It Is a Matter of Age: The Rejection of Inheritance in Josep Maria Benet i Jornet’s Testament and Ventura Pons’ Amic/Amat

Abstract

This article offers a new reading of the play Testament (1995) by Josep Maria Benet i Jornet (1940–2020) and its filmic adaptation Amic/Amat (1999) by Ventura Pons (b.1945). I will examine the extent to which Western master narratives on age and masculinity are subverted and/or affirmed, in both the play and film, and what this tells us about the depiction of ageing masculinities within the cultural context of Spain.

Key Words:

• Ageing
• Masculinity
• Inheritance
• Decline
• Illness
• Josep María Benet i Jornet
• Testament
• Ventura Pons
• Amic/Amat

Notes

1 Jaume Radigales reviewed the Catalan version of Testament in 1997. The play was first performed in Spanish in Madrid the previous year. See Jaume Radigales, ‘Benet i Jornet, más maduro’, El Ciervo, 46:558/559 (1997), 37–38 (pp. 37 & 38).

2 All three characters are given generic names, according to their primary role in the play, and these names are capitalized in the original text.

3 Phyllis Zatlin, ‘From Stage to Screen: Amic/Amat’, Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea, 26:1 (2001), 239–53 (p. 244).

4 Benet i Jornet’s critics and scholars have not paid much attention to the name changes of the characters. It is my understanding that the use of proper names in the film is a consequence of the specificities of this media.

5 Hanne Laceulle, Aging and Self-Realization: Cultural Narratives About Later Life (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2019), 64.

6 Hilde Lindemann Nelson, Damaged Identities, Narrative Repair (Ithaca: Cornell U. P., 2001), 84.

7 Lindemann Nelson, Damaged Identities, Narrative Repair, 84–85.

8 See Carl Bernstein, ‘Age and Race Fears Seen in Housing Opposition’, The Washington Post, 7 March 1969, p.7.

9 Margaret Cruikshank, Learning To Be Old: Gender, Culture, and Aging (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013 [1^st ed. 2003]), 137.

10 Sharon G. Feldman, ‘ “Un agujero sin límites”: la mirada fenomenológica de Josep M. Benet i Jornet’, Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea, 24:3 (1999), 473–92 (p. 486).

11 Leni Marshall, ‘Aging: A Feminist Issue’, NWSA Journal, 18:1 (2006), vii–xiii (p. vii).

12 See ‘Amic/Amat’, FilminCAT, n.d.; available at <https://www.filmin.cat/pelicula/amic-amat> (accessed 10 June 2022).

13 Haim Hazan, Old Age: Constructions and Deconstructions (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1994), 20.

14 Josep Maria Benet i Jornet, Testament. Seguit d'Alopècia (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 2002 [1^st ed. 1996]), 33. Further references are to this edition and will be given in parentheses in the main text.

15 Cruikshank, Learning To Be Old, 35.

16 Feldman, ‘ “Un agujero sin límites” ’, 477.

17 Mariateresa Cattaneo, ‘La ciudad y el tiempo: sobre una trilogía de Benet i Jornet’, Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea, 27:1 (2002), 7–22 (p. 19).

18 Linda Long & Geoff Wexler, ‘Lifetimes and Legacies: Mortality, Immortality, and the Needs of Aging and Dying Donors’, The American Archivist, 72:2 (2009), 478–95 (p. 485).

19 Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death & Dying: What the Dying Have To Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy & Their Own Families (New York: Scribner, 2019 [1^st ed. 1969]), 130.

20 Francesc Foguet i Boreu, review of Josep M. Benet i Jornet i la fidelitat al teatre de text, ed. Enric Gallén & Miquel M. Gibert, Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea, 28:2 (2003), 442–51 (p. 447).

21 Zatlin, ‘From Stage to Screen: Amic/Amat’, 243.

22 Zatlin, ‘From Stage to Screen: Amic/Amat’, 247.

23 Kaja Silverman, Male Subjectivity at the Margins (New York: Routledge, 1992), 185.

24 Gerardo Vera, ‘El dolor y la herencia’, El Mundo, 9 March 1996, p. 5.

25 In Greek mythology the sparagmos ritual consisted of the act of tearing to pieces a living animal, or a human being, usually followed by omophagia (the eating of raw flesh). The sparagmos ritual is present in the myths of Orpheus, Dionysus, Pentheus and Actaeon.

26 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1990 [1st ed. 1957]), 192.

* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.