scholarly journals Public relations discourse, ethical propaganda and collective identity in Luis Buñuel’s Spanish Civil War films

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 358-365
Author(s):  
Francisco-Javier Ruiz del Olmo ◽  
Jordi Xifra
2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-354
Author(s):  
CAROL A. HESS

AbstractAlthough literature inspired by the Spanish Civil War has been widely studied, music so inspired has received far less scholarly attention, and film music even less so. Musical ideologies of the 1930s, including the utopian thinking of many artists and intellectuals, emerge in some surprising ways when we consider two films of the era. Both The Spanish Earth (1937), an independent documentary, and Blockade (1938), produced in Hollywood, were intended to awaken Loyalist sympathies. The music for the former, consisting of recorded excerpts chosen by Marc Blitzstein and Virgil Thomson and widely understood as folkloric, embodies leftist composers' idealization of folk music. Werner Janssen's score for Blockade relies on many stock Hollywood gestures, granting it the status of a commodity. This article explores both films in light of Michael Denning's reflections of the relationship between the “cultural front” and the “culture industry,” along with Fredric Jameson's advocacy of the Utopian principle as a hermeneutic tool. It argues that the music for The Spanish Earth unwittingly subverts the Loyalist cause, whereas the score of Blockade, with its manipulation of Hollywood codes, is far more persuasive than the political whitewashing of its plot would seem to suggest.


Author(s):  
Fraser Raeburn

This chapter follows the Scottish volunteers to Spain itself, asking how far it is possible to establish a distinctively Scottish experience of serving in the Spanish Civil War in the absence of a particular Scottish unit in the International Brigades. Despite the lack of a formal collective identity, it is shown that the social and political networks that underpinned recruitment continued to matter in Spain, serving important functions in shaping volunteers’ experiences of everyday life, service and even battle. In particular, such informal connections could be vital in order to successfully understand and navigate the highly-politicised atmosphere of the International Brigades, and to mitigate the consequences of personal failings.


Periphērica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-183
Author(s):  
Nicole Mombell

This essay presents a brief analysis of three popular Spanish films released between 2001 and 2012 that are set in the immediate post Civil War period and first decades of the Franco dictatorship. Specifically, it considers three films which aim to reconstruct and represent the experience of the men, women, and children who fought Francoism or who endured repression after the end of the Spanish Civil War: Silencio roto (Armendáriz 2001), El laberinto del fauno (Del Toro 2004), and 30 años de oscuridad (Martín 2012). This essay explores the way in which tropes of politics, history, resistance, and repression are represented in each film, and how filmmakers using popular cinematic forms have appropriated the Spanish Civil War and Franco period settings to comment on contemporary political and social issues in Spain. Most of the recent Spanish cinematic productions (fictional and documentary) that depict the Spanish Civil War and Franco period have focused on the moral vindication of the vanquished. The three films considered here aim to reconstruct the particular experience or memories of the Spanish maquis and topos, and the civilians who supported them in their struggles. Each of the films discussed has sought to play a role in the recasting of collective identity in Spain, and affords important insights into the social processes and experiences of the time in which they were created. In a world where the visual immediacy of cinematic images increasingly works to displace traditional historiography, these representations have become ever more important and merit discussion. This essay takes into account that these cinematic representations are subjective and mediated depictions of events, participants, and circumstances of the Civil War and Franco period, and suggests pedagogical approaches to discussing each film in order to enable students (and other viewers) to grasp how to distinguish between history and the historicizing effect of its representations.


2017 ◽  
pp. 142-155
Author(s):  
I. Rozinskiy ◽  
N. Rozinskaya

The article examines the socio-economic causes of the outcome of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1936), which, as opposed to the Russian Civil War, resulted in the victory of the “Whites”. Choice of Spain as the object of comparison with Russia is justified not only by similarity of civil wars occurred in the two countries in the XX century, but also by a large number of common features in their history. Based on statistical data on the changes in economic well-being of different strata of Spanish population during several decades before the civil war, the authors formulate the hypothesis according to which the increase of real incomes of Spaniards engaged in agriculture is “responsible” for their conservative political sympathies. As a result, contrary to the situation in Russia, where the peasantry did not support the Whites, in Spain the peasants’ position predetermined the outcome of the confrontation resulting in the victory of the Spanish analogue of the Whites. According to the authors, the possibility of stable increase of Spanish peasants’ incomes was caused by the nation’s non-involvement in World War I and also by more limited, compared to Russia and some other countries, spending on creation of heavy (primarily military-related) industry in Spain.


2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-66
Author(s):  
Idoia Murga Castro

Centenary celebrations are being held between 2016 and 2018 to mark the first consecutive tours of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Spain. This study analyses the Spanish reception of Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) (1913), one of its most avant-garde pieces. Although the original work was never performed in Spain as a complete ballet, its influence was felt deeply in the work of certain Spanish choreographers, composers, painters and intellectuals during the so-called Silver Age, the period of modernisation and cultural expansion which extended from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.


2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-142
Author(s):  
Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka

Convergences in the work of Kate O'Brien and Virginia Woolf range from literary influences and political alignments, to a shared approach to narrative point of view, structure, or conceptual use of words. Common ground includes existentialist preoccupations and tropes, a pacifism which did not hinder support for the left in the Spanish Civil War, the linking of feminism and decolonization, an affinity with anarchism, the identification of the normativity of fascism, and a determination to represent deviant sexualities and affects. Making evident the importance of the connection, O'Brien conceived and designed The Flower of May (1953), one of her most experimental and misunderstood novels, to paid homage to Woolf's oeuvre.


Author(s):  
Emily Robins Sharpe

The Jewish Canadian writer Miriam Waddington returned repeatedly to the subject of the Spanish Civil War, searching for hope amid the ruins of Spanish democracy. The conflict, a prelude to World War II, inspired an outpouring of literature and volunteerism. My paper argues for Waddington’s unique poetic perspective, in which she represents the Holocaust as the Spanish Civil War’s outgrowth while highlighting the deeply personal repercussions of the war – consequences for women, for the earth, and for community. Waddington’s poetry connects women’s rights to human rights, Canadian peace to European war, and Jewish persecution to Spanish carnage.


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