A Companion to Spanish Cinema (CNCZ - The Wiley-Blackwell Companions to National Cinemas) by Labanyi Jo & Pavlovi & #263 & Tatjana

Author:Labanyi, Jo & Pavlovi & #263 & , Tatjana [Labanyi, Jo]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
Published: 2012-09-03T16:00:00+00:00

Star Typology and Performance

Stars sold films, but their exchange value surpassed their filmic image. The multimedia and intertextual nature of star texts was evident in posters that recalled Catholic images of saints or the Virgin Mary, a readily recognizable feature of Spanish visual culture. Thus, stars might appear outlined by a glittering halo that verged on the sublime (Baena Palma 1998: 17). A cinematic type that developed in accord with this iconography was that of the “saintly” girlfriend or wife.

Another type cultivated in literature and song before making its way into Spanish films was the peliculera, a blonde who imitated Hollywood stars, divorced her husband, kissed “for real” (besos de verdad), and most often left her boyfriend for a man in the movie industry. Avant-garde novels such as Ramón Gómez de la Serna’s Cinelandia (1923), and the weekly subscription series Novela Cómica, paid homage to this prototype (De Diego 1986: 155). Various cinema magazines educated readers in the science of kissing practiced by stars, in articles such as “Los besos cinematográficos” (Movie Kisses), “Cómo besan los ases de la pantalla: Clases e importancia de los besos” (How the Stars Kiss: Categories and Importance of Kisses), and “¿Sabría usted besar para el celuloide?” (Would You Know How to Kiss in the Movies?) (Morris 1980: 168 n. 25).

Cinema was early on integrated with variety shows, which began to incorporate film showings, either in alternating sessions or projecting them simultaneously with live performances, in order to boost ticket sales. And, when performers of popular spectacles, such as singers (cupletistas), dancers (bailaoras), saucy performers (cocottes), or aspiring stars (vedettes), appeared in films, it meant that the star system had become a fusion of these two entertainment traditions. The Spanish vamp was a product of this merger, a blend of the morally dubious Spanish female performer and the melodramatic Italian diva made famous in the 1910s (Sánchez Salas: 2007).

Raquel Meller’s star text shows the broadening of the spectrum of female subjectivity and, at the same time, the effects of a national effort to maintain proper (white) womanhood. Meller’s brand of femininity was a powerful version of the vamp, a charged mode of alterity that signified the liminality of being caught between the old and the new Spain. This uncontainable sexuality, haunted as it was through Meller’s star roles by the ghosts of racial and social tensions (see Chapter 7), was brought into disturbing proximity with other roles that Meller could enter almost too easily – those of perfect wife and mother, both of them necessary models of womanhood for keeping order in the home and on the streets. The creation of a modern Spanish woman who could entice while retaining a veneer of wholesomeness would be the fundamental balancing act underlying the star image of Imperio Argentina, allowing her star career to extend into the postwar period when Francoism imposed female decorum. This balancing act would be pronounced for the folklórica stars of the early Franco period. A similar sign of changing times is found

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