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Desires and female bodies: the struggle in the cinema against Franco's censorship and the oppressive male gaze

2022-03-09T03:46:46.209Z


A book and a documentary investigate the cinematographic point of view that has reified women in films, becoming mere objects for men


In

Usos amorosos de la postguerra,

Carmen Martín Gaite wrote: “The girl who wanted to conform to this ideal [of a virtuous woman in the Franco regime] could not be striking or showy.

But, on the other hand, she had to make herself stand out and be seen among the throngs of marriage candidates swarming, perplexed as she was, at the same crossroads.

How did she manage this?

The quote, pertinent in the social sphere, is even more relevant in the feminine reflection in the films of the dictatorship, and appears in one of the chapters of

The feminine desire in Spanish cinema (1939-1975)

(Cátedra), a collection of essays led by Núria Bou and Xavier Pérez, professors of Communication at Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona).

The book addresses from different angles the desire of women as a message of resistance to Franco's repression, the exploration of certain cracks in the repressive apparatus of censorship and, of course, a journey through the careers of actresses who collided with ideological injustice.

In the first part, the archetypes of women portrayed in Francoist cinema are delved into: the body-household, the country woman, the mystic-body, the marriageable virgin, the spectacle-body, the modern woman and the monster-woman.

Pope Pius XII said in his

Characteristics of the Ideal Film

speech in 1955: “[On the screen should be shown] a woman in the noblest and most worthy sense of the word, a wife and mother of irreproachable conduct, skilful in the family and outside. her, but at the same time she is totally dedicated to her home and her intimacies, because she knows that all her happiness is found there”.

And the Francoist censorship, the Women's Section of the Falange as creator of indoctrination and most of the Spanish film industry followed this statement at face value.

Only some filmmakers looked for the laps.

Fernando Fernán Gómez played with dreamlike images and home realities in

La vida por ahead

and

La vida around,

thanks to Analía Gadé's acting ability;

with the unsuccessful search for marital happiness of the character embodied by Lina Canalejas in

The world goes on,

or he highlighted rebellion and individual happiness in the face of social oppression at the Sunday dance in a town by Sara Lezana in

The strange trip.

Equally complex analyzes of the role of women appear in

Calle Mayor,

by Juan Antonio Bardem, or

La tía Tula,

by Miguel Picazo, which face the confrontation of subordination to the husband or to the patriarchal order.

From left to right, and from top to bottom, Carmen Sevilla in 'Mónica's secret', Concha Velasco in 'The art of getting married', Emma Penella in 'The red fish' and Sara Montiel in 'The last couplet'.

They are filmmakers who understand the intensity, warns the book, of the body-spectacle.

The dance or the song raise flames on the celluloid not only of those rebellious creators, but also of films intended for the general public.

Come on, the folkloric one, which has just become an example of empowerment in the face of male weight.

More curious is the use of gazes as a reflection of desire in sequences in churches in

Un hombre para el camino,

by Manuel Mur Oti, or

La Hermana San Sulpicio,

by Luis Francia, with an extroverted Andalusian nun played by Carmen Sevilla.

In mysticism there is a possibility of sexuality, tensions that even reach Luis Buñuel's cinema, with its masculine inability to materialize his longing, as in

Viridiana.

Before going through the careers of actresses who embodied or dynamited those archetypes (Aurora Bautista, Analía Gadé, Emma Penella, Josita Hernán, Lola Flores, Sara Montiel —who ends up embodying Franco's desire par excellence with close-ups of her face “and excesses in her erotic gestures”—, Carmen Sevilla, Marisol, Concha Velasco, Geraldine Chaplin, Teresa Gimpera and Helga Liné), the book studies the arrival of modern women in Francoist cinema, thanks to Carlos Saura, Vicente Aranda or Mario Camus and faces such as that of Chaplin or Gimpera, who build “figures in unreal settings, as if their existence were not possible in the daily life of Francoist Spain”.

They "exceeded the containment guidelines" of the Franco regime.

More information

Carla Simón and Clara Roquet, two women leading the revolution in Spanish cinema

In reality, the observation marks the object, the woman.

At the Sundance and Berlinale festivals, veteran American filmmaker and film essayist Nina Menkes (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 56 years old) presented the documentary

Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power,

in which he illustrates the different look —the brainwashing of the title— that the male and female bodies have received in the 120-year history of cinema.

A professor at the California Institute of the Arts, Menkes has turned into a film the conference she has been giving since 2017 “in which the different point of view that marks the placement of the camera before a man and a woman is clear, and how that marks the perspective of the public”, he told the Berlinale about this reification of women.

Menkes, who has a long resume as an

indie

fiction filmmaker

(Brainwashed

is his fourth premiere at Sundance), began those conferences with 15 videos.

In

Brainwashed

shows 175 sequences from the entire history of cinema.

“The position of the camera is marked by gender, by the male gaze.

Actors and actresses have been filmed in very different ways, and women are frequently shown as objects of use, support and pleasure for masculine themes, who are the subjects that control the action.

And it can be seen in almost all of the 'masterpiece' films that any female student has to watch, absorb and emulate when she gets to film school.

That puts aside her own stories and her own point of view, ”says Menkes at the German festival.

When the Me Too movement kicked off in 2017 with the scandal surrounding producer Harvey Weinstein, Menkes wrote

the essay The

Visual

Language of Oppression: Harvey Wasn't Working in a Vacuum for

Filmmaker Magazine

. I wasn't working on a vacuum cleaner), which already forms the backbone of some of its concepts, such as the connection between audiovisual language, workplace discrimination and sexual harassment.

Brainwashed

is intended for all audiences, and brings together sequences from films ranging from 1896 to the present, and which serve to show the worst and the best of this imbalance in the genre: from

Vertigo, Blade Runner 2049, Die Another Day, Dressed to Kill, Superbad, Neon Demon, Lost Highway, Suicide Squad

or

Nomadland

to

The

Handmaiden (by Park Chan-wook),

Rome, Lost In Translation, Silence of the Lambs, Portrait of a woman on fire

or

Titane.

Among the 23 interviewees, the actress Rosana Arquette, the directors Catherine Hardwicke and Eliza Hittman or film theorists and psychoanalysts.

Image from 'Brainwashed' by Nina Menkes

The result is a gripping lesson, exemplifying the importance of point of view.

“We contacted numerous filmmakers who were the authors of those films and either they did not want to leave or they agreed anonymously.

That eliminated them from the film, ”says Menkes.

“And although I talk about how women are portrayed leaving them without power, as a mere object, it is obvious that this point of view also applies to race, and the best example is the portrayal of women of Asian origin in Hollywood.”

Menkes insists that

Brainwashed

It is not an end point, but the beginning of a conversation, and that there have indeed been changes since that November 2017. “It is more noticeable in the number of directors, but we have gone from 3% to 5% in composers [in the American cinema] and similar percentages in that of cinematographers”.

Nina Menkes in 'Brainwashed'.

If those are the figures of American cinema, they are not very different from those of Spanish.

In the book

Gender gap in the Spanish audiovisual

(Tirant Humanities), coordinated by the associate professor of Communication at the Carlos III University Concha Gómez —and author of half of the chapters—, several scholars review the gender inequality that has characterized Spanish cinema, with an exhaustive collection of cases historical.

The first chapter already makes clear in its title the field that is being analyzed: 'Radiography of a highly masculinized industry': “The underrepresentation of women in key positions of economic and decision-making power has been an abnormality in the audiovisual ecosystem that has contributed to perpetuating for decades the lack of opportunities for a vital sector of the population of this country”, writes Gómez.

In 2019, according to the ICAA, only 10% of the films produced in Spain were led by a female director;

at the Film Academy

Gender gap in the Spanish audiovisual

delves into the laws, direction, the creation of fiction in this 21st century, in the different artistic and technical departments that make up a film production, and even analyzes television series and the transmedia universe.

And the gap is not closing: only 12% of Spanish films released in theaters and platforms in 2021 (36 of 280) have been directed by women, according to data from CIMA, the association of women filmmakers.

When will the change come?

Gómez assures: “When positions of responsibility in decision-making are reached.

The audiovisual ecosystem is transforming at a dizzying pace.

We will have to wait a while, but we will have to be vigilant”.

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Source: elparis

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