¿Una agonía esperpéntica? Shifting Memory Horizons and Carnivalesque Representations of the Spanish Civil War and Franco Dictatorship

Abstract

This article argues that the use of humour and the carnivalesque is not only a productive means to approach the Spanish Civil War, but that a comparison of works that have employed these perspectives reveals the shifting nature of Civil War remembrance in Spain over time. The article compares in particular, Luis García Berlanga's La vaquilla (1986), Eduardo Mendoza's Riña de gatos, Madrid 1936 (2010) and Álex de la Iglesia's Balada triste de trompeta (also 2010). It stresses the role of carnivalesque subversion and of the esperpento tradition as a means of being productively contestatory and thus broadening prevailing memory horizons without disqualifying any one of them.

Key words:

• humour
• Spanish Civil War
• Luis García Berlanga
• Eduardo Mendoza
• Álex de la Iglesia
• carnivalesque subversión
• esperpento
• memory

Notes

1 See Alison Ribeiro de Menezes, ‘From Recuperating Spanish Historical Memory to a Semantic Dissection of Cultural Memory: La malamemoria by Isaac Rosa’, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 16:1 (2010), 1–12.

2 Paul Preston, The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain (London: Harper Press, 2012).

3 See Jeffrey Olick, The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility (New York: Routledge, 2007).

4 Jerry Palmer, ‘Parody and Decorum: Permission to Mock’, in Beyond a Joke: The Limits of Laughter, ed. Sharon Lockyer and Michael Pickering (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 79–97 (p. 93).

5 Marsha Kinder even views the violent fight with legs of ham at the end of Juan José Bigas Luna's Jamón Jamón (1992) as a parodic staging of Goya's Duelo a garrotazos, a picture that is clearly linked to the theme of war, in Kinder, Blood Cinema: The Reconstruction of National Identity in Spain (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1993), 157.

6 José Sanchis Sinisterra, Ñaque; ¡Ay, Carmela!, ed. Manuel Aznar Soler (Madrid: Cátedra, 2004).

7 Andrés Sopeña Monsalve, El florido pensil (Barcelona: Rocabolsillo, 2008).

8 Carlos Giménez, Todo Paracuellos (Barcelona: Random House/Mondadori, 2007).

9 Eduardo Mendoza, Riña de gatos, Madrid, 1936 (Madrid: Planeta, 2010).

10 Balada triste de trompeta (Álex de la Iglesia, 2010).

11 See <http://www.formulatv.com/noticias/23981/tve-cancela-plaza-de-espana-recorta-prespuesto-juegos-olimpicos/> (accessed 19 March 2013).

12 See Alexander Wilde, ‘Irruptions of Memory: Expressive Politics in Chile's Transition to Democracy’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 31:2 (1999), 473–500.

13 In Ribeiro de Menezes, ‘From Recuperating Spanish Historical Memory’.

14 Kinder traces esperpentic elements back to the theatre and painting of Counter-Reformation Spain (Blood Cinema, 138–39), and Wolfgang Kayser's wide-ranging study includes Velázquez (The Grotesque in Art and Literature [Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1963]). One might further reference Quevedo's satirical vision in the Sueños.

15 I have not included Ovejero's La comedia salvaje, as its comic approach is less relevant than the other three to a consideration of the role of the comic and burlesque within Spain's shifting memory horizons. Nevertheless, its allusions to Valle-Inclán's Tirano Banderas and its echoes of a quixotesquely bumbling odyssey across Spain do connect it to Mendoza's literary practice.

16 See Anne Fuchs and Mary Cosgrove, ‘Introduction’ to German Life and Letters, 59 (2006), 163–68 and Anne Fuchs, Mary Cosgrove and George Grote, ‘Introduction: Germany's Memory Contests and the Management of the Past’, in German Memory Contests: The Quest for Identity in Literature, Film and Discourse since 1990, ed. Anne Fuchs, Mary Cosgrove and George Grote (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2006), 1–21.

17 Selya Benhabib, ‘Towards a Deliberative Model of Democratic Legitimacy’, in Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. Selya Benhabib (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1996), 67–94; Michael Gardiner, ‘Wild Publics and Grotesque Symposiums: Habermas and Bakhtin on Dialogue, Everyday Life and the Public Sphere’, The Sociological Review, 52 (1994), 28–48.

18 Grieg Nielson, ‘Bakhtin and Habermas: Towards a Transcultural Ethics’, Theory and Society, 24 (1995), 803–35 (p. 813).

19 Nielson, ‘Bakhtin and Habermas’, 818.

20 Nielson, ‘Bakhtin and Habermas’, 819.

21 Cited in Palmer, ‘Parody and Decorum’, 80.

22 Palmer, ‘Parody and Decorum’, 80.

23 There has been extensive discussion of the meaning of Valle-Inclán's term; for a good survey, see Christina Karageorgou-Bastea, ‘Historia y valor de la ironía en Luces de bohemia’, Hispanic Review, 73:1 (2005), 65–89 (pp. 66–67, notes 2–4). I view it here as an artistic deformation of reality aimed at offering a particular critique of historical circumstance.

24 Anthony Zahareas, ‘The Esperpento and Aesthetics of Commitment’, Modern Language Notes, 81:2 (1966), 159–73 (p. 159).

25 Zahareas, ‘The Esperpento and Aesthetics of Commitment’, 160.

26 Ramón del Valle-Inclán, Luces de bohemia, ed. Gerald Gillespie and Anthony Zahareas (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1976), 182.

27 Zahareas, ‘The Esperpento and Aesthetics of Commitment’, 171.

28 Zahareas, ‘The Esperpento and Aesthetics of Commitment’, 171.

29 José Carlos Mainer, ‘Un cuadro de Goya (Eduardo Mendonza, 1926)’, El País, 20 de noviembre 2010, <http://elpais.com/diario/2010/11/20/babelia/1290215544_850215.html> (accessed 22 January 2013).

30 Valle-Inclán, Luces de bohemia, ed. Gillespie and Zahareas, 182.

31 Francisco Ferrandiz, ‘Guerras sin fin: guía para descifrar el Valle de los Caídos en la España contemporánea’, Política y Sociedad, 48:3 (2011), 481–500.

32 Bernard Bentley, A Companion to Spanish Cinema (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2008), 260–61.

33 Barry Jordan and Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas, Contemporary Spanish Cinema (Manchester: Manchester U. P., 1998), 56, 76.

34 Vicente Sánchez-Biosca, ‘La ficcionalización de la historia por el nuevo cine español: de La vaquilla (1985) a Madregilda (1994)’, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, 20:1 (1995), 179–93 (p. 185).

35 See Luis M. González, ‘La vaquilla: memoria histórica y humor carnivalesco’, Quaderns de Cine, 3 (2008), 73–79.

36 A similar argument is made by Sarah Wright in ‘Zombie Nation: Haunting, “Doubling” and the “Unmaking” of Francoist Aesthetics in Albert Boadella's ¡Buen viaje, excelencia!’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 17 (2007), 311–22.

37 González, ‘La vaquilla: memoria histórica y humor carnivalesco’, 78.

38 <http://video.berlangafilmmuseum.com/archivos/archivos/documentos/La-vaquilla/#/185/zoomed>, 185 (accessed 19 March 2013); this script is labelled ‘Maquillaje’ and dated 1958 rather than 1956.

39 Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory (New York: Columbia U. P., 2011), 220.

40 Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects, 220.

41 Isabel Landa López, ‘El circo de Álex de la Iglesia’, El País, 11 December 2010, <http://elpais.com/diario/2010/12/11/paisvasco/1292100014_850215.html> (accessed 22 January 2013).

42 See José Manuel de Prada, ‘Álex de la Iglesia: “¿Por qué no nos reconciliamos de una maldita vez?”’, ABC, 17 December 2010, <http://www.abc.es/20101217/cultura-cine/reconciliamos-maldita-20101217.html> (accessed 22 January 2013); Verónica Martínez Monferrer, ‘Balada triste de trompeta’, Ecléctica: Revista de Estudios Culturales, 1 (2012), 127–28.

43 Jordan and Morgan-Tamosunas, Contemporary Spanish Cinema, 108.

44 Jeremy Arnold, ‘Laughter, Judgement and Democratic Politics’, Culture, Theory and Critique, 50 (2009), 7–21 (p. 8).

45 Arnold, ‘Laughter, Judgement and Democratic Politics’, 80.

46 See Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory ed., trans., and intro. by Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1992).

47 Henri Bergson, Le Rire: essai sur la signification du comique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1940).

48 Zahareas, ‘The Esperpento and Aesthetics of Commitment’, 172–73.

49 See Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard U. P., 1997).

50 Gardiner, ‘Wild Publics and Grotesque Symposiums’, 34.

51 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans Steven Rendall (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1998), 23.