus, in My Driver it is Vanessa Henman who is off her ground in Uganda. The author continues to spin the story around the misunderstandings and confrontations between Mary and Vanessa. But now it is Vanessa and her ex-husband Trevor that travel to Kampala while Mary embodies the role of host in Uganda for the couple who were once her masters in Britain. Significantly, when she began to write My Cleaner, Maggie Gee did not have any doubt about her metaphor for the changing relationship between Britain, the former colonial power, and Uganda, the former colony. To her, the main narrative difficulty arose when she decided to narrate the story in the first person not only from Vanessa’s point of view but also from Mary Tendo’s: I say this was the critical moment because it is here that all the difficult questions about imagining difference arise. Did I have the right to inhabit Mary Tendo’s mind? Could I be Mary Tendo, in the first person? Could I use her voice? Could I really, deeply, imagine her? Would I get it wrong? Would I be criticised? More fundamentally, was I stealing her story? (2009, 16)

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How to avoid appropriation and prejudice, then? And what is more, how to encounter the demand of “authenticity” by the publishers which, as Gee observes, constrains even more the creative act of writing and imagining (2009, 12-13)? Gee’s concern about these issues is not unfounded because, like other novels which deal with different voices and challenge established boundaries, she had already encountered some problems when she published her eighth novel The White Family (2002). As she comments in her recent autobiography My Animal Life (2010), this novel was unusual for the time and at first rejected by many publishers, principally because it dealt with race in a moment of ideological and racial upheaval in Britain’s recent history and she had to wait several years to see it published (2010, 174-201). The White Family has been described as a “condition of England novel” (McKay 1998, 213-221), in which, for the first time, she offers an in-depth exploration of racism, writing across colour boundaries and giving voice not only to a young white racist character but also to black characters. Its germ was the murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence by white youths back in 1993, whose final trial, in which the white men were found guilty, was not held until January 2012. Despite the relevance that this incident acquired at the moment of the crime and the posterior outbreaks of violence in London, what Gee was most interested in was “understand[ing] the kind of white family that might have given rise to these racist young men” (2009, 14). For that reason, she claims that her focus is to get “inside the mind and emotions of the racist white teenager” (2009, 14), uncovering not only his own emotions and shortcomings but also those of his family. In this regard, the author starts to imagine difference as a kind of strategy that enables her to understand, on the one hand, how racism works at its most elemental levels and, on the other, how the emotions of a character so utterly different from herself can be conveyed to the reader without losing any moral authority as a writer. Gee claims that, in the process of imagining and enacting such conflictive characters, humour became one of the crucial elements which ensured this authorial distance (2009, 14). Drawing on this strategy, in My Cleaner and in My Driver Maggie Gee not only enhances her concern about representing difference, but also reinforces her authorial choices by transforming humour into a strategy through which she blurs the boundaries of otherness. Furthermore, in bestowing her characters with both comic and pathetic features, Gee induces the reader to mistrust the visions and conceptions of her protagonists (2009, 14). For instance, in My Cleaner, the author subverts the typical situation of a supposedly emancipated middle-class academic

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in need of a domestic cleaner. If Mary Tendo was once in need of a job as a cleaner in order to maintain her son when she tried to build up a better life in London, this time it is Vanessa who is placed in the subordinate position. She desperately needs Mary’s help because her own son Justin suffers from depression. Mary brought him up as a baby and although they have not seen each other for years, she is still the only person in whom he confides. Mary returns, thus, to the house of her former employer to fill in the void left by Vanessa in her son’s life. Though initially Vanessa tries to maintain the former balance of power, Mary Tendo unsettles Vanessa’s condescending and prejudiced attitudes as soon as she arrives in the British metropolis and starts to demand rights she never would have dared to insist upon twenty years before when she first arrived in London. Besides, she challenges Vanessa’s role and authority as an academic by expressing her intention of becoming a writer as well, a profession for which Vanessa sacrificed many years and in which she has never quite succeeded. Throughout My Cleaner, Mary’s strength gradually increases, allowing her to dominate the other characters until the point that she ends up saving Vanessa’s son and Vanessa herself: “Still Vanessa is left with a puzzled feeling that somehow Mary is the centre of all this, that the heroic role, which was surely hers, the stoical, plucky victim of attack, has passed to Mary, and will not come back, however much she tells her own story” (2006, 295). Whilst the author reverses the stereotypes of the white master and the African servant, she also makes her protagonists more laughable and human, managing to draw attention towards the increasing shift in the reallocation of traditional migrant and native roles. In this regard, and going back to Braidotti’s claims, Gee induces Vanessa to become sensitive to the intellectual potential of the foreigner and ultimately she questions the image of the white middle-class woman and her hidden prejudices and racist assumptions. One of the strengths in Gee’s process of imagining difference is that she makes sure that Mary Tendo’s personality does not remain flawless. In My Driver, Gee interweaves again Vanessa’s and Mary’s lives in multiple layers and features. This time, Vanessa decides to travel to Uganda to attend a British Council conference on African writing and to visit her former cleaner, but Mary has her own plans. In spite of being now the successful Executive Housekeeper of Kampala’s Sheraton Hotel and living again a happy family life, she still misses her son Jamil. Although the last time she heard of him was when he went off to fight with Islamists in Iraq, Jamil is now struggling to return to Kampala fleeing from the treacherous rebel troops in the north of Uganda. The pressure of the uncertainty of Jamil’s fate keeps Mary from talking to her baby-daughter Dora. In order

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to escape from the situation, she has secretly asked Vanessa’s ex-husband Trevor to build a new well in her village. While Vanessa sets off to visit the mountain gorillas of the distant Bwindi Forest, Mary accompanies Trevor and learns to fight her own prejudices and preconceptions. After the journey, she reflects on her life and the loss of her son acknowledging that I am too angry with everyone. Perhaps I have been trying to punish God by not coming to church, because of what happened. But He gave the village water. The water of life. He made Trevor able to mend the well. And yet I tried to punish Trevor, also, for being an ignorant muzungu in Uganda... I could not stop being angry with him. Still it was good for Trevor to feel like me, when I was in my twenties, and first came to London, and cleaned their toilets and their offices. The English made me feel like an ignorant Ugandan [...]. But I cannot blame Trevor. He is a good man. (2010, 320)

If in My Cleaner it is Vanessa that struggles to reconcile her work with a partner and a family life, in My Driver Gee confronts Mary with a similar fight and renders her equally caught up in her own class dynamics, behaving no better towards her maid than Vanessa did to her in the past. Moreover, both women share the fundamental desire to see their sons healthy and happy again and strive to fulfil their professional dreams whether it is in London or in Kampala. As a matter of fact, Gee claims a fundamental likeness which lingers under their differences and ultimately dismantles the apparently natural and fixed mechanisms of dualistic thought on class and race. The author herself explains that this “likeness under difference” (Gee 2009, 16) that exists between her female protagonists becomes for the first time explicit near the end of My Cleaner, when Mary sees that the house where Vanessa lived as a child is actually smaller and poorer than the house where Mary grew up in Uganda (2009, 18). At a certain moment, the two women, which are about to cross a road, are looking into a mirror which reflects them and, for the first time, they become aware of this likeness: Vanessa spots it at the same time, and as they stand there, waiting for the stream of metal to stop and let them back into kinder country, the sun comes out, and illuminates it. Both of them stop and stare at it, side by side, pressed close together by the narrow gap between the thorns and the lorries. It is a small, radiant disc of sharp beauty, with a huge blue sky and swelling white clouds, a convex circle that shines like a world, and they are there, minute, in the bottom right corner, at the end of a road that slopes away into the distance, at one precise vortex of time and space, and the world is enormous, and they are tiny, and their ant-like bodies vibrate with

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the traffic, two small living things on an enormous planet, and Mary has crossed the earth to this place, and when she turns again, ten feet down the lane, the two of them merge into the same bright dot. (Gee 2006, 253-54)

In this vein, Gee’s emphasis on the underlying likeness the two female characters share recalls bell hooks’ notion of “yearning”. In Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (1996), hooks re-examines black cultural production and its criticism from a feminist point of view, rooting this revision in an interdisciplinary understanding of class and race. Accordingly, hooks pleads for a cultural criticism that is concerned with the transformation of oppressive structures of social control and that challenges the more subtle forms of racial domination that she still believes very active in current forms of postmodernism (1990, 1-13). hooks observes further that, despite postmodernist interest in the experience of “difference”, its representations are nevertheless often exclusionary and appropriative of the experience of “Otherness” since they still evolve in the context of white supremacy. In aspiring artistically and critically to challenge these politics that still underlie certain discourses on black culture, hooks was struck “by the depths of longing in many of us” (1990, 12). hooks’ argument that these sentiments are shared across race, gender, and even sexual practice and open up “the possibility of common ground where all these differences might meet and engage one another” (1990, 13) is very similar to Maggie Gee’s own desire to express herself more freely through the unfolding of nonconformist characters such as Vanessa and Mary. In her essay on “Postmodern Blackness” (1990, 23-31), hooks proposes the concept of “yearning” as a word that not only describes a “common psychological state” but also positively embodies criticism to the postmodernist deconstruction of master narratives (1990, 27). Although she warns us that such longings and yearnings might be considered as part of the realm of fantasy and could hence be separated from political action, she contends that fantasising new responses matters and interconnects both sides involved in political transformation: those who desire radical change in order to fulfil their longings and those who hold privileges but are open to negotiate these transformations (1990, 12). In My Animal Life, Gee follows this line of thought when she reflects on Stephen Lawrence’s murder and the racial problems it unveiled, despite the assumption that such conflicts were a thing of the past. Gee claims that she still felt accountable for them, and therefore, in keeping faithful to her own literary trajectory, she wanted to protest against the revived racism of those years (2010, 175). In this sense, Gee argues that, despite seeing many of her literary models in the modernist tradition, especially Virginia

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Woolf and Vladimir Nabokov, she believes that “modernist aesthetic breaks down when it isolates the writer from the world” (2010, 175). Accordingly, Maggie Gee’s own longing to participate in the social discussion and to articulate her political position through fiction can be considered very similar to bell hooks’ claims on the political force of fantasy that cuts across boundaries of race, class, and gender, and which are specially expressed in her concept of yearning (1990, 27). By applying hooks’ notion of yearning to My Cleaner and My Driver, Gee’s ideas on imagining difference and fundamental likeness acquire a new significance. On the one hand, by making Mary and Vanessa undergo similar changes throughout the narratives, Gee emphasises that both protagonists gradually evolve towards a kind of self-recognition. Thus, their respective yearnings can be considered as the string which links the two novels. On the other hand, the author simultaneously enables her characters to feel empathy with their counterpart, despite their evident differences. Consequently, through their respective yearnings, traditionally decentred subjects like Mary share sensibilities with theoretically more privileged characters like Vanessa, in a way that might be “fertile ground for the construction of empathy-ties that would promote recognition of common commitments, and serve as a base for solidarity and coalition” (hooks 1990, 27). Moreover, by enacting these differences creatively, the author can express her own beliefs in empathy and sympathy as factors that can transcend differences very much in the line of hooks’ idea of yearning. The ending of My Driver illustrates the author’s idea of “likeness under difference” and its relation to hooks’ notion of empathy, when, in a confluence of lucky circumstances, Vanessa and her ex-husband Trevor bring Jamil, Mary’s lost son, back to Kampala. Mary recovers her son at last and even finds a way to start talking to her baby-daughter. Gee describes the reconciliation of the protagonists as follows: You found my son. God be praised, you have found my son [...]. And after a while, she embraces Vanessa. Through their thin clothes, they feel the hearts thudding. Through tears and tiredness and the limits of skin. Mary: Vanessa Vanessa: Mary Then she hugs Charles. And then Trevor. People stare and linger as they pass by. It is some time before the little group of people in strange, dramatic attitudes out in the road are composed enough to go inside. They keep shouting and sobbing, laughing and hugging. (2009, 355-356)

At the end of both novels, and in spite of an apparently happy ending, nothing remains the same. The encounter between the two women, both

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flawed and human, none of them a victim, will lead the protagonists towards a new awareness that is made extensive to the readers. Through Gee’s fiction, the reader imagines the characters trespass “the limits of skin” (2009, 355) and build up empathy-ties between all of them. Thus, the author rejects simplistic essentialism and emphasises experiences and “flows of connections” (Braidotti 1994, 5) which by no means have to be considered as an act of appropriation. As Maggie Gee claims: Do I believe that external differences of skin-colour, gender, age, political and cultural tradition, are secondary to what we share? To these questions I would answer with a resounding ‘Yes’. [...] I do believe that empathy and sympathy between people are possible. So there is a basis for trying to imagine each other; for writing across geographical, gender and cultural barriers. And I see that act not as colonisation but on the contrary as a belief in our essential equality. (2009, 17)

In this regard, the author seems to highlight what Braidotti designates as “nomadic shifts”, understood as a “performative metaphor that allows for otherwise unlikely encounters and unsuspected sources of interaction of experience and of knowledge” (1994, 6). Both protagonists can thus be considered as nomads not only in the way they travel physically between England and Uganda, but also metaphorically as they are constantly compelled to acknowledge each other’s viewpoint. That is to say, their focus swings back and forth from the other to the self (Gee 2009, 18), a shift that can likewise be extended to the process of literary creation undertaken by Gee as a writer. When read in the light of hooks’ and Braidotti’s ideas, Gee’s strategy of imagining difference becomes highly political in an affective and affirmative way. By drawing on the notion of empathy we can understand Gee’s task as one which rejects those theories that try to dismantle dualistic thought based upon individualism or particularity, foregrounding instead a politics of affirmation and mutual specification of the self and the other in more multilayered social structures (Braidotti 2011, 3-8). Bearing all these ideas in mind, my contention is that Gee fictionalises new contact zones between “the other and the self”, and manages not only to redeem and open new ways for her protagonists but also to claim what Paul Gilroy calls a “spontaneous convivial culture”, defining it as the “ability to live with alterity without becoming anxious, fearful, or violent” (2005, XV). In line with hooks and Braidotti, Gilroy observes that “the desire to dwell convivially with difference can appear naïve, trifling, or misplaced in the face of deepening global inequalities and conflicts over resources, on the one side, and a routine, almost banal multiculture on the

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other” (2005, 5). However, Gilroy’s notion stresses “the shifting quality of political life” (2005, 7) and points to a new kind of cultural production that might express “a remade relationship with our heterogeneous selves, working through the after effects of empire in a self-consciously multicultural nation” (2005, 135). Gee’s protagonists are already part of this new society and their diasporic and nomadic movements are expression of an opportunity to create sites of coalition and solidarity. Indeed, if Gilroy uses the term “conviviality” to refer to “the processes of cohabitation and interaction that have made multiculture an ordinary feature of social life in Britain’s urban areas” (2005, XV), the protagonists of My Cleaner and My Driver imply that this is not only possible through the capacity to negotiate, imagine and perform one’s own subjectivity anew but also through the shifting focus between the other and the self. Therefore, Gee reaches beyond the traditional deconstruction of stereotypes and patronising forms of racism. And more importantly, through this newly gained consciousness of “likeness under difference”, she explores and portrays the contact zones and negotiations of metropolitan citizens and contemporary postcolonial subjects. In conclusion, for Maggie Gee the act of creating different viewpoints in both novels means the effort of finding common commitments. In this sense, she stresses the importance of empathy-ties in current processes of cohabitation. This effort of imagining difference becomes valuable because it calls into question the centre of traditional representations and it consequently enables both the reader and the writer to look at his or her life through a new perspective.

Works cited Braidotti, Rosi. 1994. Nomadic Subjects. New York: Columbia University Press. —. 2011. Nomadic Theory. The Portable Rosi Braidotti. New York: Columbia University Press. Gee, Maggie. 2006 (2005). My Cleaner. London: Telegram. —. 2008 (1998). The Ice People. London, San Francisco, Beirut: Telegram. —. 2008 (2002). The White Family. London, San Francisco, Beirut: Telegram. —. 2009. Imagining Difference: Girl Writes Boy, White Writes Black. In New Perspectives on English Studies. 32nd AEDEAN Conference, eds.

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Marian Amengual, Maria Juan, and Joana Salazar, 12-18. Palma de Mallorca: Edicions UIB. —. 2010. My Animal Life. London, Saint Paul, Beirut: Telegram. —. 2010 (2009). My Driver. London, Saint Paul, Beirut: Telegram. Gilroy, Paul. 2005. Postcolonial Melancholia. New York: Columbia University Press. hooks, bell. 1996. Yearning. Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. Boston, MA: South End Press. Jaggi, Maya. 2002. Maya Jaggi in Conversation with Maggie Gee. The White Family. Wasafiri 17(36): 5-10. Koval, Ramona. 2009. Maggie Gee and Tobias Hill on Travel Writing. ABC Radio National-The Book Show, November 12, 2009, http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2009/11/bsw_20091112_1020. mp3 (accessed April, 28, 2010). McKay, Margaret. 1998. An Interview with Maggie Gee. Studia Neophilologica 69: 213-221.

CHAPTER NINE BETWEEN TRADITION AND INNOVATION: APPROACHING FEMINISM IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND CHARACTERISATION OF P.D. JAMES’S AND AMANDA CROSS’S FEMALE DETECTIVES MARÍA DEL MAR RAMÓN-TORRIJOS

The detective fiction genre has traditionally been accused of being male territory, even if it has also had a significant female presence. Although women have consistently written detective fiction and introduced female detectives in these stories—as happened in Britain in the late 19th century or during the so-called Golden Age of the genre (the early decades of the 20th century)—they assumed a masculine perspective underlining the passive status of the female detective. Considering the different stages that the literary representation of women detectives has gone through in the evolution of the genre, it can be assumed that after both the lady detective of the 19th century—whom neither male nor female writers would dare to make efficient at her work providing her with a good deal of feminine intuition but with a certain amount of clumsiness—and the elderly amateur detective of the Golden Age—who in the 1920s and 1930s was obliged to choose between intelligence and femininity—, a new stage in the fictional representation of women detectives can be found in P.D. James and Amanda Cross. Their fiction provides some novelty in the textual portrait of their female detectives by shyly rejecting their characterisation from a masculine perspective. James’s and Cross’s detectives represent a transitional stage between the conventional female detective attached to stereotyped attitudes towards their gender and the competent and

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autonomous detective women of the next stage—the hard-boiled detective of the 1970s and 1980s, who could be portrayed as being a competent and professional detective without putting aside her femininity. Bearing in mind that a parallel can be drawn between the evolution of the female detective as a literary character and the ideological and social changes that the Western world has experienced,1 this article addresses the narrative by P.D. James and Amanda Cross with the purpose of analysing the textual representation of their fictional detectives, Cordelia Gray and Kate Fansler, while discussing how the portrait of these characters means a step forward in the development of the female detective in terms of personal autonomy if compared to female detectives in the previous stages. Cordelia Gray, P.D. James’s detective, appeared for the first time in An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972), in which her creator, with the construction of a “non-conventional” female detective, manages to challenge certain narrative conventions of the genre, which will have an effect on the resolution of the case. For her part, Detective Kate Fansler, created by the American writer Carolyn Heilbrun—who wrote a series of detective novels under the pseudonym of Amanda Cross—portrays some features traditionally linked to the classic detective while trying her best to act as an autonomous woman. Considering the evolution and fictional representation of the female detective as a literary character at different stages of the genre, the representation of James’s and Cross’s detectives occupies a middle ground between tradition and innovation or, in other words, between attachment to traditional detective story conventions and a tentative attempt to alter some of the conservative patterns of the genre. It is commonly understood that the professional woman detective—not amateur like the lady detective and the Golden Age spinster—comes to life with women writers writing in the hard-boiled tradition in the late 1970s, thus neglecting Cordelia Gray as a pioneer in this tradition.2 Cordelia Gray is the main character in An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972), an emblematic novel whose illustrative title alludes to the contradiction between gender and the development of certain professional careers, in which social barriers have to be added to the difficulties of the job: The “unsuitability” of the job lies in its requirements of action and of decision making, and in its placement of Cordelia in a position of independence and control, all suitable for a man but not for a woman. Whereas the male hard-boiled detectives are usually up against the widespread, generalized corruption of an entire society, with that corruption becoming particularized in the physical endangering of the

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detective, the women private eyes must face not only that widespread corruption and physical danger, but also specific hostility to women that frequently sharpens into personal attacks on the detective. (Reddy 1988, 102)

The novel, although clearly representative of the genre of detection, seems to move away from some of its accepted conventions, firstly by placing a female character in a traditional male role and trying to depict her as a competent and professional detective; and secondly, by transforming one relevant convention of this literary tradition—in this case the gendered identity of the detective—other constitutive conventions will be subsequently modified such as, in this novel, the unusual resolution of the case. Cranny-Francis reflects on how changing one basic convention— the gendered identity of the detective—may have an effect on the “transformation” of the genre: Professional female detectives use and transform many of the conventions of traditional hard-boiled detective fiction [...] those transformations are necessitated by the gender identity of the detective. If she is not to become a counterfeit male, she must operate differently, yet operate within the rules of the genre. In doing so, and changing the genre, the myth, in the process, the female detective reveals the discursive basis of many of the conventions used in the construction of the hard-boiled private investigator. (Cranny-Francis 1990, 169)

Born in Oxford, UK, in 1920, P.D. James occupies an outstanding position within the British crime novel literary tradition. Apart from having received a great number of awards for her literary achievements, her great popularity among readers and critics has been made even greater due to the fact that many of her mystery novels were adapted for cinema and television. In addition to some works in other literary genres, P.D. James is the author of a successful series of fourteen crime novels featuring Scotland Yard Inspector Adam Dalgliesh, who appeared for the first time in her novel Cover her Face, published in 1962, and for the last time up to now in her novel The Private Patient, published in 2008. Cordelia Gray will only appear in two novels, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972) and The Skull Beneath the Skin (1982), with Dalgliesh making small appearances in both novels. Her detective novels, as P.D. James describes in her last work Talking about Detective Fiction (2009), are a compendium of the traditional conventions of the crime fiction, which the author describes as follows:

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Although the author underlines that her definition of the genre could seem “unduly restrictive and more appropriate to the so-called Golden Age between the wars than it is today” (James 2009, 18), the majority of her novels seem to adjust to the classical conventions of the genre, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman being an exception since it manages to alter some of the formal conventions of the detective genre. In terms of its plot, the novel is quite a conventional murder mystery. Cordelia Gray is hired by the eminent Cambridge scientist Sir Ronald Callender to investigate the apparent suicide of his son Mark Callender. Cordelia, after doing some work and overcoming some dangerous situations, learns that Mark has been murdered by his own father so as to prevent him from inheriting his mother’s money and later use it for his scientific research. In the final resolution of the novel, Mark’s mother, who was believed to be dead, finds out that her son’s murderer is his own father and shoots him in an act of revenge that takes places in front of Cordelia. The detective helps Mark’s mother in order to make Callender’s murder look like a suicide while Scotland Yard Inspector Adam Dalgliesh, who knows who the culprit is, allows this unusual resolution of the case. In fact, when the inspector is asked by his assistant if he believes that Cordelia has been deceived by the murderer, he replies: “I don’t think that young woman deludes herself about anything” (James 1972, 286). As previously stated, the resolution of the conflict moves away completely from the classic conventional crime novel. Not only does the female detective allow the murderer to get away with the crime, thus prioritising Cordelia’s own ethical code over established rules, but the novel also makes it possible for the Inspector to overlook the culpability of Mark’s mother, since he understands her revenge. The inner explanation for Cordelia’s behaviour and her sympathy for Mark’s mother lies in the protagonist’s own identity, of which P.D. James offers a detailed portrait in the novel. Gray is portrayed as a character

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deeply influenced by her lonely childhood: she is an orphan—her mother died when she was very young—and the young girl was brought up by her father, “an itinerant Marxist poet and amateur revolutionary” (James 1972, 31), who was devoted to his idealism and had no time for her daughter. Cordelia was brought up moving from one surrogate family to another until, due to a mistake with her academic records, she arrives at a convent school run by Catholic nuns. There, despite being a Protestant, she will spend “the six most settled and happy years of her life” (James 1972, 86). Rather selfishly, Cordelia’s father does not allow her to go to university so that Cordelia is able to take care of him. After her father’s death, Cordelia takes up several jobs until she starts working at the Pryde Detective Agency, where Bernie Pryde, unfairly expelled by Inspector Dalgliesh and Cordelia’s future boss, teaches her the skills she needs to develop her work, such as “how to search the scene of a crime properly, how to collect exhibits, some elementary self-defence, how to detect and lift fingerprints” (James 1972, 32). Cordelia, therefore, firstly in surrogate families, then inside a Catholic world, and finally in a detective agency where some people try to make her feel like an outsider, has always felt as if she was in a world she does not belong to. Thus, searching for her own identity becomes one of the main objectives of the novel, alongside the resolution of the case.3 Detective Cordelia Gray shares several features with the male detective of the traditional crime novel. Like Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, she is financially independent, works in an urban setting, carries a gun, drinks alcohol and faces the same kind of violence as the traditional hard-boiled heroes. However, although Cordelia is always ready to take action and perfectly capable of taking care of herself—in fact, she transforms the passive role played by early women detectives who were not allowed to get involved in the action of the story, let alone resort to violence—she only resorts to violence when it is necessary, contrary to what characterised the traditional hard-boiled detective. Consequently, despite admitting that the gun helps her feel safer— “Bernie had meant her to have the gun and she wasn’t going to give it up easily” (James 1972, 15)—, she is aware of the fact that “she could never defend herself with it, never kill a man” (James 1972, 220). She also moves away from the traditional hero since, whereas the classical hardboiled detective is a loner and deliberately keeps himself emotionally detached when solving his cases, Cordelia allows herself to get personally involved in her investigation. In this case, Cordelia identifies herself completely with the victim, since there are a number of similarities between her life and Mark’s: both are the same age, have been brought up

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without a mother and had their fathers completely removed from their lives, serving the common good, rather than taking care of their children. In fact, Cordelia’s father was devoted to his revolutionary ideas and Mark’s father focused on his laboratories. From this perspective, Cordelia becomes Mark’s avenger, who, much like herself, has been sacrificed by her father’s dreams: She had identified with him, with his solitariness, his self-sufficiency, his alienation from his father, his lonely childhood. She had even—most dangerous presumption of all—come to see herself as his avenger. (James 1972, 118)

As Kotker emphasises, through her sympathy for the victim, Cordelia is also solving her own situation as an abandoned child by highlighting how selfish the adults can be towards their own children: When Gray does this, she is avenging herself too, putting herself on the line (she could, after all, be jailed for her complicity in covering up Sir Ronald’s murder) to make the statement that children should be loved and the caretakers responsible for them held accountable. (Kotker 1995, 57)

The novel moves away from the traditional crime novel in the resolution of the case, since the detective, after successfully uncovering the murderer’s identity, freely makes her own ethical decision and decides to let her get away with the crime. Her own identification with the victim allows her to perfectly understand Mark’s mother’s vengeance and decides to cover up the evidence of Mark’s mother’s murder. Especially interesting is how Inspector Dalgliesh also decides to respect Cordelia’s moral code and close the case despite being aware that a murder case has been reported as a suicide. In this respect, Inspector Dalgliesh claims: “I dislike being made to feel during a perfectly ordinary interrogation that I’m corrupting the young” (James 1972, 286). And finally, upon careful consideration, Dalgliesh comes up with his own conclusion: “there are some cases which are better left unsolved” (James 1972, 286). At the early stages of the genre, women who decided to develop works of detection failed either as women or as detectives. This is not the case of Cordelia since her creator, P.D. James, makes great efforts to highlight her gendered identity. It is relevant to point out that—as the title of the novel underlines—the female detective’s work is constantly being questioned because of her gender, while it is never questioned with a male as the hard-boiled hero. When Bernie commits suicide, the policeman who questions her assumes she is her secretary and not her fellow investigator.

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Not only do men question her job, women also expect a specific pattern of behaviour from her due to the fact that she is a woman. When Cordelia talks about Bernie’s suicide to the waitress of the pub they used to go to, she says: “You’ll be looking for a new job, I suppose? After all, you can hardly keep the Agency going on your own. It isn’t a suitable job for a woman” (James 1972, 21); and later she confirms, “I shouldn’t think your mother would approve of you staying alone” (James 1972, 40). As Porter (1988) contends, the whole novel replies in a negative way to the ironic question asked in the novel’s title. In fact, Cordelia Gray, when solving her first case, undoubtedly shows her intelligence alongside willpower and bravery and manages to overcome masculine scepticism and makes her own decisions. Consequently, as Kotker notes, the detective can be a very appealing model of behaviour for women of her time: As an outsider and loner, she has much in common with such traditional fictional heroes as Huck Finn, Nick Adams, Hawkeye and Shane. Like them, she rejects the values of her society, developing instead her own code. Her message is that although we cannot control the events of the world around us, we can control how we react to those events and can choose the individual stance we take before the world. This was a powerful message for women coming of age in the early 1970s, who saw in Gray and her defeat of the patriarchy, a hero for women. (Kotker 1995, 58)

However, although trying to prove that a woman can be a successful private detective without losing her gendered identity, Cordelia cannot be considered an autonomous detective since she constantly needs the approval of her male superiors or colleagues, as Munt contends: “she can only operate with the validation of the law establishment, in the form of policeman Adam Dalgliesh, James’ serial hero” (Munt 1994, 23). Like Munt, Klein (1988) argues that her gendered identity is not completely defined since she “is too young, too sweet and sincere, too unsure of her ability” (Klein 1988, 55). Accordingly, it can be assumed that only a shy and incipient feminist stance is shown in the novel, and so Cordelia Gray is still far from being a feminist heroine. In P.D. James’s fiction, this female detective will only appear again and somehow be “transformed” in the novel The Skull Beneath the Skin (1982). As Munt points out (1994, 24), in this second novel James “returned to orthodox detection”, making the character less developed and unable to solve the case. As a result, she goes back to being in charge of minor issues: robberies, captures or pursuits. As Kotker suggests, with Cordelia’s second appearance, P.D. James appears to regret her past

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choices as an author, and seemingly agrees with those who thought that a woman could not be a proper detective: It is difficult to understand why P.D. James, having created such a strong figure in the Cordelia Gray of Unsuitable Job, chose to undermine and domesticate that figure in Skull. James has said that while she considers herself to be a feminist “in the sense that I like and admire women very much,” she is not “in sympathy with the more extreme fractions of Women’s Lib”. (Bakerman 1985, 57) It may be that after Gray’s initial appearance James found this female hero, who takes as her talismans guns and leather, a character who is too extreme. Perhaps in domesticating Cordelia in The Skull Beneath the Skin, James sought to correct the record, to emphasize in the revised character James’s own cautious, qualified view of feminism. (Kotker 1995, 63)

American writer Amanda Cross, whose real name was Carolyn G. Heilbrun, was a Professor of Literature at Columbia University who used a pseudonym until she was academically promoted.4 Heilbrun was a Professor at the English Department for over three decades until she resigned in 1992, tired of the misogyny of academia,5 although she went on teaching and giving lectures at several universities until she committed suicide in 2003.6 Before resigning she underlined the ostracism she had suffered from her male colleagues at Columbia: It’s like a marriage ending, sad, exhausting and infuriating, because Columbia will continue to be run by male professors who behave like little boys saying, ‘This is our secret treehouse club, no girls allowed’. Well, I’m sick of the treehouse gang. (Matthews 1992, 72)

Throughout her trajectory, Heilbrun infuses her ideological concerns in her literary works. Her scholarly article Reinventing Womanhood (1979) analyses women’s literature from a feminist perspective focusing on a number of literary female characters that, due to their independence and rebelliousness, could be proposed as illustrative of a new female role model. The volume Representation of Women in Fiction (1982), which Heilbrun co-edited, includes a collection of critical essays written by feminist scholars such as Susan Gubar, Elizabeth Ermath or Nancy K. Miller, in which fictional images of women are discussed. Additionally, in Writing a Woman’s Life (1988), Heilbrun explores biographies and autobiographies of relevant women including Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Gertrude Stein, George Eliot or Margaret Thatcher. Themes such as independence or rebelliousness and images of women play an important role in her fiction.

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All her work offers the possibility of analysing both the theoretical implications of her feminist thought and the concretion of her feminism to which she tried to give expression in her fictional work. Alongside her essays and academic books, Heilbrun is the author of a series of fourteen highly erudite mystery novels—in which Heilbrun illustrates several aspects of her critical theory—with University Professor Kate Fansler as the heroine of her works. Interestingly, Kate Fansler is not a professional detective but—like Heilbrun—an academic and, more specifically, a Victorian Literature Professor at Harvard who investigates in her free time, solving crimes that take place on the university campus. Whereas Heilbrun was widely respected as a feminist theorist—the formulation of her feminist theories led to her obtaining pioneer status in the Gender Studies field, becoming the first director for the Institute for Research on Women and Gender in 1986—her novels have received uneven critical review. Praised by many of their followers, reviewers acknowledge their complex plotting and the high quality of her writing, as well as the wide cultural knowledge the novels display with cultural references and literary allusions scattered all over the text.7 However, many scholars highlight the fact that the author subordinates the mystery plot of her novels to the critique of the existing social, political and academic institutions, these being blamed for women’s discrimination in society at large, and in the world of academia in particular. In this respect, Professor Robert McFadden’s words (2003) when writing her obituary are relevant: The novels were ostensibly murder mysteries whose amateur sleuth sometimes sought clues in literary texts and a killer’s motives in academic politics. Most were well received by readers, but some critics said the plots were thin and the social commentary thick, and that the real subjects were women’s changing social positions, relationships with one another and struggle for independence [...] but devotees said it was all good fun, and some compared her work to the cerebral puzzles of Dorothy L. Sayers. (McFadden 2003)

Kate Fansler, the female sleuth and protagonist of her novels is, like Cordelia Gray, a very appealing character who tries to develop her personal autonomy as a woman in a male-dominated world. She is not a professional detective but an amateur who uses her intuition—alongside other “feminine attributes” such as observation, curiosity and knowledge about clothes—to solve her cases. She is nearly sixty, tall, slim, smart and with a great sense of humour. She has managed to become economically independent thanks to her parents’ inheritance and her salary as a

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university professor. She is also a liberal feminist, with a huge cultural background and a passion for literature. She is also happily married—she gets married in the middle of the series to the lawyer Reed Amhearst, although she will not adopt his surname—but is not fond of children. Her food habits do not give her any cause for concern and she usually treats herself to a martini or a shot of whisky, this habit being a feature shared with the traditional hard-boiled hero. In this regard, she resembles Lord Peter Wimsey, Dorothy L. Sayers’s detective, since Kate is also a rich aristocrat, eccentric but within reasonable limits. And in most cases, as Roberts (1985, 8) notes, these eccentricities—along with other traits—are deliberately copied from male models and their behaviour. Roberts’s description of the heroine highlights Heilbrun’s attempts to portray her detective through a number of features traditionally linked to the classic detective while trying her best to present her heroine as an autonomous woman. Additionally, the detective’s “masculine” features—she is independent, she smokes, drinks, has had several lovers, knows how to take care of herself—deliberately try to reveal an androgynous personality. Likewise, her partner and lawyer, Reed Amhearst—both of them had been friends for a long time before becoming a couple—appears portrayed as a thoughtful, sensitive, quiet man, with no traditional masculine features such as physical strength or courage, in contrast to Kate’s self-confidence. In her essay Toward a Recognition of Androgyny: Aspects of Male and Female in Literature (1973), Cross, through examples taken from Greek Literature, the Bible and other writings, rejects traditional ideas of male and female while suggesting that the condition of androgyny, defined as a refusal to accept the gender roles imposed by society, could set the person free from traditional expectations about gender. In her essay Reinventing Womanhood (1979), Cross asserts she considers her father as her only possible model of behaviour while giving some advice to women: “the male role model for autonomy and achievement is [...] the one they must follow” (in Roberts 1985, 8). In her essay When Men Were the Only Models We Had (2002) she shows her admiration for Professors Clifton Fadiman, Lionell Trilling and Jacques Barzun, addressing again the institutional sexism within academia which she undoubtedly experienced. In an interview for the New York Times Magazine in 1992 she says: “When I spoke up for women’s issues, I was made to feel unwelcome in my own department, kept off crucial committees, ridiculed, ignored” (McFadden 2003). From a feminist point of view, her most politically committed work is her novel Death in a Tenured Position (1981). The victim here,8 Janet

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Mandelbaum, is a promising female professor who has just been hired— probably due to the fact that she is not a feminist—.9 She also becomes the first tenured woman professor at Harvard’s English Department, despite the apprehension of the rest of her male colleagues, and is ultimately murdered. Harvard University has received a donation to fund a chair in the English Department for a female professor, although Janet wants to be promoted because of her academic merit and not recruited due to affirmative action. However, her academic credentials do not prevent her from feeling rejected from the beginning by her male colleagues. Kate is asked to help out Janet, her old acquaintance and colleague, while considering that it is not her academic records but her gender that makes her colleagues feel uncomfortable. However, when the situation calms down and Janet begins to experience some professional success, she is found dead. When the victim’s former husband, Moon Mandelbaum—with whom Kate also had an affair years before—, is arrested, Kate, believing he is innocent, decides to get into the case to find out both who has poisoned Janet and the reason as to why her body has appeared in the women’s restroom in a compromising position. Throughout the novel, Cross underlines male professors’ reluctance to admit the presence of women in academia, considering how having one woman promoted could be threatening for male faculty’s academic power. In fact, misogynistic academic and literary institutions alongside academia politics are responsible for Janet’s murder. Professor Robert Hanning’s words with respect to the situation at the university at that time are very enlightening in this regard: Columbia has always been very, very, very male. If you were the good son, you got ahead, you received the mantle of power. The mode allows no room for women, and to suggest it might has always elicited varying degrees of Olympian disdain and scorn. Yes, feminism threatens all that. Allowing many voices on campus may not be comfortable, but it’s certainly educational. Right now, in New York, in the U.S., in the world, in 1992, it’s very important that Columbia not opt for comfort. (Matthews, 1992)

In the novel, the detective plot runs parallel to the author’s increasingly visible social critique. Thus, Cross manages to express her personal views on literature, feminism, academic politics and other significant political and social issues without leaving aside the traditional conventions of the detective genre. Cross’s position evolved from underlining her female detective’s “masculine” features and the implicit acceptance of social organisation—which accounts for the difficult role played by women in a

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professional context—to adopting a more political and socially conscious tone by intensifying her relevant commitment towards feminist politics and questioning traditional power distribution and the rigid social stereotypes which constrain female identity, and even exploring the suggestive idea of a community of women. In fact, this idea of a community of women is well developed in the novel, since the protagonist has friendships with other female characters such as her female students, her niece Leighton and members of a lesbian community. The role played by the lesbian characters is relevant to the plot of the novel, since one of them discovers Janet’s body and another member of the lesbian community asks Kate for help. Social relationships among women appear as the counterpoint of the patriarchal institutions of power which rule contemporary society: Through the positive portrayed female characters—Sylvia, Kate, Penny, and Lizzie—Cross comes down strongly on the side of liberal feminism, advocating success in the male world and bonding with other women. Sylvia articulates the novel’s theme in a conversation with Kate: “Whether or not women change their lot will depend on their future friendships, what Virginia Woolf called something more varied and lasting because less personal”. (Reddy 1988, 65)

Kate Fansler, like Cordelia Gray, finds herself in an ambivalent position with respect to her personal autonomy. At first sight, she seems to be an independent woman, not only economically but also socially and emotionally; nevertheless, she always ends up resorting to a man whenever she needs any help or advice. In her former novels, Cross makes her heroine rely too much on her intuition while giving preponderance to her male partner’s logic-based intellectual ability. In fact, especially in her first cases, it is always her partner, district attorney Reed Amhearst, who either solves the cases she gets involved in or finds a key element which leads to the solution of the mystery. Consequently, Roberts (1985, 9), with respect to her personal autonomy, considers that Heilbrun has managed to create an independent female detective, although there are still some “lapses which are very difficult to account for”, while Stephen Knight (2004) agrees to the fact that her partner’s help becomes essential in the resolution of the murder mystery. In some cases her partner’s advice hides the female detective’s work, so it would be risky to assume that the female detective is portrayed as an autonomous character. In Knight’s words: While she can be taken as a role model for a professional woman, Fansler is never in any way deprived or seriously the victim of male oppression—

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nor, for all her poise and brains, does she have much functional independence: her male lover plays a major role in most of the solutions in the early novels. (Knight 2004, 165)

Additionally, what comes as most disturbing is the fact that Kate decides to get married to her partner, which she does in the novel Poetic Justice (1970), having rejected him on previous occasions. Bearing in mind that she considers marriage to be an extremely patriarchal institution —as she has claimed a number of times—it is difficult to understand why she suddenly decides to take part in it. For Roberts, this issue implies a confrontation between the traditional convention of detective novels— which includes the isolation of the male hero in terms of emotional and social independence—and the heroine’s desire to get involved in a successful heterosexual relationship. According to Roberts, the motives of the marriage are insufficiently developed; and the result is a violation of the tradition of the classical detective who, although himself often androgynous, almost never deviates into dependency or romantic attachment. (Roberts 1984, 11)

On the contrary, for Reddy Kate’s decision to get married symbolises the female detective’s achievement to balance her personal and professional life: In other words, Kate realizes that, with Reed, she can be both half of a ‘partnership’ [...] and her own self, that she can have love and work, learning, friendship, and marriage. (Reddy 1988, 59)

Eventually Kate’s lack of confidence in marriage is made clear when her partner leaves the country and goes to Africa and she resumes a romantic relationship with Janet’s husband, who had been Kate’s lover in the past. Interestingly, the idea of cheating is just an experiment and shows the author’s shy attempts to explore new sentimental options: Now adultery certainly suggests freedom, but it is difficult to reconcile this freedom with Kate’s earlier acquiescence in matrimony, or with conservative patterns of the detective story. We sense that Kate, in the security of her fictional framework, is exploring avenues open to women rather that defining goals. Appropriately we last hear of her giving a public lecture on “the new forms possible to women in making fictions on female destiny”. (Roberts 1985, 101)

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In conclusion, both P.D. James and Amanda Cross create female detectives who are radically different from their predecessors. These characters manage to develop their personal autonomy within a social system in which men, institutions and even women themselves look at them suspiciously. Both writers feel the need to create female detectives who, to some extent, reject what up to that time had been identified with femininity—passivity, dependence, clumsiness—while portraying feminine features which appear to be linked to positive connotations—independence, bravery, self-security—instead of identifying them with negative concepts. From this perspective, P.D. James, alongside Amanda Cross, shyly begins to explore the implications of introducing female identity and subjectivity in a genre traditionally considered as masculine. Simultaneously, both authors seem to rely on liberal feminism, murder mystery plots being more developed in P.D. James, and feminist ideas—at least from a theoretical point of view—being more elaborate in Cross’s work. From all that has been pointed out so far, it seems appropriate to conclude that, despite their limitations as regards the fictional characters they have created, both authors’ contributions to the evolution of the textual representation of female detectives as fictional characters is relevant since their detectives may also be seen as significant contributions to the struggle for female independence. It will be necessary to wait until the next generation of women writers—feminist writers writing in the hard-boiled tradition in the 1980s—to find that female detectives are able to leave behind many of their complexes and are ready to show that being a detective can undoubtedly be a suitable job for a woman.

Works cited Bakerman, Jane. 1985. Living ‘Openly and with Dignity’: Sara Paretsky’s New-boiled Feminist Fiction. Midamerica: The Yearbook of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature 12, 120-135. Cranny-Francis, Anne. 1990. Feminist Fiction: Feminist Uses of Generic Fiction. New York: St. Martin’s. Cross, Amanda. 1970. Poetic Justice. New York: Knopf. —. 1973. Toward a Recognition of Androgyny: Aspects of Male and Female in Literature. New York: Knopf. —. 1973. Reinventing Womanhood. New York: W.W. Norton. —. 1981. Death in a Tenured Position. New York: Dutton. —. 1981. The Representation of Women in Fiction: Selected Papers from the English Institute. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

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—. 2001. When Men Were the Only Models We Had: My Teachers Barzun, Fadiman, Trilling. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. James, P.D. 1972. An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. New York: Popular Library. —. 1982. The Skull Beneath the Skin. London: Sphere Books. —. 2009. Talking about Detective Fiction. New York: Random House. Klein, Kathleen Gregory. 1988. The Woman Detective: Gender and Genre. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Knight, Stephen. 2004. Crime Fiction, 1800-2000: Detection, Death, Diversity. Hampshire and New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Kotker, Joan G. 1995. The Re-imagining of Cordelia Gray. In Women, Times, Three, ed. Kathleen Gregory Klein, 53-64. Bowling Greene, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press. Matthews, Anne. 1992. Rage in a Tenured Position. New York Times 8 (August 11), http://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/08/magazine/rage-in-atenured-position.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm (accessed September 11, 2012). McFadden, Robert D. 2003. Carolyn Heilbrun, Pioneering Feminist Scholar, Dies at 77. The New York Times 11 (October), http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/11/obituaries/11HEIL.html (accessed September 11, 2012). Munt, Sally. 1994. Murder by the Book? Feminism and the Crime Novel. London: Routledge. Porter, Dennis. 1988. Detection and Ethics: The case of P.D. James. In The Sleuth and the Scholar: Origins, Evolution and Current Trends in Detective Fiction, eds. Barbara A. Rader and Howard G. Zetter, 11-18. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Reddy, Maureen T. 1988. Sisters in Crime: Feminism and the Crime Novel. New York: Continuum Books. Roberts, Jeanne A. 1985. Feminist Murder: Amanda Cross Reinvents Womanhood. Clues 6: 2-13.

Notes 1

One of the most relevant factors which influenced both the evolution of the crime genre in general and the development of the female detective in particular was undoubtedly the expanding feminist thought. 2 After Cordelia Gray, five years elapsed before the appearance of the first American professional female detective within the hard-boiled tradition, Marcia Muller’s detective Sharon McCone, who first appeared in Edwin of the Iron Shoes (1977).

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The whole novel is built around the exploration of Cordelia Gray’s identity, as a detective and also as a woman, considering her evolution from her early steps to her consolidation as a proper detective solving the case. For this reason, the novel can be seen as combining the characterisation of the crime novel with the bildungsroman pattern. 4 For six years she hid the identity of the mystery writer Amanda Cross and only her editors knew her true identity. In 1970 she published her novel Poetic Justice, in which the atmosphere of Columbia University can be easily recognised in the wake of the academic disturbances of the late 1960s. This having contributed to the discovery of her own identity, when her real name was revealed by a fan who learnt it through copyright records, the author had already secured her position as Tenured Professor at the University of Columbia and she was not afraid of revenge on the part of her male colleagues, since some of them could have been able to recognise themselves in unflattering depictions. 5 She became the first woman to receive tenure at Columbia’s English Department, and it was at Columbia University that Heilbrun spent her entire academic career promoting from Assistant Professor (1962) to Associate Professor (1967), and from this position to Full Professor with Tenure (1972), retiring as Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University (1986). 6 Heilbrun had not been ill. She just felt that her vital project was coming to an end and committed suicide at the age of 77 in 2003. Consequently, she left a written note with the words “The journey is over. Love to all”. For more information about Heilbrun’s death see Grigoriadis’s article “A Death of One’s Own” (2003). 7 Her mystery novels, which span from 1964 to 1981, have received several awards such as the Mystery Writers of America Scroll in 1964 and the Nero Wolfe Award for Mystery Fiction in 1981. 8 As Roberts contends (1985, 4-5), the victims chosen by Cross are important as a means of showing that social prejudices kill and hurt women. All but one of her victims are women and all but one her murderers are men. 9 The readers should envision themselves at Harvard University in 1978. At that time, any issues related to women’s studies were regarded with suspicion. Consequently, a female professor drawing attention to this “unnecessary” field of study would most likely have found it far more difficult to get hired.

CHAPTER TEN THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR A MULTIMODAL ANALYSIS OF PRINTMEDIA-BASED ADVERTISING IN CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE EDUARDO DE GREGORIO-GODEO

1. Introduction Under the influence of Foucault and post-structurally-based theory, “discourse” has become a fundamental notion within cultural studies in general (Barker 2000, 2002) and in approaches to popular culture in particular (Strinati 1995; Storey 2001; Martin 2003). Bridging the gap between post-structuralist approaches to discourse in “abstract” terms and more linguistically-oriented analysis of discourse as language in use, more and more work is attempting to examine the role of language in the articulation of cultural practices in various cultural artefacts (Cf. Barker and Galasinski 2001; Barker 2002). Nonetheless, contemporary communication is greatly conceived of in terms of its integration of different semiotic modes “multimodally” combined (cf. Kress and van Leeuwen 2001; Norris 2004; Ventola, Charles and Martin 2004; Ventola and Moya 2009). This is particularly the case of the discourse of advertising (Cook 2001; Goddard 2002), which is often explored as a major category of popular culture studies (Goldman 1992; Strinati 1995; Fowles 1996; Storey 2001; Nixon 2003; Jowett and O’Donnell 2006; Turow and McAllister 2009). Within the broader field of discourse studies (Schiffrin, Tannen and Hamilton 2001), critical linguistics (Wodak 1995) has specialised in unveiling the relations between power, ideology, language and other nonlinguistic semiotic modes in society, thereby incorporating different disciplines like critical discourse analysis (henceforth CDA) (Fairclough

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and Wodak 1995; Wodak and Meyer 2001) or social semiotics (Hodge and Kress 1988; van Leeuwen 2005). Although social semiotics has been highly influential in shaping frameworks for the analysis of images—alone or interplaying with language—in various genres, it has not been particularly concerned with disentangling how images—alone or in combination with text—are embedded within the socio-cultural context. In contrast, CDA has been able to decipher how text and the socio-cultural context are mutually constitutive, yet its attention to images—as a form of “cultural texts”—has been most limited. Bearing this broad interdisciplinary context in mind, and indeed the common epistemological tradition shared by social semiotics and critical discourse analysis, this paper will discuss how CDA and social semiotics may be successfully integrated for the analysis of print-media advertising. Within the emerging field of multimodal discourse analysis (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001; Norris 2004; Ventola, Charles and Martin 2004; Baldry and Thibault 2005; Ventola and Moya 2009), this contribution takes a strictly theoretical stance by introducing a methodology integrating CDA and social semiotics for examining the text-image interplay, along with its socio-cultural determination and effects, in print-media advertising as a major genre of popular culture in contemporary societies. The goal of this paper is thus to propose a methodological framework for the analysis of print-media-based forms of advertising in critical perspective, thereby attempting to embed readings of the language-and-image interplay in advertising as both determined by and constitutive of the socio-cultural. In so doing, this piece envisages an ideological “reading” of advertising discourse as a major manifestation of popular culture in contemporary social formations.

2. The multimodal dimension of discourse The term “discourse” has come to be used with a multiplicity of meanings across the social sciences and the humanities. Following the fundamental impact of Michel Foucault and post-structuralism upon contemporary cultural and social theory, the notion of discourse has tended to be employed across the social sciences to delineate “ways of speaking about the world of social experience […]. A discourse on this view is a means of both producing and organising meaning within a social context” (Edgar and Sedgwick 2002, 117). In Foucault’s pioneering view, discourses designate “the practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak” (1972, 49), which has led contemporary cultural theorists to conceptualise discourses—in rather abstract terms—as

Foundations for a Multimodal Analysis of Print-Media-Based Advertising 199 ways of referring to or constructing knowledge about a particular topic of practice: a cluster (or formation) of ideas, images and practices, which provide ways of talking about, [and] forms of knowledge and conduct associated with, a particular topic, social activity or institutional site in society. (Hall 1997, 6)

In addition to the use of this notion within post-structuralist cultural theory, discourse has become an area of great interest in linguistics, where this term has traditionally been identified with any form of language above the sentence level (Stubbs 1983, 1), or any form of language in use (Brown and Yule 1983, 1). In more recent times, discourse analysis, the discipline concerned with the examination of this notion within linguistics, has come to conceptualise discourses as forms of social practice where language features prominently, that is, a means of talking and writing about and acting upon worlds, a means which both constructs and is constructed by a set of social practices within these worlds, and in so doing both reproduces and constructs afresh particular social-discursive practices, constrained and encouraged in the overarching social formation. (Candlin 1997, ix)

This conceptualisation of discourse as a form of social practice in the realm of discourse analysis—as a major area of linguistics—has been particularly noteworthy within the field of critical linguistics / CDA (see reviews by Wodak 1995; Fairclough and Wodak 1997; van Dijk 2001; Wodak and Meyer 2001), which has produced what Mills has metaphorically labelled a “fusion of linguistics and cultural theory” (1997, 10) when approaching this notion. In bridging the gap between linguistics and cultural theory, critical linguists have paid particular attention to the role of semiotic modes other than language in actively contributing to the configuration of discourses. Thus, in their examination of the agenda of CDA for the new millennium, Chouliaraki and Fairclough use the term discourse to refer to semiotic elements of social practices. Discourse therefore includes language (written and spoken and in combination with other semiotics, for example, with music in singing), nonverbal communication (facial expressions, body movements, gestures, etc.) and visual images (for instance, photographs, film). (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999, 38)

The assumption that language is not the only semiotic mode constituting discourses has become central to critical linguistics, which is the overall epistemological paradigm underlying the approach to

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multimodal discourse analysis (henceforth MMDA) in this article. Nonetheless, this idea has now become a basic tenet across discourse studies. As Jaworski and Coupland underline, discourse reaches out further than language itself. When we think of discourse in the wider context of communication, we can extend its analysis to include non-linguistic semiotic systems (systems for signalling meaning), those of non-verbal and non-vocal communication which accompany or replace speech or writing [...] Other non-verbal discourse modes include painting, sculpture, photography, design, music and film. (Jaworski and Coupland 1999, 7)

The premise that discourses are often constituted on the basis of various modes interplaying with each other has come to take shape under the notion of multimodal discourses (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001), where “common semiotic principles operate in and across different modes” (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001, 2) contributing to the articulation of specific discourses. Today MMDA may be claimed to have grown into an independent field within the broader domain of discourse studies. As Renkema indicates, in discourse studies the simultaneous use of modes was neglected a long time. […]. But the last few decades have seen so much mixture of modes, especially the visualization of communication that multimodality has become an important factor in discourse studies. (Renkema 2004, 76)

MMDA sometimes benefits from the theoretical origins of its practitioners, by way of example, critical linguistics (e.g. Kress and van Leeuwen 2001) or systemic-functional linguistics (e.g. O’Halloran 2004). In addition to proposing analytical perspectives for the examination of general communicative contexts where multimodality is relevant (e.g. Norris 2004; Ventola, Charles and Martin 2004; Baldry and Thibault 2005), MMDA has come to focus its attention on more specific areas, including those generated by information and communication technologies (ICT) (LeVine and Scollon 2004; Odysseas 2005) or education (Baldry 2000; Kress et al. 2001).

3. Popular culture and advertising Advertising has become one of the most pervasive social practices of postmodernity. As the Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary broadly defines the term, “advertising is the activity of telling people about

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products and making them seem attractive so that people want to buy them” (1993, 22). Given the ubiquitous nature of advertising, it is one of the most significant social practices today through its impact upon our lives based on the existence of advertisements in a variety of media: pervading all the media, but limited to none, advertisements form a vast suprastructure with an apparently autonomous existence and an immense influence. (Williamson 2002, 11)

Under the afore-mentioned influence of Foucault and post-structuralism, advertising has come to be seen as a major form of discourse pervading different media in contemporary societies. As Goddard puts it, although advertising is all around us—perhaps because it is all around us— we don’t often pause to think about its nature as a form of discourse, as a system of language use whereby, on a daily basis, huge numbers of readers have fleeting “conversation” with the writers of countless texts. (Goddard 2002, 5)

Advertising has become a major area of interest for contemporary debates about culture, so that it is not by chance that “it is at the core of contemporary culture and at the heart of debates about postmodernism, globalization and consumer culture” (Barker 2004, 2). Indeed, cultural studies has been greatly concerned with the major function of advertising as “the selling not just of commodities but of ways of looking at the world” (Barker 2004, 2). This exploration of the cultural dimension of such a social practice as advertising is not to be taken as astounding given that, “because all social practices are meaningful practices, they are all fundamentally cultural” (du Gay et al. 1997, 2). Cultural studies has thus been particularly concerned with the fundamental role of advertising in the constitution of “important aspects of everyday culture” (Lewis 2002, 35); hence, the great attention that cultural studies has drawn to advertising within circuits of culture, thereby considering advertising in the context of cultural production, consumption, regulation, identity construction and representation issues on the whole (Barker 2002, 165, 173; Baldwin et al. 2004, 54-60). As discussed in the section on discourse and culture above, under the impact of foucaultian theory upon the social sciences and the humanities, discourses have come to be conceptualised as “the practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak” (Foucault 1972, 49). The construction of discourses of and about advertising has accordingly been a major preoccupation for work in cultural studies. Matheson stresses in this respect that

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As substantiated by a great amount of work on the relationship between advertising and (popular) culture (Goldman 1992; Strinati 1995; Cross 1996; Fowles 1996; Frith 1997; Storey 2001; Malefyt and Moeran 2003; Nixon 2003; Jowett and O’Donnell 2006; Turow and McAllister 2009), analyses of advertisements and the discourses therein represented and articulated have accordingly been of major interest within cultural studies and, more specifically, those works analysing popular culture, broadly conceived as “that which remains after the canon of high culture has been established and / or as the mass produced culture of consumer capitalism” (Barker 2004, 147).1

4. Towards an analysis of multimodal discourse in printmedia advertising: A methodological proposal This contribution attempts to provide a methodological framework for the examination of print-media-based advertising. As underlined by Williamson, “pervading all the media, but limited to none, advertising forms a vast superstructure with an apparently autonomous existence and an immense influence” (2002, 11). As a basis for the articulation of printbased forms of advertising, media discourse is herein taken as “a broad term which can refer to a totality of how reality is represented in broadcast and printed media from television to newspaper” (O‘Keeffe 2006, 1). As forms of socially-embedded and culturally-determined configurations of language and image in print-media genres, the discourse of advertising has been examined from a variety of perspectives ranging from more linguistically-oriented examinations of the language of advertisements per se (Leech 1966; Dyer 1982; Geis 1982; Toolan 1988; Carter and Nash 1990; Myers 1994; Tanaka 1994; Hoey 2001) to more semiotic approaches to the genre (Eco 1968; Barthes 1977; Floch 1995; Adam and Bonhomme 1997; Leiss, Kline and Jhally 1997; Messaris 1997; Nava et al. 1997; Richards, McRury and Botterill 2000; Bignell 2002; Williamson 2002), through more integrated approaches to advertising considering the language-and-image interplay therein activated (e.g. Vestergaard and Schroeder 1985; Jhally 1990; Cook 2001; Goddard 2002). Somehow bridging the gap between cultural studies and linguistically-oriented discourse analysis, Fairclough’s (1989, 1995a, 1995b, 2001, 2003) CDA

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framework has been consistently concerned with different aspects of advertising discourse within broader conceptualisations of discourse in general and media discourse in particular in social life. The analysis of advertising has also been partially covered within detailed social semiotic analyses of visuals (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996; van Leeuwen and Jewitt 2001; van Leeuwen 2005). Considering this broad epistemological context in which advertisements are considered “a diverse genre of communication, ranging across different media, and targeting different groups of consumers” (Delin 2000, 149), this paper aims to devise a methodological framework for the analysis of print-media-based forms of advertising combining language and image in critical perspective, thereby attempting to integrate social semiotics and CDA approaches to advertising, and indeed a “critical” view of text—herein seen as language and image shaping advertising discourse—as socio-culturally constitutive and ideologically laden. Thus, the methodological approach developed draws, by and large, upon Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1996) social semiotics theory and Fairclough’s (1995b) CDA framework for the analysis of media discourse. The possibility of combining both theoretical approaches into an integrative methodological framework has been considered taking into account the nature of print-media advertising as a genre. As it is, given that both approaches adopt the premise that there is a close connection between discourse behaviour and ideology, we assume the hypothesis that their combination is then plausible in order to explore image / text combinations in advertisements constructed in media-discourse vehicles. Firstly, the choice of social semiotics has been made taking into account the nature of the print-media-based advertising as a genre, which combines image and language, usually with a preponderance of the former. As defined by Fairclough and Wodak, social semiotics draws attention to the multi-semiotic character of most texts in contemporary society, and explores ways of analysing visual images (from press photographs and television images to the Renaissance art) and the relationship between language and visual images. (Fairclough and Wodak 1997, 164)

Within the broader field of discourse studies (for overviews of the discipline see Jaworski and Coupland 1999; Schiffrin, Tannen and Hamilton 2001), social semiotics may be located as a major tradition in CDA/critical linguistics, a domain specialised in unveiling the relations between power, ideology, language and other non-linguistic semiotic modes in society. Works by van Leeuwen (2005), Hodge and Kress

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(1988), Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) or Thibault (1991) have been highly influential in shaping social semiotics into frameworks for the analysis of images and their interplay with language in various genres. Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1996) Reading Images is used in this proposal, given the authors’ analysis of images based on a linguistic approach which is very relevant for the examination of the multimedia genre analysed here. Secondly, contrary to other CDA approaches more focused on textual analysis per se, since his early work Fairclough (1989, 1992, 1995a) has used CDA to investigate questions of socio-cultural change and change in discourse—and how discourse constructs and reflects identities and social relations—through a multi-layered conception of discourse where textual features are embedded into further socio-cultural practices via mediated processes of textual production and interpretation by individuals who come to use different genres in the course of their social interactions. In his work Media Discourse—drawn upon here—Fairclough (1995b) adapts this overall CDA framework to the analysis of media discourse in particular, and lays stronger emphasis on image analyses than in his earlier work. Thirdly, both social semiotics and Fairclough’s CDA are part of the same critical-linguistics epistemological tradition and are accordingly based on common theoretical premises (cf. Wodak 1995), which makes them highly compatible with one another from a methodological perspective. The linguistic approach that Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) devise for the analysis of images is modelled on the systemic-functional approach, and Fairclough (1995b, 17, 58) also acknowledges his use of “a ‘multifunctional’ view of texts, drawn from the ‘systemic’ theory of language”. Moreover, in considering that “a discourse refers to the process of semiosis rather than its product (i.e. text) [and] it is always realized through texts” (Hodge and Kress 1988, 264), social semiotics has succeeded in reading images as texts, but has not been concerned with disentangling the socio-cultural matrix of such discourses in so much detail as CDA has. However, Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) provide a more elaborate framework for the textual reading of images than Fairclough (1995b), who, in his theorisation of CDA, similarly acknowledges that “texts do not need to be linguistic at all; any cultural artefact—a picture, a building, a piece of music—can be seen as a text” (Fairclough 1995a, 4). In his analytical framework for media discourse, Fairclough (1995b, 201-205 passim) recommends paying attention to a number of variables including:

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(1) How is the text designed?2 This variable includes the analysis of (a) intertextuality—if at all relevant—and (b) language, focusing on the role of language in constructing (i) representations (e.g. lexical choices, processes and participants, presuppositions, voices, given and new information, etc.); (ii) relations and identities (i.e. relations between media personnel and audiences or readers through register, key, modality, etc.); and (iii) how language interplays with images. (2) How are texts of this sort produced, and in what ways are they likely to be interpreted and used? The focus here is on any ideologically salient processes of textual production, interpretation, distribution and consumption. (3) What does the text indicate about the media order of discourse? (4) What wider socio-cultural processes is this text a part of? Both questions (3) and (4) entail attention to the social matrix of media texts. On the other hand, in their methodology, Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) mainly concentrate on questions of image design, but do not thoroughly deal with questions of production, consumption and social determination. In general terms, they focus on: (1) The structure of representation: which participants are represented and in which types of processes (e.g. narrative, conceptual) they engage.3 (2) The position of viewers: how social relations and attitudes are created between the represented participants and viewers. For instance, constructing demands through visual contact (vs. offers when there is no gaze); more personal and intimate relations through close shots (vs. impersonality through longer shots); or detachment through oblique angles (vs. subjectivity and involvement with frontal angles). (3) Modality: in their approach to the notion of modality, Kress and van Leeuwen (1996, 159) assume that images reflect reality in a more or less truthful or factual way depending on their colour range and saturation, contextualisation, abstraction, depth, illumination or brightness.4 (4) The meaning of composition: how visual information is structured in terms of given / known (on the left) and new (on the right); real (at the bottom) and ideal (at the top); salience (through size, colour or fronting); etc.

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By and large, the methodological proposal devised for the analysis of advertisements in print media integrates Fairclough’s (1995b) and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1996) analytical variables in an attempt to account for the multimodal nature of the advertisements. All in all, this approach results from Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2001, 4-8 passim) recommendation that any examination of multimodality in contemporary communication should involve an analysis of discourse design, production and consumption as fundamental issues. The framework that emerges from this integration is thus as follows: 1. Discourse design: how are specific media-discourse instances constructed by integrating image and language in terms of representations, identities and relations, attitudes and distribution of information? 1.1. Representations: which participants and processes are represented in images and language?5 What is the role of presupposition?6 1.2. Negotiating identities and relations between discourse producers and consumers: what kind of social relations are constructed between represented participants and readers / viewers in the representation— both visually (by means of eye contact, shots and angles) and linguistically (through lexis and register)?7 1.3. Attitudes: what attitudes are projected in the representation of reality disseminated in the discourse analysed through image (e.g. abstraction, veracity)? Which attitudes are projected in the representation of reality disseminated in the discourse analysed through language (e.g. possibility, obligations)? 1.4. Information value: what is the information value in discursive products in terms of given-and-new, real-and-ideal, fronting? How do language and image interplay here?8 When it comes to the application of the method herein proposed, any analytical categories which can be directly recognised from the objects of analysis will need to be singled out from potential explanatory categories for the interpretation of such analytic categories. For example, categories like degrees of eye contact, shots or angles will be differentiated from categories like the construction of offers / demands, intimacy / interpersonality and involvement / detachment, respectively. This should also be the case as for interpreting the articulation of a certain modality in images—through explanatory categories like realism or veracity—on the basis of analytical categories directly identified like colour range, saturation, contextualisation, etc. The same will apply to the position of participants

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on the page and its information value in terms of given / new, real / ideal, etc. 2. Discourse production and consumption: how does the production and consumption of this type of discourse function in positioning readers / viewers? 3. Discourse as socio-cultural practice: what is the social matrix and underlying ideology of the discursive instance analysed?

5. Conclusions As indicated in the introduction above, this contribution is a methodological proposal which, taking a theoretical stance on the whole, may be of use in research in advertising in print-media vehicles such as magazines or newspapers. Based on its integration of pre-existing methodological proposals for the analysis of media discourse in critical perspective, on the one hand, and the ideological “reading” of images, on the other, this piece may thus be particularly helpful for text-and-image explorations of compositions characteristic of advertising in newspapers, magazines and similar media vehicles. All in all, through the implementation of the methodological framework presented above to specific advertisements, particular studies will be in a position to differentiate between the description of analytical categories that can be recognised directly from the objects of analysis (e.g. a colour range, or a position on the page) and potential explanatory categories for the interpretation of such analytical categories (e.g. a modality or an information value). Assuming an interest in ideological issues on the part of popularculture research on advertising, this methodology lays strong emphasis on the analysis of language, image and their interplay in media-based discourses of advertising; hence, the so-called “critical” analysis of language and image as both determined by and constitutive of the sociocultural context. What may be argued to differentiate this proposal from other theoretical frameworks devised to this end is the importance attached to the analysis of advertising within print-media-discourse vehicles, thereby focusing on the description and interpretation of specific forms of advertising which may only be understood as part of the print media where they are inserted. In undertaking the descriptive analysis of advertisements and the explanation of underlying ideologies thereof, the theoretical model that we have presented here may be of interest to the cultural studies practitioner with a special interest in the role of language and image per se in

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advertising. Yet, this methodological framework may also be helpful to more linguistically-oriented forms of research concerned with the multimodal discourse analyses of advertising with a special interest in the language-image-and-ideology interplay, and indeed with an analysis of discourse in social life. Either way, the present methodological proposal may complement existing theoretical approaches to advertising in popular culture research.

Works cited Adam, Jean Michel, and Marc Bonhomme. 1997. L’argumentation publicitaire. Rhétorique de l’éloge de la persuasion. Paris: Nathan. Baldry, Anthony. 2000. Multimodality and Multimediality in Distance Learning Age. Compobasso, Italy: Palladino Editore. Baldry, Anthony, and Paul Thibault. 2005. Multimodal Transcription and Text Analysis: A Multimedia Toolkit and Coursebook. London and New York: Equinox. Baldwin, Elaine, Brian Longhurst, Scott McCracken, Miles Ogborn, and Greg Smith. 2004. Introducing Cultural Studies. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited. Barker, Chris. 2000. Cultural Studies. Theory and Practice. London: Sage. —. 2002. Making Sense of Cultural Studies. Central Problems and Critical Debates. London: Sage. —. 2004. The SAGE Dictionary of Cultural Studies. London: Sage. Barker, Chris, and Darisuz Galasinski. 2001. Cultural Studies and Discourse Analysis: A Dialogue on Language and Identity. London: Sage. Barthes, Roland. 1977. Image-music-text. London: Fontana. Bignell, Jonathan. 2002. Media Semiotics: An Introduction. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Brown, Gillian, and George Yule. 1983. Discourse Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Candlin, Christopher N. 1997. General Editor’s Preface. In The Construction of Professional Discourse, eds. Britt Louisse Gunnarsson, Per Linnell and Bengt Nordberg, ix-xiv. London: Longman. Carter, Ronald, and Walter Nash. 1990. Seeing Through Language. Oxford: Blackwell. Chouliaraki, Lilie, and Norman Fairclough. 1999. Discourse in Late Modernity. Rethinking Critical Discourse Analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary. 1993. London: HarperCollins Publishers. Cook, Guy. 2001 (1992). The Discourse of Advertising. London and New York: Routledge. Cross, Mary, ed. 1996. Advertising and Culture. Theoretical Perspectives. Westport: Praeger. Crystal, David. 1997 (1980). A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Oxford: Blackwell. Delin, Judy. 2000. The Language of Everyday Life. London: Sage. Du Gay, Paul, Stuart Hall, Linda Janes, Hugh Mackay, and Keith Negus. 1997. Doing Cultural Studies. The Story of the Sony Walkman. London: Sage / The Open University. Dyer, Gillian. 1982. Advertising as Communication. London: Methuen. Eco, Umberto. 1968. La struttura assente. Milan: Bompiani. Edgar, Andrew, and Peter Sedgwick. 2002. Cultural Theory. The Key Concepts. London and New York: Routledge. Fairclough, Norman. 1989. Language and Power. Harlow: Longman. —. 1995a. Critical Discourse Analysis. Harlow: Longman. —. 1995b. Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold. —. 2001 (1989). Language and Power. Harlow: Longman. —. 2003. Analysing Discourse. Textual Analysis for Social Research. London and New York: Routledge. —, and Ruth Wodak. 1997. Critical Discourse Analysis. In Discourse as Social Interaction, ed. Teun van Dijk, 258-284. London: Sage. Fiske, John. 2004 (1988). Understanding Popular Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Floch, Jean-Marie. 1995. Identités visuelles. Paris: PUF. Foucault, Michel. 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Tavistock. Fowles, Jib. 1996. Advertising and Popular Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Frith, Katherine Toland, ed. 1997. Understanding the Ad. Reading Culture in Advertising. New York: Peter Lang. Geis, Michael L. 1982. The Language of Television Advertising. London and New York: Academic Press. Goddard, Angela. 2002 (1998). The Language of Advertising. London and New York: Routledge. Goldman, Robert. 1992. Reading Ads Socially. London: Routledge. Hall, Stuart. 1997. Introduction. In Representation. Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, ed. Stuart Hall, 15-30. London: Sage / The Open University.

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Halliday, Michael A. K. 1994 (1985). An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold. Hodge, Robert, and Gunther Kress. 1988. Social Semiotics. Cambridge: Polity. Hoey, Michael. 2001. Textual Interaction. London and New York: Routledge. Jaworski, Nikolas, and Adam Coupland. 1999. Perspectives on Discourse Analysis. In The Discourse Reader, eds. Nikolas Jaworski and Adam Coupland, 1-44. London and New York: Routledge. Jhally, Sut. 1990. The Codes of Advertising. London and New York: Routledge. Jowett, Garth S., and Victoria O’Donnell. 2006. Propaganda and Persuasion. London: Sage. Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. 1996. Reading Images. London and New York: Routledge. Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. 2001. Multimodal Discourse. The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold. Kress, Gunther, Carey Jewitt, Jon Ogborn, and Tsatsarelis Charalampos, eds. 2001. Multimodal Teaching and Learning: The Rhetorics of the Science Classroom. London and New York: Continuum. Leech, Geoffrey. 1966. English in Advertising. London: Longman. Leiss, William, Stephen Kline, and Sut Jhally. 1997. Social Communication in Advertising. London and New York: Routledge. Levine, Philip, and Ron Scollon, eds. 2004. Discourse and Technology: Multimodal Discourse Analysis. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press. Lewis, Jeff. 2002. Cultural Studies. The Basics. London: Sage. Malefyt, Tymothy deWaal, and Brian Moeran, eds. 2003. Advertising Cultures. Oxford: New York: Berg Publishers. Martin, Fran. 2003. Interpreting Everyday Culture. London: Arnold. Messaris, Paul. 1997. Visual Persuasion. The Role of Visuals in Advertising. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Mills, Sara. 1997. Discourse. London and New York: Routledge. Myers, Greg. 1994. Words in Ads. London: Edward Arnold. Nava, Mica, Andrew Blake, Ian McRury, and Barry Richards. 1997. Buy this Book. Studies in Advertising and Consumption. London and New York: Routledge. Nixon, Sean. 2003. Advertising Cultures. London: Sage. Norris, Sigrid. 2004. Analyzing Multimodal Interaction. London and New York: Routledge.

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Odysseas, Constantinou. 2005. Multimodal Discourse Analysis: Media, Modes and Technologies. Journal of Sociolinguistics 9(4): 602-618. O’Halloran, Kay L., ed. 2004. Multimodal Discourse Analysis. Systemic Functional Approaches. London: Continuum. Renkema, Jan. 2004. Introduction to Discourse Studies. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Richards, Barry, Ian McRurry, and Jackie Botterill. 2000. The Dynamics of Advertising. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers. Schiffrin, Deborah, Deborah Tannen, and Heidi E. Hamilton, eds. 2001. The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell. Storey, John. 2001 (1998). Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. London: Pearson, Prentice Hall. Strinati, Dominic. 1995. An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Stubbs, Michael. 1983. Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Basis Blackwell. Tanaka, Keiko. 1994. Advertising Language. A Pragmatic Approach to Advertisements. London and New York: Routledge. Thibault, Paul. 1991. Social Semiotics as Praxis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Toolan, Michael. 1988. The Language of Press Advertising. In Registers of Written English, ed. Mohsen Ghadessy, 52-64. London and New York: Pinter. Turow, Joseph, and Matthew McAllister, eds. 2009. The Advertising and Consumer Culture Reader. London and New York: Routledge. van Dijk, Teun. 2001. Critical Discourse Analysis. In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, eds. Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen and Heidi E. Hamilton, 352-371. Oxford: Blackwell. van Leeuwen, Theo. 2005. Introduction to Social Semiotics. London and New York: Routledge. —, and Carey Jewitt. 2001. Handbook of Visual Analysis. London: Sage. Ventola, Eija, Cassily Charles, and Kaltenbacher Martin, eds. 2004. Perspectives on Multimodality. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. —, and Arsenio Jesús Moya, eds. 2009. The World Told and the World Shown: Multisemiotic Issues. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Vestergaard, Torben, and Kim Schroeder. 1985. The Language of Advertising. Oxford: Blackwell. Williamson, Judith. 2002 (1978). Decoding Advertisements. Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. London and New York: Marion Boyars.

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Wodak, Ruth. 1995. Critical Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis. In Handbook of Pragmatics, eds. Jef Verschueren, Jan-Ola Östman and Jan Blommaert, 204-210. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. —, and Michael Meyer, eds. 2001. Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London and New York: Sage. Yule, George. 1996. Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Notes 1

According to Edgar and Sedgwick, the term “popular culture” is a problematic one in cultural studies, as it “is frequently used either to identify a form of culture that is opposed to another form, or as a synonym or complement to that other form” (Edgar and Sedgwick 2002, 245). The precise meaning of “popular culture” will therefore vary, for example, as it is related to folk culture, mass culture or high culture. In addition, popular culture may refer either to individual artefacts (often treated as texts) such as a popular song or a television programme, or to a group’s lifestyle (2002, 285). For detailed examinations of theories of popular culture, see Strinati (1995), Storey (2001), Martin (2003) or Fiske (2004). 2 In his proposal for the analysis of media discourse, Fairclough highlights the importance of exploring language, image and any other semiotic modes articulating actual instances of media discourse, so that “the analysis of media texts should include detailed attention to language […]. It should also include detailed analysis of visual images and sound effects” (1995b, 33). 3 In Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1996) framework for visual analysis, narrative processes relate to ongoing actions or events, where actors are visually represented through vectors, be it real or imaginary, doing something with regard to each other. On the other hand, conceptual processes involve a classification or analysis of participants on the basis of their stable and timeless nature, by way of example, in graphics, diagrams, etc. 4 From a systemic-functional viewpoint, modality is understood as the speaker’s attitude towards the proposition expressed in an utterance. Halliday points out in this respect that “intermediate degrees, between the positive and negative poles, are known as MODALITY” (1994, 88). 5 According to the systemic-functional linguistic tradition upon which Fairclough based his model, our perception of reality takes shape in the form of “goings-on” or processes (Halliday 1994, 106). Such processes, of which different types of participants partake, may be of different types, for instance, “material”, which indicate action as such (e.g. do, act, break); “relational”, which relate to abstract relations of classification and identification (e.g. be, have, become); “mental”, which have to do with mental cognition and perception (e.g. see, feel, think); or “behavioural”, which involve characteristic physiological and psychological human actions (e.g. dream, laugh, sing). 6 A presupposition is “something the speaker assumes to be the case prior to making an utterance” (Yule 1996, 25).

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7

The term “register” is here approached from its meaning in stylistics and sociolinguistics. As Crystal puts it, this term “refers to a variety of language defined according to its use in social situations, e.g. a register of scientific, religions, formal English” (1997, 327). 8 “Given” and “new” refer to the two-part analysis of utterances in linguistics in terms of their information structure, where given information is opposed to new: “‘Given’ refers to information already supplied by the previous linguistic context whereas ‘new’ information, as its name suggests, has not been previously supplied” (Crystal 1997, 168-169). As discussed above, Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1996) social semiotics theory makes an analogous distinction for the visual analysis of information in images, given and new information being associated with elements situated to the left or right of images, respectively. .

PART IV POPULAR CULTURE AND AGE SUBCULTURES

CHAPTER ELEVEN FIRM AND HARD: POPULAR CULTURE, GENDERED STARDOM AND THE TROUBLING EMBODIMENT OF “SUCCESSFUL AGEING”1 JOSEPHINE DOLAN

1. Introduction “I Hope I Die Before I Get Old”, the iconic and sneering mantra of the My Generation youth culture that was coined by The Who in 1965, was hardly prophetic of the band’s fate, or indeed that of many more baby boomer stars of popular culture whose continuing careers are testimony to the proliferation of ageing stars and screen narratives with old-age protagonists. Across the spectrum of performance-based popular culture, stars long past official retirement ages2 continue to work, continue to attract audiences and continue to be lauded by both fans and peers for their efforts. Indeed, as I write this essay (March 2012), sixty-two-year-old Meryl Streep has swept the board of “best actress” award at the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs and the Academy Awards for her performance of Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady (UK Phyllida Lloyd 2011); sixty-two-year-old Bruce Springsteen has embarked on yet another sell-out, global, stadium tour; Call the Midwife, whose leading cast includes Jenny Agutter at fiftynine, Pam Ferris at sixty-three and Judy Parfitt at seventy-seven, has been the surprise success of the BBC’s UK Sunday evening slot;3 the announcement has been made that seventy-six-year-old Englebert Humperdink has been selected to sing the UK entry at the Eurovision song contest; and Russia is to be represented in the same contest by the Buranovo Grannies, a group of babuschkis with an average age of seventyfive. The global and cross-media sweep of the old-age star phenomena is usefully registered by the $17,800,000 taken at the box-office in the first

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month of its release (Nash Information Services 2012) by the adaptation of Deborah Moggach’s novel The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (UK Madden 2012)—a film that includes no fewer than seven stars who have reached UK retirement age,4 or the most recent sell-out tour of Chile by sixtyeight-year-old Spanish singing star Julio Iglesias.5 Whilst it has always been the case that theatre and television dramas, notably soaps featuring inter-generational storylines and traditionally employing older actors, the phenomenon of the old-age star in popular culture is relatively recent with the consequence that old-age stardom has barely been theorised in any medium. Taking cinema of the Englishspeaking variety as paradigmatic of popular culture more broadly, it seems that even where not explicitly stated, existing scholarship implicitly assumes that popular cinema is the province of the young: that the body in popular cinema criticism is a young body. There are, of course, some notable exceptions. Sally Chivers’s book The Silvering Screen: Old Age and Disability in Cinema offers the first sustained account of old age in Hollywood film–and its stylistic derivatives from other national cinemas. Chivers’s methodology draws on the well-established field of cultural gerontology that sees old age, like race, gender, class and sexuality, as a product of discourse and culture rather than being an essential, biological property of the body. As Chivers stresses, “[c]onstruction does not mean fabrication, but rather the manipulation of existing material in relation to values [...]” (2011, 27). Like gender, old age is as much, if not more, a product of discourse than it is of biology. As Kathleen Woodward suggests in her introduction to Figuring Age: Women, Bodies, Generations, once we start to see old age and ageing as a product of discourse we can no longer see it as a discrete life stage, but rather a recognition follows that it is “part of a larger continuum of discourse on age itself, a system of age that includes infancy, childhood, adolescence and young adulthood” (1999, x). From the position of seeing old age as culturally constructed, Chivers’s analysis leads her to suggest that popular cinema produces and reproduces a problematic elision between discourses of old age and disability suggesting that, “old age is akin to disability in the ways that they are socially constructed—not just that social barriers define both, but that they are similarly constructed as threatening to the survival and integrity of the body and signal its failure” (2011, 23). In this elision of old age and disability, popular screen representations lead to the pathologisation of on-screen ageing bodies and Chivers suggests that films from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (US Robert Aldrich 1962) through to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (US

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David Fincher 2008) and Youth Without Youth (Italy Francis Ford Coppola 2007) “continue to transform old age on-screen into a freak show” (147). One effect of “the freak show” is to reduce characterisation to a set of stereotypical tropes in which privileged but grumpy, old white men are opposed to, either complicitly passive, old white women, or complicitly decent, old black men. Chivers equally suggests that popular cinema foregrounds and promotes bonds of familial caring with the effect of displacing global anxieties about the economic costs of caring for ageing populations, whilst also substituting a moral economy for that of the financial. Where Chivers’s focus is old age in popular cinematic narratives, other scholars are now engaged with stardom in popular culture per se. For instance, Aagje Swinnen and John Stotesbury’s (2012) edited collection offers analyses of Rita Hayworth, Goldie Hawn and Sharon Stone—as well as studies of old-age performances and ageing in consumerist culture. And Dolan and Tincknell’s (2012) edited collection Aging Femininities: Troubling Representations includes essays offering analyses of female stars from several popular media—Helen Mirren, Madonna, Honor Blackman and Dolly Parton. Elsewhere, Imelda Whelehan’s (2010) essay “Not to be Looked at: Older Women in Recent British Cinema” builds on a slim corpus of feminist scholarship on old age by Simone de Beauvoir and Germaine Greer who, from the shared position that older women are rendered culturally invisible, reach very different conclusions. For de Beauvoir, the older woman is not only rendered culturally invisible but also experiences self-loathing and self-alienation as she internalises the cultural abjection of old age—a deeply troubling acceptance of abjection. As Kathleen Woodward earlier observed in her essay “Inventing Generational Models: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, Literature”, de Beauvoir’s position is especially invidious because it is based on the identification of a younger person with an unnamed older person who, representing all older people is cast as an object of pity, one miserable in all senses of the word (impoverished, alone, afraid), one who ultimately represents the frailty of the human condition. Here identification is part projective identification in Melanie Klein’s sense—the projection of Beauvoir’s own fear of aging onto older people as a class. (Woodward 1999, 156)

For Greer, writing in 1992, twenty years later than de Beauvoir, such invisibility is re-imagined as productive, not abject: as the potential to thrive outside the scrutiny of the patriarchal male gaze. Greer argues that this positioning offers an “outsider” view from which both the trappings of

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conventional femininity and the restrictions of patriarchal ideology can be clearly recognised and challenged. More recently, the invisibility of the ageing lesbian woman in the hetero-normative framing of screen culture has been foregrounded and unsettled by Eva Krainitzki’s 2011 PhD thesis Exploring the Hypervisibility Paradox: Older Lesbians in Contemporary Mainstream Cinema (19952009). Crucially, apart from Chivers, these cultural theorists share a concern with femininity to the neglect of masculinity, whilst across the board, existing studies of old age in popular culture do not address the dynamics of gender difference. This essay therefore aims to build on this emerging body of research into old age and popular culture through a concern with gender difference. It aims to do this by developing the study of Hollywood stardom exemplified in the Swinnen and Stotesbury collection in order to explore how stars from a variety of popular media serve to articulate and embody gender difference at its intersection with old age. In doing so, the essay will inevitably explore dominant discourses of old age embodied and naturalised by stars in order to answer the question, “How are these discourses gendered?”

2. The back story—stardom, gender and old age in 1950s Hollywood Any study of stardom needs to acknowledge its indebtedness to Richard Dyer’s (1979, 1986) scholarship, which traces the imbricated structures of Hollywood production, consumption and economics in the transformation of a historical person, an actor or actress, into a star. For Dyer, stars are produced at the intersection of marketing, on-screen performances and off-screen publicity and media discourse. Effectively, stars are complex signifying systems that cannot be reduced to marketing strategies, or to an actor’s body of films since they are “always extensive, multimedia, intertextual” (1991, 3). Since Dyer’s initial intervention, stardom scholarship has extended its scope to non-filmic modes of performance such as the sports6 and music industries.7 Meanwhile, David Lusted (1991) has shown that television and print cultures that purport to elaborate an individual performer’s life or career are pivotal to the circulation of discourses through which star image is produced. Thus, whilst a specific medium or popular form may have a privileged place in the construction of a particular star’s image it cannot be reduced to this. It is crucial to understand stardom as an intertextual, cross-media phenomenon that is produced and reproduced in globalised circuits of discourse articulated in popular culture.

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One of Dyer’s key observations is that stars are configured as “extraordinary” because of their special talent, their beauty or rugged good looks, their charisma, their wealth and their patterns of excessive and conspicuous consumption. Yet at the same time, they are “ordinary”—in some ways they are just like you and me (1979, 49). This extraordinary / ordinary paradox takes on special resonance in the case of old-age stars who, on the one hand, are “extraordinary” because their age exceeds that usually associated with stardom. Until fairly recently, the popular cultural industries were the undoubted province of the young, the first sign of wrinkles or a spreading waist line being positioned as signifiers of incipient decrepitude, a loss of desirability and, most importantly, the end to a star’s audience and marketing appeal. On the other hand, old age is a signifier of the “ordinary” since it is seen to be a universal human condition and old-age stars can be seen to be “ordinary” because they have grown old. But crucially, as I will elaborate, the terms of the ordinary / extraordinary paradox is gendered and based upon the redundancy and pathologisation of older female stars compared to the continuing desirability and normalisation of older male stars. The extent to which popular culture traditionally rendered feminine old age as a marker of undesirability, and hence redundancy, was famously made explicit in the Hollywood film All About Eve (US Joseph Mankiewicz 1950). The film received six Academy Awards from fourteen nominations at a time when cinema continued to be the most significant global entertainment medium. All About Eve displaces the concerns of the screen star to the theatre in its account of an ageing Broadway star, Margo Channing (Bette Davis), and the ingénue, Eve Harrington (Ann Baxter), who supplants her. But Eve’s own replacement is foregrounded in the film’s iconic closure in which Phoebe, another ambitious young starlet, is multiply reflected in a full-length triptych mirror whilst wearing Eve’s gown and triumphantly holding aloft the acting award Eve had just received. Here, a seemingly endless and perpetual chain of reflections signals the pool of youthful beauties simply waiting in the wings to replace the disposable ageing female star. Simultaneously that disposability is reproduced, normalised and legitimated because the “ordinariness” of old age places the ageing female body outside the “extraordinariness” that is the hallmark of stardom. To put this another way, in a move commensurate with the public invisibility of older women suggested by both de Beauvoir and Greer, the disappearance from public view of the older woman is normalised and rendered inevitable. Ten years after All About Eve, Bette Davis was to play opposite Joan Crawford as the eponymous Baby Jane Hudson in Robert Aldrich’s 1960

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film Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. Adapted from Henry Farrell’s novel, Aldrich’s psychological thriller about a damaging sado-masochistic relationship between two ageing sisters, both former stars, Jane from the silent era and Blanche from the early talkies, powerfully explicates the corrosive psychological damage associated with Hollywood’s insistence on youthful good looks. Undoubtedly, the casting of Davis and Crawford, who, at the respective ages of fifty-four and fifty-seven, were themselves falling victim to Hollywood’s youthful beauty imperative, adds an authenticating resonance to this fictional narrative. This makes it even more significant that, whilst the film does usefully expose the redundancy, or enforced retirement, of ageing female stars within the Hollywood paradigm, it does so through a highly problematic opposition between the “ordinary” old age that signifies redundancy and an “extraordinarily” nasty relationship that effectively overshadows and nullifies any sympathy with, or political response to, the enforced retirement of older female stars. In marked contrast, one could cite a legion of male movie stars born at the end of the 19th century, or the first decade of the 20th century, who, during the 1950s, when older female stars were subject to enforced retirement, continued their careers and secured an image of ongoing virility by playing opposite female stars at least fifteen years their junior— Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, James Stewart, Robert Mitchum, Dick Powell, Humphrey Bogart, Laurence Olivier amongst others.8 Notably, Fred Astaire (b. 1899), senior by nine years to Bette Davis and six to Joan Crawford, continued his elegant glide across the screen—but with an ever increasing age gap between this ageing male star and his strikingly youthful, and subsequently iconic, leading ladies—Betty Hutton (b. 1921) in Let’s Dance (US Norman Z. McCleod 1950); Jane Powell (b. 1929) in Three Little Words (US Richard Thorpe 1950), Royal Wedding (US Stanley Donen 1951) and The Belle of New York (US Charles Walters 1952); Vera-Ellen (b. 1921) in The Band Wagon (US Vincent Minnelli 1953); Leslie Caron (b. 1931) in Daddy Long Legs (US Jean Nugelesco 1955); Cyd Charisse (b. 1922) in Silk Stockings (US Rouben Mamoulian 1957) and Audrey Hepburn (b. 1929) in Funny Face (US Stanley Donen 1957). In crude terms, this comparison suggests that female stars are rendered too old to work and perform at a younger age than their male counterparts; and the operation of a regime of gendered difference wrought at the intersection of ideals of feminine beauty, chronologies of age and masculine privilege. This reveals the extent to which the categorisation of “old age” is arbitrary and dependent on discourses other than chronology —such as those of feminine beauty and desirability; as well as the extent

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to which those boundaries are central to the regulation of masculine privilege within Hollywood’s gendered economy of desirability in the 1950s.

3. Youth, disintegration and the pathological gaze If the older male star / younger female star dynamic makes “ordinary” the continuing careers of older male stars and the redundancy of older female stars, it also serves to make “ordinary” the old man / younger woman heterosexual union, and in turn, to position the older woman / younger man union along the “extraordinary” pole. Despite the much vaunted “cougar” of contemporary popular culture, the condemnatory discourses surrounding stars such as Madonna who are linked to younger partners suggests that this coupling remains the transgressively “extraordinary” relationship exemplified by Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (US 1950). Wilder’s film is about yet another retired actress, this time screen star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) who, unlike Margo Channing in All About Eve, refuses the mantle of enforced retirement. Instead, Norma employs cosmetic techniques to conceal the signs of ageing, she resists the enforced retirement that accompanies the female star’s menopause and, in a reversal of gendered inter-generational, heteronormative couplings, she takes a younger lover, Joe Gillis (William Holden). However, this is no proto-feminist film, there are no intimations of celebration at Norma’s “extraordinary” resistance to the status quo of Hollywood’s gendering of old age, and indeed, the film’s closure in which Norma suffers a full mental breakdown can be seen as punishment for her transgressions. This closing scene has Norma descending a staircase to a group of police officers waiting to arrest her for the murder of Joe, whilst scandalmongering journalists film the event, “for the record”. In her state of derangement, Norma believes that she is on set, playing and re-playing her greatest performance to the waiting cameras. As she descends (to the ground floor, to the “ordinariness” of old age, to madness) a series of cuts between Norma and a watchful press gallery forces a comparison between the figure of the highly disturbed star and that of the hovering gossip columnist Hedda Hopper—notably played by herself. Properly hatted and gloved, the matronly Hopper works as the “ordinary”, sane, woman who accepts old age—an “ordinariness” held in counterpoint to Norma’s “extraordinary” insane resistance to the signs and conventions of old-age femininity. Crucially, the insertion of Hopper playing herself establishes a high degree of cultural verisimilitude, which, as Christine Geraghty

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suggests, “refers us to the norms, mores, and common sense of the social world outside the fiction” (1999, 360). In this way, the fiction of Sunset Boulevard’s closure is not only rendered authentic, and hence believable, it is equally positioned as part of the everyday world beyond the screen and as an unmediated reflection of a knowable reality, rather than being a construction of reality. Thus, the discursive hegemony that constitutes “common sense” in the ordinary, social world beyond the screen is reiterated and rendered as “natural” knowledge of old-age femininity. Disturbingly, this alignment between on- and off-screen worlds articulated in the juxtaposition of Norma and Hopper also establishes a pathologising, clinical gaze. In The Birth of the Clinic (1973), Foucault identifies the clinical gaze as an encounter in which the clinician seeks out the signs of disease and abnormality on the body of the patient through prior knowledge of the normal, healthy body. It is in knowing the signs of the healthy body that the clinician can diagnose ill health, can recognise the symptoms of the abnormal. The clinical gaze is thus split between the normal and the pathological. Here, in Sunset Boulevard, the gaze is similarly split between the “normality” of Hopper’s proper old-age femininity and the pathology of Norma: a pathology predicated on her transgressive efforts to hold back the signs of ageing and to enjoy the pleasure of a younger lover in the fashion of masculinity. Another example of such a gaze can be recognised in the 1965 British Hammer adaptation (UK Robert Day) of Rider Haggard’s novel She, which tells the story of an expedition in 1918 to North Africa by ex-army adventurers, Professor Holly (Peter Cushing), Leo Vincey (John Richardson) and Holly’s man servant, Job (Bernard Cribbins). They discover the lost city of Kuma, ruled over by the exceptionally beautiful and immortal Queen Ayesha (also known as She-who-must-be-obeyed), appropriately played by Ursula Andress just three years after her emergence from the sea as the bikini-clad Honey Ryder in Dr. No (UK Terence Young 1962) had established her position as an iconic beauty of global proportions. A deep love develops between Ayesha and Leo and she promises immortality to him through immersion in sacred flames that turn blue on the occasion of a rare astronomical alignment. However, as they step into the flames their celebratory embrace is short-lived as the effects of Ayesha’s second immersion unfold and Leo and his companions watch horror-struck as her eternal youth reverses and she disintegrates into little more than an abjected handful of rags and dust. As with Sunset Boulevard, this scene is structured through a series of pathologising point of view shots. In this instance, a group of horrified onlookers watch the decomposition of feminine youth and beauty. And

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like Sunset Boulevard, a pathologising gaze is brought to bear on a woman’s attempt to reverse the signs of age written on her body, to unsettle the connection between chronological age and the signs of old age, to take a younger (in chronological terms) lover. In short, she resists the ageist regulation of femininity whilst she is also punished for that resistance. Whilst She is not concerned directly with stardom, its narrative focus on the extraordinary beauty of an iconicised woman chimes with popular formulations of the screen goddess and serves to reiterate popular cinema’s pathologisation of the ageing female star. Thus, it can be seen that 1950s popular cinema stardom was organised around a gendered binary that normalised and visibly celebrated the ongoing heteronormative virility of ageing male stars that was secured through the enforced retirement of age-commensurate female counterparts and their replacement with a succession of young, beautiful partners. At the same time, the ageing female star who resisted this process was pathologised and punished. Moreover, there is a strong continuity that traces into contemporary star and celebrity culture and pathologises the visible older woman. For instance, in January 2011 UK television presenter Miriam O’Reilly won an employment tribunal against the BBC who had replaced her on the Countryfile programme with the much younger Julia Bradbury (BBC 2011). Similarly, a national furore ensued when Arlene Philips lost her place as a judge on Strictly Come Dancing in favour of the much younger Alesha Dixon, even as the position of similarly aged male judges Len Goodman and Bruno Tonioli was secured and 81-year-old presenter Bruce Forsyth accrued national treasure status (Arthurs 2013; Singh 2009). It is in this context of normal and pathological old age that the current proliferation of ageing stars and old-age protagonists, both male and female, needs to be located.

4. Stardom, embodiment and “successful ageing” One of Dyer’s key arguments about the ideological functions of stars is that they are the embodiments of the social categories in which people are placed and through which they make sense of their lives, and indeed through which we make our lives—categories of class, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and so on. (Dyer 1991, 18)

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In Heavenly Bodies (1986), Dyer’s analysis of stars such as Judy Garland, Paul Robeson and Marilyn Monroe is produced by locating them in the prevailing circuits of discourse that are contemporary to their popularity. In doing so, he explores the ways in which these star images negotiate what are often contradictory discourses of the body, such as gender, sexuality and race, whilst also mapping those discourses on to specific bodies and thus rendering those discourses as biological; as essential and outside of discourse. It requires no great leap to extrapolate from Dyer’s argument and to insert “old age” into the frame of discursively produced identities that are naturalised through the bodies of stars. In western cultures, old age currently operates as a continuum that extends from a privileged “successful ageing” to a pathologised “vulnerability”. Formulations of “successful ag(e)ing” emerged in the late 1980s (Rowe and Kahn 1997) and is summarised by Byrnes and Dillway as being “the avoidance of disease or disease susceptibility, a high cognitive capacity, and active engagement with life” (2004, 67). This model of “successful ageing” is now established as the “common sense” alternative and remedy to burdensome, vulnerable old age with its attendant economic and emotional costs to the state, to communities and to families. It is fairly self-evident that, because of their continued presence on our screens, on chat show sofas and in the circuit of media discourses, stars (not only of popular cinema but stars in general), and their ongoing desirability (as either actors or sex objects), exemplify and naturalise “successful ageing”. Moreover, because “successful ageing” is here mobilised through the bodies of old-age stars, such as those noted above, who continue to perform—that is to work—it also serves to naturalise deferred retirement and the extension of the working life, both of which are central to economic and social policy across the West, partly because of the impact of the current recession, and especially because of the perceived economic and emotional burdens of ageing populations. For example, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, justifying budget cuts in care provision in 2012, was concerned that the economic “burden” of an ageing population should not fall on a younger generation.9 At the same time, sensationalist headlines operate to transform the meaning of retirement from being a well-earned reward for a lifetime of hard work into a “£5 trillion [pension] burden” for future taxpayers.10 Whilst the column that follows is focused on state-sector workers, rather than those in the private sector, it nonetheless illuminates a broader social anxiety that the ageing population is an economic time bomb. Similarly, Dale Russakoff’s New York Times article of July 21,

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2010 summarises a report compiled by fifteen federal agencies. Entitled “Older Americans 2010: Key Indicators of Well-Being”, it suggests that: [t]he population of older Americans is growing faster than ever and living longer than ever. Living longer does not come cheaply. After adjustment for inflation, annual health care costs for the average senior increased from $9,224 in 1992 to $15,081 in 2006. (Russakoff 2010)

Across western societies, this conflation of pension and care provision costs discursively renders the ageing population as a social burden that justifies and legitimates deferred retirement and simultaneously it renders “successful ageing” a privileged identity because it is deemed to forestall many burdens of decline, both mental and physical. It is noteworthy that this extension of the working life is not articulated in terms of ongoing social contribution through taxes, valuable skills and experience, but rather is dominated by discourses of savings on the “burden” of future pensions and care provision. This reduction of old age to economic costs and the provision of services points to the reach of global capitalism. Inevitably, consumer capitalism has colonised, or even perhaps helped initiate, formations of “successful ageing”. The range of services, goods, products that interpellate consumers into the frame of “successful ageing” can be seen to include a variety of print and electronic games / activities designed to keep the synapses efficiently firing (e.g. generic games such as crosswords, word puzzles, bridge and chess as well as branded games such as Sudoku and Nintendo’s Brain Training); those gym and physical activity memberships and groups that offer to keep the body in working order; and more insidiously, that vast range of cosmeceutical enhancements (pills, potions, punctures, procedures, polishing, prosthetics) that move beyond promises to secure a fit and healthy old age, and instead suggest the possibility, and desirability of, halting, even erasing, the visible signs of ageing.

5. Smooth and firm: Femininity and “successful ageing” The place of stardom in securing this link between “successful ageing” and consumer culture is clearly evident in a variety of advertising campaigns. For instance, in 2007, at the ripe old age of forty, a somewhat disingenuous Nicole Kidman became the female face of Nintendo’s Brain Training campaign. Such disingenuity notwithstanding, attendant publicity where Kidman says that, “I've quickly found that training my brain is a great way to keep my mind feeling young” (Orry 2007) usefully highlights the purpose of Nintendo’s celebrity endorsement. In 2010 Kidman was

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joined on the Nintendo roster by the ubiquitous BBC broadcasting personality Sir Terry Wogan (b. 1938). Sir Terry (as he is affectionately known) was knighted in 2005 for services to broadcasting which included fronting BBC Television’s broadcast of the Eurovision Song Contest for twenty-eight years; hosting the internationally renowned Wogan television chat show; presenting The Children in Need television charity fund raiser since its inception in 1980; and forty years in radio broadcasting, including the Wake Up to Wogan Show, which had regular audiences in excess of eight million, making him the most listened to DJ in Europe. Even in the days of pen and paper technologies Wogan had always promoted audience interaction, and with the advent of digital technologies his shows, which went global through streamed broadcasting and red-button technologies, were rapidly characterised by a whimsical and humorous banter between listeners and production teams that culminated in the creation of a virtual club, TOGS (Terry’s Old Geezers and Gals), through which stereotypes of old age, such as forgetfulness and a fondness for beige clothing, were knowingly parodied. The Nintendo / Wogan endorsement contract was match made in heaven since the mental agility that underpins the broadcaster’s longstanding delivery style is ideal in linking Brain Training technologies with discourses of “successful ageing”. With epidemics of Dementia and Alzheimer’s haunting western culture, keeping the mind young is one of the foremost imperatives of “successful ageing”. The dominance of cultural anxieties about old-age mental decline are registered by a plethora of popular films such as Iris (UK Richard Eyre 2001), Away from Her (Canada Sarah Polley 2006), Aurora Borealis (Canada James C. E. Burke 2006) and The Iron Lady (UK Phyllida Lloyd 2011). As Sally Chivers argues, these films reveal how the silvering screen is deeply committed to spousal monogamy, especially at a point where physical care is required [...]. A focus on care giving reveals a deep social anxiety about the institution of marriage and the role of the declining family in supporting baby boomers as they age. (2011, 7677)

Typically, for both male and female stars, the performance of old-age mental decline typically brings critical acclaim and these films feature heavily at award ceremonies. In part, this can be attributed to the content of the films that chime so closely to current anxieties. But it also needs to be recognised that, even as these films make visible the cultural anxieties about mental decline, they also make visible the labour of performance. By definition, actors have to have reasonable mental competence in order

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to complete the demands of film acting. Thus, there can be no blurring between star and character and the possibility of that seamless melding of star image and narrative character that renders invisible the labour of performance is forestalled. Moreover, in this separation between star and character the performance of mental decline is secured as a prosthetic which, like make-up and costume, is used by the star for the duration of the performance and is then cast aside. This production of prosthetic decline is then concretised by the stars’ restored “normal” self in interview and red carpet appearances. This, of course, is vital for the star’s image, not solely in terms of the acclaim that comes from the labour of performance being seen, but also through the ways in which the taint of a pathologised and abject “unsuccessful ageing” can be worn and cast aside and the star remains available to embody and endorse “successful ageing” and its attendant consumer products. Once femininity is placed in the frame of “successful ageing”, the link between star and endorsement becomes much more complex. Whilst firming up the brain can be seen to cross masculinity and femininity, injunctions to maintain a smooth, firm face constitutes an especially feminine pressure. As testified by Kidman’s curiously unfurrowed, immobile brow, the young mind has to be matched by a youthful face and it is never too soon to banish the signs of impending decrepitude through the display of smooth, firm skin. Like most female stars—regardless of medium—Kidman embodies capitalist and patriarchal imperatives to manage the female body through highly conventionalised processes and products—what Naomi Wolf (1991) terms “The Beauty Myth”. At the same time, however, she also embodies the extension of “The Beauty Myth” from the youthful to the ageing body. Meanwhile, other smooth and firm faces offer well-paid endorsements for L’Oréal cosmetics and Jane Fonda’s (b. 1937) and Andie MacDowell’s (b. 1958) repeated reassurances that “We’re worth it” (Exley 2011)11 forge a glossy slippage from product to reward that conceals the underlying economics and labour of the beauty industry with an efficacy only dreamed of by the makers and consumers of wrinkle-removing “youthification” products. The extent to which the smooth, firm, feminine faces of stardom are dependent on post-production techniques such as air-brushing and computer graphic transformations, what Vivian Sobchak has termed the “second operation of plastic surgery” (1999, 206), has led to some consumer protests and legal action. In February 2012, the UK’s Advertising Standards Office ruled that the L’Oréal campaign faced up by Rachel Weisz was exaggerated and misleading and should be banned (Collett-White 2012). Some quarters of the press claim that the UK’s

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aggressive protection of consumers has encouraged a similar stance in the US, where Cover Girl mascara advertising had to be withdrawn (Phelan 2011). In legal systems predicated on provable cause and effect, no such protection extends to paparazzi photographs or narrative film production since their ostensible spontaneity or fictional underpinnings are deemed to make no overt appeal to off-screen consumption via endorsements. And it is here that the embodied firmness of “successful ageing” can be seen to extend from the minds and facial skin of stars to their stomachs, their legs, their muscular frameworks and, in the case of male stars, to their genitalia. Consequently, the bodies of female stars represent “successful ageing” as being unmarked by pregnancy or overindulgence via slender legs, pert breasts and buttocks, a flat stomach, which in turn are signifiers of “successful ageing”. In recent years, following the global circulation of a now iconised paparazzi shot of her bikini-clad figure (Daily Mail 2008), Helen Mirren (then aged 62) has been established as the benchmark of such embodied firmness.12 The power of this photograph is, of course, the absence of any investment in preserving Mirren’s image. In the paparazzi paradigm a shot breaking the “magic spell” (Sobchak 1999, 202) of cosmeceutical enhancement by revealing the signs of letting go (flab, body hair, stretch marks), the signs of maintenance (leaving the gym, leaving the beauty parlour, leaving the hospital), and signs of surgery (attempts to conceal scars, before and after images) are just as valuable. Because Mirren is here completely distanced from the pre- and post-production enhancements of star promotion, this shot works as testimony to a “natural” achievement of “successful ageing”. Once discourse is rendered “natural” in this way, its ideological function is effaced and it enters into “common sense”. Crucially, whilst the discourses surrounding the Mirren bikini shot naturalise the “successfully aged” female body, there is no pretence that it should be effortless. As The Daily Mail sums up, “this was no retouched studio shot, with the only work to transform her toned body having been carried out during gruelling hours in the gym” (Daily Mail 2008). The link between effort and “successful ageing” was made explicit by Jane Fonda following her infamous cosmetic surgery “about face”. In 2006, when she signed as the “ageing face” of L’Oréal cosmetics, she famously foreswore surgical procedures, but by 2011 she had appeared on the USA Today show rationalising her decision to choose plastic surgery. In the same “regretful” interview she goes on the say that: it’s important to exercise when you’re younger. But it’s like the number one ingredient for successful ageing. It makes a difference for all aspects of your life and your body. (Flam 2011)

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This just as she had updated her trademark fitness videos in line with the terms of ordinary “unsuccessful ageing”, rather than Mirren’s extraordinary “successful ageing”. As Fonda says, I just realised nobody’s doing videos for people like me, who can’t do what they used to do and maybe people who never exercised in their lives. […] It’s less about trying to look a certain way as being able to get up and down out of a chair, carry your grankids, look over your shoulder when backing down a driveway. Staying independent as you can. (Flam 2011)

It is tempting to accuse Fonda of dissembling, for disavowing her own investments in “successful ageing”—emotional, psychological, economic. But this would be to overlook the interpellatory power of discourse by conflating the historical person, Jane Fonda, who no doubt suffers all manner of anxieties about her ageing body, with the star image, Jane Fonda, whose signifying system both exploits and is exploited by ideologies of feminine beauty at its intersection with formations of “successful ageing”. This chimes with Sadie Wearing’s argument about what she terms “new aging”, which she suggests is characterised by the increased visibility of the older body and a concomitant desire to disavow the negative connotations of ageing. According to Wearing, recent representations of the ageing body attempt to “have it both ways” insofar as they “offer the fantasy of therapeutic rejuvenation while remaining firmly entrenched in a coercive and moralizing policing of aesthetic and gender norms” that “set the standards of both chronological decorum and time defiance regulating” (2007, 304-305). This suggests several things about Jane Fonda’s star image. Firstly, rather than simply her as the embodiment and ideological legitimation of “successful aging” we need also to recognise that her image is bound up in the policing and regulation of ageing femininity. But also, we need to recognise that her star persona articulates and re-articulates cultural anxieties about the old-age, female body that her image attempts to resolve. In a similar vein, anxieties about “chronological decorum” are evident in media focus on Madonna. In their 2012 analysis of the star, Diane Railton and Paul Watson argue that, since coming to public attention as the “material girl” of the 1980s, Madonna has mesmerised with her ability to switch between film and stage performance, as well as the distinct sexed and gendered identities in the representational spaces of her videos, and for her ability to exemplify the toned, youthful body. Indeed, following the likes of Judith Butler (1990, 1993) and Susan Bordo (1993), Madonna has

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been presented as evidence of the plastic, mutable body that defies essentialist formulations. However, since she reached her fifties, and now represented as an ageing pop diva rather than a crossover film and performance star, Madonna has been increasingly vilified in the press for the display of her ageing body, ostensibly signified by sinewy arms, gnarled, bony knees and wrinkled, veined hands; significations that are positioned as testimony of failed cosmeceutical “youthifying” technologies. Here, unlike Mirren and Fonda, Madonna’s firm exercised body is seen to lose its smoothness with its hardness transgressing the regulations of “chronological decorum”; whilst her hands especially are constituted as significations of an underlying, and “real old age” that cannot be effaced by cosmeceutical “youthing” interventions. Similarly, in the film She, a close-up of Ayesha’s hands marks the beginning of her abjected disintegration as her previous eternal youth and beauty is reversed. In the case of both Madonna and Ayesha, the hands bear the scrutiny of a clinical gaze that seeks the signs of pathological old age. In both cases, this focus on hands (the hands of time), and the age-old “truths” inscribed on them, are indicative of a continuity in cultural anxieties about the ageing female body and the diagnosis of transgressions of “chronological decorum”. With Ayesha though (one might add Norma and Baby Jane), there is a separation between character and star that resolves the tension between “chronological decorum” and “time defiance regulation”. But with Madonna, there is no such separation from star and character. It is Madonna who bears the brunt of the pathological gaze and it is Madonna who best serves to foreground the cultural anxieties by the failure to resolve the tension between “chronological decorum” and “time defiance regulation”.

6. Firm and hard: Masculinity and “successful ageing” And, just like ageing femininity, masculinity is also positioned within the double bind of “successful ageing”—its role in articulating discourses of firm, fit old age and resolving anxieties about infirm old age. Above, I signal that broadcasting celebrity Terry Wogan is used to promote the firmness of a well-trained mind that is signified by a speedy, and witty, linguistic competence that, in turn, is equated to ongoing mental competency. Wogan’s position in formations of masculinity—both as a subject and as a privileged subject within its hierarchies—is largely achieved by his continuing career in radio and television broadcasting. Even in the current postfeminist context in which women have allegedly

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reached a point of equality with men, gender difference continues to be organised around gendered access to careers and career hierarchies, parenting responsibilities and patterns of consumption (Negra 2009). Sara Willot and Christine Griffin (1996) foreground how careers and paid work are one of the ways in which masculinity accrues what Bourdieu (1986) would term “cultural”, as well as economic, power, and the extent to which long-term unemployment results in a corrosive loss of masculine privileges and esteem. Indeed, there is a considerable body of literature that equates long-term unemployment with a crisis of masculinity due to an erosion of gender difference and a resulting feminisation of masculinity (Rutherford 1988; Horrocks 1995). Such arguments can readily be extended to retired masculinity and elsewhere I argue that, for men, retirement and the loss of paid work equates to a loss of masculine cultural capital that effectively “feminises” men (Dolan 2012). Thus, any star’s successful embodiment of ageing masculinity is dependent on the articulation of a continuing career and / or esteemed position in public life that establishes masculinity as the a priori identity on to which ageing is mapped. Within masculinity, “successful ageing” and “successful masculinity” are virtually interchangeable. Whereas Wogan exemplifies the mutual support between the firm mind, masculinity and “successful ageing”, other stars, especially those associated with action genre films, serve to embody an ageing muscular masculinity—what might be called ageing musculinity. This is most evident in the recent films The Expendables (Arnold Schwarzenegger 2010), and The Expendables 2 (Simon West 2012)—and the transfer of The Expendables concept to Orange network cinema advertising. To varying degrees, this renewed visibility has revived the careers of Sylvester Stallone (b. 1946), Arnold Schwarzenegger (b. 1947), JeanClaude van Damme (b. 1960), Jason Statham (b. 1956), Bruce Willis (b. 1955), Jet Li (b. 1963), Dolph Lundgren (b. 1957) and Mickey Rourke (b. 1952). Yvonne Tasker (1993) has identified the ways in which the action genre of the 1980s that established these actors as stars serves to simultaneously register and resolve a crisis of traditional masculinity and to secure the gender binary brought under threat by shifts in the meaning of femininity. Tasker argues that this was achieved by the spectacle of both successful homo-social action and a hardened muscularity that is held up as an ocular affirmation of masculinity’s continued embodiment: an embodiment that signifies difference from the femininely tough action heroine. Now it seems that the hard, spectacular bodies of these action hero stars are forging links between the already secured masculinity that

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they embody and the feminisation of masculinity associated with later life and retirement. In this way, these stars can be seen to resolve a crisis of masculinity predicated on the loss of career-based masculine cultural capital and instead configure it as a property of the body in ways that chime with “successful ageing” agendas of ongoing activity. In a different vein of hardness, other ageing male stars, most notably Jack Nicholson (b. 1937), operate to embody both cultural anxieties about, and ideological resolutions to, the problem of male sexual dysfunction. It is worth noting the ways in which a pathologising, clinical gaze is triggered by the term. By definition, the ability to achieve an erection is positioned as a normal function of the penis, whilst the inability to do so is constituted as a sign of disease, pathology, abnormality. Medical discourse suggests that penis dysfunction is typically a sign pointing to other problems, and is a useful signal of a less obvious pathology—physical, emotional, psychological—and that the problem is unlikely to lie in the penis per se. However, in a culture where gender is organised by possession or lack of the penis, where the privileges of masculinity and masculine hierarchies accrue to the possessors of the penis, its dysfunction, for whatever reason, is tantamount to a failure of masculinity and the loss of its attendant privileges. Looking back at the 1950s, it is possible to recognise how the entitlement of older male stars to partner younger female stars is one way of offering an ideological resolution to this masculine anxiety. Certainly, we can recognise a continuity of this pattern in gossip discourse about Nicholson where his name is frequently linked to younger female stars and celebrities such as Kate Moss and Paz de la Huerta. Because of Nicholson’s highly hetero-sexualised on-screen image, produced through a stream of roles from various genres in which he is either lover to several women at once, such as The Witches of Eastwick (George Miller 1987), or he plays the lover of much younger women in films like As Good As It Gets (James L. Brooks 1998), The Pledge (Sean Penn 2001), Something’s Gotta Give (Nancy Meyers 2003) How do you Know? (James L. Brooks 2010), it hardly matters whether or not these “dates” culminate in heterosexual activity—it is enough to imply that he could if he wanted to.13 Here, Nicholson makes explicit an embodiment of stardom that was always implicit in 1950s casting—that older male stars maintain their virility, that younger women find older men desirable, that younger women are the privilege of sexually active older men. In a similar vein, one could also cite the elision of ageing masculinity with the “sex and drugs and rock n’ roll” discourse that secures the ongoing virile reputations of several rock and pop stars—Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, Paul

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McCartney, Bruce Springsteen to name a few—an elision that also reiterates the sexual privileges of ageing masculinity. Moreover, with Nicholson, his image of desirable, hard, erect, ageing masculinity is so secure it enables the star to perform anxieties about sexual dysfunction as the serial younger-womanizer, Harry, in Something’s Gotta Give. The film opens with Harry embarking on a weekend’s tryst with his most recent girl-friend, Marin (Amanda Peet). They set off for her mother’s beach house in the Hamptons, expecting it to be empty, but in a conventional trope of farce, they arrive to discover that Erica (Diane Keaton) is in residence. The narrative continues its farcical trajectory via Harry’s Viagra-induced heart attack; the enforced proximity of Harry and Erica; a young doctor, Julian (Keanu Reeves), with an eye for Erica; all of which culminates in a generationally-attuned partner switch that pairs Harry / Erica and Julian / Marin. Crucial here, then, is a chain of representations concerning male sexual dysfunction anxieties—Harry ingests Viagra because he is anxious about his sexual performance with a younger woman; the consumption of Viagra triggers heart failure; the treatment for heart failure is a nitroglycerine drip; Viagra and nitroglycerine is a fatal combination and this knowledge leads to Harry’s public denial of Viagra use which is juxtaposed to a private consultation in which he makes a humiliating confession to the much younger (virile) Julian. Through this chain of events this narrative illuminates the hegemonic grasp held by the Viagra brand and all that it stands (up) for. Its efficacy and its centrality to masculine old age sexuality is placed beyond question. However, the exposure given to the brand is contradictory and runs the risk of suggesting that Viagra is not really a solution to male sexual dysfunction but rather a further symptom thereof; a shameful symptom of a shameful loss of masculinity. For Harry’s recovery from both heart failure and sexual dysfunction comes when he falls into bed with Erica and enjoys the Viagra-free erection that confirms his masculinity. It is important to note that this outcome was never really in doubt due to the combined significations of the romantic comedy genre and Nicholson’s star persona. Indeed, it is because Nicholson’s star image is so firmly fixed as the embodiment of unfailing male sexual functionality that he is able to rehearse the cultural anxieties about sexual dysfunction. Additionally, it is noteworthy that these anxieties are resolved through the mechanism of age-matched coupling in which the figure of the older female star is figured as a desirable, sexual being. On the one hand, this means that masculinity is once again shored up by the adoring figure of the woman. It seems that little has changed since Virginia Woolf observed that “[w]omen have served all these centuries as looking-glasses

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possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size” (Woolf 1977, 35). However, and most importantly, the on-screen presence of both the sexually active woman and the older female star is confirmed and normalised. Compared to their 1950s counterparts, representations of older women in popular cinema have considerably shifted. Yet, there is no reason for complacency because, as I suggest above, this is highly dependent on a star’s successful alignment with discourses of “successful ageing”. Moreover, as I will now elaborate, this does not mean that popular cinema has entirely relinquished its oldage pathological gaze.

7. The pathological gaze to the aesthetic gaze As suggested by the discussion of Nicholson and Keaton, active sexuality is pivotal to “successful ageing” agendas—loss of libido being formulated as a key symptom of decline. However, in the frame of popular cinema active sexuality is rapidly collapsed into a hetero-normative, homo-phobic framing. For instance, Eva Kraintizki observes that films like Notes on a Scandal (Richard Eyre 2006) continue to deploy stereotypes of older, predatory dykes and their victims (2011) and thus reiterate a long-standing pathology of lesbian desire. Equally, whilst it might seem that popular cinema is keen to display its liberal credentials through the representation of gay men, these are, generally speaking, highly problematic. In the 1980s, for example, representations of gay men were rarely more than tropes for anxieties about HIV infection in films such as Philadelphia (Jonathan Demme 1993) or The Hours (Stephen Daldry 2002). Whilst one might cite notable exceptions such as Benidorm in which a gay couple are arguably homo-normalised (Prieto-Arranz and Casey forthcoming), the general rule of popular texts is that the gay man is reduced to the role of fashion accessory: little more than a confidante and shopping companion to the heroine of the post-feminist chick flick. Or, just as problematically, in films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral (UK Mike Newell 1994) and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, the gay man is doomed to die. In both films, sudden heart failure is the cause of death and, whilst this does register a change from the connotations of plague triggered by a gay man’s death in earlier HIV narratives, it can hardly been seen as a positive change since it still positions the gay man as dispensable and non-essential to either the cultural or generic verisimilitude of these hetero-normative romantic comedies. In the context of this essay, the death of Graham (Tom Wilkinson) in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is especially noteworthy because of the

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old-age cast noted earlier, and a storyline that deals with some contemporary issues of old age. The story follows a disparate group of middle-class British pensioners who retire to the eponymous Indian hotel as a way of eking out their reduced incomes. It transpires that Graham’s childhood years had been spent in India, and one of his retirement aims was to seek out the love of his life from whom he had been forcibly separated when, as teenagers, they had been discovered together. Having carried a life-long burden of guilt that he had abandoned his friend and lover14 to a solitary life of pathologised victimisation, his reunion with his friend, by now a contentedly married grandfather whose wife has lovingly accepted the knowledge of the affair with Graham, is especially affective. But, and crucially, Graham’s death deprives this “feel good” film of a happy homosexual closure. Whilst the film does offer a final gesture of love when Graham’s friend provides a Hindu funeral before ritualistically scattering his ashes onto the waters of the Ganges, it is a gesture that effectively seals the rupture to hetero-normativity produced by the story of lost, teenage love—a seal reinforced in the film’s closing sequence that cuts between both long and newly established, happy hetero-sexual couples. The effacement of homosexual love through the mutual reinforcements of Graham’s death, his friend’s recuperation into contented hetero-normativity and the closure of hetero-normative couplings is particularly insidious in its articulation of gay identity as pathologically abnormal. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is deeply troubling in its alignment of homophobic discourse, normative hetero-sexuality and “successful ageing”. Equally, the critical reception of the film signals other acute aware problems, especially the reiteration of western superiority that invokes a white supremacist nostalgia for the privileges of the Raj. Richard Dyer (1997) has traced the problematic ubiquity and invisibility of “whiteness”, its capacity to signify privilege, advantage and power whilst simultaneously signifying its own non-existence (1-14). This film is yet another instance where a global multi-cultural demographic is effaced from popular cinema. Chris Tookey of The Daily Mail is typical in critiquing the film’s escapist strategies that produce this imperialist nostalgia saying that “it offers a welcome glow of Indian warmth in a cold winter” and that “[t]he noise and squalor of India, however, are downplayed, and none of the characters’ implicit sense of superiority over the locals is seriously challenged”, whilst, “[t]here’s no attempt to tackle the awkward question of how the characters are going to cope without the support of the NHS, either” (Tookey 2012).

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However, the film cannot be reduced to these shortcomings and, despite its many problems, it is groundbreaking in some of its depictions of old age. Not least is the film’s refusal to deploy a pathological gaze; or to pathologise old-age bodies by effacing the signs of ageing written on those bodies. Obviously, the film’s emphasis on sexual desire works to foreground the desirability, rather than the abjection of ageing bodies. Following a trend set by films such as Something’s Gotta Give, the old-age bodies in this film are both desiring and desirable. But, unlike Something’s Gotta Give, where the characters inhabit a glossy, designer Hamptons lifestyle, those in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel bear the full brunt of middle-class, old-age reduced circumstances—hence the move to India. Because of this, the film’s cultural verisimilitude is strengthened and characters are rendered “ordinary” and, by extension, the desirability of the older body is also rendered “ordinary”. Moreover, Judi Dench aside, this “ordinariness” is consolidated by the ensemble cast who are most closely associated with unglamorous British cinema and TV, rather than the glamour attendant on Hollywood stardom that informs Something’s Gotta Give. Additionally, and more importantly, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel deploys an aestheticising gaze, rather than the pathological gaze all too frequently brought to bear on the old-age stars and protagonists of popular cinema—there is no indication of pre- or post-editing techniques or subtle lighting or filters being used to soften the signs of a long life. Instead, those signs are brought into sharp relief by the brilliant Indian light, whilst careful compositions frame parts of the body as objects of beauty comparable to the exotic richness of the film’s luscious mise en scene. This is not simply “honest” cinematography but a shift in perception that unsettles dominant discourses of beauty and desirability that are hegemonically equated to youth. Instead, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel offers a counter discourse predicated on the signs of a long life, lived well. This shift in perception refuses the imperatives of “chronological decorum and time defiance regulating” that supports “successful ageing”. And it also refuses the flip to the binary opposite of pathological, “unsuccessful ageing”. Rather, although limited to white hetero-normative identities, the starring bodies of this film offer alternative, affirmative perceptions of “successful ageing”.

8. Concluding remarks From the outset, this essay has traced the embodiment of “successful ageing” by stars of popular cinema and other media. It has pointed to the

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ways in which these embodiments are fully dependent on the regulatory mechanisms of a pathologising gaze, its gendered imperatives of “firmness”, and its links to consumer culture. The thrust of the essay is the extent to which stardom renders “successful ageing” as knowable and natural, whilst simultaneously inscribing the ruptures in the ideological seam of “successful ageing”, and their discursive resolutions, onto the gendered bodies of stars. At the same time, however, in order for stars to continue as hegemonic texts of “successful ageing”, their bodies are protected from alignment with the mental and physical frailties that signify abjected, “unsuccessful” old age. This is most notable with the articulation of cultural anxieties about male sexual dysfunction where the star is discretely protected from the associated loss of masculinity by a separation constructed between star and character. But equally, stars have to be safeguarded from associative abjection because of their role in reiterating and consolidating an insidious white, middle-class, hetero-normative hegemony whose very ubiquity is its most powerful strategy of power. This hegemony is all the more disturbing because it threads through an emerging shift in the representational conventions of old age registered in the shift from a pathological to an aesthetic gaze brought to bear on the ageing body. This shift in perception marks the insertion into popular culture of old-age positive discourses mobilised by the alternative art community (Hayden 1999; Martin 2012) and which previously had remained the province of therapists and artists on projects such as Sheffield University’s “Look At Me: New Dynamics of Aging Research Project”.15 Crucially, these interventions position old age as a site of aestheticised visual pleasure in which the embodied signs of old age are no longer the signs of incipient disintegration and abjection. But because this emergent and affirmative formation of “successful ageing” is interleaved with a persisting problematic, exclusionary and pathologising hegemony its undoubted visual pleasures need to be viewed with extreme caution.

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Davies, Dan, dir. 1988-.Countryfile. BBC. Day, Robert, dir. 1965. She. London. Hammer. De Beauvoir, Simone. 1972. Old Age. London: Andre Deutsch. Demme, Jonathan, dir. 1993. Philadelphia. Culver City, CA.: Tristar Pictures. Dolan, Josephine. 2012. “It isn’t going to be like this, is it?”: Class, race and dis-identification at Bristol’s Celebration of Age Festival. In Aging Femininities: Troubling Representations, ed. Josephine Dolan and Estella Tincknell, 69-82. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press. Dolan, Josephine, and Estella Tincknell, eds. 2012. Aging Femininities: Troubling Representations. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press. Donen, Stanley, dir. 1951. Royal Wedding. Beverley Hills, CA.: MGM. —. 1957. Funny Face. Los Angeles, CA.: Paramount Pictures. Dyer, Richard. 1998 (1979). Stars. London: British Film Institute. —. 2004 (1986). Heavenly Bodies Film Stars and Society. London: Routledge. Exley, Gemma. 2011. L’Oreal Ads Featuring Julia Robert and Christy Turlington Banned for Being Misleading. Holymoly, July 27. http://www.holymoly.com/celebrity/news/loreal-ads-featuring-juliarobert-and-christy-turlington-banned-being-misleading58337 (accessed September 13, 2012). Eyre, Richard, dir. 2001. Iris. Santa Monica, CA.: Miramax Films. —. 2006. Notes on a Scandal. Century City, Los Angeles, CA.: Fox Searchlight Pictures. Fincher, David, dir. 2008. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Los Angeles, CA.: Paramount Pictures. Flam, Lisa. 2011. Jane Fonda: Why I Chose Plastic Surgery. NBC News, December 5. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45556326/ns/today-today _health/t/jane-fonda-why-i-chose-plastic-surgery/#.UFGgO7LN_eA (accessed September 13, 2012). Foucault, Michel. 1973 (1963). The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. London: Tavistock Publications. Geraghty, Christine. 1999. Gender and Genre: The Case of the Soap Opera. In Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, ed. Stuart Hall, 337-386. London: Sage. Greer, Germaine. 1992. The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Hayden, Jacqueline. 1999. Figure Model Series, 1991-1995. In Figuring Age: Women, Bodies, Generations, ed. Kathleen Woodward, 227-232. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

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Horrocks, Roger. 1995. Male Myths and Icons: Masculinity in Popular Culture. London: Macmillan. Hyde, Dan. 2012. The £5 Trillion Burden of State Sector Pensions: Laid Bare for the First Time, £180,000 Bill Facing every Family in Britain. The Daily Mail, April 27. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article2136404/The-5trillion-burden-state-sector-pensions-Laid-bare-time-180-000-facing-family-Britain.html (accessed September 13, 2012). Jennings, Ros and Abigail Gardner, eds. 2012. Rock On: Women, Ageing and Popular Music. Aldershot: Ashgate. Kraintizki, Eva. 2011. Exploring the Hypervisibility Paradox: Older Lesbians in Contemporary Mainstream Cinema (1995-2009). Unpublished thesis. University of Gloucestershire. Lloyd, Phyllida, dir. 2011. The Iron Lady. New York: The Weinstein Company. Lowthorpe, Philippa, dir. 2012-.Call the Midwife. London: BBC. Lusted, David. 1991. The Glut of Personality. In Stardom: Industry of Desire, ed. Christine Gledhill, 251-258. London and New York: Routledge. Madden, John, dir. 2012. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Century City, Los Angeles, CA.: Fox Searchlight Pictures. Mamoulian, Rouben, dir. 1957. Silk Stockings. Beverley Hills, CA.: MGM. Mankiewicz, Joseph L., dir. 1950. All About Eve. Los Angeles, CA.: Twentieth Century Fox. Martin, Rosy. 2012. Outrageous Agers: Performativity and Transgression: Take One. In Aging Femininities: Troubling Representations, ed. Josephine Dolan and Estella Tincknell, 83-92. London: Cambridge Scholars Press. Martin, Rosy, and Kay Goodridge. 2012. Photo-essay: Outrageous Agers: Performativity and Transgression: Take Two. In Aging Femininities: Troubling Representations, ed. Josephine Dolan and Estella Tincknell, 193-204. London: Cambridge Scholars Press. McCleod, Norman Z., dir. 1950. Let’s Dance. Los Angeles, CA.: Paramount Pictures. Meyers, Nancy, dir. 2003. Something’s Gotta Give. Culver City, CA. Columbia Pictures. Miller, George, dir. 1987. The Witches of Eastwick. Burbank, CA. Warner Brothers. Minelli, Vincent, dir. 1953. The Band Wagon. Beverley Hills, CA. MGM.

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Nash Information Services. 2012. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. The Numbers. http://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Best-Exotic-MarigoldHotel-The (accessed September 13, 2012). Negra, Diane. 2009. What a Girl Wants: Fantasizing the Reclamation of Self in Postfeminism. London: Routledge. Newell, Mike, dir. 1994. Four Weddings and a Funeral. Los Angeles, CA.: Gramercy Pictures, Universal Pictures. Nugelesco, Jean, dir. 1955. Daddy Long Legs. Los Angeles, CA.: Twentieth Century Fox. Orry, James. 2007. Nicole Kidman the New Face of Brain Training. Videogamer, June 25. http://www.videogamer.com/ds/more_brain_training/news/nicole_kid man_the_new_face_of_brain_training.html (accessed September 13, 2012). Penn, Sean, dir. 2001. The Pledge. Burbank, CA.: Warner Brothers. Phelan, Hayley. 2011. The U.S. Takes Steps Towards Restricting the ‘Misleading’ Use of Photoshop in Cosmetic Ads. Fashionista, December 16. http://fashionista.com/2011/12/the-u-s-takes-steps-tow ards-restricting-the-misleading-use-of-photoshop-in-cosmetic-ads (accessed September 13, 2012). Polley, Sarah, dir. 2006. Away from Her. Toronto: Capri Releasing. Prieto-Arranz, José Igor and Mark E. Casey. Forthcoming. The British working class on holiday. A critical reading of ITV’s Benidorm. Submitted to the Journal of British Cinema and Television. Railton, Diane and Paul Watson. 2012. “She’s So Vein”: Madonna and the Drag of Aging. In Aging Femininities: Troubling Representations, ed. Josephine Dolan and Estella Tincknell, 193-204. London: Cambridge Scholars Press. Redmond, Sean and Su Holmes, eds. 2007. Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader. Los Angeles: Sage. Ross, Tim. 2012. Budget 2012: Elderly Care Bills could Rise to £100,000. The Daily Telegraph, March 23. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/budget/9161511/Budget-2012Elderly-care-bills-could-rise-to-100000.html (accessed September 13, 2012). Rowe, John W. and Robert L. Kahn. 1997. Successful Aging. The Gerontologist 37: 433-441. Russakoff, Dale. 2010. Old Age in America, by the Numbers. New York Times, July 21. http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/agingin-america-how-its-changing (accessed September 2012).

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Rutherford, Jonathan. 1988. Who’s That Man? In Male Order: Unwrapping Masculinity, ed. Jonathan Rutherford and Rowena Chapman, 21-67. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Schwarzenegger, Arnold, dir. 2010. The Expendables. Santa Monica, CA.: Lionsgate. Singh, Anita. 2009. Strictly Come Dancing’s Arlene Phillips is a Victim of Ageism, says Harriet Harman. The Telegraph, July 19. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/strictly-comedancing/5844671/Strictly-Come-Dancings-Arlene-Phillips-is-a-victimof-ageism-says-Harriet-Harman.html (accessed September 13, 2012). Tasker, Yvonne. 1993. Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Movie. London and New York: Routledge. Thorpe, Richard, dir. 1950. Three Little Words. Beverley Hills, CA.: MGM. Tincknell, Estella. 2012. Dowagers, Debs, Nuns and Babies: The Politics of Nostalgia and the Older Woman in the Sunday Night Television Serial. In Ageing Femininities: Troubling Representations, ed. Josephine Dolan and Estella Tincknell, 53-65. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press. Tookey, Chris. 2012. Dame Judi Dench is at her Magisterial Best in this Madcap Retirement Romp. Mail Online, February 27. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2105615/Best-ExoticMarigold-Hotel-review-Dame-Judi-Dench-magisterial-best.html (accessed September 13, 2012). University of Sheffield. 2012. New Dynamics of Ageing. A Cross-Council Research Programme. http://www.newdynamics.group.shef.ac.uk/look-at-me.html (accessed September 13, 2012). Vardanis, Fenia and Richard Hopkins. 2004-. Strictly Come Dancing. UK: BBC. Walters, Charles, dir. 1952. The Belle of New York. Beverley Hills, CA.: MGM. Wearing, Sadie. 2007. Subjects of Rejuvenation: Ageing in Postfeminist Culture. In Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture, ed. Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra, 277-310. London: Duke University Press. West, Simon, dir. 2012. The Expendables 2. CA.: Lionsgate. Whelehan, Imelda. 2010. Not to be Looked at: Older Women in Recent British Cinema. In British Women’s Cinema, ed. Melanie Bell and Melanie Williams. 170-183. London and New York: Routledge.

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Notes 1

“Successful aging” has become a standard term is old-age studies, especially after Rowe and Kahn’s (1997) influential study. It therefore often appears in the literature following the American English spelling conventions originally used by Rowe and Kahn. Since this volume uses British English, however, “ageing” has been preferred over American English “aging”. 2 Retirement age usually refers to the point at which state retirement benefits (or private pension plans in the USA) are paid. These ages are internationally variable, for instance in the USA it varies from sixty-two to sixty-five, in France it is currently sixty and will be raised to sixty-two by 2018; Germany raised its from sixty-five to sixty-seven in 2011; in Spain the age rose from sixty-five to sixtyseven in 2011; in 2012 UK budget retirement age will be raised to sixty-six for both men and women from 2020. 3 Given the current fragmentation of audiences, figures in excess of nine million make this the BBC’s most successful drama for decades. For analysis of the drama, see Tincknell (2012). 4 Maggie Smith (78), Bill Nighy (62), Ronald Pickup (72), Celia Imrie (60), Judi Dench (78), Penelope Wilton (65), Tom Wilkinson (63). 5 The Sony Music Corporation suggests that Iglesias is one of the top fifteen alltime bestselling music artists with sales in excess of three hundred million from seventy-seven albums. 6 See for instance: Hugh Dauncey and David Morrey (2008). 7 See for instance: Sean Redmond and Su Holmes (2007); Ros Jennings and Abigail Gardner (2012). 8 Cooper (b. 1901); Grant (b. 1904); Stewart (b. 1908); Mitchum (b. 1917); Powell (b. 1904); Bogart (b. 1899) and Olivier (b. 1907). 9 See for instance Tim Ross (2012).

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Dan Hyde for The Daily Mail, 27 April 2012, says “£180,000 bill facing every family in Britain; 98% of money will come out of taxpayers’ pockets; £3.8tn bill for state pension payouts, £1.2tn will go to pay retired doctors, teachers and civil servants” (Hyde 2012). 11 Fonda signed in 2006 at the age of 68. MacDowell signed with the company in 1985, then aged 27. This continuity makes her endorsement all the more powerful. 12 Only days after this image appeared, the global media mesh was saturated with advice for older women on how to achieve a similar, firm but feminine, body. Even now, March 2012, Googling “Mirren bikini” brings up 1,280,000 results. 13 One of the most intriguing aspects of the world wide web at its intersection with gossip discourse is the large number of sites dedicated to collating the dating histories of stars and celebrities. Whilst one should be suspicious of the reliability of these sources, their very existence is testimony to the importance of dating to star formations and celebrity culture. Googling “Jack Nicholson dating history” brings up over a million hits. 14 The film is not yet available on DVD and from my cinema viewing I have no memory of the friend being named and, having trawled the internet, this information is strikingly absent from all sites. I note this as a powerful example of marginalisation–the gay, old Indian is not worthy of naming. 15 More information can be found at the website http://www.newdynamics.group.shef.ac.uk/look-at-me.html.

CHAPTER TWELVE THE TWILIGHT SAGA: GENDER, CONSUMERISM AND CULTURAL FRANCHISES MERITXELL ESQUIROL-SALOM

1. Introduction This chapter analyses the process of construction of contemporary cultural identities in a context strongly influenced by global cultural politics and neo-liberal economic policies, where market values have a growing role in the logics of production and consumption. This is approached in the light of feminist critical theories proposed by Angela McRobbie (2009) and Valerie Walkerdine (2001) through which we begin to see just how far the very logic of the market is responsible for the production and distribution of a certain model of femininity with the sole purpose of capitalising on one emerging market niche: the female / women target group. In particular, we rely on one of the most successful youth events in recent years, The Twilight Saga, and the signification and consumption practices of its fans. The present work observes how this phenomenon is created by the current nature of the entertainment industry, where distribution strategies are carefully designed and fans are considered the perfect market segment in which to perpetuate their content. Terms such as transmedia storytelling and affective economics, used by Henry Jenkins (2008), will help us tackle the strategies of cultural production in this era of media convergence, in which market values, by means of interactive consumption, are crucial in the formation of youth models of femininity. On the other hand, using the concept of post-feminist masquerade proposed by Angela McRobbie (2009), we will observe how contemporary cultural productions exploit and commodify a representation

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of women that masks, thanks to the instrumentalisation of feminism by the logic of commercial dynamics and certain institutional discourses, a kind of anti-feminist sentiment that contributes to the promotion of a conservative femininity that seems contrary to current feminist achievements. With this approach, our aim is to complement the study of fans and their degrees of commitment, activity and group cohesion, with cultural politics and economic issues. We do not wish to fall prey to the presumption that any tactical exercise generated by a fan group practice constitutes an act of resistance per se. As Henry Jenkins (2008) would argue, we must situate the study of fans and participatory culture within its own analytical framework, in order to distinguish when their intended or unintended uses make possible the creation of new meanings and the negotiation of cultural identities, beyond the development of their expressive and creative powers. The ultimate aim that underlies this question is to place the discussion of the consumption practices of popular culture within the broader context of cultural studies, to see how the neo-liberal cultural politics of a globalised cultural and economic market are involved in the construction of cultural identities.

2. The Twilight Saga: A feminine cultural franchise Without doubt, The Twilight Saga franchise is one of the most important media events amongst the female youth population in recent years. The four film adaptations of the literary series released until now have burst into the consumption practices and the youth imaginary in a highly successful way. In the Spanish market alone, box office receipts for the films premiered thus far are in excess of forty million euros.1 But this figure is not the only one that allows us to quantify the extent of its success. Numerous film-related products have been marketed through various media platforms. Spanish teen magazines continually review the lives and images of all the actors, who have already gained celebrity status, either in news stories or monographs, or through commercial appeals in the form of posters and postcards. Additionally, there is a wide array of merchandising licenses including bracelets, necklaces, jewellery, umbrellas, school supplies, toys, fast food, etc., many of which have their own devoted sections in department stores and speciality stores, especially those selling comic books or young adult literature. In addition, the enormous appeal that the Twilight stars have among young audiences accounts for thousands of fans often gathering at

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festivals, or carefully planned events scheduled by the official distributors of the saga in Spain. One case in point was the Fan Event held in Madrid on 5 November 2009, just days before the New Moon (Chris Weitz 2009) premiere, as well as the Fan Con in Barcelona in 2012, or the Twilight Fan Event also held the same year at the Sitges Film Festival in order to promote some of the films of the series. At all events, what are the keys to The Twilight Saga’s success? Undoubtedly, the content of the various instalments, which, as discussed below, constitute a romantic and melodramatic story of tremendous box office success, similar to films such as Titanic (James Cameron 1997) and Pretty Woman (Garry Marshall 1990), clearly appeals to a highly specific market niche. Another key is the way the story is revealed in perfect harmony with commercial consumer habits and certain subcultural aesthetics—gothics or neo-romantics for example—of certain contemporary youth groups. However, what is truly different about The Twilight Saga? What has made it a media event? The answer to this query may lie in the context of its production, distribution and consumption. As noted by Henry Jenkins (2008), we live in an age in which, beginning with the production process, the flow of content through various media channels is emphasised; an age in which participatory culture and interactive contents are key strategies which are regularly used to appeal to fans who in turn become most active consumers of popular culture. This has resulted in an entirely new relationship with the mass media for mass distribution, and has visibly contributed to the profitability and life-span of new cultural products. In this light, enquiring into how participatory culture possibilities are first envisaged according to business strategies and specific cultural economies and ultimately strategically deployed is key to a full account of The Twilight Saga. While it is true that fan communities tend to coordinate their consumption practices in a way that enables a certain unity in their signification practices, we must not assume that they are generated in a free and spontaneous manner; on the contrary, and at least in our case study, they are somehow pre-supposed in their production strategies.

2.1. Fans and the affective economy As Jenkins (2008, 2009) sees it, there is no doubt that fans are no longer a group placed outside the cultural industries. The former’s spaces and practices of opinion and expression are no “underground”. Today, fans—once stigmatised by academic discourse and the cultural industries themselves—are essential to the functioning of culture. Thus, the fan is not

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only a sort of rogue who appropriates, collects, comments on, manipulates, and puts content back into circulation. The fan, thanks to these consumption practices, has become a valuable asset to the industry—one that is, in some way, responsible for perpetuating the profitability of cultural products or content. And this is all the more so in the case of large audiences. The industry observes this reality, and takes advantage of it by producing and reproducing content-related products for as many media platforms or commercial distribution channels as possible. Let us know consider the specific case of The Twilight Saga. The contents of the books and their film adaptations are developed and feed on each other through other cultural and commercial products that are fully in line with consumer habits and participation in the entertainment industry by girls and teenagers. There are countless tracks and platforms: a comic book adaptation of the first of the instalments of the saga; the publication of The Secret Life of Bree Tanner by Stephanie Meyer (Madrid: Alfaguara, 2010), a spin-off about one of the vampires that appears in Eclipse; the review of the lives of the characters in magazines as a manual for the perfect fan; a collection of products and objects related to the mythology of the series; a commercial network through which fan can obtain the attire needed to imitate the style of their favourite character; a new production broadcast on Spanish television channel Antena 3 in which young vampires try to make sense of their lives. The list of new Twilight-related cultural products keeps growing, and to this we must also add the proliferation in the publishing world of neoromantic fantasy novels, mythological adventures, and other representations of the vampire world. And of course, the emergence of a multitude of platforms and discussion forums on the net, through which information can be uploaded and updated on the series and its parallel contents, and other materials can also be shared, such as literary creations, fanfiction, and audiovisuals—fanvids—made by members of the fan communities. This string of products and media platforms through which The Twilight Saga is continuously represented and reproduced fosters a dynamic participatory consumption. The fan communities can thus access their content through various paths, a good example of what Henry Jenkins (2008) calls “transmedia storytelling”. Each of these platforms allows a different approach to the content of the primal narrative, increasing the knowledge, control and expert reading of the text on the part of the fans. That is, they make it possible for fans to be connected to the product through a variety of experiences. At the same time, they contribute to the cohesion of a group feeling / fan ownership, to which we shall refer later following Black (2006). But we must not forget that every

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significant fan experience with the product ought to bring with it a commercial experience. Behind this participatory culture starring the fans there is a business strategy, since the relationships established between producers and consumers and between distribution platforms and powerful consumer practices are strategically designed. Against a background of global market competition, economically dominated by the service sector industries, the information and communication technology industries have greatly increased their participation and power in the financial sector (Rifkin 2000; Walkerdine 2001; McGuigan 2004), where the marketing of products or content leaves very little room for improvisation. The industry, or rather, the corporate media, activate a number of resources whose purpose is to ensure the flow of products through multiple distribution channels to which the public (and loyal fans) will have access. And such products are strategically designed as to motivate the public to add experiences, and deepen them into other platforms and products. At the end of the day, as we have said before, what is promoted and commodified is participatory culture. Jenkins (2008, 69), with his concept of “affective economy”, defines the commercial strategy by which, beginning with cultural production, one understands basic emotions as the driving force in the public’s decisionmaking process. According to Jenkins, this means that cultural producers have caught on to something that has long been the object of interest on the part of cultural studies practitioners: the study of fans, their active participation practices via consumption, and the commitments that are generated around cultural texts. All of this is tailored to the laws of marketing and “seeks to mold those desires to influence consumer purchase decisions” (Jenkins 2008, 70). That is, there is an attempt to quantify desire, to calculate the intensity of relationships between product and consumer, to commodify their commitment, and finally convert all of this into investment revenue in order to set consumption patterns.

2.2. Designing participatory marketing The present study and analysis approaches The Twilight Saga as a cultural franchise (Jenkins 2008). Based on growth in potential markets, its dynamic business performance has disseminated relevant content through different distribution channels, ultimately extending the brand and marketing it through Twilight merchandise licensing. This is arguably one of the main reasons as to why content that should have primarily appealed to a mostly female niche has become a media event of global proportions. In this regard, it should be noted that the vast majority of films or film

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franchises that have so far reached a similar position in the history of popular culture are (super)hero-based action films. For its part, The Twilight Saga has managed to reconcile the logic of cultural production that characterises a neo-liberal economic market with the search for an emerging niche, which is none other than the female. As Jim McGuigan points out in Cultural Policy when referring to the strategies of different cultural markets, “marketing is never simply giving the customer what he or she is said to want spontaneously but, rather, it is a means of increasing sales through a careful profiling of consumers and putting in the effort where it counts” (McGuigan 2004, 45). Thus, media corporations establish strategies of cultural production by balancing free, flexible access to content with the creation of consumer models, which in turn are consolidating and shaping the product merchandising itself. By controlling all of their business strategies, they seek and also help create specialised audiences and consumers who are loyal to the brand or the content, which at some point will pay for production costs by charging for acquisition-related experiences: participation and sharing. In other words, audiences that are not economically profitable have no interest, and what matters is fostering the loyalty of the profitable consumers by promoting a participatory culture in which charges will eventually be made for access to (initially free) contents. This kind of marketing aims to increase the consumer’s emotional investment. As a result, their signification practices are also expanded and their consumption practices are further outlined.

2.3. Participating and creating fans As seen above, The Twilight Saga is perpetuated by a string of products and platforms, but perhaps the platforms that best exemplify the depth of the consumption experience and the full implications of the participatory culture in which the film franchises are inscribed are the forums, social networks and sites that allow interaction and content creation by the fan communities. Contentwise, such platforms act as a kind of shared knowledge manager, with that knowledge being reviewed and renewed ad infinitum. Among other features, they provide space for the discussion of characters, as well as for content creation in the form of roleplaying games, fan fiction, prose recreations of the characters in the saga, and even fanvids, audiovisual recreations based on different aspects of the original narrative. Thus, these platforms are constituted as spaces that consolidate and deepen the consumers’ experience and the fans’ processes of constructions

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of meaning. Thus seen, fanvids or fanfictions are representative exercises of the interpretation and creativity of fan groups, and help us understand what kind of significant implications are constructed from cultural consumption practices (Black 2006; Jenkins 2009). A close analysis of such materials, therefore, provides insights into the common experiences of these groups, how they share and build knowledge, and how they enforce a series of social norms, as a close link can be seen in such groups’ creative and consensus building processes with their own individual socialisation processes.

2.4. Production and reproduction of contents Before examining the processes of critical and creative reading performed by fans through virtual platforms, some notes should be provided on the actual content and plot of The Twilight Saga. Even if it always difficult to circumscribe a film or a literary work to a particular genre, as Altman argues (2000), it can be quite safely argued that The Twilight Saga storyline is constructed as a melodramatic romance aimed at an eminently teenage girl audience. Although the series combines different moments of epic narrative tension, such as the presentation of the myths and ethos of vampires and werewolves, the attack and defence strategies of both clans, or spectacular fights to protect Bella (see below), all this is at the mercy of the main plot, which is the love story between Edward, a 19th-century vampire, and Bella, a seventeen-year-old girl; one third key character is the umpire, Jacob, a young wolf-boy and Bella’s friend since childhood. The emotional weight of the tale can be found in the love story between the vampire and the human, which is physically impossible yet somehow expresses the naturally human quest for immortality. With this traditional story line, it is not surprising that classic literary works about love and passion such as Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (1597) or Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847), key works in the anglophone literary canon, are continually cited in the film. One of the values added to the story is character building. Edward, Bella and Jacob have distinct youthful attitudes to life with which it is easy to identify. In broad terms, the two boys reproduce two archetypal poles of masculine youth. They are clearly defined aesthetically and presented as their respective clans’ standard bearers, which serves as a strong element of identification among the young audience. Style acts as a recognisable sign of a kind of ideological position towards the world, which synthesises, through a process of appropriation and resistance, a series of symbols that take on a fresh, new meaning in a particular context (Hebdige

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2004). In this sense, in virtual forums and platforms, it is important for members of the fan community to show which side they belong to: Team Edward o Team Jacob. This public statement not only shows the group how they understand the love story of the series and their preference for the characters, but also defines in a way their place in the world: how they believe certain conflicts should be resolved, what types of values they stand (up) for, etc. As for the character of Bella, she is responsible, spontaneous, carefree with her physical appearance but decisive and highly protective of the direction of her desires and relationships. She may be seen as the paradigm of the new woman or new femininity. Responsible in her studies, and endowed with intellectual curiosity, she is accountable for her strong and feisty actions. She encourages her friends to be themselves, to be autonomous in their decisions, prudent when making judgments, and deeply analytical. However, Bella’s character also responds sensitively to the call of values that are part of traditional femininity. She is capable of giving up her human nature for love, and of accepting, without prior denial and bargaining, her fiancé’s traditional 19th-century desires when she marries him. To sum up, this is a story that exploits one of the more traditional “monomyths”—to use one of Joseph Campbell’s (2005) concepts from El héroe de las mil caras—used in cultural history: the story of eternal love,2 a love story tinged with melodrama at the end, highly recognisable, and one that has been historically linked to the tastes of female audiences (Gledhill 1987; Hollows 2000). We are now in a position to return to the analysis of the fans’ consumption and signification practices. In this respect, it may be said that most fanvids and fanfictions reproduce moments of narrative tension that somehow celebrate traditional femininity.3 To mention but one example, in the case of fanvids, we see Bella suffering, fragile, lost and desperate for Edward’s love. Or we see a moody Bella, embracing Edward as her protector. We also observe audiovisuals that idolise Edward and Jacob, the two leading men who compete for Bella’s love. All of these productions intersperse scenes or postcards from other romantic films, recreating fantastic scenery that is dream-like, neo-romantic, always backed by a soundtrack that features songs by some of the most successful bands among members of goth youth subcultures, such as Evanescence, or other melodramatic film scores. In the case of fan fiction or role-playing games, it is interesting to observe through the female characters how Bella and the female vampires always maintain a traditionally feminine role, emphasising a womanly

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version of friendship, as well as their smiling and dreaming, emotional fragility, and desire to be loved and protected. In the male characters we see the protective or daring role, with the boys always acting more independently, as the heroes and heartthrobs of the plot. It could therefore be argued that the monomyth of eternal love functions as the Twilight brand among fans, highlighted as it is in the very content of the series and then continuously reproduced by merchandising strategies, formulated according to the emotional capital that is ascribed to the female audiences. As mentioned above, media corporations devise and provide something that the fans can channel and divert, thus commercialising and marketing not only plots but also—and crucially— lifestyles. To put it in other words, the proposals that media corporations execute connect with the most relevant emotional bases, in this case the more traditional ones, of the target female audiences. Thus seen, the media product’s contribution to the construction of a fairly homogeneous imaginary with respect to how one understands, negotiates and shares the contents of the series cannot but be taken as symptomatic of the success and ultimate power of the cultural and media industries.

3. Creative readings: Critical readings? At this point it seems interesting to raise the issue of whether the fans’ creative readings are also critical readings. Both fanfiction and fanvids presuppose and reinforce the idea that reception of the media product, in this case on the part of the fans, is not passive (Jenkins 2009). Quite on the contrary, being able to create and recreate fiction from some primordial content means, at the very least, that fans are familiar with the basic rules that structure the romantic or melodramatic story; they recognise the primary features of the hero, and are able to debate and discuss their ethical dimension; they are capable of re-enacting spectacular melodramatic moments through audiovisual messages. Although not experts, they are familiar with this kind of story’s language and expressive resources. Most importantly, these practices of participatory consumption enable them to develop a range of skills and competences: they learn to share and compare cultural value systems; establish connections between disparate details; express interpretations and feelings; distribute creations online; and ultimately develop an understanding of themselves and the world around them (Black 2006; Jenkins 2009). The Twilight Saga fan communities, therefore, can activate a range of skills learnt through participatory culture. In this particular case, we are referring to an eminently female audience that can read and interpret

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content and audiovisual stories and express themselves through their use and their own creativity. However, to what extent are they aware of the system of values that their very participation connotes? In other words: to what extent are their readings of creative visual language and expressive resources critical readings of values?

3.1. Feminism and popular culture Since the 1980s, feminist critical theory has inspired a range of studies which have questioned heroine / femme fatale dichotomies that had up to that point traditionally characterised the representation of women in popular culture. Taking a post-structuralist stance, such studies focus on the relationship between feminism and cultural change, as represented in daily media practices and constructions. Authors such as Ien Ang (1985) in Watching ‘Dallas’, Charlotte Brunsdon (1997) in an analysis of Pretty Woman, or later authors like Akass and McCabe (2006) in Reading ‘Desperate Housewives’, or Harris and Watson (2007) with The Oprah Phenomenon, reflect on how these stories take place in popular culture, and how involved they are in the construction of women’s cultural identities. Their common aim is to rethink women’s signification and consumption processes not as a passive practice, dominated by sexist discourse, but as a meaningful practice of resistance in which female audiences negotiate their cultural identity. This body of research suggests that popular culture offers a feminine imaginary with which today’s women can identify. Unlike traditional female media personalities (typically following melodramatic or perfecthousewife patterns), the representation of new media heroines includes novel features. This applies to, for example, the main characters in Ally McBeal (FOX, 1997-2001), Bridget Jones’ Diary (United Kingdom Sharon Maguire 2001) and Bridget Jones The Edge of Reason (United Kingdom Beeban Kidron 2004), Sex and The City (HBO, 1998-2004), or Desperate Housewives (ABC, 2004-2010). All these are women who are able to combine the desires and anxieties of traditional femininity—they largely want to be good housewives, see motherhood as key to full womanhood, comply with the prevailing aesthetic canon, and pursue romantic love—with the new socio-cultural codes, skills and competencies of the modern woman—they are professionally successful, have benefited from formal education, are autonomous and determined in making decisions, o publicly manifest their sexual desires, and they all have full access to the leisure industry. They are female models with which to establish a negotiation between traditional femininity, which is how they

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have been historically interpellated, and current female models who are in tune with what is supposed to be the modern female (Hollows 2000; Hollows and Moseley 2006). Many of these representations—which have been dubbed “postfeminist” in some quarters— are rather optimistic. In fact, it has been argued that they may actually act as a “backlash” against feminism (Faludi 2006). As seen by Faludi, traditional femininity will be victorious and placate the anxieties and restore the fissures and contradictions that social changes have provoked in women. But as Joanne Hollows and Rachel Moseley argue, this negative reading of post-feminism neglects how the popular frequently operates as a site of struggle over the meanings of feminism. [...] In essence, such an approach need not imply that post-feminism is either a good or a bad thing, but that it is used in a historically-specific sense to mark changes in popularly available understandings of femininity and woman’s place. (Hollows and Moseley 2006, 8)

Following this line of thought, other authors like Sarah Smith (2008) and Francesca Coppa (2008) focus on how the fans’ participatory consumption makes these practices of resistance visible through the creation of fanvids and fanfics conceived in a framework of interaction to establish strong links that celebrate a sense of feminist identity and in which a subversive practice or sensibility is essential. On the one hand, this is a starting point in these narrative creations. On the other hand, it is a nexus of identity: a subversive reading as a product of negotiation and resistance embedded in consumption practices that attempt to answer institutionalised femininity, claiming traditional heroines as the representatives of the anxieties and contradictions of femininity today. Should we apply this thesis to the specific case of The Twilight Saga, Bella may be seen to function as the embodiment of the teenagers’ contradictions, but the fans’ recreations are neither rebellious nor subversive. In general, we find this kind of subversive creation and reading within other distribution platforms, such as YouTube, which operate outside of the sites managed or updated by fans themselves. It is important to remember that in fan forums or net platforms, a homogeneous imaginary has been established, which constantly produces and reproduces Bella’s more traditional femininity, both in their creations and in the discussion forums. Most importantly, it should be remembered that we have considered this as a victory for the industry itself, which has been able to design a product aimed at a specific target audience, which has in turn responded homogeneously and unequivocally to that product.

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In this light, a word of caution is required so as not to mistake the high levels of activity, creativity, commitment and social connection attained by fans or “Twilight brand” advocates for a critical contribution to the debate on socio-cultural identities, in order to avoid falling into a somewhat populist academic stance (McGuigan 2004).

3.2. Post-feminist masquerade: The feminine as a rising value? Even if it may seem paradoxical in the context of the aforementioned media celebration of a femininity that sublimates its identity by turning back and taking refuge in its most traditional aspects, we are in a time when social reality has apparently taken over some of the traditional feminist claims. Women are an emerging market sector because they are now economically active and profitable, which is no doubt related to their elevation and social prestige in certain areas of public participation. Overall, we live in a time when institutional and media discourses are promoting an image of women as intellectually trained, professionally productive and fully integrated into the leisure market, and therefore taken into account for their ability and potential. Thus, it is no wonder that the cultural industries should turn to women as an emerging consumer audience. It is well known that women have increased their share of managerial positions in small and medium-size firms in the Western world. Likewise, they participate actively in public life and in the leisure industry. Their access to education is fully balanced with that of males, and has surpassed it in some disciplines and professions. It can be safely argued, then, that the social advancement of women, if not fully consolidated, is improving and is reflected in the growing presence that they have in public life of our society. It is necessary to point out that this rise coincides with a new meritocracybased order regulating socio-cultural access, driven both by government policies of social participation and integration, and market and neo-liberal economic policies developed in a system of increasingly aggressive competition. Participation in a meritocratic system is assumed to be a fundamental part of new emerging lifestyles, which, as Angela McRobbie would put it (2009), somehow makes women believe that they live in a world in which gender roles are no longer restrictive whilst simultaneously referring them back to a domestic or passive space. As she sees it, this new regime gives (especially younger) women a “sense of female individualism”. This implies that young females enjoy full access to the free market of skills, as that is what certain educational and employment policies have promoted

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and, supposedly, prepared and authorised them to do. A woman’s identity and market opportunities result from a new regime of social and cultural access based on her own merits. At this point, Angela McRobbie updates the concept of “postfeminism”, describing it as a social and cultural logic characterised by a certain anti-feminist sentiment, visible in almost all expressions of contemporary popular culture. At a time when various feminist slogans or vindications have been incorporated into political and institutional life, this may be seen to at least potentially discredit what feminist activism and lobbying have achieved to date. McRobbie (2009) notes that claims such as “equality” and “choice” have lost their militant character and spread to cultural and institutional discourses, coming to function as a sort of substitute for feminism and forwarding the belief that gender inequality has been overcome. As she sees it, the use of such terms in both education and labour policies today, as well as in the worlds of advertising and the entertainment industries, has placed the feminist sentiment in a false situation of standardisation, which ultimately leads to the revaluing of the feminine form of “hegemonic common sense” (McRobbie 2009, 12). Whereas in previous works McRobbie considered somewhat optimistically that the consumption of young women’s magazines by teens who did not even consider themselves feminists made it possible for them to negotiate various models of femininity that were a far cry from traditional (feminine) goodness, she now perceives this lack of awareness is potentially problematic. The author believes that the loss of a certain militancy in the processes of reading and signification leads to the relaxation of feminist sensibilities and ultimately to a trap that can be summarised in the following questions: Why be a feminist when, somehow, everyone shares the values of feminism? Why be a feminist when some government initiatives provide for the integration and full participation of women in policy strategies? Why be a feminist when the cultural imagination appropriates the vocabulary of feminist discourses to ensure our full participation in the market? To such false standards we must add another point: a mismatch between the generation of younger women and feminist discourses, which, in the light of this “common sense”, seem unnecessary and redundant. It is at this point of disagreement that the post-feminist masquerade is shaped by the advent of a new regulatory system that determines the cultural construction of femininity.

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3.3. Commodified femininity—Do it yourself! If the institutional and media discourses do promote a concept of femininity based on a merit system and open sociocultural access, it also seems that the processes of social inclusion are exercised, increasingly, from the consumption practices of the leisure and entertainment industry. Citing British sociologist Nikolas Rose, Walkerdine points out that contemporary neo-liberal dynamics “[demand] a psychological subject who is capable of bearing the serious burdens of liberty” (2001, 2). Thus, hegemonic discourses seem to inform a range of emancipatory policies that make bearable the burdens of visibility and election processes that, paradoxically, are claustrophobic and restrictive due to their transcendental nature: each individual has the right and duty to make his or her life meaningful, as if his or her biographical project were the result of a selffulfilment project. Any individual should be enabled, both psychologically and socially, to participate in a discourse that makes it possible for them to define themselves as free and autonomous. And the cultural industry provides the necessary tools for this through the marketing of a range of products whose acquisition processes celebrate this individuality and selfrealisation. Despite the extensive body of Marxist cultural criticism that ties the consumption of industrialised culture to a kind of cultural disrepute, such consumption somehow activates the restlessness derived from the cultural anxieties described by Rose. As McGuigan points out (2004), participation in the cultural market is no longer measured by the exchange value, quality or content of the product purchased, but by its use-value, what I do and who I am with it. Thanks to (the increasingly effortless) ease of acquisition of, and freedom of access to commodities, their novelty value and the obtention of their merchandising licence per se constitute a meaningful participatory practice that somehow makes us visible at a time that, as suggested above, competition in globalised cultural politics and neo-liberal economic policies contribute to the formation of increasingly paradoxical, contradictory individual identities. Indeed, the more individual (based on practices of consumption) values are promoted, the more individuality is suppressed due to the globalisation of the message. As McRobbie (2009, 57) notes, the current context provides young females with full access to the free market of skills, thanks to the promotion of certain educational and employment policies that have prepared and authorised them to do so. Due to the promotion of this controversial sense of individuality or “do-it-yourself” identity, young females may no longer confront sexist

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imagery critically. As they read it, exploitation has been replaced with (apparent) self-consciousness. The objections to sexist readings now become ironic. Not objecting to and / or satirising the sexist discourse that still populates part of contemporary popular culture thus becomes a kind of sophisticated consumer practice.

4. Conclusion Taking a critical feminist standpoint, this chapter has attempted to contextualise The Twilight Saga so as to try and unravel the keys to its success. Insights have also been provided into the paradox resulting from the films’ clear exploitation of a traditional, female-targeting melodramatic story, which ensure their distribution and prolong their life through the various participation platforms resorted to by the fan community. Women are now an emerging public to which the cultural industries pay serious attention, due to the revaluation of the feminine from a sociocultural perspective, and also because women are a potentially profitable market sector today. Therefore, the challenge for the cultural industries is to build products capable of combining cultural representations of this social change with values and market mechanisms that define and consolidate women as consumers. The discussion above has emphasised that the neo-liberal cultural policies of a globalised economic and cultural market are involved in the construction of cultural identities. Thanks to the planning of a commercial strategy developed from an understanding of the affective economy, The Twilight Saga has managed to market a brand emotionally in tune with the principles of participation and socio-cultural advancement in which women have been involved. In a context that guides the revaluation of femininity under a meritocratic system, feeling part of the popular cultural scene has never been easier than in the current consumer and entertainment culture. As McRobbie (2009) puts it, as women’s cultural identities get commodified, feminist sentiment is diluted in the very processes of access and belonging, to the detriment of content.

Works cited Akass, Kim and Janet McCabe, eds. 2006. Reading ‘Desperate Housewives’: Beyond the White Picket Fence. London and New York: I.B. Tauris.

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Altman, Rick. 2000. Los géneros cinematográficos. Barcelona: Paidós Comunicación. Ang, Ien. 1985. Watching ‘Dallas’. Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination. New York: Methuen. Black, Rebecca W. 2006. Language, Culture and Identity in Online Fiction. E-Learning 3(2): 170-184. —. 2007. Fanfiction Writing and the Construction of Space. E-Learning 4(4): 384-397. Campbell, Joseph. 2005 (1949). El héroe de las mil caras. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Coppa, Franchesca. 2008. Women, ‘Star Trek’ and the Early Development of Fannish Vidding. Transformative Works and Culture 1, http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/44 (accessed July 11, 2012). Faludi, Susan. 2006 (1991). Backlash. The Undeclared War against American Women. New York: Three Rivers Press. Gledhill, Christine, ed. 1987. Home is Where the Heart Is. Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film. London: British Film Institute. Hardwicke, Catherine, dir. 2008. Twilight. Los Angeles: Paramount Pictures. Harris, Jennifer and Elwood Watson, eds. 2007 The Oprah Phenomenon. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Hedbige, Dick. 2004 (1979). Subcultura. El significado del estilo. Barcelona: Paidós Comunicación. Hollows, Joanne. 2000. Feminism, Femininity and Popular Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press. —, and Rachel Moseley, eds. 2006. Feminism in Popular Culture. New York: Berg. Jenkins, Henry. 2009 (2006). Fans, blogueros y videojuegos. La cultura de la colaboración. Barcelona: Paidós Comunicación. —. 2008 (2006). Convergence culture. La cultura de la convergencia cultural de los medios de comunicación. Barcelona: Paidós Comunicación. McGuigan, Jim. 2004. Rethinking Cultural Policy. Maidenhead: Open University Press. McRobbie, Angela. 2009. The Aftermath of Feminism. Gender, Culture and Social Change. London: Sage. Quart, Alissa. 2003. Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers. New York: Basic Books. Rifkin, Jeremy. 2000. La era del acceso. La revolución de la nueva economía. Barcelona: Paidós Estado y Sociedad.

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Slade, David, dir. 2010. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Universal City: Summit Entertainment. Smith, Sarah. 2008. Lip and Love: Subversive Repetition in the Pastiche Films of Tracey Moffatt. Screen 49(2): 209-215. Walkerdine, Valerie. 2001. Growing up Girl. Psychosocial Explorations of Gender and Class. New York: New York University Press. Weitz, Chris, dir. 2009. The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Universal City: Summit Entertainment.

Notes 1

According to data from the Spanish Ministry of Culture: Twilight (USA Catherine Hedwich 2008): €12,575,236.56 with 2,128,805 viewers; New Moon (USA Chris Weitz 2009): €19,970,534.86 with 3,293,089 viewers; Eclipse (USA David Slade 2010): €18,017,893.81, with 2,942,653 viewers. 2 According to Campbell (2005), a monomyth is a conceptual structure extracted from the transcultural analysis of the world’s major religions. 3 In this analysis we focus on the fanvids and fanfics that are published on websites aimed at and organised by fans of the saga. There are other amateur creations that circulate outside of these platforms whose general tone is parodic, subverting an affective reading totally in agreement with the text’s original intention.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN YOUTH CULTURE IN SPAIN: TWO TEEN TV FICTIONS PAUL JULIAN SMITH

1. A dazzling age Recent work on youth culture has sought to broaden the range of debates that were originally based on examples of teen cinema or subculture drawn from the US or UK. Thus, there have been studies of youth culture in global cinema (Shary and Seibel 2006) or those attempting to address youth and identity in a postcolonial world (Huq 2006). Yet Spanish youth media, creatively innovative and commercially successful, have not attracted the scholarly interest they deserve. This chapter offers case studies of two top-rated TV series from the years 20072010. Giving an account of the production and reception of these screen narratives, it points to the growing convergence between the two media of cinema and television. And focusing on the three themes of sex and friendship, immigration and ethnicity, and analogue and digital technology, it also asks what specificities we find in social representation in a Spanish context. It might be said that the study of youth culture in Spain is in its infancy. Thus, when respected film historian José Enrique Monterde treats the topic in a collection called The Dazzling Age [La edad deslumbrante] he restricts himself to a canon of US comedies whose apparent transgressiveness is, he says, merely a mask for reactionary machismo (2004, 216); claims that the place assigned to “youth” in such films is “witless” (2004, 218); and attacks (unnamed) “infantilized” Spanish critics who have championed the genre, unable to discriminate between the Farrelly brothers and the Taviani brothers (2004, 213). Curiously, another contributor to this volume, published in association with the Gijón International Film Festival, stresses rather the sobriety of Spanish youth:

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Alex Mendíbil cites statistics suggesting that a large majority of young Spaniards are active as volunteers at schools and in religious organisations; that those lucky enough to have jobs are diligently paying in to their pensions; and that their greatest worry is future financial viability (2004, 208). This contrasts markedly once more with Antonio Muñoz Carrión’s study of “tactics of youth communication” in Spain (2007), published in Revista de Estudios de Juventud, where he identifies “presentism”, or the lack of temporal horizons, as typical of contemporary teenagers, as, indeed, of their parents at the same age. Although Muñoz’s quantitative study does not treat media, his suggestion that “actions” or “practices” be granted the status of “expressions” is however invaluable in this context. Elsewhere Carlos Gurpegui Vidal (2005) gives a schematic account of “being young in Spain” as seen through feature films since the death of Franco. Thus, the transitional period 1975-80 was characterised by an obsession with and denunciation of troubled youth; the time of “change” (1981-90) featured stories and genres directed to the youthful demographic itself; a period of “changing of the guard” (1991-2000) saw veteran auteurs addressing the topic; while a final age of “globalization” (20002005) coincided with the treatment of the social problems of youth within commercially successful films (8). Although Gurpegui’s avowed aim is to find out what these features “tell us about Spanish society”, his study jumps backwards and forwards within his thirty year period, examining films within the broadest of categories: “the rediscovery of childhood”; “the passage to adolescence”; and, finally, “the perversion of an image” in horror films such as Tesis (Spain Amenábar 1996). An alternative periodisation is given in Carles Feixa’s Culturas juveniles en España (1960-2004), published in 2004 by the Instituto de la Juventud, a division of the Ministerio de Igualdad. After giving a general history of British subcultures (from Teddy Boys to ravers) Feixa sketches out his Spanish variations on the juvenile theme: “golfos & hippies” (1960-1976), “punkies & posmodernos” (1977-1985); “pijos & makineros” (1986-1994); “okupas & skinheads” (1995-1999); and finally “fiesteros & alternativos” (2000-2004) (2004, 51-80). As we shall see, in spite of their supposed historical separation from one another, several of these figures coexist in current Spanish TV drama. Feixa devotes just two pages to youth culture on television (167-8), dismissing the then recent pioneering fictions Compañeros ([Mates], Antena 3, 1997-2002) and Al salir de clase ([School’s Out], Tele5, 1998-2002) as “promoting a wholly depoliticized model of youth” and presenting neatly dichotomised protagonists: “the socially positive subject and the one who incarnates all that a good girl or

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boy shouldn’t do” (168). While periodisation is clearly problematic here, it is striking that there have been two periods of efflorescence of mainstream youth media: the shows cited so briefly by Feixa both ran from 1997 or 1998 to 2002 and the genre was to revive only at the end of the decade.

2. Two TV case studies: Production and consumption My own TV case studies are mystery El internado [The Boarding School], which premiered in 2007 and whose final episode was shown Wednesday 13 October 2010 with a 19% share and an audience of nearly three and a half million; and drama Física o química [Physics or Chemistry], which began in 2008 and started its sixth season Wednesday 15 September 2010.1 Meanwhile, 2009, a year of particularly strong TV drama (Smith 2009), also saw no fewer than three teen films in the box office top ten—Mentiras y gordas ([Sex, Lies, and Party] Spain Alfonso Albacete and David Menkes 2009), Fuga de cerebros ([Brain Drain] Spain Fernando González Molina 2009), and Pagafantas ([Friend Zone] Spain Borja Cobeaga 2009). Curiously, this period of intense activity coincided with the smallest cohort of Spanish teens ever, as a plunging birth rate had reached a low of 1.18 in 1995, a record in Western Europe (Bosch 1998). Young people, so attractive to advertisers, had thus become a scarce commodity by the end of the first decade of the millennium. In this context of scarcity, young photogenic actors take on a particularly intense image value. A photo spread by movie magazine Fotogramas in April 2009 showcased thirteen so-called “Teletalents... with one foot in the cinema!” posing for the camera in a chaotic classroom set (Fotogramas 2009). On the board is chalked up a series of “technical terms”, all Anglicisms drawn from the TV industry: share, prime time, rolling average, etc. This feature not only reveals the pliancy of the Spanish print media in promoting the newly converged worlds of small and large screen fiction. It also confirms the centrality of my chosen TV fictions: El internado provides two of Fotogramas’ “classmates” and Física o química no fewer than four. These two top-rated and prize-winning shows would seem to have much in common. In general terms they benefit from the increasing seriality and formal complexity of long form fiction in many countries, exacerbated in the case of Spain by the extended length of episodes which requires bigger casts and yet more intricate storylines than elsewhere. More specifically, they are both teen series set in high schools broadcast at 10 p.m. or shortly after by national free-to-air channel Antena 3. Moreover, the two shows were frequently cross-promoted, as when young

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actors from both series were transformed into dwarfish avatars for youth social networking site Habbo (2010). In spite of their domestic origin and focus, both have been widely exported around the world, either in their (dubbed) original form or as formats. El internado’s stars were photographed in Tokyo with Japanese schoolgirls (BBVA 2009); Physique ou Chimie is followed by French teens (Maury 2009). Dismissed by newspaper critics, both series went on to win major awards from their peers. Finally, the photogenic young crop of stars used their new visibility as a stepping stone to cinema. This was in spite of the perceived crisis in feature film production at the end of a decade when the “death” of Spanish cinema was regularly predicted and the indifference, or frank hostility, of Spanish audiences (especially young Spanish audiences) to Spanish films much remarked on (García and Hermoso 2009). What is striking when the Spanish shows are compared to the US teen series is what is left out. For example, the theme of popularity, with its subsets of proficiency in fashion and sport—so vital to US equivalents Gossip Girl (CW, 2007-2012) and Glee (Fox, 2009-), is generally absent in both Spanish shows. Moreover, the motif of class conflict, ubiquitous in Latin American teen telenovelas such as the Mexican Rebelde ([Rebellious], Televisa, 2004-2006), is greatly attenuated in Spain. As I wrote earlier, El internado entered its last season in spring 2010. The series’ allegiance to horror is signalled by the name of its single location, an unfeasibly isolated private school called “The Black Lagoon”. And although its main attraction is the young ensemble, in and out of their fetching blue uniforms, El internado boasts a prestige veteran cast: curmudgeonly housekeeper Amparo Baró has been a star of stage and screen for over fifty years. As an ostentatious example of “quality” TV, El internado also benefits from an expert art design with a large set of 1,200 square metres and frequent exterior shots in the gloomy forest whose mysterious denizens threaten the pupils (Noxvo 2007a). The disturbing premise of the first season was a quest for murdered orphans. And in successive years conspiracy theories have involved Nazis, explosions, and deadly viruses (in the finale the school burned down). El internado’s dark palette could hardly be further from the clashing colours of Física o química. Freed from the constraints of El internado’s modest uniforms, wardrobe is embraced here as a source of pleasure. Física o química’s rating and share rose to reach a high point in the second season of almost four million viewers and an enviable 21% share (Noxvo 2008a). A weekly drama with comic elements, noticeably absent in El internado, Física o química crosscuts between the private and professional lives of teachers and pupils at the troubled Madrid high school named,

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with some irony, after Golden Age painter Zurbarán. Although its Madrid location generally goes unstressed (dialogue tends to refer rather to “the city”), Física o química is, unlike El internado, clearly embedded in contemporary society, addressing such issues as teen homosexuality, drug abuse, eating disorders, and racism. And for every seven days the crew shoots on its 1,600 square metre set, it films three on location, mainly on the outskirts of the capital (Noxvo 2007b). The show’s amphetamine rush theme tune, by local pop rockers Despistaos, also contrasts with El internado’s lush orchestral soundtrack, penned by the same composer who wrote the score for TVE’s swashbuckling romance Águila roja ([Red Eagle], TVE, 2009-), the biggest new hit of 2009. While both series are broadcast by Antena 3, El internado is made by Globomedia, Spain’s most reputed independent producer. Globomedia had signed an exclusive production agreement with the broadcaster, said to result from increased competition for quality, scripted content in a country which has no fewer than six free-to-air national channels. Globomedia is known for innovative programming over some twenty years. Its heritage of top-rated shows and the continued presence of executive producer Daniel Écija help to explain why a horror title like El internado can claim to target a “family audience” (Noxvo 2007a). Física o química, which is credited to a single “creator” (Carlos Montero) and is produced by the lesser known Ida Y Vuelta, spurns this broader demographic, using casting to create a sense of greater immediacy: unlike the somewhat older stars of El internado, the untried actors of Física o química are real teenagers, schooled for the rigours of weekly long-form television through an extended process of audition and improvisation. Although El internado has its fair show of body horror (in the first season the pupils quickly come across a jar of human eyeballs in the school’s dusty attic) and of nudity (the school’s nubile new cleaner falls naked from a tree in the opening episode), it was Física o química that provoked a full-blown media panic. Física o química is invariably invoked by journalists to illustrate stories that show TV as “bad machine”. Thus, the show’s liberal use of expletives in its dialogue is contrasted unfavourably with the modesty of the US networks (Pérez-Lanzac 2009a); a report on media multitasking by isolated teens cites young viewers watching the show while they surf the net (Sahuquillo 2010); small children viewing outside their lengthy government-“protected” time slots are said to gravitate to Física o química (Noxvo 2009); and a survey of product placement on Spanish television highlights this title’s unique selling points (Pérez-Lanzac 2009b). In 2009 cast members featured in Clearasil spots in the ad breaks within the show, further blurring the boundaries between

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commercials and programme. When web marketer “The TV Wardrobe” [El Armario de la Tele] was set up, pitching to teens the fashions featured on a wide range of Spanish TV fiction, the press report was illustrated by a screen grab of two Física o química stars in their stylish leisure wear (C.P.-L. 2009). It is scarcely surprising, then, that Física o química has been attacked by parents’ associations (critiqued in the show itself for their reactionary attitudes) (El Mundo 2009), teachers’ unions (alarmed perhaps by the show’s continuing attachment to teacher-pupil romance), and the Children’s Ombudsman for Madrid (who later had to apologise himself for anonymously lurking on a social networking site restricted to minors) (Abascal Fraile 2009). When a botellón [public drinking session] turned into a small riot in an outer suburb of Madrid, there was no doubt for the mayor which teen TV show was to blame (P.Á. 2009). It is striking that, even as they antagonise adult newspaper readers, many of the developments listed above can be read as innovations in production or promotion: attempts to attract and monetise fleeting teen viewers and web traffic prompted by the “mother ship” of the TV series. At the simplest level are TV spin-offs, which expand mere recaps or promos into full-blown titles that are separately scheduled. Thus, Física o química has spun off a series of shorts in which individual characters address a camcorder in a supposed video diary, introducing clips and thus catching up the audience on his or her exploits in seasons past. www.fisicaoquimica.net is both an official website and a magazine-style show broadcast before episodes, made up of clips, interviews, and makingof segments (Antena 3 hosts complete episodes on its own website). Such hybrid productions are interesting forms of disaggregation of a narrative whose seriality makes it fundamentally resistant to such practices. More ambitiously, the labyrinthine El internado span off Los archivos secretos. Here, flashforwarding to the year 2012, characters confess to the police their past role in the tangled web of mysteries that they have presumably succeeded in surviving. Beyond mere memory management, then, these extended recaps (like those that precede each new episode, up to three minutes in length), serve not just to give competence in narrative development but to build brand identity by stressing character profiles and themes, and thus blurring plotting and promotion. One of the first Spanish series to be shot in high definition, El internado has perhaps benefited from the more expert brand extension. For the first time in Spain, complete episodes were posted on the internet shortly before the first broadcast. Next came feature length TV specials, a mobile phone video game (later re-launched on Nintendo DS), an alternate

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reality game in association with Coca Cola which attracted 850,000 page views, and, for more literate fans, a series of books (Noxvo 2008b). Promotional events have included movie-style premieres in downtown Madrid and a special advance screening of the season finale in the capital’s Fairground, which is located, appropriately enough, on the edge of a forest. El internado is thus a 360-degree brand, rare indeed in Europe and comparable only to the immersive experience of the most creative US series such as Lost (ABC, 2004-2010), to which it bears a passing resemblance in its labyrinthine plotting and the cult fandom it has provoked. Less immersive and more everyday as a brand, still Física o química has staged elaborate season premieres. At one 2009 event at the huge Cine Capitol (fans competed online for tickets), excited crowds blocked Madrid’s Gran Vía as the young cast posed like seasoned movie stars on the red carpet. Just weeks later three of their members were invited to serve as grand marshals at Madrid’s huge LGBT Pride celebrations, whose theme that year was aptly enough “education”. Taking advantage of their political platform, the actors delivered an earnest speech on equality to impatient gay fans who chanted the characters’ names. The fictional classroom thus took to the streets, collapsing borders between televisual and real life activism.

3. The multiple realities of TV fiction As the above example suggests, both series can thus be read as educational in the broadest sense of the word, in John Ellis’s phrase, “working through” vital problems for their faithful audiences, problems that can have no definitive solution on or off screen (2000, passim). Moreover, the most cursory examination of Física o química’s plotlines, endlessly parsed by online fans, reveals that the scourges of sex, drugs, and alcohol, which adult critics constantly claim are merely “trivialised” in the show, wreak dramatic damage on the teens who indulge in them. Thus, one girl with a healthy sexual appetite winds up raped in a park by a hookup; marijuana use results in the accidental death of another character; and a fictional botellón leads to a theft and beating for a third. Careful content analysis is thus vital if we are not to succumb to the reflexive denunciations shared by Spanish media scholars and censorious citizens alike. But we must also go beyond the “effects” debate, still taken for granted in public discourse on teen media in Spain, to discover a new qualitative theoretical model that takes TV narration seriously as a form for negotiating different life-worlds. And here I appeal to Milly

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Buonanno’s monograph The Age of Television: Experiences and Theories (2008). In her convincing and eloquent account of media storytelling, which draws on a wide range of earlier sociological sources, Buonanno addresses the “multiple realities of television fiction” in which TV serves, still, as a social “super-narrator” (70). Cutting the Gordian knot of “realism” (still invoked by both defenders and detractors of shows like Física o química), Buonanno argues that television drama neither faithfully mirrors reality nor distorts it, but is rather an “interpretative practice” that “organise[s] experience into a narrative form” (72). Furthermore, “narrating” and “knowing” are conjoined, derived from a cognate Sanskrit root (73). “The disruptive force of narrative imagination”, for Buonanno, thus “rests effectively in its freedom to transcend reality” (74). This does not mean, however, that it turns its back on the real: rather it “alienate[s] us from [real life] sufficiently to tempt us into thinking of alternatives beyond it” (75). These “imagined alternatives work together with cultural and social change in the real world and so contribute to the redefining of shared conceptions of what is normal and what violates the norm”; or again they give “access to a plurality of possible worlds that form an integral part of the multiple realities that inform our life experience” (75). Buonanno cites Don Quixote at the puppet show in this context. Unlike the dreaming knight, however, TV viewers are not perniciously enthralled by the lures of fiction but rather able to recognise the specific cognitive styles of stratified “life-worlds” and to migrate between them (76). While there are indeed “overlapping spaces and interaction” between the imagined and the real and the former can “intersect with and to some extent modify our everyday life”, the domestic location of television makes it as special case: “watching television creates the conditions for more fluid and continuous switching and for transitions between the real and the imaginary that are less pronounced and upsetting” (77). This friendly approach to TV thus leads to a rereading of earlier models: Buonanno’s sense of the “widened horizons of mediated experiences” revalorises William’s “dramatised society” and Giddens’s “mediated experience” as positive goods (78); the de-localisation of social life is not Meyrowitz’s deprivation (“no sense of place”) but rather an additional resource: “the possibility of coming into contact with [the] spatially [and, we might add, the chronologically] far away” (79); Horton and Wohl’s “para-social interactions” with beloved media friends should not be pathologised but rather seen as “an extension and enrichment of the personal capital of social relationships” and an “intensification” of such experiences (81). Finally, television offers us frequent, and safe, contact

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with fundamental areas of human experience which, according to Giddens, have become rare, “sequestrated” from modern life: “folly, criminality, death, sexuality, and nature” (82). For Buonanno there is little point in “measuring the amount of violence shown in order to infer its effects on behaviour”, while failing to recognise the homeopathic function of TV: “mediated contact with sequestrated experiences subsumes the conditions for neutralizing [audiences] insecurity” (82). In this context of the “vast range of experience” made available to today’s public—“access to social settings far removed in space and time; interaction with personalities once has never met [...]; contacts with fundamental areas that are concealed from human life” (83), Buonanno cites empirical research on a French teen drama of the 1990s. Adolescent fans found here “a guide on finding one’s way through the still unexplored territory of romantic love, relations between couples and feminine identity [...] without falling into the trap of naively identifying the fictitious character with her real-life portrayer” (82). We can now go on to explore how Spanish teens are represented (and how they respond) in the terra incognita of their TV fiction.

4. El internado: Managing memory Episode 1.4. “Mensaje en una botella” [Message in a Bottle]; broadcast: 10 p.m., 14 June 2007; audience: 4,200,000; share: 23.5%. Antena 3 Televisión officially summarised the episode as follows: Carolina se hace pasar por Alfonso y manda un correo electrónico a Ricardo Montoya, con el que queda en el cementerio. El periodista explica a los chicos la desaparición, en los años 70, de los cinco pequeños huérfanos y les advierte del enorme peligro que corren si continúan con la investigación. Insiste en que no deben confiar en nadie, ni dentro ni fuera del internado. Marcos está preocupado por su hermana, demasiado volcada en su mundo de fantasía y su amistad con el gnomo imaginario. Sin embargo, no todo lo que cuenta la pequeña es fruto de su imaginación, algo que Fermín podrá comprobar al ver la extraña figura que ha dibujado Paula y que, también a él, le resulta desagradablemente familiar. Además, la pequeña es más lista de lo que ellos creen y ha empezado a temerse lo peor. No es normal que sea la única niña del colegio a la que no escriban ni llamen sus papás. (Antena 3 Televisión 2007) [Carolina pretends to be Alfonso and sends an email to Ricardo Montoya, whom she arranges to meet in the cemetery. The journalist explains to the kids how, in the 1970s, five little orphans disappeared and warns them of the enormous danger they are facing if they carry on

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By the time the fourth episode of El internado was broadcast on 14 June, 2007 (it would prove to be the highest rated of the first season) the series had established itself as the most successful launched by Antena 3 in some years. And, in spite of the sobriety of its handsome set and the underplaying of its large cast, it had done so employing some melodramatic plotlines worthy of the Mexican telenovelas such as Rebelde ([Rebellious], Televisa, 2004-2006) that in Spain are relegated to the afternoon. Thus round-faced, good hearted María has escaped from a mental hospital and disguised herself as a maid in order to track down the son who was sold to a wealthy couple by an abusive partner (she will recognise him by his blood type). Sharp-featured director of studies Elsa has got her claws in head teacher Héctor, but (as we learn in this episode) is also having an affair with the gym teacher. In a classic example of sexual tension and class conflict, María and Héctor, after twice seeing each other naked by accident, will be drawn to one another. The adults’ love triangle (Héctor, María, and Elsa) is echoed by that of the pupils. Sexy bad boy Iván (played by Yon González, the school bully) is the steady boyfriend of sexy rich girl Carolina (Ana de Armas), but she is attracted by sensitive new boy Marcos, who has arrived at the school with his little sister Paula after their parents have mysteriously disappeared. Meanwhile, poor girl Victoria secretly pines for Iván. Stereotypical plotlines of love, jealousy, and conflict are thus set up along classic dichotomies, as Carles Feixa suggested of earlier Spanish teen dramas. As in Mexico, social class seems at first to be the main issue dramatised here. In this episode María is humiliated because she is unable to spell out the menu on the blackboard in the school’s rather formal canteen. In a typical example of the pervasive theme of pedagogy, Héctor offers to initiate María into the mysteries of Castilian orthography, even as Elsa taunts her that it will take her “many months” to achieve her goal (literacy or the attractive Héctor?) and her (secret) son Iván dismisses her as an ignorant chacha [maid]. (The pedagogic Héctor will retort that she is not a maid but a “person”.) More seriously and sensitively, Héctor schools

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little Paula on the mysteries of death, telling her that her parents have gone to a “secret island” from which they cannot communicate and will never return. It is a scene reminiscent of classic kids drama of the 1980s— Verano azul ([Blue Summer], TVE, 1981), where a small blonde infant is also educated on the consequences of an adult’s death. These well-worn and sometimes sentimental moments, typical of domestic soap opera, are oddly juxtaposed with horror tropes that reference a distinctly Spanish cinematic tradition, some of which was very recent when the series premiered. Thus, child Paula alarms the adults by drawing a picture of her friend the “gnome”, a grotesque hooded figure she has met in the forest, in a plot point very similar to the depiction of the child’s scary imaginary friend in El orfanato ([The Orphanage], Spain, 2007)—we have already learnt that the La Laguna Negra was itself an orphanage before it became a school. There are several elements of plotting and mise en scène reminiscent of El laberinto del fauno ([Pan’s Labyrinth] Spain and Mexico del Toro 2006): for example, a grotesque face over the school gate and another in a fireplace mirror the face over the faun’s lair, discovered by Guillermo del Toro’s youthful heroine. When, in this episode, the kids descend for the first time into the hallowed “terrible place” of horror (shadowy passageways beneath the school) one even exclaims “this is like a labyrinth”. When two little girls gather around the well, we are reminded perhaps of El espíritu de la colmena ([The Spirit of the Beehive] Spain Erice 1973). When they go down to the lake to launch a message in a bottle they encounter a monster. This is, of course, a remake of the famous scene in Frankenstein (US Whale 1931), itself replayed by Erice. Shooting style, here in exteriors or extensive sets, becomes highly cinematic, as befits a prestige project: rejecting with some relish the leisurely shot/reverse shot in which the domestic dialogues are shot, the camera tracks rapidly alongside the panicking children or takes up the shaky viewpoint of the Other, whose uncanny perspective is signalled by a degraded image, drained of colour. Actors repeatedly burst into frame from off screen space, in what horror master Val Lewton called “buses”— after the vehicle that memorably scared audiences in Cat People’s shadowy Central Park (Newman 2008, 42-3). Linking sequences exploit fast motion and crash zooms through the gloomy forest. Given these classic references, it is hardly surprising that El internado barely treats the social issues central to more overtly contemporary shows like Física o química. Although the kids are constantly slipping into each other’s rooms, unlike their bed-hopping teachers they do not appear to have sex. Indeed Iván is enraged when he witnesses a simple romantic kiss

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between Carolina and Marcos, who they are temporarily trapped in the well. It is left to fans to speculate on the homoerotic tension between rivals Iván and Marcos, who often confront one another in the showers and here toil sexily in the well in matching black-and-white muscle shirts. This is the least overtly gay or lesbian boarding school in audiovisual memory. Likewise, the theme of race and immigration, so evident in contemporary Spain, barely registers. Carolina speaks with the Cuban accent of the young actress that plays her, but she is identified not as a foreigner but rather as a “pija” [posh kid]—her mother is an international celebrity of some kind. “Pijos” are perhaps the only youth subculture named in the show. And, with the location of the school teasingly unestablished, the closest we get to Spanish geography is when bully Iván taunts Marcos for his Galician accent, asking Carolina what it was like to kiss a botafumeiro [the famous incense burner in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela]. Similarly, technology is mainly analogue. One key clue discovered by the kids is the sketchbook that had belonged to one of the orphans who went missing in the 1970s. It contains creepy drawings of mutant animals, including that monstrous head above the fireplace. In this cloistered world, the arrival of a single e-mail (sent by a missing teacher to a journalist) is enough to provoke consternation; and the kids rarely seem to use their mobile phones (at one point they do take incriminating photos with them). As we shall see, and as the cinematic references in the narrative suggest, it is celluloid that still rules the roost here. In spite of these anachronisms, El internado is nonetheless clearly set in the present and exploits current fears. In the first episode we hear a passing reference on the radio to the “war on terror”; and one teacher sarcastically asks another, who is searching for evidence of the school’s hidden history: “Have you found the weapons of mass destruction yet?” But beyond this contemporary paranoia, favoured horror tropes refer back to the past. When steely housekeeper Jacinta warns newcomer María (in the first episode once more) that the boarding school is like “Auschwitz without the gas”, the reference seems jaw-droppingly disproportionate. But this is just the first of the Holocaust references that will lead to the revelation of a Nazi conspiracy behind the all too respectable scenes. Little Paula is kidnapped by unseen tormenters who experiment on her body (her eyes are made to glow a ghostly grey); and amidst the pervasive blues, browns, and blacks of the art design, she is kitted out with an ostentatious red coat reminiscent of the girl who served as the only splash of colour in the monochrome Schindler’s List (US Spielberg 1993).

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While such references might appear to be gratuitous, even offensive, it is here that El internado’s barely masked engagement with contemporary Spain becomes evident. The disappearance of the orphans is placed precisely within the last bloody days of the dictatorship (1973); and their mummified bodies are uncovered by a sleuthing teacher in the very first episode. The show thus not only implies the close connection between Franco’s regime and that of Hitler, but also comes close to commenting directly on the Law of Historical Memory and the movement to excavate mass Civil War burial sites. Ironically it does so precisely at those points when it most clearly cites the fictional tradition of film horror. It is perhaps no accident that the tagline for feature length catch up episodes of the show (essential elements of memory management for distracted viewers) was “If you want to understand, first you must remember”. Like their little girl, the creators of the series place their “message” in a pretty bottle: a package of young photogenic actors with a particularly intense image value. Let us look more closely at the climactic sequence of episode 4. Five of the teens make it down to the labyrinthine passageways where the bodies of the orphans (and more recently that of their history teacher) are buried, successively shocking each other (and us) as they meet up. In a distant alcove they discover a projector screening a film. It is of mutant or mutilated children: the infants have two heads or two trunks joined together. Then comes black and white footage of the terrified orphans shortly before their death, shot in that very place. We cut from the five dead children of the past to the five live teens of the present, watching the latter as they in turn watch the former. There is thus a kind of historiographical metafiction at work here, a meditation on the continued presence of the past in the present. This disturbing sequence is crosscut, strangely perhaps, with a continuing soap-style storyline: head teacher Héctor’s burgeoning cross-class romance with undercover cleaner María. Classic horror is thus oddly fused with classic telenovela, shock and awe with domesticated romance. How can we read this hybridity? Clearly, as Buonanno suggested (70), El internado (in spite of its nominally contemporary setting) is an excellent example of the multiple realities of television fiction. Neither faithfully mirroring reality nor distorting it too greatly, the show serves as an “interpretative practice” that organises viewers’ experience into a narrative form. This narrating is also a kind of knowing, as El internado’s schoolroom setting and pedagogic theme makes explicit. The disruptive force of narrative imagination rests in its freedom to transcend reality, thus tempting us to imagine alternatives to that reality. Hence the series, with

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its jarringly dissonant elements, offers us access to a plurality of possible worlds that form, in turn, an integral part of the multiple realities that inform our life experience. Migrating between these different “lifeworlds”, we and the show experience a fluid and continuous switching that is mitigated (made less upsetting) by the domestic location in which we consume this cinematic-style content. More specifically, we can re-read the series in terms of Buonanno’s three conditions of TV narration (78-82). Firstly, El internado clearly delocalises social life in its oddly abstracted dramatic space that offers little or no sense of place. Yet we are offered the clear and rare possibility of coming into contact with what is spatially and the chronologically far away, a chilly, secluded setting coded as “British” to Spanish viewers and referencing the periods of the Second World War and the Francoist dictatorship, so distant from the concerns of allegedly “presentist” teenagers with little sense of historical horizons. The bridge to such far-flung territory is Buonanno’s second factor: the para-social interaction with characters. The fact that such interaction is perceived as an extension and enrichment of the personal capital of social relationships is confirmed by the rich evidence of fans’ internet bulletin boards on the show, whose discussion threads are more numerous than those for the equally popular Física o química. Indeed, as the first season develops, telenovela-style dichotomised characters are revealed as more complex than they at first appear: bully Iván is the product of a brutal and neglectful stepfather; steely Jacinta develops a soft spot for vulnerable María, having become estranged from her own absent daughter. Finally, El internado is an extreme example of TV drama’s focus on the rare experiences “sequestrated” from everyday life: folly (María’s escape from an asylum), criminality (a gun toting cook), death (the elderly teacher who first ventures into the “labyrinth”), sexuality (the precocious jealousies of the teens), and nature (the dense forest, home to wolves and gnomes). If the authorities seem oddly untroubled by the sometimes explicit violence of the show (which is classified as inappropriate for audiences only under age seven), it seems that this is likely to be because El internado takes care to neutralise its audience’s insecurities. It does so even as it places us in contact with fundamental areas that are normally concealed from human life in Spain today, but were much more visible in tragic episodes of still recent history. It is to El internado’s credit, then, that it has used youth culture, so frequently dismissed as reactionary, witless, or trivial to create an immersive experience of impressive narrative complexity and affective intimacy. While the history lessons depicted within the show are typically antiquated (the teacher just opens

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up the text book and reads to the class), the history lessons taught by the show are much more attractive and more complex.

5. Física o química: A sentimental education Episode 2.12. “Te quiero y es mi culpa” [I Love You and It’s My Fault]; broadcast: 10 p.m, 24 November 24 2008; audience: 3,152,000; share: 17.9%. Vocento (2008) provides the following summary: Cuando Paula descubra unos dibujos de Xiaomei en el bloc de Jan, esta se lo echará en cara. Enfadada y en plena borrachera, Paula cometerá un error que pondrá en peligro la boda por lo que se verá obligada a hacer aquello que menos le apetece: Ayudar a Jan y a Xiaomei para que la boda siga adelante. […] Después de acostarse juntos, Loli decide que no pueden continuar con su relación y deja a Adolfo. El descubrimiento por parte de Isaac y Roque de lo que ha pasado entre él y Loli, solo será el principio de una serie de situaciones que acabarán destapando la verdad sobre la enfermedad de Adolfo. Isaac, después de descubrir que su madre se acuesta con Adolfo y ser rechazado por Irene, se sentirá solo y engañado, lo que le llevará a tomar una decisión que puede que le aleje para siempre del colegio. Olimpia, presionada por la asociación de padres para que no se represente la obra, pondrá en marcha un plan para boicotearla… plan que acabará volviéndose en su contra. Gorka y Ruth vuelven a estar juntos, pero el fantasma de Cabano planea sobre la relación y éste es incapaz de relajarse. Cuando Gorka tenga un sueño erótico con la persona equivocada, comenzará a dudar sobre su sexualidad. (Vocento 2008) [When Paula finds some drawings of Xiao Mei in Jan’s sketchbook, she calls him out on it. Angry and very drunk, Paula makes a mistake which will imperil the wedding. And so she’ll be forced to do the one thing she least feels like doing: helping Jan and Xiao Mei to have a successful ceremony. [...] After they sleep together, Loli decides their relationship cannot continue and leaves Adolfo. When Isaac and Roque find out what happened between Adolfo and Loli, this will be just the first of a series of situations which will finally reveal the truth about Adolfo’s illness. Isaac, after finding out that his mother is sleeping with Adolfo and being rejected by Irene, feels alone and betrayed, which will make him take a decision that may take him away from school for good. Olimpia, under pressure from the parents’ association to cancel the performance of the play, sets in a motion a plan to boycott it, a plan which will backfire on her. Gorka and Ruth get back together, but the ghostly memory of Cabano hovers over the relationship and Gorka cannot relax. When he has a sex

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By the twelfth episode of its second season Física o química was building to its greatest audience, with a melodramatic cliffhanger in which a favourite character met an accidental death. And, as in El internado, soapy plotlines favoured love triangles that arced across the lengthy series. Thus, sexy blonde Ruth hesitates between abusive bad boy Gorka (to whom she is said to be “addicted”) and cute, rich Cabano (who, this season, is reduced by his parents’ divorce to working on an Internet sex site “www.boysmenhunt.com”). On the teachers’ side, blonde ingénue Blanca and brunette woman of the world Irene flirt with and flit between hunky new Argentine teacher, Miguel (played by Michel Brown, an actor known in Spain for his work on telenovelas). It is notable that the teachers’ plotline is more humorous, even farcical, than that of the pupils, which is taken with some seriousness. Typically, parallelisms between the two worlds tend to establish that adults are like kids (sexual novice Blanca confuses sex with love), while kids are like adults (Ruth refuses to give up her friendship with one boy even as she sleeps with his best friend). The oldest character (Adolfo, the father of another teacher) is the most childish: on hearing his diagnosis of a brain tumour he buys a motorcycle and sleeps with the mother of a pupil. Clearly “presentism” is not exclusive to, or even overly characteristic of, adolescents. As pupil Isaac says reproachfully to Irene, the teacher with whom he has had a longstanding affair, “You are supposed to be the adult here”. Later Miguel will tell “unscrupulous” head teacher Olimpia that her Machiavellian behaviour teaches a “fine lesson” to the kids. Pedagogy thus cuts both ways. But unlike in El internado, Física o química’s classroom has some semblance of educational content. In this second season Irene’s philosophy classes cite Pascal (“The heart has its reasons”), Nietzsche (“The eternal return”), Montaigne (“On friendship”), and, most relevantly, Ortega y Gasset’s (“Yo soy yo y mis circunstancias” [I am myself and my circumstances]). Indeed the ensemble nature of the show is its greatest strength. While El internado’s DVD cover shows ten characters, Física o química’s shows no fewer than nineteen, posing either side of the series’ logo whose ransom note lettering clearly cites British punk. And if Física o química is much more of a fashion parade than its rival (with at the time of writing 265 items on sale at the TV wardrobe compared to El internado’s modest eighty-seven), then the many teens are barely differentiated by their uniformly cool and colourful costumes. There are traces of Spanish youth subculture here: Punky Paula boasts spiky hair and piercing and “alternative” Cova dreadlocks and ethnic

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skirts, but out gay Fer and Chinese immigrant Jan dress (and act) no differently to their peers. Firmly opposed to stereotyping, the show stresses the differences within groups. When Fer hooks up with a new boyfriend whom he met in an online chat room, the latter innocently remarks: “You’re a pijo and I’m an anarchist; we gays look like anything but gays” (the new lover will have links with another youth tribe: okupas or squatters). Yoli’s origins in a working-class suburb may be signalled by her preference for huge hoop ear rings, but her overtly sexy fashion choices are as acceptable as middle-class Ruth’s roller derby T-shirts. The controversial social issues so attacked by critics are thus clearly integrated into the narrative lines and psychological profiles of the show’s intricate plots and multifaceted characters. Let us start with sex, a hot topic for these 16-year-olds. Countering the stereotype of reactionary machismo found in US teen cinema, the girls in Física o química are generally shown to be in control of their love lives. Pretty brunette Yoli demands to be treated with respect, however many men she sleeps with, and lectures Ruth not to go crawling after Gorka, who has humiliated her in the previous season. When Ruth decides nonetheless to invite Gorka back to her bedroom, insisting he use a condom, he is struck with youthful impotence (a recurring theme in the show). It is striking that Física o química skipped quickly in its first season over such themes as coming out and racism, which monopolise many series’ interest in their gay or minority characters. Typically, a long-lasting plotline involving a sex tape of Fer on a lost USB stick ends not in tragedy but in renewed respect: when Gorka conspires to have it played in class the gay boy wins universal praise for his performance (and gets the phone number of another hot teen). The queer plotline in this episode is teacher Miquel’s choice of a play with a gay theme for the school’s drama group. The prissy representative of the parents’ association objects, citing “the protection of children” (the same point made by critics of Física o química itself). Rather than editorialising on this topic, the show incorporates it into its plot dynamic. New head-teacher Olimpia owes her position to the now critical parents, since she had supported them over a previous scandal which involved the promotion of condom use amongst students. Olimpia secretly alerts the press to the planned performance, thus provoking threats from neo-Nazis, reason enough, it would appear, to cancel the show. Apparently based on the real-life children’s book King and King (a fairy tale in which Prince Charming passes over a Princess in favour of a handsome male suitor), the drama plotline, which builds over the season to climax in this episode, involves sustained commentary on social behaviour as performance and on the difficult division between sincerity and

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mendacity. Teacher Miguel repeatedly uses rehearsal to blur the boundary between reality and fiction. Hence, when he asks long time couple Chinese immigrant Jan and punky Paula to act out a conflict, she gives voice to her real concerns: that he is falling for his recently-arrived cousin with whom he is obliged to contract a sham marriage. Exploring the gay theme further, Gorka volunteers to play a prince even if it involves kissing a guy (the gay Fer) in order to show sensitivity and win back lost girlfriend Ruth. When Fer starts to figure in Gorka’s wet dreams, the show offers some unforced education on homosexual panic: Gorka is ridiculed for fearing that queerness can be caught “like flu” and is cured of his fears by a lengthy kiss from Fer, which proves that both boys feel nothing for one another. The immigration plotline, with its equal emphasis on performance, authenticity, and the blurring between the two, plays out in tandem with the gay play. And it is significant that the series chose to incorporate a Chinese character, thus highlighting perhaps the least visible immigrant community in Spanish television and cinemas. Previously, Paula’s father had insulted Jan and his parents when the latter make a polite visit to her home (“Anyone order Chinese food?”). And, uniquely in Spanish film and TV, several sequences use Chinese dialogue to show how Jan, who speaks perfectly idiomatic teen Castilian, negotiates between his two cultures. Later, Jan’s forced fiancée Xiao Mei, imposed so his parents can pay a debt to the smugglers who sponsored their emigration to Spain, turns out to be not the expected bumpkin from “deep China” but a stylish “supermodel”, who earns the jealous ire of Paula. Drunkenly dialling her aunt at the immigration office to denounce the marriage as a sham, Paula is now obliged to make the wedding as convincing as possible in order to prevent Xiao Mei’s deportation. Typical of the series, this farce relies on technology to prove its authenticity: the despedida [joint stag and hen night] and ceremony will be taped by Paula on her camcorder as evidence for the immigration authorities. And expectations are once more subverted. Xiao Mei, for whom Madrid is allegedly “like Mars”, fits right in at the botellón in the local park, which takes the place of a formal despedida, dancing moodily to her i-Pod; and, taking the initiative, she seduces the insecure Jan between the shelves of his father’s convenience store. The sham marriage will thus be consummated even before it takes place. Striking here is the unaccustomed theme of selflessness and cross-cultural empathy. Accepting that Jan must obey his parents, Paula takes part in a marriage process that can result only in humiliation for her. We are far indeed from the allegation of the show’s critics that it “trivialises” sex or, indeed, from the promise of Física o química’s theme tune, which evokes the ecstasy

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and immediacy of exchanged body fluids (“your saliva in my saliva: physics or chemistry”). Let us look more closely at a late sequence that reveals how such broadly educational elements (anti-homophobia and anti-racism) are embedded in an attractive and complex narrative and visual style. The third act of an episode is often set to a song, which plays at full length and comments obliquely on the various plotlines. Here a new more plangent number from Despistaos (authors of the breathless theme tune) signals extended crosscutting between two attractive exteriors: the public park where the kids have decided to put on the play after it was banned by the school and the town hall where the Chinese wedding, filmed by longsuffering Paula, will simultaneously take place. Against all expectations, homophobic bully Gorka takes his role as same-sex suitor as seriously as does the gay Fer, even as both wear fairy tale frills that most teens would surely find unflattering. Likewise, Jan and Xiao Mei’s ceremony, with the bride in flaming Chinese red, proves surprisingly affecting, when the reluctant bridegroom finally turns up. While the prince in the play confesses he must be honest about his feelings, the bridegroom at the wedding is urged to “help his family and cousin”, a more ambivalent, but no less important, imperative. The show cuts directly from the gay kiss, applauded by a large audience that includes the reluctant head-teacher, to the straight kiss, passionate on the part of Xiao Mei at least. As so often in the series, straight and gay plotlines run strictly parallel, with no distinction made between them. Moreover, in a sound bridge that further connects the two scenes, the ambient noise of audience applause and the plangent song of Despistaos bleed over from one location to the other. Meanwhile, teacher Irene texts pupil Isaac, setting up a date later that night. Just as El internado serves as a kind of commentary on the historiography of the horror genre, so Física o química incorporates its own critique. The censorious representative of the parents’ association warns that, while laws concerning same-sex marriage may have changed, attitudes towards minors have not; and the series’ stress on erotic tension across age barriers is surely an internalisation of the prurient interest of older viewers in the readily available sexualised bodies of teen actors so frequently disrobed for our pleasure. This last theme is inseparable from digital technology: it may be Fer’s fellow students that seek to humiliate him by circulating explicit photographs and videos of the gay youth, but it is web surfing teachers who pay for Cabano to strip when they come across him on the porn site (one is later investigated by the police). The

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sheer density of references to digital technologies here is not only a transparent product placement from Vodafone; it is also an invitation for viewers to reflect on the role of such imaging in their real lives and to negotiate these different life-worlds. It seems likely that the distance between the target audience and the life-world of the everyday Física o química is markedly less than that with the otherworldly El internado. And even non-metropolitan viewers are encouraged to identify with a Madrid setting acknowledged only by the briefest of generic links: split screen shots that show not famous monuments but rather relatively anonymous features of the city’s built environment (the four recently completed towers north of the centre, the new network of traffic underpasses) that simply signal “modernity”. One rare sequence where a place name is prominently featured is when female friends take shy Fer to Madrid’s gay village of Chueca (we see the sign on the subway station) in order to ease his initiation into queer metropolitan culture. It may well be the case, as some contributors to Internet forums suggest, that the acceptance of gays and immigrants presented as natural on Física o química is not universal in actual Spanish high schools. But the series’ imagined alternatives can perhaps work together with cultural and social change in the real world and thus contribute to the redefining of shared conceptions of what is normal and what violates the norm. This is clearly the case within the show itself where the homophobe, already scorned and isolated, is led slowly towards a very public embrace with another boy. If Física o química’s intensification of such experiences seems “unrealistic”, then it surely overlaps with a dramatised society in which social life is already, especially for youth, highly mediated. And the series, once more, teaches its viewers to switch between a plurality of possible worlds while recognising the differences between them: finally, Gorka does not believe that playing gay will make him gay. These widened horizons embrace an enrichment of the personal capital of social relationships in a series which is more character-led than the plotdriven El internado. Characters are rarely dichotomised. The homophobe is later humbled when his doting mother takes up a job as cleaner at the school. Conversely, one sympathetic boy falls in with bad company at the gym and will join the neo-Nazis in the next season. Sexy Yoli will fall for a cute charismatic Christian who rejects sex before marriage. Para-social interactions with such sympathetically-presented characters, some of which remain infrequent in Spanish cinema, promote an invaluable extension of life experience.

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Finally, although once more less evidently than in El internado, Física o química offers its viewers mediated contact with sequestrated areas normally concealed from the sphere of everyday life. As the second season opens, one girl is hospitalised with a coma after taking ketamine. When it closes, a boy is in the same situation after a marijuana-fuelled accident. The foolish, the criminal, and the sexual come together in the underage porn plot line. Life at the Zurbarán is hardly a faithful mirror of reality; nor would it be watched if it was. But the show does organise real-life experiences into a compelling narrative form. Indeed, the disproportionate reactions to it reveal that the series expresses the disruptive force of narrative imagination that in Buonanno’s words, borrowed from Jerome Bruner: “alienate[s] us from [real life] sufficiently to tempt us into thinking of alternatives beyond it” (75).

6. Schools for scandal? In spring 2010 three of Física o química’s young stars took part in a flashmob at Madrid’s Príncipe Pío shopping mall to coincide with the new season of US musical teen drama Glee. A transparent example of cross promotion (Glee is broadcast on Neox, a division of Antena 3) in which the stars, unlike their amateur peers, benefited from professional make up and choreography, the event blurred the boundaries between real life and fiction, but also those between Spanish and US content. The same strategy is used by the weekly magazines aimed at Spanish teens. In a single week of summer 2009 the covers of SuperPop featured stars from El internado, Bravo those of Física o química, and Black the boys from the Twilight franchise. Inside desirable bodies from the two continents are photoshopped together into posters fit for teenage bedroom walls with Zac Efron and Miley Cyrus rubbing shoulders with Yon González and Ana de Armas. Copy focuses on memory management and easing entry into new seasons (“the five best plotlines”, “meet the new stars”). Bravo even features yet another genre for El internado: a continuing “fotonovela”. That summer the frontier between television and film was breached with what seemed to be unusual intensity. Física o química’s school room set featured a poster for Apatow-light comedy of embarrassment Pagafantas; Antena 3 aired repeated promos for campus farce Fuga de cerebros; and three actors from Física o química and El internado stripped off for sex- and drug-fuelled melodrama Mentiras y gordas, an experience they later claimed to regret. While such teen ensemble films were amongst the biggest grossing at the box office that year—exceeding much heralded Los abrazos rotos ([Broken Embraces] Spain Almodóvar 2009), they are

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noticeably crude and regressive at a conceptual level. The latter two rely on a hoary plotline that could have come from the 1970s: a closeted gay character who is tragically in love with his best mate. Física o química is far more complex and convincing on that theme. Spanish teen TV also crossed international barriers, carried by informal electronic means. A new and touching gay love affair for Fer found female fans as far away as the US, where one enthusiast lovingly subtitled sequences in English before posting them on YouTube (FOQFAN 2009). And grateful viewers from Mexico to Argentina thanked the actor for his portrayal of a “natural” and non-stereotypical gay youth of a kind they had not encountered in their own television series (in some comments posted to the Física o química’s blogspots in 2008). As elsewhere, transmedia thus worked to eliminate troubling discontinuities between Spain and the abroad, between gay and straight. And when one fan on a Física o química bulletin board asked “¿Cuántos homosexuales habemos en este foro?” [How many gays is we in this discussion group?], his cyber mates kindly corrected his faulty grammar (“tenemos”) but did not disparage his attempt to build an on-line community. As Antonio Muñoz Carrión (2007) suggested, such “actions” or “practices” are clearly expressive in their effects. Classroom drama is thus pedagogic in more than one sense. El internado’s viewers may not discover too much about contemporary Spain (beyond the symptomatic return of repressed cadavers), but Física o química’s attentive audience will learn much about the legal status of minors like themselves in relation to such vital topics as marriage (only with the parents’ consent), abortion (only with the parents’ knowledge), and rape (prosecuted even if there are no signs of violence visible on the victim’s body). And if one of the cast shills for depilatory cream, another is the poster boy for an anti-bullying campaign. Far from being a school for scandal, the Zurbarán thus offers an education in responsible citizenship. It is not that the kids are depoliticised, as critics of Spanish teen drama have claimed, but rather that the model of “tolerance” such series promote may not be to the liking of some adults (Carlos Montero confirms as much on his blog in 2009). Likewise, the hyper-mediated and consumerist life-world depicted by the show may well repulse others. In a special report on global television included in The Economist (2010), television was named “media’s great survivor”, ceaselessly adapting to new circumstances. This is perhaps even more the case in Spain, where quality series continue to attract domestic audiences in their millions and to be exported around the world, even as local film production complains of terminal crisis. And the youth series I have examined have also exploited the new opportunity of transmedia with

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unusual vigour, even though the Internet arrived late in Spain and rates of access to broadband remain lower than elsewhere in Europe. In Henry Jenkins’s well-known terms, in these two cases at least media convergence has certainly led to a participatory culture in Spain, if not to the further stage of a collective intelligence actively reworking fictional worlds (2006, passim). The periodisation of Spanish teen series is also resonant, with their mass popularity beginning as it did on the threshold of an economic crisis that would prove more severe in Spain than elsewhere. In spite of such an unpropitious environment, the image power wielded by national TV, the Internet, and glossy magazines combined with the continuing purchasing power of a small cohort of teens, often only children, to yield the commodity form of the “quality series”. As we have seen, its content can be surprisingly varied but its transmedia exploitation, fitfully monetised, is remarkably similar. If youth is indeed “the dazzling age” then we should not be blinded to the hidden history of teen shows. One infant actor from Compañeros later played an adolescent in El internado; Carlos Montero had written for Al salir de clase before graduating to “creator” of Física o química. And we should not stress too much the lost innocence of earlier examples of the genre. While Compañeros was certainly more modest in its subject matter than Física o química, it was equally self-referential, spinning off a novel in which one character comes to play a part in a “famous television series”. The alleged “presentism” of youth should thus not be collapsed into the supposed “liveness” of television as a medium (Buonanno 2008, 57). As I hope to have shown, recent teen series in Spain are the privileged vehicle for a continuing commentary on sex and friendship, immigration and ethnicity, and analogue and digital technology, one that is couched in a distinct narrative and aesthetic form.

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Notes 1 EDITORS’ NOTE: Since this paper was submitted the two shows have had their finale. At the time of publication, and to the best of our knowledge, no intention of producing further seasons has been announced by their respective creators. Física o química has had reruns on Neox, which some critics have interpreted as an attempt to test its current popularity and possible future projection were more episodes to be shot, but no final decision seems to have been reached in this respect. 2 All quotes in this paper have been preserved in the source language and provided with an English translation by the author.

PART V POPULAR CULTURE AND NATIONAL/CULTURAL IDENTITIES

CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE (RE)CONSTRUCTION OF TRANSYLVANIA IN VAMPIRE FILMS MIHAI IACOB

The topic of this paper is part of a larger research project that aims to question the validity of the concept of Transylvanism and its potential use in the marketplace of ideas, together with similar, firmly established notions, like, for example, Orientalism, defined by Edward Said, and Balkanism, discussed by Maria Todorova. It presents an analysis of only one segment of the Transylvanian discourse (vampire films),1 in order to emphasise the two main paradigms that cinematic representations about the Transylvanian space share, namely the (more traditional) symbolic paradigm and the (updated) pseudo-realistic. Two of the key features of these paradigmatic visions will also be commented upon: heterogeneity and mobility. Most vampire fiction—even Bram Stoker’s famous novel (1897)— identifies the name Transylvania with Count Dracula’s homeland, a wild and backward country, at the end of the civilised world.2 This image, a highly effective vehicle for the dissemination of geographical, historical, ethnic, ethnographical, and political information, is closely related to the survival of not only the clichés from gothic literature but also the hegemonic Western views over Eastern, especially Balkan, otherness. Nevertheless, apart from the ideological issues—which on the whole are still valid today, as has been proved by Edward Said and Maria Todorova, amongst others—we have to take into account the fact that the image of Transylvania as a cultural construct has been created mostly in the realm of literature and film.3 It is precisely the distinctively unreal and fictional nature of this image that may set Transylvanism apart from the ideological constructs referred to above as Orientalism and Balkanism, created by literature and art, in general, as well as by a large corpus of non-fictional texts (historiography, travel memoires, newspaper articles, reports and political discourses, etc.). It is mainly because of the importance of non-

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fictional texts that Orientalism and Balkanism have gradually become two institutionalised, organised, didactic and politically instrumentalised discourses, while Transylvanism is still relegated to the field of fiction and popular culture. Since Transylvanianism—under analysis here—has developed inside horror fiction, there is a distorted relation between this concept and any empirical reality whatsoever, be it the case of the administrative province of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, or the historical province of Romania. What Todorova, when discussing the discourse about the Balkans, refers to as “the complete dissociation of the designation from its object” (Todorova 2009, 7) proves to be a much more radical process. In this respect, it is highly significant that in 1830, many years before Stoker’s Dracula was published, the uncharted land of a British map of Tanzania was named “Transylvania” (see Gelder 1994, 1). Nevertheless, unlike what happens in the Balkanist approaches and, due precisely to the radical breach between the filmic-literary Transylvania and the real one, Transylvanist communication has not yet known “the subsequent reverse and retroactive ascription of the ideologically loaded designation to the region” (Todorova 2009, 7). And this is because Transylvania is still perceived mostly as a fictitious geography.4 Therefore, it is my contention that Ken Gelder’s rhetorical question “Can the ‘real’ Transylvania ever be represented?” (1994, 5) points rather to the shortage of non-fictional discourses that aim at representing today’s well-defined region of Romania than to a saturation of the real geography with political and cultural topoi, as is the case of the Islamic East after 2001 and the Balkans after 1991. This is mainly due to the fact that, beside an acute but short interethnic conflict between Romanians and Hungarians in 1990, the real Transylvania has not given explosive reasons to the public opinion or the international media, neither has it turned into a target for self-interested and massive political propaganda led by a postcolonial power (despite the speculative interpretations by some Romanian nationalist movements, especially at the beginning of the 1990s), as was the case of the Islamic world in the former Yugoslavia. Besides, it remains to be seen whether (past or even forthcoming) non-fictional communication on Transylvania has supported or will support an autonomous vision— similar to that currently being expressed through literature and cinema—or just a Balkanic sub-discourse. The origin of cinematic Transylvania can be found in Bram Stoker’s descriptions, amplified and expressed by filmic means, but expurgated of a great deal of information that the Irish writer had drawn from travel memoirs and ethnography and folklore books which would turn Jonathan

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Harker’s diary into a precise anthropological report (see Abbot 2007, 62). This is an oneiric, highly artificial, schematic and essentialist representation, more often than not dependent on on-the-set scenery consistently made up of ingredients5 such as hardly accessible mountain forests; shelters with coarse, fearful and superstitious countrymen; a nocturnal and stormy atmosphere; castles perched on cliffs; generic Balkanic music; names and phrases in German and Hungarian; generic Central European pronunciation, etc.6 To a greater or lesser extent, such elements can be found in works like the foundational Nosferatu (Germany Friedrich Murnau 1922), Dracula (US Tod Browning 1931), Terence Fisher’s version (1958), several of the later films produced by Hammer, or the more recent Van Helsing (US Stephen Sommers 2000) and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (US Patrick Tatopoulos 2009), where some of the fundamental Transylvanian clichés (a wild nature, a nocturnal and stormy atmosphere, the castle) become more spectacular with the help of digital effects. Charles Derry’s view of the symbolic representation of horror, which this first hypostasis of filmic Transylvania is part of, is highly schematic. This is in no small part due to a line of thought dating back to the 18th century gothic and which accounts for the origin of evil by means of an artificial image, thus reassuringly distancing it from both the audience and the real world (Abbot 2007, 62). Likewise, by locating barbarism and (fantastic-horrific) deviation in what Western European and US audiences respectively perceive as a mythical border country or a mythical Old World, cinematic Transylvania—like the image of the Balkans (Todorova 2009, 187) and the Orient (Said 2003, 1-2, 4, 12)—becomes a distorted mirror of the West, causing racist relief (note, for example, the abovementioned derogatory description of the Transylvanians) and emotional and sexual discharges (in this regard, mention must be made of the powerful relation between sexuality and vampirism). The second Transylvanian hypostasis is pseudo-realistic and sometimes modernising, since it deals with real (geographical, architectural, historical, folkloric, political) facts in order to renew the frame of the traditional gothic vision from the inside, without subverting its foundations.7 The films disseminating this cultural construction tend to move away from the Stokerian plot to approach the supposed origins of the vampire myth or the historical present. In this case, the source of inspiration is no longer a novel but the fictional history book In search of Dracula, written by Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally (1972), in which the historical fact is distorted to a greater or lesser extent so as to adapt it to both the vampire myth and the gothic imaginary.8

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Both directly and indirectly influenced by Florescu and McNally’s proposal, several films were shot after the fall of the Romanian Communist regime. Some of them were filmed on location in the former Austro-Hungarian province with the participation of Romanian actors and producers, and introducing lines in Romanian, references to Vlad the Impaler, to Communism, post-Communism, or the Yugoslav Wars.9 At first sight, and especially after 1989, it seems that the symbolic and fixed filmic representation, independent from reality, starts to cohabit and compete with another kind of image, which refers to an empirically geographical space. Nevertheless, as is usually the case, the gothic loci are still more important to film directors than the documentary truth, and what may look like a new vision is simply a reconstruction of the same clichés with various materials. The image of Transylvania thus continues to be a “frozen” image. This also applies to the perception of the Orient, in which case the “ideological myths” survive despite improved knowledge (Said 2003, 63). In order to gothicise the reality of present-day Transylvania and even the whole of Romania (as an extended version of Transylvania), it is worth commenting on the digitally-revamped depiction of the Saxon Zărneúti fortress in Dracula III: Legacy (2005). As a result, an otherwise rural and coarse fortress becomes a Gothisised ghostly structure. It is a phenomenon similar to the “Orientalisation of the Orient” discussed by Said (2003, 5), which involves the deformation of reality considered inadequate as it does not fit an a priori culturally pre-established image. It is in this film that a NATO-occupied Bucharest serves as scenario for a civil war (reminiscent of the Yugoslav Wars), which thus preserves and reinforces the mytheme of barbarism characteristic to the land of Dracula as spread by distorted information about recent Eastern European history. In actual fact, the image of Romania being devastated in a cruel civil war (in which, why not, vampires take part) reflects the hyperbolic perception of the Yugoslav conflict by large sectors of the Western public opinion, undoubtedly influenced by Balkanist discourses.10 Other clichés present in the post-1989 vampire films that seem to originate in Balkanist discourses are the dictatorial tendencies, excessive bureaucracy, the ill-functioning of the public institutions, corruption, the coarse and savage nature of the villagers, or the well-rooted habit of Romanians to be late for meetings.11 Nevertheless, at the same time, there is an obvious aim to promote the country as a tourist destination because the same films emphatically showcase its natural wonders or architectural monuments like Hunedoara Castle or the Saxon Prejmer Fortress.

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It must be pointed out that the previous distinction between the artificial, symbolic-oneiric, and the pseudo-realistic versions of Transylvania largely depends on the cultural profile of the audience. For example, if to a Romanian the perspective conveyed by one of the modern vampire films shot on location in Transylvania is a counterfeit, American audiences with rather limited knowledge of the reality of Romania might find it substantially easier to suspend their disbelief. In practice, many films simultaneously activate the two categories of images mentioned above. However, and as hinted above, pseudo-documentary vampire cinematography has been built from the very beginning on gothic foundations. Thus, interpreting such images as fitting into the former or the latter category often depends on the number of symbolic and pseudorealistic elements present, which tend to be measured rather subjectively. An eloquent instance of hybridity would be Bram Stoker’s Dracula. On the one hand, Francis Ford Coppola’s film, which may be seen as parodic pastiche or as a half ironic, half nostalgic remake, goes back to firmly established gothic motifs and provides the audience with recognisable visual cues from Nosferatu and the Hammer productions. In these, we can observe a Transylvania mostly constructed on the set, with backgrounds and special effects taken from primitive cinema; a remote and oneiric Transylvania à la Stoker, with such ingredients as superstitious inhabitants, bad weather and a pompous castle in ruins and overall darkness. Due to the ambiguous and postmodern nature of parodic pastiche, it is difficult to establish whether the film reinforces suspension of disbelief in relation to the traditional gothic discourse, or whether, on the contrary, it denounces the artificial and obsolete quality of the aforementioned discourse as a first step in the search for real Dracula and, implicitly, real Transylvania. On the other hand, a clear attempt can distinguished in Coppola to approach the origin of the myth, or rather, the origin of the materials that are behind the myth. Romanian is used in his work more than in any other vampire film, and the use of informative sources about the life and personality of Vlad the Impaler is noticeable (historiographic documents, Saxon chronicles, folk legends…).12 However, it is more than likely that the sources were not consulted directly but found via In Search of Dracula (1972)—a successful novelised historical book written by Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally—or via the homonymous documentary, directed by Calvin Floyd in 1975. Florescu and McNally tried to instrumentalise the historical, geographic, and folkloric details with the intention of reaffirming the myth of Dracula, enriching it with a documentary—and partially manipulated—dimension. In order to

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integrate their book not only into the historiographic tradition but also, and perhaps above all, the tradition of vampire fiction(s), the authors go as far as to evoke a research trip to Romania, presenting themselves as the worthy followers of Jonathan Harker. The trip, supposedly inspired by a glass of plum liquor they were served at the University of Bucharest (Florescu and McNally 1991, 18)—hardly an academic gesture, but one which is in tune with the balkanising representation of a primitive and archaic Romanian society—finally takes them to the ruins of Vlad the Impaler’s fortress (which they inadequatly call “castle”), 13 on the banks of the river Arges, close to the border with the ancient province of Transylvania but actually within the limits of Wallachia, another historical province of today’s Romania. In order to preserve the vampire-focused atmosphere, the two historians talk about the local townspeople being reluctant and fearful to release any information about the fortress/castle, which is often visited by Stokerian rats, bats, and wolves. They even assure that the man who guards the ruins at night always has an old Bible on him, in order to keep away the evil spirits (Florescu and McNally 1991, 83). Francis Ford Coppola and scriptwriter James V. Hart feed on Florescu and McNally’s text as much as on its spirit, that well-measured mixture of history and fiction. They adapt the book to their own view of the myth; a Hollywood version based on an immortal love story. For instance—just like in a popular Wallachian folk tale compiled by Florescu and McNally (1991, 63)—Vlad’s wife kills herself at the beginning of the film, jumping into the Arges. However, although the folk version attributes this decision to her fear of being enslaved by the Turks, in Coppola’s story she commits suicide for love: she has been told that Vlad had died on the battlefield. In this context, the river Arges, which is actually Wallachian, features as a Transylvanian river, following the transylvanising interpretation favoured in In Search of Dracula. The use that Coppola and Hart make of the information provided by Florescu and McNally can be read both as a reason to include Bram Stoker’s Dracula within the traditional gothic scheme (folkloric inspiration, suicide for love). But it could also favour its inclusion in the category of historical or pseudo-historical fiction, since the popular Romanian legend of Vlad’s wife’s suicide would be, despite the inevitable distortions of the historical record, closer to Wallachian cultural reality—shared by the Impaler—than a Western novel written at the end of the 19th century by someone who had never set foot on Transylvanian or Wallachian soil. The two representations mentioned above, like the image that Stoker created, are not homogeneous: they encompass more reduced spaces, more

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or less enclosed and characterised by more and more concentrated doses of vampire horror, oneirism and magic, or, eventually, Transylvanism: the train station, the guest house, the surroundings of Dracula’s castle (the famous Borgo Pass) or the castle itself. The area close to count Orlok’s home is shown in Murnau’s film with the use of negatives, a technical artifice that indicates a “change of worlds” (Gómez Rivero 2008, 18) from the area where the guest house is located. In the same way, the off-camera voice in the first Dracula by Fisher, who is reading Jonathan Harker’s diary, points out that near the Count’s castle “everything seemed normal, besides the lack of birds’ singing”. The same voice also signals that after crossing the bridge towards the entrance of the building—the limit of another, even more essentialised Transylvanian space—“suddenly it feels much colder, due unquestionably to the mountain stream that flows underneath”. The subdivisions of the Transylvanian territory are also present in Nosferatu, the Vampire (1979), Werner Herzog’s tribute to Murnau’s film, in which a gypsy tells Harker that Dracula’s castle is “on the other side, in the land of the ghosts”. This land seems to be part of a parallel universe or else a place where the real and the oneiric meet, since the shots inside the castle that show old, but still inhabitable dwellings, do not match the general shots of the derelict outer walls. In the cases described above there functions a system of representation based on a typically romantic mise en abyme: the macrocosm and the microcosm reflect each other. Perhaps the shorter and more concentrated version of Dracula’s native macrocosm, already mentioned in Bram Stoker’s text, is the wooden box—which the filmic tradition has turned into a coffin—filled with Transylvanian earth, the only thing that provides the Count with some rest during his trips and stays in the West that he wants to colonise and infect. Nevertheless, the film medium offers other miniaturesque Transylvanian images. In Cronos (1993), the vampire grandfather lies in one of his granddaughter’s doll boxes, turning it into an ambiguous, malignant, yet tender habitat. Besides, the virus of immortal life—and, implicitly, of vampirism—is transmitted by a strange scarabshaped device that seems to contain a leech full of vampire blood. It is worth mentioning also that the artefact arrives at the main character’s antiquities store hidden within another receptacle, yet another case of ambiguous mise en abyme: the empty interior of a polychrome wooden angel. The wooden box and the other objects and artefacts introduce an important element: mobility. Already in Bram Stoker’s novel, the vampire space infects and moves to other worlds together with its owner; likewise, the home of good and reason (London) also happens to move sometimes,

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so that the polarity West vs. East, civilisation vs. barbarism, present vs. past (see McDonald 2009) can be re-created; a polarity always relativised by the typically gothic ambiguity. For this very reason it could be the case of a transplanted Transylvania and, sometimes, of a mobile space that the vampire turns into his own habitat: the ruins of Whitby Abbey, the residence at Carfax, as seen in Stoker’s novel and in the films faithfully reproduce its storyline; the fenced area around an abandoned mine in The Return of Dracula (Paul Landers, 1958); the marshy New Orleans in Interview with a Vampire (Ann Rice’s 1976 novel, as well as Neil Jordan’s 1994 film adaptation); the rainy and dark town of Forks in Twilight (2008), by Catherine Hardwicke, or the spectral supply spaceships from the series Stargate Atlantis (a larger and futuristic version of the Stokerian wooden box).14 It must be mentioned that, in order to be transylvanised, the spaces and premises must always have a Transylvanic bias, that is, they must be abandoned, degraded, with a natural and moral climate that can be of some benefit to the vampire: both Whitby Abbey and the property at Carfax are gloomy, ramshackle places; Fork is a dark town where there are frequent storms when vampires play baseball so that they can benefit from thunder—normal people cannot notice the noise from their terrible bat strikes. Finally, in some films, the mobility of the vampire virus, inseparable from the transfer and expansion of the flexible, symbolic and metageographical Transylvanian space, determines the appearance of a globalised Transylvania, expanded all over the world. In The Addiction (US Abel Ferrara 1955), for example, white and black indicate the widespread and relentless evil in today’s world, whereas in I am Legend (US Francis Lawrence 2007), a wild New York, overwhelmed with vegetation and bound through by herds of deer is a synecdoche for the vampire pandemic that could conquer the earth. In conclusion, the cinematic representations of Transylvania analysed in this chapter are characterised by a heterogeneous structure and a mobile referentiality inside their fictional universe. The first imagological category—from the chronological point of view—is almost completely independent from empirical reality, whereas those second category incorporate much more factual information, although they also reconfigure it, transforming it into gothic topoi. Besides, it has been shown that, unlike Orientalism and Balkanism—mutually influenced, as evidenced by their exchange of stereotypes between the non-fictional and fictional discourses—in the case of Transylvanism, which is almost exclusively a product of literature and film, information has so far only moved in one

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main direction: from the historiographic, journalistic and political texts towards gothic fiction.

Works cited Abbot, Stacey. 2007. Celluloid Vampires. Life after Death in the Modern World. Austin: University of Texas Press. Florescu, Radu, and Raymond McNally.1992. În căutarea lui Dracula. Bucharest: Editura FundaĠiei Culturale Române. Gelder, Ken. 1994. Reading the Vampire. London and New York: Routledge. Gómez Rivero, Ángel. 2008. El vampiro reflejado. Madrid: Alberto Santos Editores. McDonald, Beth E. 2009. Recreating the World: The Sacred and the Profane in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In Critical Insights: Dracula, ed. Jack Lynch, 87-137. Pasadena: Salem Press. Said, Edward. 2003. Orientalism. London: Penguin Books. Stoker, Bram. 2008. Notes for ‘Dracula’. Jefferson and London: McFarland & Co. Todorova, Maria 2005. The Trap of Backwardness: Modernity, Temporality, and the Study of Eastern European Nationalism. Slavic Review 1: 140-164. —. 2009. Imagining the Balkans. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Notes 1

Although the analysed corpus is by no means exhaustive, because of the sheer number of vampire films, this chapter attempts to account for the beginnings of the main Transylvanian clichés in vampire cinema. 2 Backwardness and primitivism are common features of Transylvanism, Orientalism and Balkanism (see Said 2003, 261; Todorova 2009, 3). 3 This statement is valid although Bram Stoker drew his inspiration from the travelogues of some Romantic travellers, like Emily Gerard, Charles Bonner, Andrew F. Crosse o Major E. C. Johnson (see Stoker 2008). 4 After 1989, in the non-fictional discourses about Transylvania (many of which partaking of docufiction and infotainment features), the ascription of vampire clichés to the real referent is usually ironical. An eloquent example is the Spanish TV programme Callejeros Viajeros: Transilvania, broadcasted by Cuatro in November 2009. 5 Stacey Abbot states that in the 1930-1960 cinematography “the monstrous continued to emerge from a fantasy representation of Europe and as such evoked

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an atmosphere of dreams and nightmares rather than a real and recognizable landscape” (Abbot 2007, 72). 6 The predisposition towards the myth is also a representative feature of the Western discourse on the Balkans (see Todorova 2005, 153-154). 7 With regard to the modernisation of the vampire narrative, Abbot states that, generally since the 1970s “[t]he vampires in film and television are no longer ruled by the past or tradition but rather embrace the present and its vast array of experiences” (2008, 4). 8 The main contribution by Florescu and McNally to the Dracula myth is the theory that the model for Stoker’s character would be the 15th-century Wallachian prince Vlad the Impaler, although the Irish writer’s preparatory annotations prove that this historical figure is just one of the ingredients–but not the most important one–used to buid this character (see Stoker 2008). 9 Relevant titles include Bram Stoker’s Dracula (US F. F. Coppola 1992), the Subspecies series (US Ted Nicolaou 1990, 1993, 1994, 1998), Nadja (US Michael Almereyda 1994), Vlad, el príncipe de la oscuridad (US Joe Chappelle 2000), Vlad (US Michael D. Sellers 2003), Dracula II: Ascension (US/Romania Patrick Lussier 2003) and Dracula III: Legacy (US/Romania Patrick Lussier 2005), BloodRayne (US/Germany Uwe Boll 2005). 10 “While during the Cold War Yugoslavia was neatly exempt from any connection to the Balkans, its civil war in the 1990s was generalised as a Balkan war, although none of the other Balkan countriesGreece, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, even Albaniawere in danger of entering it” (Todorova 2009, 192). 11 Nadija evokes the death of a Romanian politician, a tyrant and a vampire, “Count Vaiwoda Arminius Ceauúescu Dracula”; in Subspecies I (1990) we learn that punctuality is not the strongest point of the Romanian ex-colleague of the two young American girls who arrive in Transylvania; the same Romanian girl drives a clapped-out Trabant, made in former Eastern Germany, which she calls “a local speciality”; in Subspecies III (1999), lieutenant Marin informs the protagonists that in Romania one can get a licence to enter a suspiciously abandoned castle in “two weeks or two months”; in the miniseries Dracula’s curse (US Roger Young 2002), Jonathan Harker, an American businessman who works in post-Communist Budapest, tries to act according to the “grey economy” principles of the East; besides, when he travels to Transylvania the Romanian customs officers threaten him with a Kalashnikov, for no reason other than the poor European’s rudimentary envy of the rich Western men. 12 The Sony Pictures 2007 DVD version proves that the longest scene in Romanian (when Vlad, enraged because the Church has excommunicated his suicidal wife, renounces his faith after a violent argument with a priest) was even longer in the original footage, before montage. 13 In the same line of vampirisation of reality, Florescu and McNally refer to Vlad by the nickname “Dracula”, thus assimilating the figure of the real Wallachian prince to the fictional Transylvanian count.

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14 Whereas the city-ship Atlantis symbolises the civilised world (a kind of futuristic and also mobile London), since it can travel through cosmos, from Planet Earth to the remote galaxy of Pegasus.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN FROM FOLK TO CHILDREN’S LITERATURE: AN IDEOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE GRIMMS’ CONTRIBUTION TO THE FAIRY TALE GENRE1 GLORIA BOSCH-ROIG

1. Introduction Oral transmission is intrinsic to the folk tale genre, which necessarily implies the potential coexistence of several versions or variations of the same text. Unlike legends, which are invariably linked to a certain place, folk tales lack the space-time coordinates and thus are not specific to any concrete geographic area; however, folk tales belong only to their narrators. Despite this, the Brothers Grimm tasked themselves with the difficult mission of providing folk tales with their own space, delimiting their field of action and giving them written form. This finally gave rise to a single version of the tales. It was in the 19th century that folk tales were viewed as a surviving form of ancient poetry preserved by the lower classes, which embodied the spirit, fundamental nature and creative potential of the German people, which made recovering them a necessity. Folk tales, however, suffered during the complicated process of compilation and classification. On the one hand, their collection was influenced by the Romantic trend of the period, which insisted on a purely aesthetic approach to the tales. On the other hand, they were influenced by the rise of the petite bourgeoisie in Germany from the early 19th century onwards, as well as by 18th-century traditions rooted in the Enlightenment. All of these circumstances fostered the transformation of folk tales into educational tales, ultimately giving rise to a new literary genre: that of children’s tales. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm carried out the first systematic and scientific compilation of European tales and legends, a contribution that marked the starting point for modern studies of literary folklore. They

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were also pioneers in doing pedagogy through popular culture, albeit accidentally. The first edition of the tales (1812), entitled Kinder–und Hausmärchen [Children’s and Household Tales], was a philological project, a diachronic study that aroused a good deal of criticism when it failed to meet the expectations set by its title. Wilhelm Grimm initially confessed to an inability to reconcile the documentation and historical analysis of folk tales with their poeticisation for educational or entertainment purposes. In this manner, folk tales, in contrast to the initial intention of the Brothers Grimm to faithfully transcribe and codify oral stories, were subject to a transformation in the most literal sense of the word, moving away from their natural morphology and giving way to a new literary genre. The tales transcended folkloric boundaries and became children’s stories or, in other words, universal tales. Thus seen, the Grimms’ collection of folk tales now undoubtedly forms part of world heritage. Even so, the morphology of children’s tales continues to mutate and change over time. They have once again transcended the boundaries of the genre, finding expression in another new medium. Walt Disney and its culture industry have turned children’s tales into a global narration for both children and adults, restoring them to the oral tradition that is unarguably one of their main properties. The aim of this chapter is to trace the origin and transformation of the Grimms’ folk tales into fairy tales and to show its morphological evolution by analysing some structural, stylistic and thematic features in the different editions of the texts. I will first consider the Romantic folk tale as a means of expressing German national identity and as the main aesthetic point of reference for the Brothers Grimm. I will then attempt to identify the main sources from which the tales originated, differentiating between oral and literary sources and their influence on the Grimms’ version. Finally, an analysis will be carried out of the main ideological principles underlying some of the plot variations seen in the texts, up to the most recent cinema adaptations.

2. The folk tale as an expression of German national identity The gargantuan task of compilation and the numerous stylistic, thematic and formal modifications carried out by the Brothers Grimm contributed to the process of dissemination and universalisation of folk tales in an era in which it was believed that these types of texts did not even deserve to be printed. In contrast to early German cosmopolitan and

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universal Romanticism, late (post-1800) Romanticism is a period marked by significant political crises and by the extolling of the collective ego of the people as a replacement for the individual ego. For the German philosopher and forerunner of philosophical nationalism Johann Gottlieb Fichte, freedom, energy, spirit and culture were properties of the individual which could also be applied to the collective. The concept of education developed by Fichte in his Addresses to the German Nation, published between 1807 and 1808, would serve to transform the individual into a useful member of society (Fichte 1977, 85-102; 105-120). This would intensify the trend of thinking in terms of collectivity, enabling Romantic metaphysics to penetrate the political sphere for the first time. The ideas and the intellectual push for the expansion of this nationalist school of thought originated from the University of Berlin, the city occupied by Napoleon after Jena, from which Friedrich Hegel developed the new philosophy of the authority and power of the State. Romantic philosophers pose themselves questions based on history as a creative force, society, the State and the nation. Fichte spoke of the German people as an “original people” and of German as an “original language” (1977, 181). This spurred a process of self-reflection on identity and on the reclaiming of national roots. Early universal Romanticism faltered in its duty of self-affirmation against France. Under its hegemony and with Prussia defeated, Germany was far from a politically-united nation. The expansion of the Napoleonic Empire from 1806 onwards stirred up nationalist sentiment in Germany, which manifested in an attitude of resistance to foreign domination. It was precisely this strong desire for self-affirmation that sparked the intense search for what might be called “German identity”. Its aim, thus, was to seek out and recover folkloric roots, the poetry of the people or natural poetry, and for this reason some Romantic authors moved to Heidelberg between 1806 and 1808.2 The area was home to two of the most important representatives of German Romanticism: Brentano and Achim von Arnim. Heidelberg thus became the principal seat of this new Romantic group, which sought to salvage legends, myths, folk songs and other historical traditions used to express what the philosopher and theologian J. Gottfried Herder referred to as “Volksgeist” or the spirit of the people (1994). Herder and, to a greater extent, Ludwig Tieck, with the publication of his folk tales Volksmärchen von Peter Leberecht [Folk Tales by Peter Leberecht] in 1797, as well as August Musäus, who published a collection of German folk tales between 1782 and 1786 called Volksmärchen der Deutschen [Folk Tales of the Germans], had already instilled folk tales with their Romantic or literary form. These authors were more interested

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in the artistic potential of this literary effect than in recovering the tales’ original form, although they never ceased to insist on the need to retrieve these sorts of texts. Some authors, such as Clemens Brentano, adhered to the Romantic manifesto of their predecessors, which advocated reclaiming folk tales. It was Brentano himself who asked the Brothers Grimm for help in collecting the texts of some folk tales, stories and legends, with a view to assembling his own compilation of folk songs.3 To this compilation he would later add a collection of children’s tales. In 1810 Brentano announced that he had begun to write a collection of folk tales, and he again asked the Brothers Grimm to send him some texts for inclusion in this collection. In the same manner as Tieck, Brentano understood that rescuing these types of tales involved converting them into the Romantic literary canon. Romantics romanticised folk poetry, because it lived, so to speak, in a state of innocence. In contrast, art had a conscience (Safranski 2009, 165). Eventually, in 1810 Brentano received a manuscript from the Brothers Grimm with fifty-four texts he never published and never returned to the brothers. Thanks to this oversight we have been able to recover a great deal of information which is useful for literary criticism, as these initial texts served as a source of reference for analysing the formal evolution of the tales. Encouraged by their friend, writer Achim von Arnim, the Brothers Grimm finally published their first collection of tales between 1812 and 1815.4 This encompassed a total sum of 158 texts entitled Kinder–und Hausmärchen (KHM) [Children’s and Household Tales]. This publication, which was the first in two volumes, took the form of an anthology and was a critical edition. It did not meet with a great deal of success due to its philological, overly specialised nature, quite far removed from the collection of children’s tales promised by its title. The contradiction apparent in the publication’s logic reflected, to a certain degree, the differing sensibilities and working methods of the brothers, which ultimately provoked a gradual transformation of the text more in line with the vision of the younger brother and with the prevailing canon of the period. From 1819 onwards, no edition of the tales was left unchanged. In each successive publication, until the seventh and final edition was released in 1857, new texts were included along with a series of stylistic variations on the earlier tales. This gave rise to the definitive transformation of the Grimms’ tales into children’s stories. The introduction to the 1819 edition admits that the first edition has been completely modified (Derungs 2010, 14). The comparison of later editions with the original 1810 manuscript (Rölleke 1975) allows us to identify

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various techniques that were employed when drafting and stylising the tales. Before proceeding to analyse philological features, however, it seems appropriate to debunk some myths regarding the task of compilation carried out by the Brothers Grimm.

3. The origins: Oral and literary sources It is not true that the Brothers Grimm travelled around the towns of Hesse—a cultural region and a state in West-Central Germany— interviewing simple folk and locals. Rather, quite the opposite occurred. It was the brothers who received visits at their home from young women belonging mainly to the local haute bourgeoisie (Rölleke 2004, 78). As shall be seen further on, the sources from which the tales stemmed were diverse and in most cases the tales had not folk but rather bourgeois origins. This does not necessarily mean that the tales were not known among the lower classes. Rather, it indicates that those same tales went through several filters, most of them bourgeois, before they were collected by the Brothers Grimm. It is therefore also a myth that the texts were faithful to the original sources. In many cases, this myth was propagated by the brothers themselves, who claimed the following in the prologue to the 1812 edition: Alles ist mit wenigen bemerkten Ausnahmen fast nur in Hessen und den Main- und Kinziggegenden in der Grafschaft Hanau, wo wir her sind, nach mündlicher Überlieferung gesammelt; darum knüpft sich uns an jedes einzelne noch eine angenehme Erinnerung. (Panzer 2008, 56) [With the few exceptions mentioned, nearly all of them have been collected by oral transmission in Hesse and the regions of Main-Kinzig in the duchy of Hanau, where we are from; for this reason each one connects us with a pleasant memory.]

A certain degree of intentionality can be perceived here, as many of the tales were recounted by families belonging to the haute bourgeoisie. Some of these families were of Huguenot-French origin, such as for example the three Hassenpflug sisters, who had associations with the Brothers Grimm and were well acquainted with the tales of Charles Perrault and other French authors. Friederike Mannel, Dorothea Wild and the Ramus sisters also made valuable textual contributions to the 1812 collection published by the Brothers Grimm. Most of these initial sources were young women belonging to the sophisticated bourgeoisie in the region of Hesse and Westphalia, who spoke French and undoubtedly had the gift of

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storytelling. It should also be noted that these tales had already been purged of any hint of religious or social criticism, as well as of inappropriate, obscene or sexual references. From the early 18th century onwards, storytelling was a pastime mainly engaged in by females, and this also exercised an influence on the style and content of the texts (Zipes 1991). At the end of 1812, new sources emerged which were used by the Brothers Grimm, including Ferdinand Siebert, August von Haxthausen and Dorothea Viehmann. Wilhelm Grimm himself explicitly mentioned the texts for the first time in the prologue to the second part of the tales in 1815. He also insisted that all of the oral texts collected were of German origin: Alles aber, was aus mündlicher Überlieferung hier gesammelt worden, ist sowohl nach seiner Entstehung als Ausbildung (vielleicht darin den gestiefelten Kater allein ausgenommen) rein deutsch und nirgendsher erborgt, wie sich, wo man es in einzelnen Fällen bestreiten wollte, leicht auch äuȕerlich beweisen lieȕe. (Panzer 2008, 344) [All that is compiled herein has been taken from oral transmission, both in terms of origin and of preparation (with the possible exception of “Puss in Boots”), and is genuinely German and not borrowed from any other place, as has been suggested in certain cases. This could also be easily demonstrated by paying attention to form.]

In the same prologue he denied that the tales were subject to nonGerman influences, claiming that, irrespective of their original sources, the folk tales were the product of narrators that took control of them, transforming and adapting them in both time and space. In some instances it is clear that the Brothers Grimm intentionally falsified the identity of their sources, imbuing them with characteristics desirable in an ideal storyteller. An example of this is seen in the introduction to the second part of the 1815 edition of the tales, in which Wilhelm Grimm mentions Dorothea Viehmann and gives a detailed and passionate description of the woman, whom he describes as an authentic peasant from Hesse,5 roughly fifty years of age with lively blue eyes and a gift for storytelling (Rölleke 2004, 90; Derungs 2010, 10). In truth, she was not a peasant, but rather the wife of a tailor of Huguenot-French origin, and like other female sources she was well acquainted with tales of French origin. It can thus be affirmed that the Brothers Grimm, particularly Wilhelm, ended up pursuing their own ideals as regards the drafting of the texts. This ultimately resulted in a shift from folk tales and legends to children’s tales. The prologue to the second part of the 1815 tales reveals a clear

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intention to go beyond poetry and transform the collection of tales into an Erziehungsbuch or educational book: Wir wollten indeȕ durch unsere Sammlung nicht bloȕ der Geschichte der Poesie einen dienst erweisen, es war zugleich Absicht, daȕ die Poesie selbst, die darin lebendig ist, wirkte: erfreue wen sie erfreuen kann, und darum auch, daȕ ein eigentliches Erziehungsbuch daraus werde. (Panzer 2008, 343) [Nevertheless, with our collection not only did we want to act to serve the history of poetry, but at the same time it was also our intention that poetry itself, which lives within, should act: that it should gladden anyone it can gladden, thereby becoming a truly educational book.]

This declaration of intentions, which eventually led into a definition of the book itself, has clear consequences for the selection and drafting of the tales, as passages containing any sort of religious or social criticism or any form of attack on the prevailing moral canon of the period were either directly eliminated or censured and modified.6 Although this new Grimms’ genre had its roots mainly in oral folk tales, the great importance of literary texts from the Renaissance (Gianfrancesco Straparola, Giambattista Basile, Madame d’Aulnoy) up until the 19th century cannot be overlooked, as these texts contributed to padding the collection of tales.7 These crucial literary sources also included authors that were contemporaries of the Brothers Grimm, for example Ludwig Aurbacher, J. Gustav Gottlieb Büsching, Albert Ludwig Grimm and Heinrich Jung-Stilling; 16th-century literary sources include Johann Jacob Frey, Hans Wilhelm Kirchhoff, Martin Montanus, Johannes Praetorius, Jörg Wickram and, particularly, Hans Sachs. Hans Michael Moscherosch; and the picaresque narrative Simplicius Simplicissimus by H. J. Christoffel von Grimmelshausen8 also have a place on the list of 17th-century authors that made important contributions to the texts in the collection. It was, however, texts by Clemens Brentano and, in particular, two folk tales published by Philipp Otto Runge in low German, entitled “Von dem Fischer und syner Fru” [“The Fisherman and his Wife”] and “Von dem Machandelboom” [“The Juniper Tree”],9 that, due to their originality, structure and style, reached canonical status—i.e. representative of that to which the folk tale genre should aspire. For this reason, they also served as a model for the Brothers Grimm, who used them to establish and consolidate their own style of folk tale writing. It has already been demonstrated by scholars that in these early editions of the tales the Brothers Grimm adopted stylistic formulas previously employed by Runge in his texts, such as the opener “Dar wöör

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maal eens” [Once upon a time] and the ending “bet up hüüt und düssen Dag” [to this day], which enclosed the triadic structure typical of folk tales. Runge expertly reproduces this structure in his tales, imbuing the texts with greater logic and cohesion. This is an important structural feature of the texts, one which was also adopted by the Brothers Grimm and is seen in the tale “Rumpelstilzchen”10 [in English “Rumpelstilstskin”]. This tale contains two triads: on the one hand, the three challenges (the transformation of straw into gold) that the protagonist must complete over three nights in order to marry the King; and, on the other hand, three days as the timeframe in which the final challenge—guessing the name of the imp—must be completed. Other recurrent stylistic elements in Runge’s texts, as well as later on in the Grimms’ tales, are a preference for parataxis, i.e. the use of coordinating and adverbial connectors in the text (examples include “und” [and], “oder” [or], “da” [then], “nun” [now]); the repetition of words (“ich rieche, rieche Menschenfleisch” [I smell, smell of human flesh]);11 the duplication of nouns (e.g. “Speis und Trank” [dining and drinking], “Gesottenes und Gebratenes” [boiled and fried]); the substitution of present verb tenses with past tenses; a preference for reported speech; the elimination of foreign words and their substitution with German terms (for example “Prinz” [prince] with “Königssohn” and “Prinzessin” [princess] with “Königstochter”; the use of diminutives; and last but not least, the growing introduction of phraseologisms or popular expressions that link folk tales to the Romantic tradition, albeit in an idealised manner.12 It is important to note that, with each new edition of the tales, the Brothers Grimm distanced themselves a little more from popular forms, turns of phrases and vulgarisms, moving closer to the standard norms of written language. A clear example of this is their use of adjectives ending in –e, as is the case of “müd” [tired] and “gern” [with pleasure], which tended to be omitted in popular speech and which was progressively added to the texts. At the same time, adjectives were increasingly included to embellish and enhance the narration. Syntax became more complex, with increasing parataxis. As the language employed grew more elaborate, the text of the original tale lost its natural quality. Thus, we can say that the Brothers Grimm failed to reconcile the tension produced by the conflict between Naturpoesie and Kunstpoesie, a conflict which reflects the romantic aporia or paradox that contraposes the popular tale in its purest state to the wish to poeticise the form through which it is expressed. For this reason, the canonisation process of traditional tales carried out by the Brothers Grimm can be said to have a double meaning since, while popular elements are idealised in them by stripping them of their own

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forms of expression, German identity is also idealised, as Romantics attributed the true root or essence of German identity to popular culture.

4. Thematic revision and censure of the tales’ content The Brothers Grimm established numerous hypertextual relationships with other, mainly literary, works, which can be read in the light of Gérard Genette’s theory (1989). Genette understands the concept of hypertextuality as all forms of relationships linking a text, B, which he calls the “hypertext”, to a base text, A, called the “hypotext”. This places the tales within a new intertextual arena in which, as will be seen further on, an ideology is proposed which often runs counter to the hypotext and is more in line with the historical and cultural context of the period. This ideological split occurs through thematic revision and the refinement of certain overtly explicit content in the texts, which on occasions provokes narrative ellipses that interrupt the logical unfolding of the action. It should be noted that the themes present in the tales were subjected to progressive didacticism, or education-based revision, consisting of extolling the hero and eliminating all passages that could be considered violent, anti-authoritarian, overly critical or immoral under the bourgeois canon that prevailed in the period. Moral and social archetypes were exalted, based on the religious and patriarchal values of society then. Similarly, any overly evident allusions of an erotic or sexual nature were removed from the texts. The elimination of all explicit erotic content in the tales is particularly apparent in “Rapunzel” and “Rothkäpchen” [Little Red Cap, generally known in English as “Little Red Riding Hood”]. In order to analyse this I will compare different versions of “Rapunzel” with the final 1857 version and, in the case of “Rothkäpchen”, the text by Charles Perrault with different versions of the tale by the Brothers Grimm. In the following quote from “Rapunzel” I have highlighted in italics the passages that were eliminated or transformed in its successive editions, which logically led to or described the pregnancy of the tale’s protagonist: [...] bald aber gefiel ihr der junge König so gut, dass sie mit ihm verabredete, er solle alle Tage kommen und hinaufgezogen werden. So lebten sie lustig und in Freuden eine geraume Zeit, und die Fee kam nicht dahinter, bis eines Tages das Rapunzel anfing und zu ihr sagte: “sag’ sie mir doch Frau Gothel, meine Kleiderchen werden mir so eng und wollen nicht mehr passen”. Ach du gottloses Kind, sprach die Fee, was muss ich von dir hören, und sie merkte gleich, wie sie betrogen wäre, und war ganz aufgebracht. (Grimm 1812/15a, 41, my italics)

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Thus, in the first edition the attraction the protagonist feels towards the prince is made clear, deriving in a physical relationship (“they lived together, pleasurably”) which culminates in Rapunzel’s pregnancy. All this happens without any reference to any kind of compromise between them. On the contrary, in the second edition of the tale this aspect is introduced, in such a way that their relationship transcends the physical sphere and is presented as close to the romantic ideal, whereas the reference to pregnancy is omitted: So lebten sie lustig und in Freuden eine geraume Zeit, und hatten sich herzlich lieb, wie Mann und Frau. Die Zauberin aber kam nicht dahinter, bis eines Tages das Rapunzel anfing und zu ihr sagte: “Sag, sie mir doch, Frau Gothel, wie kommt es nur, sie wird mir viel schwerer heraufzuziehen als der junge König”. “Ach du gottloses Kind”, sprach die Zauberin [...]. (Grimm 1819, 41, my italics) [In this manner, they lived happily and content for some time, and they loved each other from the heart, as man and wife. But the enchantress did not discover their secret until one day Rapunzel said to her: “Tell me, Mother Gothel, why it is so much harder for me to lift you up than the young king”. “Oh, heathen child”, answered the enchantress [...].]

It is noteworthy that in the prologue to the 1819 edition Wilhelm Grimm admits to having eliminated all the expressions which might not be considered suitable for children: “Dabei haben wir jeden für das Kindesalter nicht passenden Ausdruck in dieser neuen Auflage sorgfältig gelöscht” (Grimm 1819, 9) [We have meticulously eliminated every expression inappropriate for children]. In the 1857 edition the Brothers Grimm lengthen the text by adding information about the relationship between the protagonists, who are now clearly committed to each other. Moreover, as in the previous edition, any reference to Rapunzel’s pregnancy is eliminated: Da verlor Rapunzel ihre Angst, und als er sie fragte ob sie ihn zum Manne nehmen wollte, und sie sah daß er jung und schön war, so dachte sie der wird mich lieber haben als die alte Frau Gothel,“ und sagte ja und legte ihre Hand in seine Hand. […] Sie verabredeten, dass er bis dahin alle

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Abend zu ihr kommen sollte, denn bei Tag kam die Alte. Die Zauberin merkte auch nichts davon, bis einmal Rapunzel anfing und zu ihr sagte: “Sag, sie mir doch, Frau Gothel, wie kommt es nur, sie wird mir viel schwerer heraufzuziehen als der junge Königssohn, der ist in einem Augenblick bei mir”. “Ach du gottloses Kind”, rief die Zauberin, “was muss ich von dir hören, ich dachte, ich hätte dich von aller Welt geschieden, und du hast mich doch betrogen! (Grimm 1857, 68, my italics) [Rapunzel then lost her fear, and when he asked her whether she would have him for her husband, and she saw that he was young and handsome, she thought, he’ll certainly love me better than old Mother Gothel. So she said yes and placed her hand in his. [...] They agreed that until then he would come to her every evening, for the old woman came during the day. Meanwhile, the sorceress did not notice anything, until one day Rapunzel blurted out, “Mother Gothel, how is it that you’re much heavier than the prince? When I pull him up, he’s here in a second”. “Ah, you godless child!” exclaimed the sorceress, “What’s this I hear? I thought I had made sure you had no contact with the outside world, but you’ve deceived me! (Zipes 2003, 44, my italics)]

As can be seen in the selected quotes, the elimination of passages produces a narrative leap that ruptures the temporal perspective and, as a result, the logical development of the action. It is a process of adaptation of the base text to the prevailing acceptable social discourse, characterised by placing constraints on the way in which themes, ideas or problems are dealt with in order to extol certain values or behaviours. We can therefore affirm that the adaptation of themes and content, understood as an ideological rupture or fragmentation from the hypotext, is the determining factor in the transformation of folk tales into fairy tales for children. Something similar to this ideological rupture and canonisation process can also be observed in Walt Disney’s film adaptations. If we contrast the latest adaptation of the tale by Walt Disney, entitled Tangled (USA Nathan Greno and Byron Howard 2011), with the versions written by the Brothers Grimm it becomes apparent that the tale has been completely transformed, with any sexual content and references to the virginity and pregnancy of the protagonist definitively removed. As Gemma Lluch suggests, all cinematographic tales with a folkloric base share certain characteristics, including a rejection of scenes from the hypotext considered not appropriate and a constant use of a moral wrapping up the story. It should be borne in mind that Walt Disney intended not only to offer an entertainment experience, but also to provide moral education after World War II with an idealised image of the American family (1998, 144-147).

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As for “Little Red Riding Hood”, it can be considered the tale whose original version, included in Charles Perrault’s 1697 edition, contains the most explicit sexual content: Le Loup la voyant entrer, lui dit en se cachant dans le lit sous la couverture “Mets la galette et le petit pot de beurre sur la huche, et viens te coucher avec moi.” Le petit Chaperon rouge se déshabille, et va se mettre dans le lit, où elle fut bien étonnée de voir comment sa mère-grand était faite en son déshabillé. (Perrault 2011, 36, my italics) [And upon seeing her enter, the wolf, climbing into the bed under the covers, said: “Put the flat cake and the little pot of butter on the chest and come sleep with me.” Little Red Cap gets undressed and climbs into the bed, where she is shocked to see her grandmother's nakedness.]

As we can see, in the first version by Perrault Little Red Cap sleeps naked in bed with the wolf, which is also naked. In fact, it is the wolf’s nakedness that leads Little Red Cap to suspect that her supposed grandmother is an imposter. Perrault adds a moral to the tale: the warning to young women who trust affable strangers that a hidden wolf lurks within: “Qui ne sait que ces loups doucereux de tous les loups sont les plus dangereux!” (Perrault 2011, 38) [Everybody knows that sweet-looking wolves are the most dangerous!]. In the 1812 text by the Brothers Grimm the complete omission of this content is already apparent: “Drauf ging es zum Bett und zog die Vorhänge zurück: da lag die Groȕmutter und hatte die Haube tief ins Gesicht gesetzt und sah so wunderlich aus” (Grimm 1812/15a, 115) [“Next she went to the bed and drew back the curtains. There lay her grandmother, with her cap pulled down over her face giving her a strange appearance” (Zipes 2003, 95)]. In later editions by the Brothers Grimm the scene unfolds in the same fashion and, contrary to Perrault’s original version, where the wolf symbolises a real-life man who tries to sexually abuse Little Red Cap, in the Grimms’ tales the wolf does not belong to a real, cruel and dangerous world, but to a mythical territory where we witness the eternal fight between the universal concepts of Good—embodied by the grandmother—and Evil—embodied by the wolf. The excerpts from the tales analysed above allow us to identify an ideological rupture from the models present in the base texts, seen in the elimination of references and the manipulation of language, which is rid of all implicit or explicit sexual allusions. This rupture, understood as a process to mythologise motifs and values, is a determining factor fundamental to the process of transition of folk tales into fairy tales. The Grimms’ tales thus acquire a universal value and a didactic, civilising function.

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5. Conclusion To conclude I would like to point out the irreconcilable paradox faced by the Brothers Grimm, who struggled with a dilemma from the very beginning. On the one hand, the Romantic volition and devotion to recovering oral folk traditions and the strong trend of literary Romanticism advocating embellishment of poetic and aesthetic features; on the other hand, the strong pedagogical pressure brought to bear by the bourgeois elite, which aimed to impose its own principles and moral values. The title Haus–und Kindermärchen [Children’s and Household Tales] thus came to represent the mission of the Brothers Grimm. Unlike Carl August Musäus, who in 1787 named his collection Volksmärchen der Deutschen in fünf Bänden [Folk Tales of the Germans, in Five Volumes], the Brothers Grimm universally omitted the adjectives “folk” and “German” from their title, probably aware that many of the texts were not of German origin and did not have folk but rather literary roots. The brothers followed the example set by their similarly named peer, Alfred Ludwig Grimm, who had published a collection of tales in 1808 under the title Kindermährchen, featuring a significantly educational approach that had resulted in success for the publication. We have seen that the different versions of the Grimms’ tales are the result of a canonisation process through the ideological fracture of the hypotext whose consequence is the idealisation and mythification of cultural values and motifs with a didactic and civilising end. In the same way, the adaptation of tales to cultural macrotexts like Walt Disney films can be said to undergo a similar process. If we analyse the evolution of the tales compiled by the Brothers Grimm, this time with consideration given to their various adaptations for the film industry, we see that their adaptation to cultural macrotexts such as Walt Disney films has triggered their standardisation by way of the same mechanism observed with respect to the Brothers Grimm, i.e. adjustment to suit the moral and aesthetic canons of the times. The repeated use of simplified plots, combined with moral reductionism and topped off with the ubiquitous happy ending are constants in cinematic adaptation that have endured over time and have paradoxically proven capable of consolidating this endurance despite continuous implicit plot variations. The civilising and educational function intrinsic to fairy tales for children loses strength in the motion picture, as it produces the disappearance of the figure of the storyteller as the catalyst and interpreter of events. In some cases, we must even hold cinematic animation responsible for the transformation of traditional hypotexts with

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the incorporation of new transtextual references that are also capable of capturing the interest of an adult audience. Despite this, film possesses a two-fold, magical power, since it may be seen to restore the tales to their original orality while at the same time they have the potential of allowing characters to come to life, take the floor and free themselves from the archetypical roles for which they were created. Within this framework, therefore, the motion picture can be considered as a catalyst and potential medium for the emancipatory and creative deconstruction of the traditional fairy tale, although in most adaptations of the tales to cultural macrotexts, like Walt Disney films, no ideological rupture of an emancipatory nature can be observed. This is the case, for example, of Tangled (USA Nathan Greno and Byron Howard 2011), in which Rapunzel is portrayed as an infantilised woman next to a modern Prince Charming.

Works cited Büsching, J. Gustav. 1812. Volkssagen, Märchen und Legenden. Leipzig: Reclam. Derungs, Kurt, ed. 2010. Die Ürsprünglichen Märchen der Brüder Grimm. Grenchen: Amalia Verlag. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. 1977 (1806). Discursos a la nación alemana. Madrid: Editora Nacional. Genette, Gérard. 1989. Palimpsestos: La literatura en segundo grado. Madrid: Taurus. Greno, Nathan and Byron Howard, dir. 2011. Tangled. Burbank, CA: Walt Disney Studios. Grimm, Albert Ludwig. 1809. Kindermährchen. Heidelberg: Mohr und Zimmer. Grimm, Brüder. 1812/15a. Kinder–und Hausmärchen. Vol. 1. Berlin: Realschulbuchhandlung. —. 1812/15b. Kinder–und Hausmärchen. Vol. 2. Berlin: Realschulbuchhandlung. —. 1819. Kinder–und Hausmärchen. Vol. 1. 2nd Edition. Berlin: G. Reimer Verlag. —. 1850. Kinder–und Hausmärchen. Vol. 1. 6th Edition. Leipzig: O. Wigand. —. 1857. Kinder–und Hausmärchen. Vol. 1. 7th Edition. Göttingen: Verlag der Dieterische Buchhandlung. Grimms Märchen. Vollständige Ausgabe. 2009. Köln: Anaconda Verlag.

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Herder, J. Gottfried. 1994. Werke. Vol IV. Schriften zu Philosophie, Literatur, Kunst und Altertum 1784-87. Ed. Jürgen Brummack and Martin Bollacher. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag. Lluch, Gemma. 1998. El lector model en la narrativa per a infants i joves. Barcelona: Aldea Global. Musäus, J. K. August. 1919. Volksmärchen der Deutschen. Jena: Diederichs Verlag. Panzer, Friedrich, ed. 2008 (1913). Die Kinder und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm. St. Goar: Leibniz Verlag. Perrault, Charles. 2011 (1962). Contes de Fées. Märchen. Bilingual Edition. Trans. by Ulrich Friedrich Müller. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. Rölleke, Heinz, ed. 1975. Die Älteste Märchensammlung der Brüder Grimm. Synopse der handschriftlichen Urfassung von 1810 und der Erstdrucke von 1812. Cologny-Genève: Fondation Martin Bodmer. —. ed. 2004. Die Märchen der Brüder Grimm. Eine Einführung. Stuttgart: Reclam. —. ed. 2007. Kinder–und Hausmärchen. Die Handschriftliche Urfassung von 1810. Stuttgart: Reclam. Runge, Philipp Otto. 1984. Von den Fischer und syne Fru. Von dem Mahandel Bohm. Mit einem Nachwort von Siegfried A. Neumann. Rostock: Hinstorff Verlag. Safranski, Rüdiger. 2009. Romanticismo. Una odisea del espíritu alemán. Tusquets: Barcelona. Zipes, Jack. 1991. Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization. New York: Routledge. —. 2003. The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. New York: Bantam Books.

Notes 1 This paper has been translated from Spanish by Patricia Bastida-Rodríguez. Quotes have been preserved in the source language and provided with an English translation. 2 Among them Joseph Görres is found, with his work Die Teutschen Volksbücher (1807) [The Germans’ Popular Books] and another author with the same surname as the Brothers Grimm—Albert Ludwig Grimm, although they did not have any relation. In 1808 he published a collection of children’s tales including “Aschenputtel” [“Cinderella”], “Hans Dudeldee” and “Die Bienenkönigin” [“The Queen Bee”]. These tales appeared later in the first collection by the Brothers Grimm in 1812, Kinder–und Hausmärchen (KHM) [Children’s and Household

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Tales], although the title of “Hans Dudeldee” was changed to “The Fisherman and His Wife”. 3 The collection of folk songs by Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim, entitled Des Knaben Wunderhorn [The Youth's Magic Horn], was published between 1805 and 1808. 4 Just a few months before the Brothers Grimm published their collection of tales, a collection of folk tales, myths and legends was published in Leipzig by the philologist Gustav Büsching (Volkssagen, Märchen und Legenden [Folk-Sagas, Fairy Tales and Legends]), who carried out a meticulous analysis of folk texts and was able to document the differences between these three literary genres. 5 In the second edition of the tales, this attribute no longer appears. 6 By the release of the second edition in 1819, some ideological or content-based changes were already apparent, seen in the elimination of any sort of religious or social criticism in the texts. This can be observed in the different versions (1812, 1819, 1857) of Tale No. 44, “Der Gevatter Tod” [“Godfather Death”]. 7 Over sixty tales, nearly one third of the entire collection, come from literary sources (Rölleke 2007, 40). 8 Der Abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch (Simplicius Simplicissimus) by H. J. Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, published in 1669, is a picaresque novel representative of the German Baroque style. 9 This tale was first published in 1808 by Achim von Arnim in his newspaper Zeitung für Einsiedler (Journal for Hermits). 10 Tale no. 42 is entitled “Rumpenstünzchen” in the 1810 manuscript edition (Rölleke 1975). The definite title, “Rumpelstilzchen” [“Rumpelstiltskin”], appeared in the 1812 edition in relation to Tale No. 55. 11 It appears in Tale No. 29, “Der Teufel mit den drei goldenen Haaren” [“The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs”] in the 1812 edition. 12 In the Prologue to the sixth edition (Grimm 1850), Wilhelm Grimm admits to having continued using these phraseologisms. Furthermore, the 1819 version of “Vom Schneiderlein Daümerling” [“The Gallant Tailor”] contains many popular sayings and expressions that do not appear in the original sources or in the 1810 manuscript version.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN THE CHANGING NARRATIVE SPACES OF SLOVAK TELEVISION SLÁVKA TOMAŠýÍKOVÁ

1. Narrative theory and narrative television discourses Throughout the 1990s narrative became a prominent issue not only in literary but also cultural, social and communication studies. Since television is widely considered as one of the principal story tellers of the 20th century, media studies cannot afford to ignore television’s now characteristically postmodern narrative discourse, typically hovering between the realms of information and entertainment. Indeed, television is essentially narrative and narrative is therefore present in all of its genres, both fictional and non-fictional: films, documentaries, news bulletins, commercials, reality shows, sports programmes... This chapter attempts to demonstrate that television remains among the most influential and decisive audiovisual media and its discourses replace to a large extent what would otherwise be a more direct, “authentic” experience by its audiences. More specifically, the analysis focuses on the shift from the so-called “information” tradition towards the rise and dominance of the “communication” tradition in the construction of Slovak television narratives in the past twenty years, taking into consideration the significant changes that have occurred in Slovak society since 1989. From a post-structuralist perspective, narrative is no longer understood as structure but, crucially, as structuration. Structuration is the process through which the meaning is structured into narrative by both the author and the recipient. Post-structuralist, post-modern media narrative theorists, among others Anne Dunn (2005), Helen Fulton et al. (2005), Marie-Laure Ryan (2004), Joanna Thornborrow and Jennifer Coates (2005), and Terry Threadgold (2005), aim at de-constructing the media narrative and priority is given to the role of the recipient in the process of interpreting meaning.

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Narrative is hence primarily defined as communication that is socially and culturally contextualised. Moreover, narrative fulfils multiple functions in various discourses. It operates as a source of entertainment, as an explanatory device, as may even be seen to carry out informative and instructional functions. It also plays an important role in the processes of identity creation and identity enhancement. The elementary theoretical basis for this research lies in Lyotard’s perception of narrative. For the French philosopher, narrative represents a mode of knowledge and the way the media message is legitimised. It is the narrative that distributes information and knowledge in society and at the same time the narrative largely defines the conditions for such distribution and significantly influences the performance of a given society (Lyotard 1991, 70-4). The discourse of television stands amongst those most visible in the world of the media thanks to its own (already fairly long) history, always in close connection with the latest technological developments. Television has developed its specific genres and narratives in accord with its own nature as a key element in the individual’s domestic sphere, with audiences having at least partial control over selection procedures (switching on, off, and over), reception features (volume control), and prevalence of visual over audio modes. In its earliest period television adopted and modified the already successful genres of radio (soap opera, comedy, quiz) and print journalism (news). In the post-modern period of the 1990s television companies had to fight for their audiences, with even public service televisions having to justify the spending of taxpayers’ money by reaching extensive audiences.

2. The media after the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe The main function of television narrative, to attract large audiences to the screens and to engage them in the process of communication, is related to the ideological, economic and subsequent social changes that have taken place since the end of the 1980s in Central and Eastern Europe. It is indeed possible to identify the influence of such changes on individual factors of television communication processes using the revised model of television communication originally designed by Stuart Hall (1980, 130). In Hall’s encoding and decoding model, the meaning of a message, i.e. of a television programme, is encoded and decoded in an interaction between the text and its producers, on the one hand, and the text and its audiences, on the other. In the 1990s the television processes of encoding

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and decoding, as experienced in Central and Eastern Europe, were dominated by frameworks of knowledge that cannot be but artificially separated from the substantial ideological changes that took place in the region. In the 1980s and throughout the 1990s Marxist concepts in postsocialist and communist societies were replaced by ideas of democracy, human rights and freedom of expression. The political transformation triggered by the fall of the Berlin Wall found its immediate counterparts in the economic and social changes as well as the fall of “media walls” in all post-communist countries. The ensuing political developments had a direct impact on the political and social sphere, including media institutions. The newly-achieved freedom of expression, linked to the democratisation of society, brought not only the first free elections but also the deregulation and privatisation of the media industries. Relations between television production and consumption (Hall 1980) in the region were influenced by such concepts as a free market, free enterprise and the ideology of consumerism. The media, both old and new, soon found out that they were playing a very different role within a new social context. From being the tool of communist propaganda the media began to move towards libertarian concepts, and instead of being controlled and subsidised, they started to be transformed into free, largely subscription—and advertising-dependent, profit-making institutions. Some newspapers disappeared, some saw their circulation crippled, and many new special-interest journals appeared on the print media scene at the beginning of the 1990s in many Central and Eastern European countries. The number of radio and television stations multiplied in the 1990s and new local ownership was very soon replaced by partnerships of local and foreign media companies (numerous owners from Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the United States of America invested in the Czech and Slovak broadcasting market), although ownership would most frequently be eventually transferred to transnational broadcasting. In the past twenty years the transformation resulting from the process of media democratisation has reached different levels in different postcommunist countries. In both Slovakia and the Czech Republic the different media were privatised at a staggering pace from the very beginning and the profit-driven media moguls have since ignored ideas of responsibility, whether cultural, ethical, or aesthetic. Decentralisation, privatisation, and commercialisation were viewed as the only alternative to the former Soviet-controlled, socialist, and communist media. After twenty years both Slovak and Czech newspapers can be said to have so far provided very low-standard journalism and the market lacks renowned,

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serious, independent newspapers and investigative journalists. In both countries, the concept of public service has not fully materialised due to the lack of professionalisation found in news and current affairs services and the continuous focus on low-quality entertainment. Commercial televisions are not properly regulated and their high profit orientation results in tabloid programming only too often. The Russian media market has undergone similarly substantial changes. Its specificity can be defined by the fact that the Russian press is viewed as a mechanism of pure commercial interest whereas television is still perceived as a medium that is elite-oriented in the periods of political and social crisis. Illustrative, oft-quoted examples of this include the role played by television during the failed putsch in August 1991 and its place in the doomed 1994-1996 Chechnya campaign. Overall, both researchers and economists agree that the media markets in all post-communist countries were fully saturated at the end of the 2000s.

3. The transformation of the Slovak television market since 1989 The revolutionary post-1989 political and economic changes brought competition for the very first time to the (then) Czechoslovak television media market. Czech and Slovak television audiences suddenly had access to an enormous amount of previously inexperienced information, enlarging their frameworks of knowledge with new political concepts. Additionally, such audiences also experienced a new social reality, previously available to them only through the broadcasts of American-funded Radio Free Europe and Voice of America. In 1989 both the state-controlled Czechoslovak Radio and Czechoslovak Television were instrumental in the days of the Velvet Revolution. After the first week of crushed demonstrations the period of censorship came to an end, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia lost its leading role in society, and both media provided full coverage of the ensuing meetings, demonstrations and political discussions. Moreover, they started programming previously banned films and documentaries by forbidden authors. Soon afterwards, the state-owned federal bilingual television channel as well as the two separate Czech and Slovak channels were also dramatically transformed (STV 2010a). Denationalisation was the first step in the democratisation, and was then followed by the establishment of the dual principle—the co-existence of both public and private service—in broadcasting. All such processes were accompanied by new media legislation that replaced Parliament acts

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passed in the previous regime, and enhanced by the addition of new, narrowcast, cable and satellite technologies to the already existing technical infrastructure of terrestrial broadcast. There was no substantial alternative to the two state-owned Slovak national terrestrial television channels, namely JEDNOTKA (from 19932004 STV1) and DVOJKA (from 1993-2004 STV2) until August 1996 when a new national commercial channel, MARKÍZA, began broadcasting (Markíza 2012). Very soon, being considerably different from both STV channels in both narrative content and narrative form, the channel became known for its strong commercial orientation, Americanisation and proopposition bias (Tomašþíková 2002). The first commercial satellite television channel, VTV, was launched in April 2005. Covering two fifths of all households in Slovakia, it was originally meant to break the monopoly of STV, but it remained very similar to STV in both its programme structure and political affiliations. Moreover, VTV’s financial problems were solved by credits from the Ministry of Culture and so the life of VTV was rather short (VTV 20042009). The 2000s brought more television channels to the Slovak media market. Since 2001 there also exists a 17-hour-a-day news and documentary service provider: the private news channel TA3. It is available via cable and satellite networks. A new national terrestrial television channel, TV JOJ, started competing with ‘older’ commercial partner MARKÍZA in 2002. Public service Slovak television introduced its third national channel (sports channel) —TROJKA—in 2008 and TV JOJ brought to life its JOJ PLUS channel via cable or satellite that same year. One year later, MARKÍZA came up with a new channel via cable or satellite—DOMA—in 2009. The complex economic situation of STV led to the cancellation of TROJKA in 2009 and to the merger of public service television and radio into RTVS in May 2011 (RTVS 2010a). Moreover, there exists a number of regional, local and smaller town cable companies in different regions (for instance, TV SEVER, DCTV, OTF, VEGA, TV NAŠA) whilst reference must also be made to the numerous Czech and Hungarian channels which are available to Slovak audiences via terrestrial systems being supplemented by the increasingly diverse channel offer via satellite or cable networks (Mediálne.sk 2012). The dominance of the private Slovak commercial channels with an overall combined 50% share (even higher in prime-time) over the stateowned STV/RTVS (with a relatively small share of around 10%) is obvious in statistics of the 1990s as well as the most recent data (RTVS 2010b). The low support and general distrust of the state-owned channels have

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resulted in declining audience interest. One can conclude that the attempt to create successful public service broadcasting has failed. RTVS remains a rather opaque, unprofessional and incompetent institution with constant financial difficulties and a very limited range of home-produced programmes; it does produce news and current affairs but such programmes are not independent and most of the programming falls into the category of light, escapist entertainment. The technological innovations of the 1990s not only affected Slovak television companies and other ‘old media’ but also brought the phenomenon of the Internet and new interactive media to the Slovak media scene (Aktuálne.sk 1999-2011). The extensive transformation of Slovak television broadcasting has been accompanied by the loosening of government regulation, and the expansion of international media conglomerates. The end of the 20th century brought about much stronger market competition among all television companies. Television programmes, whether products of commercial or public service television, became commodities; as such they have to fight for their audiences to make a profit or justify their expenses. During the first decade of the 21st century the commercial imperatives became even more visible, which resulted in immense competition among channels for viewers’ attention, and a strong emphasis on entertainment values. The offerings are almost unlimited and range from films, popular television genres, and entertainment programmes, through a much smaller proportion of educational programmes, to documentaries and news bulletins. It is no longer up to the audiences to search for information, education and entertainment; it is the actual television companies that try to attract audiences to their particular programmes. If at the beginning of the 1990s Slovak television was clearly defined as a dominant information medium, and Slovak television audiences were active in searching for information, by the end of the 1990s television was already firmly established as a mixed information-and-entertainment medium for Slovak media consumers, both a meaningful and pleasurable outlet, and so a carrier of both factual and fictional contents. In other words, by the late 1990s television was no longer a passive medium for the viewer. As the introduction of television polls and interactive programmes suggests, the audiences became firmly actively involved in the television communication process (Mediálne.sk 2012). In the late 2000s, the situation changes again: the search for information is no longer perceived as a need. Television audiences, radio listeners, periodical readers, Internet users are bombarded with an enormous amount of information twenty-four hours a day. Opinion polls,

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surveys and research studies in television audience behaviour find that what audiences want the most is not so much information (and so to be educated) as to be entertained. In order to ensure that they retain their appeal, television companies move on to make information entertaining, seeking the audience’s direct involvement even within this particular audiovisual genre (see Onlineprogram.sk 2012). It might be argued that the present-day state of Slovak broadcasting is primarily defined by the dominance of nation-wide private television channels and the very low position of the public service television. The content and form of broadcasting can be described as hypercommercialised, focusing on marketing strategies, advertising and “popular” programming. The viewers of commercial channels are attracted by unusual approaches to presentation, attractive newscasts, dynamic reporting, as well as directness and informality as some of the main features of televised communication. These are in opposition to the relatively sterile, passive and unimaginative approaches used by the public service television.

4. Slovak television news journalism: Old and new narratives Television news, if compared to print news, is widely—yet wrongly— perceived to be less mediated, more real, less constructed, more focused on information and facts. It is not generally viewed as a source of entertainment and drama by television audiences. The narratives of Slovak television news programmes before 1989 were defined as informative, propagandistic, educational, regulatory and hedonistic. Back then, news journalism was concerned with the depiction of “Reality”, argumentation, the dissemination of the correct ideology, novelty, positiveness, continuity, and by and large could be said to have had an informative and institutional character. The production of news before 1989 was understood as a collective process, focusing on the people, done for the people (Tomašþíková 2010b). Apparently, the change of the political system as well as the character of the social processes after 1989 were immediately reflected in the news production strata. The philosophy, values, goals and principles of western journalism rapidly expanded into the developing mechanism of the Slovak news media journalism, particularly in the cases of the commercial channels. The major technological changes of the 1990s that found their reflection in the amount of news service offered to Slovak audiences subsequently created higher competition, which spurred a rise in the ratio

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of entertainment elements in the primarily non-entertaining genre of television news, and the tendency continued in the 2000s. Unfortunately, the speed of transformations and the profit-making priorities of the media moguls have not resulted in the professionalisation of news services and neither commercial nor public service television has yet developed truly independent investigative journalism. Indeed, the last two decades brought about changes to the form, structure and organisation of the evening bulletins. To one evening news programme called Televízne noviny that used to be simultaneously broadcast on both nationwide STV channels, and one late-night edition of the news programme Ozveny dĖa (later 24 hodín vo svete), special regional news bulletins were added in the 1990s. All new television channels then introduced their own news programmes into their programme structure. The emergence of specialised news and documentary television channel TA3 led to the addition of more news programmes to the programme schedule of most other television channels. Additionally, the availability of teletext and the almost unlimited access to on-line news services have substantially reduced the importance of the main evening news bulletins (STV 2010b). The present spectrum of Slovak television news services serves as proof of the rising number of broadcast news services and their diversification over the last twenty years. At present, four terrestrial television channels broadcast news bulletins several times a day in Slovakia, and the satellite and cable networks offer one news and documentary channel in Slovak, whilst an additional two broadcast in English. The longest news bulletins are scheduled in the late afternoon slots (from 4.00 pm to 6.00 pm) and in the early evening slots (from 7.00 pm to 8.00 pm). This supports the claim about the gradually falling importance of the main evening television news bulletins in the context of the much wider offer of news services provided during the day by terrestrial, satellite and cable networks. Each news programme has to fight for its audience in the very wellsupplied Slovak news media market. Market-driven journalists realise that their goal involves constructing news bulletin narratives in such a way as to attract audiences. To draw the attention of audiences and to keep it throughout the news programme—in other words, to discourage the audiences from switching to another channel—became very much a priority at the end of the 1990s when the news market became saturated and this has been reflected in the choice of both narrative content and narrative form in news programmes. Many news programmes specialise in different “news subgenres” (e.g. celebrity news, crime news, regional

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news from regions of Slovakia or news broadcast in any of the country’s different minority languages, such as Hungarian, Ruthenian, Ukrainian, Roma but also German, Czech and Polish). Some news programmes are very short and provide a “quick news service”. The tendency to have more specific rather than general news bulletins reflects the need to offer something “extra” to the audiences—and to offer it very quickly. One of the visible outcomes of the efforts above is the introduction of an increased amount of dramatic elements into the formerly informationcentred news programme, which results in the “infotainment” character of both narrative content and form of current news productions. Thus, the combined provision of both information and entertainment rules all elements of the Slovak television news programme production process. The news becomes constructed on the borderline between information and entertainment and, as a result, more evidently than ever, between fact and fiction. At the same time, the production of news programmes has to be economically efficient. In order to meet the strict economic requirements, television news producers use services provided by multinational agencies. In the case of foreign news items, the use of services provided by the agencies and the use of the Internet as the cheapest means of communication leads to the increasing uniformity of news narrative contents and to a certain schematisation of the narrative form in which news is produced. On the other hand, the use of state-of-the-art satellite and digital technologies translates into instant mediation and the online presentation of selected events, thus creating the conditions for strong competition among news providers in terms of both actuality and novelty. In order to engage the audiences in the communication process and to keep them watching television news programmes, the narratives are based on two main principles: immediacy and relevance. New technologies have made near-real-time reporting possible, thus enabling audiences to see what is going on at the moment of viewing. In short, events may be observed through television news bulletins almost as they happen. Stuart Allan defines news in a post-modern, global context as news or views from “nowhere”, as an up-to-the-minute narrative (now) taking place on the spot (here) relevant to audiences, labelling the news sources as those reporting news right as they happen from anywhere to wherever the audiences may be (1998, 105). Immediacy, instantaneity, and closeness are mostly achieved by the construction of a specific visual mode and the use of live interviews. In order to attract audiences, television news texts should be easily accessible or “readerly" and, at the same time, they should be “open”

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(term introduced by Umberto Eco in 1966) or “writerly” (term introduced by Roland Barthes in 2004). Both terms, open and writerly, mean that the text is fragmented and carries characteristics of a process into which audiences can be invited. John Fiske states that a text which is both readerly and writerly can attract attention if it is also “producerly”, i.e. if it produces multiple reading possibilities, combines both factual and fictional modes of representation, and creates a collage of fragmented images (1987, 94-105). Among the elements supporting the producerly narrative character of Slovak television news programmes there is evidence of a shift towards the communication tradition in both the narrative content and narrative form of programmes. Slovak television news narratives have become less political and the audiences of both public service and commercial news providers are engaged in the communication process by the appeal of social issues, private sphere elements and human stories while complex political and economic issues are mostly avoided. Entertainment and dramatisation result from the presence of soft news items, the trivialisation and sensationalisation of narrative content and a high proportion of negative (very often disturbing, arguably disgusting) content requiring relevant narrative forms inspired by genres such as high drama and the feature essay. Entertainment, emotions, and negative elements are primarily carried by the visual mode, although the musical mode also enhances the dramatic character of the narrative. The narrative mode becomes less elitist, the perspective of a common person is preferred, and greater attention is paid to the studio décor whilst highly personalised news-reading styles are generally favoured (Tomašþíková 2009a). Narrative forms are characterised by an almost complete absence of not only the principle of relevance but also coherence. A news programme is a collage of events with a high level of fragmentation and a largely serialised narrative which allows for the same event to be reported throughout several programmes. This also results in an increase in the tempo of the programme, and a higher number of visual cuts and sound bites. These lead to the interrupted and fragmentary nature of visuals, which requires the constant attention of audiences (Tomašþíková 2009b). Interactivity (widely blamed for the “death” of the information tradition) also plays a substantial role and can be seen in promotion strategies applied in the form of regular short news-bites broadcast throughout the day; direct invitations from news producers for members of the audience to contribute with their own stories or to provide information about events in their neighbourhood; subtitles running at the bottom of the screen highlighting the most recent events and therefore inviting audiences

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to watch complete items in one of the regular news programmes; or the absent closures of television news programmes that are replaced by invitations for audiences to watch subsequent news programmes to be broadcast later (Tomašþíková 2010a). Interactivity is further strengthened by carefully chosen narrative techniques, which make news stories more attractive. Since the late 1990s a linear technique clearly prevails, which makes it possible for audiences to follow the development of a story step by step. Consequently, the formerly dominant ‘inverted pyramid’ (lead-and-body) required by the information tradition is disappearing slowly. Personalisation often becomes a strong supportive element of the linear narrative technique, and both elements combined have led to the tabloidisation of hard news (Tomašþíková 2010b). Interactivity is also achieved through the conversational character of a spoken mode of narrative construction. As stated elsewhere (Tomašþíková 2010b), this conversational character results from a careful selection of specific linguistic elements, namely predominantly colloquial vocabulary and idioms, the narrative present tense, the direct representation of other participants’ speeches, and even a fairly constant process of “interpellation” that results from the audience being addressed directly by newsreaders and correspondents/reporters alike. All these characteristics are examples of a gradual move away from the information tradition towards the communication tradition in television news discourse.

5. Slovak television entertainment: Old biases and new narratives As stated above, television has gradually become one of the major entertainment providers in Slovakia. After a short period at the end of the 1960s characterised by a relative tolerance towards the works of western authors that were adapted for the small screen by Czecho-Slovak producers (Svetová dráma na obrazovke [World drama on the TV screen] or Svetový román na obrazovke [World novel on the TV screen]), stronger censorship dominated all aspects related to broadcasting until 1989. During the twenty years prior to 1989 most of the programmes aired in the country were produced by the Czecho-Slovak television industry, with Slovak productions representing one third of the total. If any programmes were to be imported, these were restricted to television productions from fellow Eastern bloc countries. The leading role of the Communist Party was reflected in the narrative content and narrative forms. The general ideas of socialism and communism, images of the ideal citizen contributing

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towards the success of the latter, the leadership of the working class... were present in all TV productions, including news programmes, which at that time were essential tools of propaganda (and so ideological manipulation). Discussion programmes, documentaries, educational programmes for children and youth, as well as entertaining genres were scheduled respecting the daily routine of their audiences (Tomašþíková 2005). Discussion programmes were very much used as an extension of the propaganda disseminated through news programmes. Documentaries re/presented the myth of a super-hero successfully building a communist future in a socialist society and covered politically important periods of post-war history. Educational programmes underlined pro-Soviet attitudes by idealising the lifestyles of various social groups. Social(ist) realism visibly dominated the serial format genres, the narrative content of which had to include a hero in everyday situations—a teacher, a shop assistant, the manager of a state-owned company, solving minor problems without difficulties. The narrative forms were uniform and so the space for creativity was very limited. The complete lack of internal competition resulted in programming being a mixture of mediocre artistic production and light entertainment for the general audience. Rather successful, and also of higher artistic quality, series were produced as dramatisations of literary works by Slovak authors. Pre-1989, light-entertainment products brought to the television audiences Vtipnejší vyhráva [The best joke-teller wins], a competition with censored, ideologically unmarked jokes, cabaret shows with short comic sketches, music and other artistic performances, ‘best-singer’ and do-it-yourself competitions, among other similar features. The television production proper was supplemented by the broadcast of theatre performances, folk music and dance shows, classical music concerts and sport competitions (Univerzita Komenského v Bratislave n.d.). The post-1989 period brought about changes not only to television news production (as described above) but also to the educational and entertainment functions of television, as understood by Slovak television companies. STV has generally intended to stand by the principles of public service broadcasting, seeing itself as a national, independent information provider, but also as an educational and cultural institution, and as a modern electronic medium aiming at providing a full and broad reflection of life in a democratic, plural society. It thus aims at providing a service to the state by guaranteeing the right to serious, objective, unbiased information for its citizens, as well as fulfilling the needs and interests of the broadest possible audience (STV 2010c). However, STV has been

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heavily underfunded in this new era and thus unable to produce and broadcast its own quality products. As a result, and in spite of numerous reshuffles, STV has not been able to perform its public service functions. STV’s programme structure is a far cry from its public service ideals. There certainly is room for improvement as far as its journalism standards are concerned (shown in both its news and discussion programmes); it very rarely produces its own documentaries or children- and youthoriented educational programmes, which are almost non-existent; and very much the same could apply to its own entertainment-oriented programmes. This state of affairs was summarised by STV’s new manager in 2008, who stated that his main goal was for STV to move away from the televisionthat-buys-and-broadcasts to the television-that-produces-and-broadcasts model; from the television-taking-care-of-ratings to the television-takingcare-of-its audiences model (STV 2010a). On the other hand, the new commercial television companies have been from the very beginning oriented towards quick profit; consequently, they have focused both their own production as well as their import programmes on popular television genres. These have safely brought the expected numbers of viewers to satisfy the needs of advertisers. Such commercial imperatives, combined with the immense competition for the Slovak viewers’ attention, have strongly emphasised entertainment values and resulted in the fact that in the post-1989 years Slovak audiences have been mostly exposed to either imported television programmes or else domestically-produced programmes with popular formats under licence from foreign production companies. In the 1990s Southern American (mostly Argentinian and Mexican) telenovelas took over substantial morning and afternoon slots on both STV and the commercial channels. They attracted mostly female audiences in all age categories above fifteen with their “exotic” (i.e. un-Slovak) lifestyle narratives. What seems to have attracted the audiences was the chance to empathise with apparently ordinary characters onto which their individual frustrations could be projected, or who could otherwise represent dreamfulfilling stories of success. The insights into their lifestyles, the resulting comparison of different private spheres, as well as the emotionally heavyladen scenes have so far proved able to involve audiences into the narrative, and numerous dramatising elements in both narrative content and narrative forms have resulted in the very high popularity of the genre, the effect of which is still visible today, at least to a certain extent. In the same period imported American and British serials were placed to take the time slots in and around prime time. Unlike British situation comedies, American sitcoms have had their stable prime-time space in the

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programme structures of all Slovak television channels until today. In the early 2000s they had to share the prime-time slots with German crime drama series. To the strong entertainment element of humour in situation comedies the German crime series added the dramatic elements of tension and mystery. The audiences were mostly attracted by their negativity, disturbing visual images, or spectacular car crash scenes. The last five years have seen the decline of foreign comic genres on both STV and the commercial televisions and their space is being taken by an extensive choice of American crime drama and rather successful situation comedy produced in Slovakia (Mediálne.sk 2012). Indeed, the last ten years of both public service STV and commercial television companies have been enriched by domestically-produced Slovak soap opera (although some examples are also imported from the Czech Republic) as well as by various reality shows. Reality television began with licensed formats of competitions, game shows and was later supplemented by docu-soaps, and even reality crime series that have been produced as original series. Most of the game and quiz shows, as well as various other competitions, retain their prime-time slots in weekend evenings, whereas this space is taken by the new reality crime series and docu-soaps on week days. Reality television genres incorporate almost all aspects of the communication tradition. They attract audiences by involving them in the narratives: the audiences can watch what is happening in a Big Brother bathroom, they cross fingers for the participants in quiz shows and answer the questions with them, they cry with children winning or losing in talent shows. The seriality of not only reality genres but also all drama fiction (sitcom, soap opera, crime) makes audiences come back to their television screens again for the continuation of the story—or for a new story altogether.

6. Conclusion Slovak television viewers, like their counterparts in the western world, have become active decoders of meaning, active communicators who may be amused whether they watch television news programmes, popular television genres, a western film, a live broadcast of a parliamentary session or a football match. In post-modern societies, the entertainment factor is present not only in those television genres like sitcom or soap opera (designed to be primarily entertaining) but has also become an inherent part of non-entertainment, non-fiction programmes. By watching them, the audiences enter an imaginary, fantasy world which enables them to escape from their reality and enjoy an extra/ordinary, virtual world. The

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television industry manipulates individual topics, however serious, to become a source of entertainment. Thus, the shift from the information tradition towards the communication tradition observed in the discourse of television news is also visible in other television genres, as this chapter has aimed to show.

Works cited Aktuálne.sk. 2011. Internet na Slovensku má 15 rokov. http://aktualne.centrum.sk/veda-a-technika/clanek.phtml?id=228059 (accessed October 15, 2011). Allan, Stuart. 1998. News from Nowhere: Televisual News Discourse and the Construction of Hegemony. In Approaches to Media Discourse, ed. Allan Bell and Peter Garrett, 105-141. Oxford and Malden: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Barthes, Roland. 2004. Mytologie. Prague: DokoĜán. Dunn, Anne. 2005. Television News as Narrative. In Narrative and Media, ed. Helen Fulton, Rosemary Huisman, Julian Murphet and Anne Dunn, 140-152. Melbourne and New York: Cambridge University Press. Eco, Umberto. 1966. The Narrative Structure in Fleming. In Popular Culture: Past and Present, ed. Bernard Waites, Tony Bennett and Graham Martin, 242-262. London and New York: Routledge; The Open University Press. Fiske, John. 1987. Television Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Fulton, Helen, Rosemary Huisman, Julian Murphet, and Anne Dunn, eds. 2005. Narrative and Media. Melbourne and New York: Cambridge University Press. Hall, Stuart. 1980. Encoding/Decoding. In Culture, Media, Language, ed. Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe and Paul Willis, 128-138. London: Routledge; CCCS, University of Birmingham. Lyotard, Jean-François. 1991. Postmoderná situácia. Kapitoly 8-10. In Za zrkadlom moderny, ed. Egon Gál and Miroslav Marcelli, 70-91. Bratislava: Archa. Markíza. 2012. Všeobecne o Markíze. http://www.markiza.sk/o-nas/otelevizii (accessed April 19, 2012). Mediálne.sk. 2012. Televízia. http://medialne.etrend.sk/televizia.html (accessed May 27, 2012). Onlineprogram.sk. 2012. TV program s filmovou databázou. http://www.onlineprogram.sk (accessed March 2, 2012). RTVS [Rozhlas a televízia Slovenska]. 2012a. História STV.

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http://www.web.rtvs.sk/sk/o_rtvs/historia-historia_televizie (accessed March 7, 2012). —. 2012b. Aktuálne. http://www.web.rtvs.sk/sk/info/aktualne (accessed March 9, 2012). Ryan, Marie-Laure, ed. 2004. Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. STV [Slovenská televízia]. 2010a. O nás. História. http://www.stv.sk/stv/o-stv/historia/ (accessed October 4, 2010). —. 2010b. Redakcia spravodajstva a publicistiky. História spravodajstva. http://www.stv.sk/spravodajstvo/redakcia/historia-spravodajstva-stv/ (accessed October 6, 2010). —. 2010c. Zákon NR SR þ. 16/2004 Zb. o Slovenskej televízii. http://www.stv.sk/stv/o-stv/zakony-a-dokumenty/ (accessed October 6, 2010). Thornborrow, Joanna and Jennifer Coates, ed. 2005. The Sociolinguistics of Narrative. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Threadgold, Terry. 2005. Performing Theories of Narrative: Theorising Narrative Performance. In The Sociolinguistics of Narrative, ed. Joanna Thornborrow and Jennifer Coates, 261-278. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Tomašþíková, Slávka. 2002. Masmédiá a slovenská spoloþnosĢ. In O interpretácii masmediálneho textu. Zborník štúdií riešiteĐov grantu KEGA þ. 153/2001. Acta Facultatis Philosophicae Universitatis Prešoviensis, ed. Juraj Rusnák, 135-159. Prešov: Filozofická fakulta Prešovskej University. —. 2005. Masmédiá–mobilita ich výrazu a významu. In Významové a výrazové premeny v umení 20. storoþia. Acta Facultatis Philosophicae Universitatis Prešoviensis, ed. Viera Žemberová, 323-330. Prešov: Filozofická fakulta Prešovskej University. —. 2009a. Narrative as an Element Crossing Boundaries between Information and Entertainment within Television News Discourse. In Culture Language and Literature across Border Regions: Proceedings of the International Conference, Košice 28-29 April 2008, ed. Pavel Štekauer, Slávka Tomašþíková and Wladislaw W. Witalisz, 185-196. Krosno: PWSZ. —. 2009b. The Construction of Narrative Identities in Media Discourses. In Constructions of Identity (V), ed. Rares Moldovan and Petronia Petrar, 351-367. Cluj-Napoca: Editura Napoca-Star.

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—. 2010a. Media Narrative and Semiotics. In Suþasni doslidžennja z inozemnoi filologii: zbirnik naukovich prac, 8, ed. Myroslava Fabian, 515-519. Užgorod: Timpani. —. 2010b. On Narrative Construction of Television News. Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov, 3(52): 259-270. VTV. 2010. História. http://www.vtv.sk/historia.htm (accessed October 4, 2010).

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN FROM ELITE CULTURE TO CULTURE FOR THE “NEW” PEOPLE: THE RECONSTRUCTION OF ROMANIAN IDENTITY THROUGH THE CULTURAL PRESS (1948-1964)1 ANDRADA FĂTU-TUTOVEANU

1. Introduction Under the slogan “for the people, about the people, by the people”, the Romanian context is an interesting case in point when it comes to approaching popular cultures from the perspective of local identities— especially those considered minor or marginal, such as Eastern European countries, both in relation to communism and post-communism. The late 1940s and 1950s were quite possibly the most significant period in Romania in terms of both the identity crisis and cultural shift the country underwent due to the process of Sovietisation, alternatively read as cultural colonisation (see Fătu-Tutoveanu 2012, 77-93). Indeed, Romanian culture suffered a process of distortion or identity deconstruction followed by reconstruction in terms of Soviet mimicry based on “a canon that depend[ed] on discursive criteria established in the metropolitan centre” (Mignolo 1993, 125). Subjected to stereotypically optimistic propaganda encouraging the population to contribute to the process of building a Communist Paradise, Romanian culture was actually disfigured during the late 1940s and early 1950s, becoming unrecognisable if compared to its interwar characteristics and the tendencies shown prior to the instalment of communism. Romanian culture—always a crossroads or border culture between Western and Eastern influences—was then forced, under extreme political pressure, to accept a radical shift towards the Soviet cultural canon. Consequently, during the late 1940s, Romanian

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“High” culture, predominant until then, can be referred to as a “captive” and a beheaded one, since the elites were either eliminated (see Toma 2004, 325-335) or forced to adjust to the official discourse: The Stalinist blueprint for Eastern Europe was based on a unique strategy of transforming national political cultures into carbon copies of the USSR. The leaders of the local communist parties and the growing administrative and secret police apparatuses enthusiastically implemented this blueprint, transplanting and even enhancing the characteristics of the Soviet type of totalitarian system. (Connelly 1999, 107)

In intimate connection with the above-mentioned strategy, and in tune with the political and social changes, the media turned into an essential instrument to implement the cultural policies imposed by the regime; simultaneously, the media became the mirror of such transformations, which were to convince the readers, already significant in number, of the legitimacy of such measures and the regime itself (Fătu-Tutoveanu 2011, 78-87). While the (cultural) press may usually be quite safely regarded as the most faithful reflection of the evolution of trends and ideas— animating, for instance, the literary or artistic environments—, within the totalitarian context it actually shows the directions and effects of propaganda. Thus, the complex mechanisms through which the official discourse was implemented are most visible in the cultural periodicals of the time, such as articles, prose and poetry sections, criticism, inquiries among artists or transcriptions of their meetings, to mention but a few. The Soviet cultural “canon” provided that culture should no longer be elitist or bourgeois, but become popular or, explicitly, mass culture. Although in post-war Western contexts popular culture has been accepted as essential due to the (re)production, massification and commodification of cultural products, in the case of satellite countries in the Soviet bloc, as is the case of Romania, the situation was radically different. It was an aggressive, artificial, politically-controlled process that involved the levelling of all tendencies and originality towards the model of “Soviet cultural homogeneity and monotony” (Rolf 2009, 601). The process meant eliminating, transforming, re-educating or replacing the prominent voices through a complex punishment-and-reward mechanism. Elimination meant purging people but also periodicals and books that were already published—through the purge of libraries, both personal and public—or were entering the publishing process. It rapidly led to a closed, tightly controlled system, based on fixed and rigid ideological (and even physical and psychological) boundaries:

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Sovietising culture was a work in progress, and various experts of cultural production had an influential voice when it came to defining an adequate “Soviet style”. Participants sometimes “worked towards the leader” by acting in ways they imagined to be expected by the political centre. (Rolf 2009, 603)

The creation or, in some cases, radical transformation of key institutions was an essential process towards achieving total control of all cultural production. Thus, in June 1948, the Romanian Academy became the Academy of the Popular Republic of Romania. In the following year, the Writers’ Union was created and would amass substantial power and centralise important resources, such as library funds, publishing houses and magazines. In January 1949 other radical interventions took place based on the decision of the Romanian Workers’ Party (RWP) to focus on the “stimulation of scientific, literary and artistic activities” (Selejan 2007, 171; Ionescu-Gură 2005).2 A more urgent matter having been solved—“the conquering and the stabilising of the power of the State” (Selejan 2007, 16)—some actions were initiated in 1948 and 1949 as part of the process of literature appropriation by politics. Decrees aiming at “stimulating scientific, literary and artistic activities” were issued, such as the decree issued on 14 January 1949, for book editing and distribution, considered an instrument for “stimulating literary creation”. As stated elsewhere (Fătu-Tutoveanu 2012, 87), this decree mirrored the cultural policies that typically resulted from cultural sovietisation, including the nationalisation and centralisation of publishing houses and all printing, control over copyright issues and all cultural publications and reproductions, etc. In 1948-1949 the official press organs revealed the complex measures adopted by the regime in order to subordinate literature and the arts.

2. Explaining the concepts The concept of “minor culture”, as employed in the current study, applies to two functional levels. First, in a more general perspective— influenced by post-colonial studies—the concept may be used to refer to the relationships between a particular national culture and those aligned with the dominant or hegemonic discourses. Historical and linguistic factors are also involved and the case of Romania—a small nation, always at the border of great empires—is no exception. In this respect, Lucian Boia spoke of symbolic borders as both real and equally “fictional” limits (2008, 61), using the concept of “geographical predestination” (2008, 50) to explain the case of Romania in relation to the status of a constant

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marginal or peripheral nation. While acknowledging that the discourse of identity and otherness is always relative to the speaker— “problema-cheie este pînă la urmă cine vorbeúte despre cine: unde se situează pe axa centru-periferie cel care Ġine discursul úi unde se află cel care formează obiectul acestui discurs” (2008, 54) [the key-issue is, after all, who speaks of whom: where the speaker is placed on the axis centre-periphery and where on this axis is the object of the discourse]—, Boia retrieves the discursive, historical and “geographical predestination” of Romania for a peripheral condition, in relation to Ancient Greece, Rome, the Byzantine Empire, the Otoman Empire, the Habsburg and Russian Empires, and more recently, to the European Union (2008, 54-61). Notwithstanding the above, “minor” can also be interpreted in the light of the specific historical context in the late 1940s-1950s and particularly the context of the 1950s totalitarian regime: Romanian culture was minorised not only as a national culture, but also in its relation to power, having been turned into an instrument. In this sense, culture is in the service of proletarians and, more specifically, in the service of propaganda. “High” culture was minorised in a process that sacrificed originality and aesthetic values to the function it performed within the system. As Adrian Marino (1996, 126) argues, the relation between politics and literature is neither uniform nor universal, as it is context-dependent. Moreover, in a totalitarian state such as communist Romania this dependence is extreme, as censorship and propaganda appropriate literature, both in terms of form and message, turning it into an educational and manipulating instrument towards the “captive” mass audiences. The appropriation of culture by politics was aggressively performed, leaving no room for questioning its relation to power, as the following quotation reflects: [S]uprimarea libertăĠii comunicaĠiilor úi a deplasărilor, cenzură sălbatică, dogme, normative, dirijism birocratic, limbă de lemn, lozinci goale, eroi pretins ‘pozitivi’, propagandă, aúa-zisul ‘spirit partinic în literatură’. […] mai înseamnă suprema oroare pentru orice scriitor care concepe úi scrie liber úi independent, în demnitate: transformarea sa în funcĠionar literar úi în instrument docil de propagandă. […] A fost constrâns—mai ales la cei ce păstrau încă un reflex de independenĠă—la duplicitate úi ipocrizie, la oportunism úi cinism. (Marino 1996, 18-19) [[S]uppression of the freedom of communication and travelling, wild censorship, dogmas, normative documents, bureaucratic domination, wooden language, empty slogans […], propaganda, […] the supreme horror for any writer who conceives and writes freely and independently: his transformation in a literary clerk and an obedient instrument of propaganda. He was thrown a few financial privileges. […] He was

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forced—especially those maintaining a reflex of independence—to duplicity and hypocrisy, opportunism and cynicism.]

The transformation of the writer into an obedient clerk is part of a larger process focused on the deconstruction and then reconstruction of identity using Soviet blueprints. Therefore, the Eastern European countries adopted the Soviet model on identity construction policies defining the manner in which identity patterns were promoted through the available media: the regime was creating individual and group patterns. This involved a set of complex, politically-controlled social matrices, materialised in different codes and representations and intended to deconstruct, reconfigure or reshape individual and group identities. This artificial de- and reconstruction of identities took place at several levels, involving social, gender, professional and individual identity. These new identity patterns promoted a specific “orthodoxy” manifested in a set of stereotypical features defining the “new” man, the “new” woman, but also the “new” writer or worker. Speaking of the process as it took place during the Sovietisation of Romania, Morar-Vulcu (2007) argues that identity is constructed, referring to an artificial, imposed construction. He means that the monolithic official discourse imposes (through media) a series of Soviet-modelled identity matrices and typologies. Paraphrasing Benedict Anderson, Morar-Vulcu argues that in this system not only the nation but all types of identity (collective, individual, cultural or political) are “imagined” through the discourse (2007, 99-100) and therefore artificial. Within culture, this reshaping or construction of an artificial group or individual identity meant institutionalising artists, who were, as mentioned earlier, transformed into paid “clerks”, grouped into institutions on which they were fully dependent, both financially and socially. The cultural periodicals reveal the recurrent plans that were required from them, as they had to engage themselves in producing a certain number of works every year and then, if possible, produce more. Institutional power manifested itself in official normative papers and the duty to attend meetings, while discussions on culture often placed emphasis on “production” and paid work (loans, salaries, awards and high royalties and any kind of privilege for the “faithful”). When problems existed, the institutional hierarchy placed the writers in the position of asking for support from the communist leaders. The following transcript of a dialogue between a president of the Writers’ Union and the chief of the state shows the required artificial, repetitive and stereotyped “wooden language” (Thom, 2005):

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Chapter Seventeen Tov. George Macovescu: ‘Activitatea noastră se desfăúoară conform indicaĠiilor pe care dumneavoastră ni le-aĠi dat. În repetate rânduri dumneavoastră ne-aĠi spus că sarcina noastră principală este de a produce cartea. ProducĠia noastră, a scriitorilor, tovarăúe secretar general, este cartea, cartea pe care o producem, cartea care ajunge în mâinile cititorilor noútri. Vă putem raporta că planul acestui an se ridică la 2.600 de titluri de literatură care vor fi tipărite […] Trebuie să precizăm că numărul este bun úi putem afirma că Ġinem pasul cu producĠia material, conform planului de stat care există în Ġară’. (Macrea-Toma 2009, 147) [Comrade George Macovescu: ‘Our activity is being performed according to the indications you gave us. You told us repeatedly that our main task is to produce the book. Our production, the writers’ production, comrade general secretary, is the book, the book we produce, the book that reaches the hands of our readers. We can report that this year’s plan rises to 2,600 literary titles to be published. […] We have to add that the number is good and we can state that we keep up with the material production, according to the state plan in our country’.]

If the regime was using the media to promote its identity construction policies in order to create the “new” man, within culture it was definitely “fabricating writers” (Macrea-Toma 2004, 136).

3. The “Paper Curtain” Le fameux rideau de fer […] n’était donc qu’un simple rideau de papier (Spiridon 2004, 20) [The famous iron curtain […] was therefore no more than a simple paper curtain]

Sorin Toma, senior editor between 1947 and 1960 of the official newspaper of the Party, Scânteia, admitted that the newspaper had been designed to justify the policies promoted by the unique Party and shape public convictions and behaviours in accordance with the official ideology (2004, 310), following thus the same pattern as the Soviet propaganda and official newspapers (and mainly Pravda). The decade between 1948 and 1958 meant even more: this was the time when Soviet troops were present in Romanian territory; thus, the Sovietisation of culture was performed under military pressure. Despite the heavily promoted “voluntary” (or self) Sovietisation (Connelly, 1999), many authors, among them Malte Rolf (2009), do not agree that this process was accepted voluntarily or enthusiastically. The leaders in Bucharest formed a puppet regime ruled by Moscow and all “directions” relating to culture, the economy, etc. were decided there, leaving little in terms of decision making to the local leaders.

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However, the latter had similar ideas to the Soviets when culture was concerned. Dej (the General Secretary of the Party) himself and the rest of the local leaders had been communist workers, politically trained by Moscow and with little education, so they were interested in culture and cultural periodicals only as instruments of political propaganda. The ideological “orthodoxy” (Fitzpatrick 1992, 238-250) of the message had to be the same, irrespective of the instrument (be it an official newspaper or a literary work) and the political leaders never missed the chance to correct all possible “heresies” in cultural products, even if this meant showing writers how to write or correcting the thought of influential scholars. This decade, especially its early years, is therefore very interesting as Soviet control was then at its peak. The appropriation of cultural products, institutions and cultural actors was extremely significant for the communist regime in Romania since, although power had been conquered, it now had to be legitimised. If persuasion and propaganda are generally used to reach power, the usual stages were reversed in Romania: politically-controlled cultural periodicals, and all cultural products, were used after the establishment of the communist regime and “served not the ascension to power, but its consolidation and legitimacy” (Osman 2004, 48). As it had very little public support at its instalment, the communist regime needed media (cultural periodicals such as Flacăra or Contemporanul among them, considered to be more attractive to their readers due to the emphasis laid on the visual component) in order to persuade people about the benefits of a new political order which was already a fait accompli. Another function of media was to impose new values and standards in order to reshape the opinions and convictions of the audiences by “controlling the truth”. Official information was carefully controlled and filtered before reaching the masses (millions of copies of periodicals were distributed and almost imposed on the people—as is the case of the official newspaper Scânteia): “Puterea creeazã úi distribuie o entitate bastardã, amestec […] de real úi iluzoriu, de spus úi presupus–acest produs hibrid este informaĠia oficialã” (Coman 2007, 134) [By monopolising information, Power creates and distributes a bastard entity, a mixture of partial truths and credible lies, of reality and illusion, said and presumed—this hybrid product is official information]. Through the press, the communist regime applied a complex persuasion and control system in order for the propaganda message to have the necessary impact on the readers’ minds and emotions, wishes and acts. As put by Lasswell, “Propaganda […] is the technique of influencing human action by the manipulation of representations” (1995, 13). The purpose was to make them react as

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expected, ensuring they remained passive in some aspects while “mobilising” them in others: “the propagandist’s task is to intensify attitudes favourable to his purposes, to reverse obstructive attitudes, to win the indifferent or at least to prevent them from becoming antagonistic” (Lasswell 1995, 18).

4. S(t)imulated debates The overwhelming control of all intellectual activities and cultural products was, however, paradoxically treated by propaganda, as far as the cultural press reveals it. Intellectuals, Katherine Verdery argues, were considered both necessary and dangerous, because of their abilities to influence social values, but also because the political perspective on their cultural role was different from the official one (1994, 64). Verdery adds that the talents of the intellectuals were also essential for the legitimisation of the regime, which required the monopoly of the cultural means of production and, most especially, the very language, which had to be duly transformed into an “authorised” version, with ideological effects (1994, 65-67). Although any real debates and controversies were hushed down, and so diversity of ideas simply was not allowed to exist but systematically and effectively replaced with monotonous thought (generally expressed with wooden language, simulating cultural “effervescence”), debates and intellectual verve was a favourite activity of the cultural periodicals of the time: many (artificial, content-less) gatherings, conferences and debates were organised within the abovementioned institutional environment. Farce was therefore not an exception but the rule in cultural meetings: everything from roles to attitudes (enthusiasm, zeal, hatred, etc.) was to be simulated. These role-plays were very much based on a collective or organised lie (or “living within a lie”, as Vaclav Havel et al. (1985) put it), (both politically- and socially-based) convention and compromise. Ana Selejan (2007, 465) quotes for instance an article published in Contemporanul in 1951 by V. Nicorovici, mentioning the debates that had taken place that same year and, most significantly, the phrases used (i.e. “opinion opposition”, “combative spirit”, “animating the working sessions” and so on), which attempted to suggest effervescence and participation, quite ironically when confronted to the transcripts of the wooden language monotonous discussions. As suggested above, the press revealed an obsession for its “lively participation in discussions” (Selejan 1998, 8), which was the opposite of the actual immobility, monotony, fear and artificiality of the cultural manifestations and practices of the time. Paradoxically, even those

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measures taken to encourage and make such meetings and cultural activities more “dynamic” (or at least appear to be so) were artificial and bureaucratic; for instance, institutions were placed in charge of “stimulating the activity of creation”, as well as the debates and controversies. The topics were conventional and the debates had to follow the predictable lines and apply the same monolithic language. The meetings usually had an administrative purpose: to “plan” work or to give instructions. Occasionally, however, the farce had hidden purposes: the meeting, disguised as a working session, was actually meant to punish, find a scapegoat for a certain problem, or offer “examples”—see Jar’s case below (Toma 2004, 203-206). In addition to “exemplary” meetings, authors were also sanctioned in articles which, although written by critics or journalists, were commanded by political leaders. Thus, for example Sorin Toma confessed in his postcommunist memoirs that he received the task to write an important (yet literary) article directly from Iosif Chiúinevschi and not through Leonte Răutu, who usually mediated the communication between the Party and the newspaper Scânteia. Moreover, he was told that this direct communication was due to the fact that the initiative of this article belonged to the Party leadership and more precisely to the General Secretary himself (Toma 2004, 331). The instrumentalisation of the cultural press is thus most visible in such exemplary meetings or critical articles published by the controlled periodicals. Not only the meetings, but the whole series of inquiries and interviews published by the cultural periodicals of the time transmit the same artificial “enthusiasm” s(t)imulated by propaganda: writers always fully “engage” to write more and “better”, in terms of ideological faithfulness or “orthodoxy”. They make conventional statements of “adhesion to the cause”, always expressed in the ideological wooden language which had invaded public communication and particularly press. Consequently, “reality” and “fiction” were no longer easily distinguishable: reality, explicitly the most important thing culture had to focus on, was actually fictionalised in this convention. Moreover, in this role play, parts were reversed and the discourse of propaganda was very much a substitute for reality, while both writers and readers had to at least pretend they accepted the simulacrum (Osman 2004, 49). Beneath the conventional optimism and “engagement” in the cause, cultural periodicals and the cultural products they promoted were disfigured, forced to squeeze and develop within an artificial matrix, subjected to military discipline: no wonder, then, that the formula of the Soviet “regimenting of intellectual life and culture” (Tismӽneanu 2003, 109) should be widely used when approaching Romanian culture, during

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its grey, uniform and obedient years, later referred to by writers as the “obsessive decade”.

5. Correctional measures and resistance If the history of Romanian communism reveals the existence of certain periods characterised by relative—yet controlled—freedom, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, any sign of disobedience was punished in an exemplary form, as shown above. Alexandru Jar’s case of public discrediting is one of the most symptomatic ones: a writer with a communist background who had dared to ask for some independence for writers. Sorin Toma’s testimony on this public symbolic execution is that it had been carefully planned and organised so as to set an example and warning to the other writers (2004, 206). Thus, rather than establishing directions and censoring “unfaithful” works, the regime was actually “punishing” (or threatening to do so with) those who dared to oppose them: Mai întâi sunt acuzaĠi de colaboraĠionism o serie de scriitori, apoi de rătăciri ideologice úi de pactizare cu fascismul german, ceea ce creează panică úi derută în rândul scriitorilor, care de teama represaliilor se înregimentează masiv în rândurile PCR sau răspund unor comenzi politice imediate, scriind cu frenezie despre traduceri din literatura sovietică. […] În librării, edituri úi biblioteci epurarea cărĠii vechi este radicală. […] Numeroase biblioteci particulare sau publice sunt arse, zeci úi mii de cărĠi sunt aruncate la gunoi, transportate în pivniĠe úi beciuri întunecoase, unora dintre cele mai importante arhive li se dau foc. (Popa 2001) [First, some writers were accused of collaboration [with the enemy], then of ideological errors and pacts with the German fascist, which created panic and confusion among writers, who feared massive retaliation and as a consequence entered the Communist Party or responded to immediate political orders, writing frantically about translations of Soviet literature. [...] In bookshops, publishing houses and libraries the purge of older books was radical. [...] Many private or public libraries were burned, tens of thousands of books were thrown away, transported to dark basements and cellars, some of the most important archives were set on fire.]

As already mentioned, the former cultural elites, who had had proWestern ideas and education, were eliminated and dismissed from universities and institutes, sometimes even sent to labour camps. Consequently, they had to remain silent, had no “signature right” or else had to learn to speak the “new” language. It is therefore interesting to see if “resistance” as such existed and, if so, how it functioned and which were

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the correctional measures associated to it. In Adrian Marino’s words (1996) “resistance” characterised care au refuzat, direct sau indirect, tacit sau declarat, să scrie în favoarea regimului totalitar comunist. Care s-au opus, într-o formă sau alta, transformării literaturii în instrument de propagandă. Care au protestat úi rezistat, într-o măsură sau alta, indicaĠiilor, normativelor,cenzurii, dispoziĠiilor administrative úi legale. (Marino 1996, 21) [those who refused, directly or indirectly, silently or openly, to write in favour of the communist totalitarian regime; those who opposed in one way or another the transformation of literature into a propaganda instrument; those who protested against, and more or less resisted, the directives, normative documents, censorship, legal and administrative decisions.]

These legal measures meant that the ideological pressure (the socialist realism monopoly) had administrative, legal and even repressive equal correspondents, all organised in a complex bureaucratic system (Toma 2004, 335). Marino studies resistance under two main categories: passive and active resistance. In the first category, the author placed, first, the silent, passive, spontaneous resistance expressed by the refusal to write; secondly, he speaks of an assumed, conscious refusal to contribute to commissioned festive articles and similar pieces of writing. In the second category of active resistance he places, first, political-literary and political resistance through literature—the explicit refusal to sign, collaborate or to become a cheater—and, secondly, the most serious one: publishing clandestine works, sending books and papers abroad, collaborating with Radio Free Europe and adding political subtexts among others (Marino 1996, 21-27). A few very important writers of the time, however, were allowed to write outside the ideological “pattern”, due to a combination of prestige and political faithfulness. This phenomenon could be referred to as negotiation of boundaries or canons: in exchange for this partial freedom of writing these important authors used to “offer” numerous articles or literary works, very faithful to the official ideology. Sometimes these contributions were very significant, both in dimensions and political involvement, such as Petru Dumitriu’s extensive novel on the DanubeBlack Sea canal, Drum fără pulbere [Road without Dust], which was presented as a great socialist work, while the building site that serves as setting for the work was in fact a labour camp, mostly for political prisoners. Their conscious negotiation made it possible for some valuable works to appear in the 1950s, but the authors were later marked by this

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compromise. As Nistor argues, few books survived in terms of aesthetic value and even fewer as morally uncorrupted (2009, 156). Transcripts of meetings or other documents made accessible after 1989 placed great interwar personalities in a very dramatic light in relation to compromise. The manner in which the writers had to obey, and bow to political directions, listening to and obeying instructions issued by political leaders despite the latter’s lack of education, is visible in transcripts such as that of a dialogue recorded in an official meeting at the beginning of 1960 between a Romanian Academy member and important interwar prose writer (G. Călinescu) and the general secretary of the Party, Gh. Gheorghiu-Dej. The writer visited the political leader in relation to his book, blocked by censorship, but had to behave as a “yes-man” to Dej’s speech on the Party’s involvement in establishing a “right direction” for the writers to follow. Sorin Toma mentions Dej saying that he had read and annotated a part of the aforementioned book in order to emphasise what was ideologically incorrect or unacceptable (in his words, “wrong”). Most significantly, the General Secretary of the Party proved inflexible towards any unorthodox directions in literature (stating that the Party makes no compromises when the Party spirit is concerned) and with writers attempting to avoid the main ideological direction, shown by the political leaders (Toma 2004, 209). The Academy member and influential writer was advised on the “right” way to approach literature and this behaviour, simulating protection, is highly representative of the relation between politicians and cultural producers of the time.

6. The “right” way This “right” cultural way involved some pre-established rules deeply connected to the political context of the time (and extremely powerful during the Sovietisation process). Therefore, what was only left to discuss when criticising a work of art was the “degree” in which the rule was obeyed; in fact, specialised critics were replaced by groups of proletarian readers, considered more legitimate as they “spoke for the masses”. If not perfectly conforming to the official ideology (as was usually the case), the purpose of all debates and meetings was to “correct” the work (see Toma 2004, 208-210), which in the case of literature led to revisions and new editions. During the first decade of the communist regime, artists, however privileged, were treated with simulated superiority and tolerance by the proletarians, as culture was “in the service of workers”. The simulated educational influence of proletarians over writers was extensively present in cultural periodicals, mirroring “reality”. The conclusions of such

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meetings were that the works could be improved and made to sound “right”. This meant full acceptance from the writer of the workers’ criticism. Thus, an example quoted by Selejan is that of Davidoglu confessing that, following such an educative meeting within a factory in which he was criticised for the death of a character, he conformed and changed the plot of his book (Selejan 2007, 100). The rules of what, to use Fitzpatrick’s terminology (1992, 238-250), could be referred to as “orthodox” literature required that this should be simple and accessible, as clearly stated by Selejan (2007, 100): “write so we can understand”. However stereotypical and monotonous, literature was presented as showing—and not just imitating—reality. Fiction was explicitly considered heresy, as fantasy was considered part of the residues of the “old” literature and a form of covering and concealing the “truth”, while both culture and society were in fact kept captive within a universe of conventions and simulacra. As a consequence, topics had to be taken from proletarian realities: attention was paid to covering the topic in quantity and faithfulness to the ideology whilst aesthetic value played no relevant role. The cultural press was very much interested in the extent to which such “real life” subjects were covered: “Progrese inseminate se pot observa—scrie Eugen Luca—mai ales în nuvelistica oglindind viaĠa uzinelor úi fabricilor” (Selejan 2007, 201) [An important progress can be noticed—Eugen Luca wrote—especially in the short stories reflecting life within plants and factories], while the novelist Petru Dumitriu wrote a series of articles on the topic of building sites. Self-criticism was always appreciated even when ideological “victories” were acknowledged. The stereotypical discourse had to leave room for improvement (usually involving new editions of the same volumes) and progress, particularly in terms of revealing an improved political education and therefore a religious-like “knowledge of truth” (Selejan 2007, 466). Besides imposing proletarian subjects on artists, other absurd situations required intellectuals to support political measures and become interested in them, such as the example of poets writing on the benefits of kolkhoz (Soviet-modelled collective farming) policies, as part of a campaign to promote the elimination of the “differences between intellectual and physical work”. Paradoxically, as conventional and devoid of content as they were, cultural products—and literary works in particular—were prolific enough during communism in terms of quantity. In fact, after inquiring about the number of published books in a certain year, Ceauúescu commented that literature was very productive (Macrea-Toma 2009, 147). Although Ceauúescu’s allusion refers to a period outside the scope of the current

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study, it is equally applicable to the 1950s—a period which, although heralded as most aggressive and restrictive in terms of ideological control, reveals a rich cultural production in terms of quantity. Being offered privileges—referred to as “priviligentsia” by Sorin Antohi (2005) and Macrea-Toma (2009)—or simply having no other choice—punishment has already been mentioned here—, especially writers, but also other cultural producers, followed “directions” as closely as possible and produced a significant number of works, even if very few of these were valuable and ultimately survived. For the category interested in gaining privileges and occupying a position within the state institutions or organisations, especially in the Writers’ Union, compromise actually meant a transfer of power: they could thus exert influence over some aspects of publication and make decisions in this respect, influence the content of school textbooks and decide upon literary awards (Verdery, 1995, 194).

7. Conclusions This mapping of the cultural press between the late 1940s and early 1950s leads us to conclude that the few existing periodicals—the most significant of which were Flacăra and Contemporanul—reveal monotonous content and repetitiveness, expressed in stereotypical language and visual representation clichés. As a result of Sovietisation, cultural periodicals did no longer “record live” cultural phenomena but adopted an artificial, conventional code that was applied with no exception. Consequently, originality and aesthetic values were sacrificed to political, ideological principles, all of these being extra-cultural factors and influences. Thus seen, culture was held captive between very well organised borders, merely an instrument for “the education of the new man”, deconstructing in fact and then reshaping his identity. Restrictions were extended on every level of culture, from organising and censoring writing and publishing to restricting access to reading. The latter was performed through the limitation of people and book circulation and the “purging” of libraries, with special funds created for those considered to be “dangerous” books. These were controlled through a centralised censorship and publishing system, together with a whole lot of institutions which, in order to group and control all intellectual professions, unions and institutions with specific legislation (but also privileges), controlled prizes and fees, regulated punishment and even conducted public “executions” in regular meetings.

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As a consequence, Romanian culture in the 1950s was subject not only to an unexpected and radical change that took it away from its natural leanings towards the West and Western modernism,3 but also to aggression and captivity on political and even military grounds. Propaganda and ideological discourse, after the Soviet model, replaced all cultural initiatives and movements, while culture became a conventional mechanism with predicable methodologies and results. The artificial transgression from a former elite culture to a culture for the people, about the people, by the people resulted in an organised convention in which most of the producers and receivers—the “new people” subjected to an artificial de- or reconstruction of their own identity—learned only to simulate interest and enthusiastic involvement. The “disciplined” and uniform evolution of culture was only seldom interrupted by exceptions, such as rare manifestations of resistance (exemplarily punished) or, in case of the most privileged, political negotiation in what Pruteanu has called “the deal with the devil” (1995).4

Works cited Boia, Lucian. 2008. Jocul cu trecutul. Istoria între adevăr úi ficĠiune. Bucharest: Humanitas. Coman, Mihai. 2007 (1999). Introducere în sistemul mass-media. Third Edition. Iaúi: Polirom. Connelly, John. 1999. Captive University: The Sovietization of East German, Czech, and Polish Higher Education, 1945–1956. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Fătu-Tutoveanu, Andrada. 2011. Legitimising Power Discourse: Political Ideology within the Romanian Cultural Press in the Late 1940s and 1950s. Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies 4: 77-88. —. 2012. Soviet Cultural Colonialism: Culture and Political Domination in the Late 1940s-Early 1950s Romania. Trames. A Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences 16: 77–93. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. 1992. The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia. Ithaca, New York, and London: Cornell University Press. Havel, Václav, et al. 1985. The Power of the Powerless: Citizens against the State in Central-Eastern Europe. Ed. John Keane. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Ionescu-Gură, Nicoleta. 2005. Stalinizarea României: Republica Populară Română. 1948-1950: Transformări instituĠionale. Bucharest: Bic All.

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Lasswell, Harold D. 1995 (1934). Propaganda. In Propaganda, ed. Robert Jackall, 13-25. Houndmills: Macmillan. Macrea-Toma, Ioana. 2009. PrivilighenĠia. InstituĠii literare în comunismul românesc. Cluj-Napoca: Casa CărĠii de ùtiinĠă. Marino, Adrian. 1996. Politică úi cultură. Pentru o nouă cultură română, Iaúi: Polirom. Mignolo, Walter D. 1993. Colonial and Postcolonial Discourse: Cultural Critique or Academic Colonialism? Latin American Research Review 28: 120-134. Morar-Vulcu, Călin. 2007. Republica îúi făureúte oamenii. Cluj-Napoca: Eikon. Nicorovici, Vasile. 1951. Pentru o cotitură în munca de creaĠie a scriitorilor noútri. Contemporanul 260(39). Nistor, Viorel. 2009. Aspecte ale cenzurii comuniste în proza românească postbelică. Studia Universitas Babes-Bolyai, Ephemerides 1: 143-168. Osman, Fernanda Emanuela. 2004. Note despre poezia agitatorică a anilor ’50. Caietele Echinox 7: 48-64. Popa, Mircea. 2001. Schimbarea de paradigma Vest-Est sau ocupaĠia sovietica în cultură. Caietele Echinox. Postcolonialism & Postcomunism 1: 134-139, http://phantasma.ro/wp/?p=2688. Preda, Sorin. 2006. Jurnalismul cultural úi de opinie. Iaúi: Polirom. Pruteanu, George. 1995. Pactul cu diavolul: úase zile cu Petru Dumitriu. Bucharest: Albatros. Rolf, Malte. 2009. A Hall of Mirrors: Sovietizing Culture under Stalinism. Slavic Review 68: 601-630. Selejan, Ana. 1998. Literatura în totalitarism. 1955-1956. Bucharest: Cartea Românească. —. 2007. Literatura în totalitarism. 1949-1951. Bucharest: Cartea Românească. —. 2008. Literatura în totalitarism. 1952-1953. Bucharest: Cartea Românească. Spiridon, Monica. 2004. Le rideau de papier. Caietele Echinox 7: 11-22. Thom, Françoise. 2005. Limba de lemn. Trans. Mona Antohi. Bucharest: Humanitas. Tismӽneanu, Vladimir. 2003. Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Toma, Sorin. 2004. Privind înapoi. Amintirile unui fost ziarist communist. Bucharest: Compania.

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Verdery, Katherine. 1994. Compromis úi rezistenĠă. Cultura română sub Ceauúescu. Trans. Mona Antohi and Sorin Antohi. Bucharest: Humanitas.

Notes 1

This paper is supported by the Sectoral Operational Programme “Human Resources Development” (SOP HRD), financed from the European Social Fund and by the Romanian Government under the project number ID59323. 2 Short quotes in Romanian have all been translated into English by the author of this paper. Longer quotes are preserved in the source language and provided with an English translation. 3 Interwar Romanian literature was deeply connected to and influenced by Western Modernism. 4 This is the title he chose for his work Pactul cu diavolul: úase zile cu Petru Dumitriu (1995).

CONTRIBUTORS

Montserrat Amores obtained her PhD in Hispanic Philology from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, where she lectures in literature. She has published books on the development of 19th-century folktales and short stories and two monographs about Fernán Caballero and Antonio de Trueba. She has also published articles on authors like Bécquer, Valera, Pereda, Galdós, Pardo Bazán, and other well-known 19th-century writers, as well as editions of 19th-century Spanish writings. She is Head of the GICES-XIX research group. Patricia Bastida-Rodríguez is senior lecturer in English at the University of the Balearic Islands. She holds a PhD in English and Women’s Studies from the University of Oviedo (2002). Her current research focuses on gender and urban mobility in recent diasporic fiction. Her publications include Santa o hereje: La otra Teresa de Ávila en Impossible Saints de Michèle Roberts (2006), On Cultural Diversity: Britain and North America (2009, co-editor) and Nación, diversidad y género: perspectivas críticas (2010, co-editor). Iria María Bello-Viruega received her Master’s degree in English Studies from the University of A Coruña in 2008. Her field of interest includes applied and corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, cognition and issues of representation in the media. Her PhD thesis has dealt with nominalisations in scientific texts from a diachronic perspective. She has taught at the University of A Coruña (Spain) and at the College of the Holy Cross (USA). Gloria Bosch-Roig holds a PhD from the University of Bielefeld and is senior lecturer in German studies at the University of the Balearic Islands. Her research fields include German culture from Weimar’s Republic to 1945, the tales of the Brothers Grimm and the didactics of German. She has published internationally and is the author of didactic materials for Hueber Publishers. Among her most recent publications are Übungsgrammatik Deutsch für den Tourismus 1 and Training Deutsch im Tourismus (2011).

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Contributors

Caterina Calafat lectures at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB). She holds an MA (Hons) in Catalan (Hispanic) Philology from the UIB and another in Translation and Interpretation from the UAB (Barcelona). She holds a PhD (2001 Doctoral Excellence Award) from the UIB. She also works as a conference interpreter and a literary translator. Her research fields include the use of ITT in FLT, translation and cultural studies, notably in the English and French-speaking worlds. Eduardo De Gregorio-Godeo is senior lecturer in English studies at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Ciudad Real, Spain. With a special interest in the subject of identity construction and representation in print media, his research draws upon discourse analysis, and other appliedlinguistics-oriented perspectives, as a resource for cultural analyses. Some of his recent work has appeared in journals like Image & Narrative (2005); Gender & Language (2010); ReCALL (2010); Lexikos (2010); and Perspectives – Studies in Translatology (2011). Josephine Dolan researches gender and ageing. She lectures in film at UWE Bristol, where she specialises in British cinema. Recent publications include Aging Femininities: Troubling Representations (2012, with Estella Tincknell); “‘Stuff it!’: Respectability and the Voice of Resistance in Letter to Brezhnev” (The Journal of British Cinema and Television 9.2., 2012); and “The Queen: the Bio-pic, Aging Femininity and the Recuperation of the Monarchy” (Aging Studies in Europe 2, 2012). Meritxell Esquirol-Salom is a researcher and cultural analyst specialised in feminisms, representation, and cultural consumption. She is currently working in her PhD dissertation, focused on the cultural construction of contemporary female identity in relation to the economic and cultural project of neoliberalism and consumer culture. She lectures in sociology at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Andrada Fătu-Tutoveanu is a postdoctoral researcher holding a PhD from “Babeú-Bolyai” University (Cluj-Napoca, Romania). She is currently conducting a research project on identity in the Romanian media, and is also a member of the international research project “EXPERT” at P.J. Safarik University (Košice, Slovakia) where she lectures regularly. In 2011 she was a visiting scholar at the University of Balearic Islands (Palma, Spain). Her academic work and teaching cover cultural studies, comparative literature, gender studies and cultural journalism.

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Marta Fernández-Morales holds a PhD in English and Women’s Studies from the University of Oviedo and is currently senior lecturer in American literature and culture at the University of the Balearic Islands. Her research focuses on gender issues in contemporary American cultural manifestations, mainly theatre, film, and television. She has published in national and international journals, is the author of four books, and has edited or coedited four volumes. For more on her work and publications, browse http://uib-es.academia.edu/MartaFern%C3%A1ndezMorales. Mihai Iacob is senior lecturer at the University of Bucharest’s Department of Romance Linguistics, Iberian Romance Languages and Literatures and Italian. He is also an associate researcher of the University of Vigo’s Translation and Paratranslation (T&P) Group. He is a member of the editorial or scientific boards of journals such as Agália. Revista de Estudos na Cultura (Associaçom Galega da Língua) and Océanide. (SELICUP). His main research fields are argumentation and postmodern Iberian literatures. Marta Miquel-Baldellou (University of Lleida), lectures in literature and is a member of the research group DEDAL-LIT. Her research focuses on Victorian, comparative and gothic literature, as well as ageing and cultural studies. Some of her recent articles have been published in New Literatures of the Old: Dialogues of Tradition and Innovation in Anglophone Literature (CSP 2008), Flaming Embers: Ageing and Desire in Contemporary Literature (Peter Lang 2010), and Ageing Femininities: Troubling Representations (CSP 2012). Mercè Picornell-Belenguer lectures in Catalan and comparative literature at the University of the Balearic Islands. She has published on testimonial and ethnographic writing, experimental literature and Catalan culture. She is the author of Discursos testimonials en la literatura catalana recent and Continuïtats i desviacions. Els debats crítics sobre la cultura catalana en el vèrtex 1960/1970, and has edited texts by Gabriel Maura, Pere d’Alcàntara and Maria Mayol. Her interests include the analysis of the cultural context of experimental literature. Margalida Pons is senior lecturer in the Department of Catalan Studies at the University of the Balearic Islands. Her main research and teaching areas are Catalan literature, literary theory, and comparative literature. She has been visiting professor at Brown University and Stanford University. She has written a number of studies on Catalan literature, with special

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Contributors

focus on 20th century poetry and experimental fiction and prose. She leads the research group LiCETC (www.uib.es/depart/dfc/litecont/index english.html), which focuses on literary experimentation and interdisciplinarity. Antonio Prado lectures in Spanish language and literature at Knox College, Galesburg (Illinois, USA). He has taught courses on Argentinian political cinema at the University of Palermo (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and is the author of Matrimonio, familia y Estado: Escritoras anarcofeministas en la Revista Blanca (1898–1936) (Fundación Anselmo Lorenzo 2011). José Igor Prieto-Arranz is senior lecturer in English at the University of the Balearic Islands’ Department of Modern and Classical Languages. He holds a European PhD in English from the University of Oviedo (2002). He has researched in the fields of SLA, translation and, most especially, cultural studies, his main interest being the expression and representation of identity, on which he has published widely. Follow him on http://uibes.academia.edu/Jos%C3%A9IgorPrietoArranz. María del Mar Ramón-Torrijos received her PhD in English Literature and her MA degree in Applied Linguistics from the Complutense University (Madrid, Spain). Her PhD dissertation focused on the American writer Bret Easton Ellis. She has published on contemporary American fiction, postmodernism and feminism in national and international scholarly journals. She currently works in the Modern Languages Department at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). Her research areas include contemporary American fiction, feminist literary criticism and cultural studies. Carlos Sanz-Mingo lectures in Hispanic Studies at Cardiff University (UK). In 2008 he defended his PhD thesis on the trilogy on King Arthur by Bernard Cornwell. Since then, he has published a series of papers on how contemporary and medieval literatures reflect the religious problems of their times, and also on the role of female characters in those periods. He is currently working on a project on the reception of Arthurian literature in Spain. Paul Julian Smith is Distinguished Professor in the Hispanic and LusoBrazilian Program at the Graduate Center in City University of New York, and was previously professor of Spanish in the University of Cambridge.

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He has been visiting professor in ten universities, including Stanford, NYU, and Carlos III, Madrid. He is the author of sixteen books and seventy academic articles. He is also a regular contributor to Sight & Sound and Film Quarterly. Follow him on Twitter: @pauljuliansmith. Cristina Suárez-Gómez is senior lecturer of English linguistics at the University of the Balearic Islands, and the Principal Investigator of the project “Morphosyntactic variation in New Englishes”. She holds a European PhD in English from the University of Santiago de Compostela (2004). Her main areas of research are English historical syntax, English historical sociolinguistics, and dialectal variation in English, both in a synchronic and a diachronic perspective. Her most relevant publications can be seen on www.usc-vlcg.es/CSG.htm. Slávka Tomašþíková is senior lecturer in British Studies at P.J. Šafárik University (Slovakia). where she teaches British and media studies. She has been a speaker at conferences in ten European countries and lectured at Université Paris 13, Universidad de Jaén and Univerzita Palackého (Olomouc). She is a member of SKASE and the secretary of ESSE. Among her articles are “British Situation Comedy and the Consciousness of New Class Differences in Slovakia” and “The Construction of Narrative Identities in Media Discourses”. Corneeltje Van Bleijswijk holds degrees in History and the Didactics of German as a Foreign Language from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She is a secondary school teacher, responsible for the first CLIL project in German of the Balearic Islands (2006-2008). She is writing her MA dissertation ‘Beyond the Color Line’: Representation and Transposition in Bernardine Evaristo’s Blonde Roots”. Her research interests include contemporary fiction, postcolonial theory and gender studies, and she has published on Andrea Levy and Maggie Gee.