Transitional Tastes: Food Metaphors and Character Development in Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón’s Half of Heaven (Spain, 1986) and Silvio Caiozzi’s The Moon in the Mirror (Chile, 1990)

Abstract

This paper explores the representation of food in Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón’s film Half of Heaven (Spain, 1986) and Silvio Caiozzi’s The Moon in the Mirror (Chile, 1990) as it depicts the political transition from dictatorship to democracy in Spain and Chile. While the Spanish transition was initiated with Francisco Franco’s death in 1975, and the Chilean transition with Augusto Pinochet supposedly stepping down in 1989, in both cases the dictatorial power structures ensured that such a shift in political ideology did not come into effect overnight. As a result, well after Franco’s death and Pinochet’s defeat, the regimes’ institutions remained in place. With this political context in mind, food features prominently as a metaphorical representation of the complex power struggles and political shifts that were occurring in these two countries at this time. In this way, the relationship of food—presented as either good or bad, edible or contaminated—is conflated with character development in such a way that it establishes a new set of semantic networks among characters that illuminates sociocultural dynamics and political debates in transitional Spain and Chile.

Keywords:

• Chile
• Spain
• political transition
• food studies
• film studies
• dictatorship

Notes

1. Similar to Bower, Steve Zimmerman says that so-called “food films” were born in the 1980s when “[m]ovies, at long last, discovered the visual and aesthetic appeal of food, glorious food, and began to make movies in which food played a leading role, thus giving birth to a new genre: food films” (2010, 1).

2. The vast body of literature on food representation in Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate has shaped the direction that Hispanic food studies has taken, focusing on the personal and collective identity in the Hispanic world. For evidence of this, see Maite Zubiaurre (2006).

3. For more on food in Strawberry and Chocolate, see Eloy Merino (2004).

4. See Gutiérrez-Albilla’s (2005) article on the “perverse appropriation” of the last supper in Viridiana. See Pauly’s (1994) article about unfulfilled appetites in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. See Iball’s (1999) contribution for more on sex and food in Bigas Luna. See Kinder’s (2007) review, for more on female bonding and food in Volver.

5. For the purposes of space, I have translated all Spanish titles and critical quotes into English.

6. For more information on Half of Heaven’s cinematic success, see Bernard Bentley (1995: 262). Regarding The Moon in the Mirror, see Peter H. Rist (2014, 115).

7. “Mise-en-scène” is a film studies term that refers to the entire experience of the scene—actors, movement, sound, prop placement, design, lighting, etc.

8. For a more in-depth analysis of the grandmother’s character, see Katherine Kovacs (1988).

9. Rice pudding is the only meal Don Pedro consumes throughout the film. For an in-depth analysis of the trope of milk in Half, see Susan Martin-Márquez (1999).

10. For more evidence of the tradition/modernity split being a main cause of the Spanish Civil War, see José Luis Comellas’s Historia de la España contemporánea (2002, 125–126).

11. Don Arnaldo is very old and all of his references to famous naval battles date back to the late 1800s and early 1900s, suggesting that his flashbacks and nostalgia refer to a much earlier time than Pinochet’s reign.