¿Y después del cuplé? Disidencias de género en la cinematografía española: Sara Montiel y Juan Antonio Bardem=¿Y después del cuplé? Gender transgression in Spanish Cinema: Sara Montiel and Juan Antonio Bardem

<p align="left"><strong>Resumen</strong></p><p>Desde su debut como luminaria del <em>star system</em> español con <em>El último cuplé</em> (1957), la trayectoria cinematográfica de Sara Montiel ha estado marcada por una capacidad contestataria y disidente construida desde el escenario. Injustamente denostada por la crítica y olvidada en los estudios sobre la actriz, la película <em>Varietés </em>(1971) resulta el mejor ejemplo a este respecto. Es en esta colaboración insólita con el cineasta Juan Antonio Bardem donde advertimos las más poderosas reflexiones sobre el estrellato y la vejez, la difícil posición de la mujer artista en el espectro de la feminidad aceptable y aceptada por el franquismo y, en fin, las posibilidades del espectáculo de variedades como aparato disruptor de esta última. </p><p align="left"><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p>Ever since her appearance in <em>El ultimo cuplé</em> (1957), that led to her immediate success in Spanish cinema, Sara Montiel’s acting career has been marked by a rebellious and unorthodox stage persona. Unfairly criticized and forgotten, the film <em>Varietés</em> (1971), directed by Juan Antonio Bardem, turns out to be the best example in this regard. It is indeed through this unusual collaboration that the most compelling afterthoughts are made. Stardom and aging issues, the difficult position of the female star in conveying the Francoist feminine ideal and, finally, the enormous potential variety shows bear when it comes to eventually disrupting this femininity.</p>

The Historian and the Sexologist

This article investigates how twentieth-century historians' reliance on pathologizing discourses about transvestism produced the distorted historical account of the premodern “transvestite saint.” The essay begins with a critical historiography aimed at unraveling the intertwined writings of historians and sexologists. European sexological writing on Christian saints rendered them little more than pathologized subjects stripped of their religious context, and historical narratives that drew on pathologizing sexological paradigms frequently interpreted these religious figures as premodern examples of transhistorical sex-gender transgression. After examining the development of the interpretive model of the transvestite saint and its dependence on tropes of disguise and deception, the author argues that this framework should be abandoned. Considering the limitation of this interpretation, the essay proposes a more capacious historical method termed the apophasis of transgender.

St Eufrosine’s Invitation to Gender Transgression

In the Old French Vie de sainte Eufrosine (c. 1200), gender transgression is central to the poet’s pedagogical techniques. The fusion of masculine and feminine elements in Panuze’s lamentations and in the roles he assumes demonstrates the depth of his virtuous love for his daughter. The poet imitates Panuze, both showing the audience how to cultivate virtuous love and involving them in the transgression of gender to do so. Throughout, the poem presents masculine and feminine traits as equal. Eufrosine’s transgressive models offer modern readers the opportunity to rethink medieval orthodoxy and, consequently, the history behind modern identities and inequities.

Discursive stickiness: Affective institutional texts and activist resistance

Pushing the bounds of public relations theory and research, we explore how institutional texts have produced and reified stigmas around gender transgression and how these texts are bound up in moments of activism and resistance. We considered how different discursive and material functions get “stuck” together by way of texts and how this sticking depends on a history of association and institutionalization. Activism presents opportunities to challenge institutional and structural stickiness, and we argue that public relations can challenge the affective assemblages that comprise and perpetuate these systems, unsettling the historical discourses that have governed institutions by establishing new communicative possibilities.

Trouble Genders: “LGBT” Collapse and Trans Fundamentality

This essay considers how deployments of the acronym “LGBT” often obscure and flatten the specificity of the terms the letters reference. Also of concern here is how the “T” might be the more fundamental letter, as reactions to “LGBT identity” are indexed in gender transgression, to which the “T” refers. I argue for holding the trouble of the acronym in the “T” and that the trans underlies how “LGBT,” as a marker of subjectivity or violence, becomes legible. To carry this out, the essay makes a parallel to how “LGBT” functions similarly to “people of color” as the terms obscure the fundamentality of the trans and the black, respectively; clarifies the distinction between queer and trans, and subsequently trans and transgender; and demonstrates how transphobic readings are integral to homophobic responses.