The representation of the Spanish metropolis in the cinema of Pedro Almodóvar and Ventura Pons: Urban change and global habitat
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How does the gradual transformation of the Spanish metropolis from 1980 to 2013 reflect not only concurrent socio-political changes in contemporary Spain, but also the increasingly fluid space that is the global urban habitat of today? And how can unfixed gender identities and an altered human anatomy in the cinema of Pedro Almodóvar and, to some extent, Ventura Pons be viewed as metaphors for the changing city in which this transformed individual lives? The fluid body and identity of the on-screen transvestite and transexual occupies a third space located somewhere between the traditionally male and female. The body becomes a construct that mirrors the increasingly artificial and dual cinematic city where the scale replica often replaces the real urban space. This thesis thus analyses the cities of Madrid and Barcelona in films by both filmmakers as spaces that are becoming ever more abstract, fluid, complex and artificial as globalisation takes a hold of our postmodern era. The films explored are considered important visual documents that reflect not only
Spain’s move from dictatorship to democracy, but also the transformation of the Spanish and Catalan capitals and the move from concrete urban habitat to a more abstract global space – which is not always entirely Hispanic in feel. It is therefore to be concluded that Spain both on- and off screen, is becoming ever more outward-looking in perspective. In the analysis of films spanning from the 1980s to date, the thesis argument revolves primarily around Zygmunt Bauman’s theories on postmodern liquid societies and related theories
applicable to postmodernity and the urban environment by cultural geography scholar David Harvey. With regard to fluid gender representations in the cinema analysed, Judith Butler’s views on gender performativity will be linked to the Develuzian concept of becoming, which again relates to Bauman’s more all-encompassing idea of a liquid global society defined by its overall lack [...]
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Melbourne