Masculinity in Spanish Film: From Prohibition to Commanded Enjoyment

Hegemonic masculinity as represented in Spanish film from 1939 through the present changed dramatically across time initially organizing itself around prohibition and self-renunciation during the dictatorship and later, with the onset of consumerism, reorienting itself around desire and enjoyment. Employing psychoanalytic theory as used by Todd McGowan, this dissertation describes the shift from a "society of prohibition" to a "society of commanded enjoyment" elucidating how the oedipal narrative can be used to analyze changes in filmic representation of hegemonic masculine representation. The oedipal narrative, a paradigm that has been widely cited for its function in the reproduction of capitalist economic structures, is eminently suited to the analysis of masculinity as it relates to changing economic structures as seen in the Spanish context. The oedipal father who prohibits the expression of desires and later the "anal father of enjoyment" who in a consumerist society does not prohibit enjoyment, but rather actively promotes it reflect the effect of the rise of consumerism in Spain. This shift is especially relevant in the Spanish context as a repressive fascist-oriented dictatorship gave way quite abruptly to a modern democratic consumerist society during the transition period in the 1970s and 1980s. Early dictatorship war films, the so-called "cine de cruzada" exalted personal restraint and sacrifice while later films represented conflicts that arose as masculine figures were increasingly faced with consumer opportunities and pressures to buy. These pressures were accompanied by a breakdown of sorts around the 1970s in the traditional hegemonic or dominant patriarchal male model represented in both popular and "art film" traditions by infantilized, "perverse" and dysfunctional sons and absent and/or ineffectual fathers whose power was shifted onto an overpowering female "madre castrante." From this period emerged a reconstruction of "masculinities" in relation to carnal desires and consumerist opportunities in a society that is increasingly fragmented, plural and individualistic as well as resistant or reactive representations that seek to reject or disregard consumerist values. Filmic representations of masculinity reorganize themselves in the aftermath of the dictatorship not around prohibition but rather around desire and the pursuit of personal enjoyment leading to a reconfiguration of the primary construction of the male identity.