Men on the Screen

There is a first phase, the post-war period, characterized by hunger, misery, strong political and religious repression, and international isolation (1939–1959). The establishment of industrial stabilization plans carried out by technocratic ministers implied a change of direction that led to a second phase known as Developmentalism (1959–1970). During this decade, Spain began to timidly open to the world, and a fledgling middle-class emerged. The country improved industrially, economically, and socially. Political repression, although tempered, still remained in force. The last phase of the Franco regime known as Late Francoism (1970–1975) corresponds with the last years of the dictator, who died in bed while still in power. Spain was already a modern country in every way except politically, as the dictatorial regime still prevailed, and the Catholic Church continued to exercise an iron grip on morals and customs.

Secondly, there is the Political Transition, which represents the transition from the dictatorial regime to the democratic regime. This second stage goes from 1975 to 1982, a year in which the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) won an absolute majority in the general elections. It was the first time that a leftist party, after almost forty years of dictatorship, came to power in Spain. These were tumultuous times, with a lot of political and social tension, but finally democracy was established. Thus, the third stage, Democracy covers the period of time from 1982 to the present. In recent years, Spain joined NATO, the European Union, is a member of various international organizations and is definitely integrated into modernity.

According to the aforementioned time periods, the book is organized into four sections: Masculinities During Franco, Masculinities in the Late Francoist and Transition periods, From the Transition to the Present Day, and finally New Masculinities? Continuities and Breaks.

The first section addresses the study of the various masculinities that appear in Francoist cinema. In this sense, the chapter “The Man Franco Dreamed of: A Prescriptive and Dictatorial Masculinity” analyzes the male model offered by the Francoist ideology, an amalgam, sometimes confused, of political ideas, worldviews, and beliefs that were changing over time. In this blend there are, as in geological substrata, traces of Fascism of clear Mussolinian style, which were later tailored by Falangism in order to assimilate them to the Hispanic worldview. This amalgam also shows remains of the stalest traditionalism, both in its conservative and monarchical strands; and naturally, in the Catholicism that permeates Spanish society, before, during, and, most surely, after the Civil War. This conjunction of elements turns out in a certain way of being male, which is prescribed (imposed) by the Franco regime, which configures the so-called “Franco man.” In this sense, the hero of the film Raza (Race), played by an actor linked to the regime, represents the origin and the essence of Franco’s masculinity. Yet, the film not only presents that archetype, but, in line with the prevailing authoritarianism, also prescribes it. Thus, every “true man” must aspire to that model, if he does not want to be persecuted, stigmatized, or condemned to a “civil death.”

But Francoist’s obsession is not only focused on the present, it is also projected onto the past. This can be seen in “Masculinities of the Past as a Re-writing of the Present.” Films that bring historical facts to the screen often serve as a projection or interpretation of ideals or contemporary events in their production. This is the case of the cycle of historical cinema produced in Spain during the first phase of Franco’s dictatorship in the 1940s and 1950s. In this first phase, cinematography and ideology were intertwined with patriotic proclamations and exaltation of the greatness of the Spanish race. The most emblematic films of this period provide leading and supporting roles to historical characters such as Philip I of Castile, known as the Handsome, Christopher Columbus, Luis Montana, Juan de Tapia, known as the warrior, Juan de Padilla and their son Pedro, Manrique, Ramiro de Ávalos and Pedro de Guzmán, among others. These are male characters who star, in three of the cases, in films centered on a strong female character. With the perspective of Francoist historical cinema in mind, different masculinities such as that of the hero, the traitor, the guardian, or the seducer will be analyzed.

The Francoist period concludes with a sarcastic view of the common man, of the ordinary man as can be seen in the chapter “Excessively Comical, Even Grotesque Men.” Spanish cinema in the Franco era has been studied more as a popular spectacle than as a period of exploration of new languages and film formats. However, in this period, one can find hybrid and suggestive productions that have served as a school for later Spanish cinema. In this chapter, we observe and analyze excessively comic male characters, born from one of the most creative coupling of Spanish filmmakers: director Luis García Berlanga and screenwriter Rafael Azcona. The aim of this chapter is to look for the ironic, dissonant, and rebellious meanings of several characters of this kind of cinema of the mid-Franco dictatorship in order to find other dimensions hidden in humor. The result is a humor not designed to make people smile, but to contrast starkly with reality, in order to express the sense of claustrophobia in characters who are trapped in moments or circumstances contrary to their will.

The chapter “The Latin Lover Who Degenerates into an Iberian Male” follows along the same lines. At the end of the 1960s, when the Franco regime began a slight liberalization, Spain started to welcome tourists, and the coasts began to fill with ‘Swedish’ women in bikinis. In the masculine ideology of the time, these tourists not only sought the sun but were also attracted by the sex appeal of the Iberian male: a rude, primitive, short, hairy and vigorous lover. The popular saying here makes sense: “the man, like the bear, the more hairy, the more fair.” This stereotype of masculinity is faithfully reflected by the Destape cinema, in which the Latin lover of yesteryear degenerates into the Iberian male. The paradigm of the Iberian macho of the cinema of the late-Francoist period a sexually repressed man, but obsessed with women, a physically unattractive seducer (short, dark, hairy), a hick (uncultured and little traveled) and sexist (a sultan, a hunter, a sweet talker of easy flattery). The trail of this ridiculous character can be traced to the present.

The perspective on the moral and sexual crisis that is experienced in Spain is complemented by a vision that, in this case, proceeds from the outside as it is included in “The Fetishist or the Erotic Gaze of the Repressed Man.” Despite the international isolation brought about by the Dictatorship, a part of the Spanish cinema transcended borders. For almost three decades, from the 1950s on, feature films of Hispanic origin were produced in Mexico, by filmmaker Luis Buñuel. In this chapter, the presence of a man who lives eroticized by specific parts of a woman’s young body is acknowledged. These are men who give an account of a deep and unacknowledged erotic-sexual desire generated by the nudity of feet, legs, thighs, and the female breast; that is to say, they are repressed men who experience a libidinous spiral from certain areas of the female body that they furtively observe and spy.

The chapter “Man and God: The Sacred in the Construction of Masculinity” tackles man’s spiritual crisis. In Francoist cinema, the construction of masculinity is dominated by the codes and examples derived from a heteropatriarchal and Catholic belief system. With the death of the dictator and the entry of Spain into a postmodern religious system, a questioning of the way in which personal belief is experienced, imposed, or transmitted is carried out. This chapter addresses the phenomenology of religious practices as constructors of masculinities at a time when they have lost their centrality and, therefore, the social acceptance of their foundational work. For this purpose, the representation of religious gestures linked to masculinity is analyzed in such complex and stimulating films. The objective of this chapter is to demonstrate how the crisis of masculinity in Spain is closely linked to the crisis of Catholic centrality.