Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Between Two Loves: Manolo Escobar, Masculinity, and a Spanish Transition

2015; University of Northern Colorado; Volume: 30; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/cnf.2015.0003

2328-6962

Mary T. Hartson,

Media, Journalism, and Communication History

Between Two Loves:Manolo Escobar, Masculinity, and a Spanish Transition Mary T. Hartson Porque yo sólo admiro a todo lo que vale, a todo lo que vale, menos al dinero. Y aunque sé que sin ello, sin ello nada vale, yo prefiero virtudes y lumbre de luceros sabiendo de antemano que el mundo es del dinero. —”Admiración” performed by Manolo Escobar, Me has hecho perder el juicio Fisherman, auto mechanic, truck driver, metro train operator, guitar maker, lemon picker … the simple, hard-working protagonist, moderate in his habits and disdainful of wealth and self-promotion, is thrust into a modern consumerist culture where he adapts and thrives despite initial reluctance. The extraordinarily popular Spanish singer/actor Manolo Escobar stars in a series of formulaic musical films from the later part of the Francoist dictatorship and early transition to democracy,1 and his transformation reflects the struggle that many Spaniards faced as the dictatorship’s fascist-Catholic value system waned and was replaced by a more global consumerist culture. Among the many adaptations that occurred during this transitional time was a shift in the way successful masculinity was perceived. The anti-materialist ethos of the early dictatorship exalted self-sacrifice and service promoting a version of masculinity that was predicated on self-sufficiency harking back to such models as the Cid—the quintessential buen vasallo, or self-abnegating soldier. The active prohibition and regulation of pleasure informed every aspect of civic life and served as a backdrop for the psychic development of generations. But beginning in the late 1950s a new focus on individualism and the pursuit of material goods and pleasure [End Page 113] brought about profound changes in the way masculinity was perceived as self-sufficiency and restraint were discarded in favor of hedonism and consumption—a societal shift that Todd McGowan describes as a transition from a society based on prohibition to one based on commanded enjoyment. In this model the foundational conceptualization of the good citizen and model male was reformulated to promote the needs and desires of the individual over those of the collective, thus revising the traditional masculine ideal of self-regulation and moderation—a model dating back in Western culture to Ancient Greece. As Michel Foucault explains: “The man of pleasures and desires, the man of non-mastery or self-indulgence was a man who could be called feminine” (84), and he points out that moral conceptions in Greek and Greco-Roman antiquity were oriented toward ask?sis, or discipline of the self and the management of one’s urges and desires. Originally associated with any form of disciplined practice, the term “ascetic” was adopted into Christianity and came to refer to anyone who practices a renunciation of worldly pursuits to achieve higher intellectual and spiritual goals. Christian ascetics lived extremely austere lifestyles, refraining from sensual pleasures and the accumulation of material wealth, and this model was promoted through the explicit alignment of early Francoism with the Catholic Church. Further reinforcing this connection, Franco’s Falange Party based itself on a fascist ethos that glorified the sacrifice of one’s individual identity for the benefit of the whole (and thus made a virtue of necessity by denouncing materialism in the lean post-Civil War years). Peter Stearns comments on the correlation between fascism and anti-consumerism in Consumerism in World History: The Global Transformation of Desire: “Basic fascist goals, however, were anti-consumerist. For fascist leaders, modern society had become too disunited and individualistic. Consumerism was a fundamental part of modern degeneracy,” and he states that in fascist Italy and Nazi Germany “the defeat of fascism discredited the most general effort to stem consumerism and replace it with a more military and collective identity” (72). While in Germany and Italy fascism was quickly suppressed, in Spain its influence endured and was promoted throughout the early dictatorship years of the 1940s and early 1950s and came to inform popular conceptualization of the masculine ideal. This ideal is perhaps best exemplified in Spain by the principal male characters in the heavily promoted dictatorship film genre “cine de cruzada” or crusade cinema—those films from the early years of the dictatorship that represent true...