Duncan Wheeler

The Performance History of Golden-Age Drama in Spain (1939-2006)

It has become a commonplace in comedia studies to lament the lack of a performance tradition in Spain. However, this claim is rarely substantiated with a detailed analysis of comedia performance over a sustained period of time. Focusing primarily on productions of works by the three chief proponents of Golden-Age drama (Calderón, Lope, and Tirso), this article will analyse, chronologically, the tradition of comedia performance in Spain between 1939 and 2006. I will offer a description of moods, trends, and styles that have underpinned the production and reception of Spanish seventeenth-century plays since the end of the Civil War, often highlighting the production and reception of specific performances. (DW)

All her friends call her Alaska: the cultural politics of locating Olvido Gara in and beyond Madrid’s Movida*

ABSTRACT First coming to prominence as the bassist of one of the earliest Spanish punk bands, Kaka de Luxe, Alaska became the public face of the Movida through a starring role in Pedro Almodóvar’s debut feature, Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón (1980), and a string of major hits as lead singer of Alaska y los Pegamoides and, subsequently, Alaska y Dinarama. The latter dissolved in 1989 when she and Nacho Canut, a constant presence and songwriter in all of her groups, formed Fangoria, a formation she has fronted to the current day. Especially following the success of MTV reality show, Alaska y Mario (2011–), the star has been heavily criticized for associating with reactionary figures, while simultaneously being variously celebrated and denigrated as a privileged icon of the Culture of the Transition. The commonplace of the two Spains as applied to the Movida has less to do with the political left and right than with a division between those who see politics everywhere, and those whom refuse to see them anywhere. This article will suggest that, while Alaska’s (a)political stance is not unproblematic, commentators who reduce everything to ideology have been ill-equipped to critique the achievements and limitations of a cultural phenomenon that sought to reify aesthetics at the expense of all other considerations, politics included.

Translation and didactics in the language classroom: the preparation and dissemination of a dual-language critical edition of José Luis Alonso de Santos’ Bajarse al moro/Going down to Morocco

We have clearly come a long way from the time when translation’s principal role in the classroom was as a tool for language acquisition. This has been a positive development in many respects but, as we hope to demonstrate, the insights gleaned from this specific case-study – viewed through the prism of a Foucauldian approach to the archaeology of the disciplines – illustrate the need for a more general reassessment of the educational and scholarly potential of the dual-language text, a once-popular and well-respected literary and pedagogical resource which was the collateral victim of the disciplinary warfare by which translation and language education were able to establish themselves as autonomous scholarly fields. The discrediting of the facing-page translation as a teaching tool has, at least in part, been the result less of pedagogical considerations than the fact its disappearance was a (necessary?) prerequisite of both translation and educational theory consolidating themselves as independent disciplines.

Contextualising and Contesting José Antonio Maravall's Theories of Baroque Culture from the Perspective of Modern-Day Performance

ll statements about early modern Spain (including our own) are implicated in wider social and cultural formations even as they constitute the object of study called the Golden Age” (Mariscal, “An Introduction” 19). José Antonio Maravall’s studies of baroque culture rank amongst the most accomplished and influential to emerge in the twentieth century. There is, however, a latent irony in the fact that this self-proclaimed scholar of “la historia social de las mentalidades” often fails (Maravall, La cultura 12), as does much of his readership, to take sufficient account of the specific sociohistorical context from which he wrote and the constitutive influence it had on the way he viewed the past. This article effectively seeks to undertake a Maravallianstyle analysis of his work on Golden Age drama that will place specific emphasis on the relationship between his theories and their legacy with the performance and reception of the comedia in Spain during both the dictatorship and the democratic period. I will question whether a greater understanding of the context from which his major works on baroque culture emerged can and/or should be used as a form of contestation and propose some strategies for engaging with his legacy in a constructive manner.

Raphael and Spanish Popular Song: A Master Entertainer and/or Music for Maids

professional singing career in 1960 and has subsequently taken the lead role in numerous cinematic star vehicles, hosted his own television shows and starred in the Spanish version of the Jekyll and Hyde stage musical. His initial rise to fame was inextricably linked with his ability to simultaneously embody tradition and modernity in his public persona, music and performance style. He remains a household name in Spain and his television specials on Christmas Eve have become as traditional and commented upon as the King’s address to the nation. Although Raphael is undeniably an institution at home, he is too contested a figure to acquire the status of a national treasure. In the words of Luz Sánchez-Mellado:

You’ve Got to Fight for Your Right to Party? Spanish Punk Rockers and Democratic Values

Abstract La Movida is generally considered to be a cultural phenomenon that emerged in Madrid and elsewhere in Spain in the late 1970s as a reaction against the draconian nature of the Franco dictatorship (1939–75). This article will nuance and challenge some common misconceptions about the scene(s) in relation to Spain’s Transition to democracy by advancing three interrelated arguments. First, the Franco regime was not as antagonistic to popular music as we have frequently been led to believe. Second, the dictator’s death was a necessary but not sufficient condition for an outpouring of Spanish musical creativity, centred primarily albeit not exclusively in Madrid. Third, the music, iconography, and ideology associated with La Movida were at least as much influenced by Warhol and the subsequent CBGB’s scene in New York as by British punk. These claims, both individually and collectively, suggest the need to revise the critical vocabulary employed to variously celebrate or denigrate La Movida, revealing its frequent positioning as a belated importation of the “swinging sixties” and/or a watered–down version of British punk to be both culturally chauvinistic and politically tendentious. My underlying hypothesis is that popular culture in Spain not only transcended mere imitation but, as a result of various socio–cultural factors, anticipated a series of debates that would only subsequently come to the fore in Anglo–American contexts.

Pleasing Everyone: Mass Entertainment in Renaissance London and Golden-Age Hollywood by Jeffrey Knapp (review)

ANyoNE SuCH AS MySELF WHo WAS EDuCATED in multicultural Birmingham, a stronghold of industry and heavy metal—but within commutable distance of Stratford-upon-Avon—is predisposed to have, at best, an ambivalent relationship with shakespeare. Prior to ever reading or seeing any of his plays, i’d been taken on numerous school trips to the provincial backwater whose chief selling point was its being the birthplace of the world genius of literature. i was all too quick to nod in agreement when a young, new teacher, keen to ingratiate herself with a bunch of teenagers, informed us that the Bard would be writing for soap operas if he were alive today. an obvious riposte is that Dallas (1978–1991) would likely have aged better with the presence of such a witty and imaginative screenwriter. symptomatic of ongoing anxieties surrounding cultural capital, this comparison between modern-day popular culture and early modern drama skirts an underlying issue: was shakespeare great in spite of or because of his mass appeal? Jeffrey Knapp’s ambitious new book diagnoses a plethora of heuristic strategies that, as he suggests, are the cause and consequence of a confused and confusing critical orthodoxy. Pleasing Everyone seeks to vindicate the artistry of popular filmmaking by unpacking the implicit and explicit grounding of much contemporary scholarship in the Frankfurt school of mechanical reproduction and indoctrination. in so doing, Knapp proposes that adorno and Horkheimer’s theory of mass culture as debased and debasing is predicated on a fallacy that equates its birth with that of advanced industrial capitalism; as he argues, “Renaissance plays and Hollywood movies share an identity that our current theories of modernity and mass culture do not allow them to share” (1). disentangling this confusion provides the possibility not only of nuancing our appreciation and understanding of cultural production from across the centuries but also of correcting notions of the popular, since “Renaissance plays help sharpen our focus on mass entertainment by disentangling it from Jeffrey Knapp. Pleasing Everyone: Mass Entertainment in Renaissance London and Golden-Age Hollywood.

The (post-)feminist condition: women filmmakers in Spain

Abstract Spain did not experience first- or second-wave feminism simultaneously with its European neighbours due primarily, albeit not exclusively, to the Franco dictatorship (1939–1975). Following the transition to democracy, the twenty-first century media-scape often appears to be firmly committed to the discourse of post-feminism, an adscription that might be construed as a paradigmatic example of cultural and social normalisation. There is, nevertheless, a paradox in undergoing a transition from what we might term pre- to post-feminism; is it possible to disavow and supersede a movement that never genuinely took root? This essay critically interrogates the assumption that Spanish cultural production is committed to post-feminism, focussing on the eight films directed by Spanish women that received general domestic distribution in a twelve-month period commencing in September 2007. I draw upon personal interviews with women filmmakers alongside a general discussion of the films themselves in an attempt to contextualise the on- and off-screen gender(ed) politics of women in front of and behind the camera within both wider socio-broader practices in Spain, and the transnational idiom of (post-)feminism. My hypothesis is that the most compelling cinematic response to the machismo and misogyny of Spanish film and society is to be found in middle-brow melodrama, a genre all too often dismissed by Spanish critics.

Translating Quotidian Humor for the Contemporary Stage: José Luis Alonso de Santos's La estanquera de Vallecas

José Luis Alonso de Santos is the most commercially successful Spanish playwright of the post-Franco period in Spain. Although he has written across a wide range of dramatic forms and genres, he is best known for his modern comedies that have frequently been inspired more by cinematic than theatrical forms. On the one hand, a number of critics have accused him of playing to the gallery and repeating himself; conversely, however, his capacity to imbue conventional forms with contemporary characters and concerns has not only endeared him to a broad range of audiences but also warrants his inclusion within the canon of twentieth-century Spanish theater. Having previously translated his most popular and endearing play, Bajarse al moro, into English, I will begin this article with a discussion of the tragicomic humor in La estanquera de Vallecas, his first success, whose colloquial street dialogue marked a controversial break with the prevalent strain of literary and rhetorical theater in Spain. I will focus my discussion on how and why the humor derives from the plays intersection with quotidian urban concerns (rising crime, unemployment, etc.) and a dialectical interplay between imported cinematic forms and national theatrical traditions. This will pave the way for a discussion of the translation of theater into and out of Spanish on the page and stage in both pedagogical and professional environments.