The Mobile Nation

Tatjana Pavlovic

Description

Tatjana Pavlović received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington, Seattle in 1996. She is currently associate professor of Spanish at Tulane University in New Orleans. Since 2006, she has served as director of Tulane’s undergraduate Spanish studies programme. Her research and teaching interests centre on twentieth-century Spanish intellectual history, literature, cultural studies and film theory.

Introduction

 

Chapter I: La hora del lector: Literature and the publishing industry

 

Chapter II: Television (Hi)stories: 'Un escaparate en cada hogar'

 

Chapter III: Voces de oro: Spain, modernity, and the child-star system

 

Chapter IV: Spain's mass tourism: Condenada belleza del mundo

 

Chapter V: Mobile subjects: La vida sobre ruedas

Sujets

• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinema
• Film
• Cultural Studies
• General
• General officer
• Performance art
• Película fotográfica

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841505411
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Mobile Nation: Espa a cambia de piel (1954-1964)
The Mobile Nation:
Espa a cambia de piel (1954-1964)
by Tatjana Pavlovi
First published in the UK in 2011 by Intellect,
The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2011 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press,
1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2011 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover design: Holly Rose
Typesetting: John Teehan
ISBN 978-1-84150-324-0
Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter I: La hora del lector : Literature and the publishing industry
Chapter II: Television (Hi)stories: Un escaparate en cada hogar
Chapter III: Voces de oro : Spain, modernity, and the child-star system
Chapter IV: Spain s mass tourism: Condenada belleza del mundo
Chapter V: Mobile subjects: La vida sobre ruedas
Bibliography
Index
A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Several individuals and institutions have contributed to the making of The Mobile Nation: Espa a cambia de piel (1954-1964 ). Many ideas incorporated into this book have resulted directly or indirectly from discussions with friends over the several past years. It could not have been written without intense conversations, theoretical debates and the friendship of Anthony Leo Geist, Isolina Ballesteros, John Charles, Marline Otte, Ari Zighelboim, Laura Bass and Henry Sullivan. Henry gets my extra-special thanks for helping to smooth out some rough spots in the manuscript, far-ranging insights and careful judgement. He read the entire manuscript and thoughtfully engaged its arguments. My sense of his personal and intellectual support goes well beyond the pages of this book. I am also grateful to Camillo Penna and Suna Ertugrul for their friendship and for bringing my attention to certain key theoretical texts. Their own relationship to theory and writing has been very important to me during the composition of this book. Above all, I pay tribute to my mother Biljana Pavlovi , who originally instilled in me the love of books and reading.
At Tulane University, I am fortunate to be surrounded by talented and generous colleagues who are also true friends. My deepest thanks go to them and to our Chair Marilyn Miller for her consistent support. I also wish to thank my students at Tulane University in a wide range of courses on Spanish cinema, film history and film theory who have listened to early versions of the manuscript and raised many excellent questions. Several scholars working on contemporary Spanish culture have read earlier versions of various chapters and given me valuable critical feedback. Special thanks also go to my colleagues in Spanish Film Studies from the United States, Spain and the United Kingdom who have been remarkably generous in sharing their work and expertise: Marvin D Lugo, Katy Vernon, Eva Woods, Susan Martin-M rquez, Steven Marsh, and Josetxo Cerd n. Since my student days I have always been inspired by Jo Labanyi and Paul Julian Smith, two outstanding scholars of Spanish literature, film and visual culture. Their work continues to be essential to my own understanding of Spain and its cinema.
This book could not have been written without the help of various institutions in Spain and the United States. The Dean s Office of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Tulane University provided me a Research Grant in the summers of 2007 and 2009 and a Junior Research Leave during the 2003-2004 academic year. That same office was also generous in aiding Intellect Publishing of Bristol, United Kingdom, with publication costs. Funding from The Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain s Ministry of Culture and United States Universities allowed me to spend two summers (2005 and 2006) viewing many films discussed in the book. I am also indebted to Margarita Lobo and other personnel of the Filmoteca Espa ola who have been tremendously helpful in providing me access to the Filmoteca s collection. At Intellect Publishing, I would like to thank the Associate Publisher, May Yao, for her efficiency, patience and commitment to the project. I am also indebted to Integra Software Services for their diligent copyediting and to the typesetter, John Teehan. In addition, I also thank Holly Rose for the design of the cover, which uncannily captures the spirit of the book and period studied.
Sections from the Introduction appeared in an earlier version as Espa a cambia de piel: The Mobile Nation (1954-1964 ), Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies , Vol. 5, Issue 2, July 2004: (213-226). A condensed portion of Chapter 2 was published as Television (Hi)stories: Un escaparate en cada hogar , Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies , Vol. 8, Issue 1, March 2007: (5-21). I gratefully acknowledge the publishers of these articles for permission to reproduce parts of them in this book.
This book is dedicated to my two great loves: my life-partner Rachel and our son Constantin. Rachel s keen critical acumen and understanding of the project shaped the way I look at Spanish cinema. Above all, she was my companion in the pleasures of filmgoing and film-viewing. Our shared love of cinema and literature was a main impetus in writing The Mobile Nation . But while this project is now over, she continues to inspire me into an unlimited future.
I NTRODUCTION
The Mobile Nation: Espa a cambia depiel (1954-1964) focuses on a period of transition in the history of Spanish culture that has not received sufficient critical attention. 1 Several forces converged in the early 1950s to put Spain on a path of integration with the more developed countries of Europe. Autarkic Spain abandoned its outdated and sluggish economic model developed mostly as a response to Spain s international isolation following the Spanish Civil War. 2 It gradually curbed the state interventionism that had been an integral part of autarkic economic principles. Autarky, a type of economic nationalism, had formed part of Franco s stock rhetoric by which the post-war ostracism of Spain was modified, even eulogized as a self-sufficient, autonomous cultural polity sustained, among other strategies, by an insistence on the superiority of Spain s bless d backwardness ( bendito atraso ). 3 With this easing of autarkist principles, the government needed to reframe its political tactics, visible in a revision of nationalist rhetoric that now defined progress as a technocratic mutation of the prevailing ideology. The regime s self-justification ceased to be metaphysical and became more frankly material. The insistence on an Eternal Spain with its religious essence and God-chosen destiny was no longer desirable or optimal and was replaced by the language of efficiency, rational thinking and a belief in high living standards. The triumphalist, bellicose discourse of the postwar period now centred on a rhetoric of prosperity and an ever-broadening horizon of expectations. Franco s regime ceased to be providential and became technocratic. Spaniards would no longerbe preparing for the heavenly paradise, but enjoying an earthly one. A discourse sustained by the old-fashioned values salvaged from the Civil War now morphed and became compatible with the siren call of hedonism. A society of sacrifice become a society of leisure, much more in line with emergent global consumerism.
The period studied in this book includes three overlapping stages of development: (1) the moribund autarky of the post-war era; (2) the technocratic period initiated by the restructuring of the cabinet in February of 1957; and (3) a so-called fraguismo during Manuel Fraga Iribarne s all-important tenure as Minister of Information and Tourism from 1962 till 1969. The transition from autarky to technocracy was aptly named by those economists who dubbed it the hinge decade ( decenio bisagra ). 4 The term captures the shift from post-war insistence on moderation, restrictions, hoarding or rationing to the wave of new commodities and, hence, concepts that now entered the market- apartments ( apartamentos instead of pisos ), televisions ( televisores ), washing machines ( lavadoras ), financing ( financiacion ), parking (aparcamiento)-neologisms that were just then being admitted to the Dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy (S nchez Vidal 1990: 156). The impact of consumer durables on everyday life was remarkable, and the percentage of urban households that owned a refrigerator, television set, car, telephone, electric food-mixer or record player soared exponentially. 5 By 1954, per capita income was approaching pre-war levels, but overall growth still encountered stubborn problems. As Tortella observed:
An economy as backward and capital-hungry as was the Spanish had an inordinately strong propensity for import; in addition, market pressures for both capital and consumer goods, combined with an archaic fiscal structure and a policy of state investment virtually free of orthodox financing norms, provoked price increases that were very soon evident in labor market. The result was a rapid and powerful inflationary spiral. (2000: 450)
Inflation had become so rampant by 1959 that urgent measures were needed. The Franco regime proved reactive rather than forward-looking, and it was the inflation crisis pinpointed by Tortella-rather than any premeditated design-that determined the radical change in economic policy which became the 1959 stabilization plan. A year of unavoidable but salutary recession in 1960 was followed by dramatic economic growth. The whole ethos of the nation began to shift: The new slogans of the sixties were rationality, efficiency, the maxims of the world of the impersonal, compe