This week we dwelled in the correspondences between the periods of Transition (la transición) and disenchantment (desengaño), with the (apparent) end of Spanish exceptionalism and the emergence of a new kind of violence, and what they meant for Spain in the 20th century. We also learned about the roles these concepts played in the unfolding of the ghosts of fascism, the lingering of the sovereignty of the dictator, and of a sense (or, at times, a lack) of historical memory.
We read and discussed the essay where Cristina Moreiras reframes la movida madrileña and la transición, the period that sent Spain down memory lane back to the Baroque period in the 17th century, and the emergence of new kinds of violence, and traces a new understanding based on a close look at the state of exception and temporality. We explored, with Willis, how violence, style, politics, and the influence of the Italian aesthetic of giallo impacted Spanish cinema and society. On Wednesday discussed a film closely related, and yet vastly different, from Erice/Quejereta’s 1973 The Spirit of the Beehive we watched last week, Saura’s 1976 Cría cuervos (Raise Ravens).
By Sunday at 5pm, please post your comment on one or more of these questions
I think one interesting way to interpret the emergence of new kinds of violence would be maybe to see it as not new at all, as evidenced by Moreiras’s piece. The new violence was something more of a return than anything else. This is definitely how I feel Moreiras would explain the violence. What makes it seem new is how Moreiras says that many people tend to think of the past as non-important and not constantly shaping our culture today. This idea of “ghosts” pops up at multiple points in this curriculum, and I feel that the ghost is history, and that it haunts because society has a tendency to forget that it is there in the first place. Removing the anti-democratic causes (i.e. Franco) didn’t immediately fix all of Spain. This can be seen in Cria cuervos, where the poisoning of the father did not resolve everything, violence (or bad/abusive parents/guardians in the case of the film, with the switch from Ana’s father to Paulin as the guardian).
The Spirit of the Beehive and Cría Cuervos, although they are both very different films, share a focus on death, spirits, and memory. The Spirit of the Beehive follows Ana’s obsession with Frankenstein, who she does not understand is a fictional character. She imagines him living in the abandoned house, visiting her at night, and listening to her when she calls. Similarly, Ana in Cris Cuervos does not fully grasp the death of her mother and frequently sees the ghost of her mother sending her off to bed, playing piano, and reading her stories in the middle of the night. Both films have an interesting approach to violence. In Spirit of the Beehive, perhaps the most violent character is Ana’s sister, Isabel, who fakes her own death, chokes the cat, and rubs blood on her lips. The violence against the Republican soldier is also equally an act of violence against Ana who experiences the pain of his death and seemingly does not recover. In Cria Cuervos, the violence is less physical, although Ana does believe she murdered her own father and attempts to murder her aunt. The violence in Cria is instead represented by the betrayal Ana feels from the adults who are frequently shown to be adulterous and immoral with little sympathy for the extreme loss she feels for her mother. These films both represent the pain and trauma that can come from childhood, which is so often viewed as an idyllic and peaceful time. In this way, they both serve to mimic the misplaced nostalgia for “a better time” under fascism, a time that never truly existed and has been misrepresented through how we remember and recount history.
A reoccurring theme in historical and filmic discussions of Francoist and fascist Spain is the idea of an infantilized people; a metaphor for the repressive and patriarchic submission of Spaniards, especially women during the dictatorial years. I believe that both films, Víctor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive and Saura’s Raise Ravens, the infantilized individual is brought to life by the talents of Ana Torrent, who stars as a young girl in each film. Taking place during the civil war and during the swan’s song years of Franco’s Spain, the films of Saura and Erice, respectively, tell stories of brutish and deeply flawed adults, juxtaposed by the innocent, naive and pure characters interpreted by Torrent. In both films Torrent, despite her age and lack of experience, appears to be the more wise and capable personality among her older counterparts. Discovering and caring for an injured Republican deserter in Spirit of the Beehive and being privy to her father’s infidelity and grandmother’s wishes to die in Raise Ravens, Torrent is able to see humanity and find compassion where those who are supposedly in charge fail. Likewise, the periods of disenchantment and transition characterized by Spain cinema speak of the lingering ghosts of fascism. Produced near the end of Franco’s life, Beehive ends with the apparent life-long haunting of Ana, who is forever struck by the death of her newly found friend in the Republican soldier. Much like the scars of war long haunting Ana after they are made, the Spanish people would continue to real from the scars of fascism, arguably continuing to do so to this day. Similarly, the so-called ghost of Franco, which looked over the Spanish people in the years following his death, is depicted in the surrealist sequences found throughout Raise Ravens. Ana’s mother and father, both dead in the film, make several appearances through its runtime, re-emerging at several points in Ana’s life to shine light on their fraught relationships to one another and to their children. Ana’s mother and father never truly die in Raise Ravens, continuing to affect her life in meaningful ways, much like the history of Spain in the aftermath of loosing Franco.
Like Spirit of the Beehive, Cria Cuervos examines questions of violence, memory, and history from the perspective of a precocious young girl, both played by Ana Torrent. The looming figure of her dead father, who was a fascist general begins the film and continues to hold power over the various characters in his controlling nature and his adultery. Cria Cuervos also similarly engages with the burgeoning modernity with the juxtaposition between the modern house and the estate in the country. The temporality portrayed in the film with the compilation of images and timelines, the recurring scene in the kitchen, and the appearance of Ana’s dead mother, seems to me to add an element of confusion and constructed history that we have discussed before. Ana as the daughter of a fascist continues to enact the violence of fascism in her quiet belief that she has been poisoning her family members. She necessarily carried with her the imprint of fascism and the dread of growing older in the new open (but not fully open) transitional period. Ana gets to be a child who plays and dances with her siblings, but she is simultaneously harboring and acquiring the insidious marks of violence and control that are characteristics of fascism. In this way past, present, and future meld and become inextricable.
Both Cria Cuervos and Spirit of the Beehive have immense similarity to a more contemporary film, Jojo Rabbit. All three follow young children living under the yoke of fascism. While Cria Cuervos and Spirit of the Beehive interact with the spirit of Franco in an ethereal sense, Jojo Rabbit takes it a step further. The young child subject has an imaginary friend who is a personification of Adolph Hitler. If these films are examined in a trilogic form, Spirit of the Beehive would be the experience of children in the midst of fascist transition, Cria Cuervos would represent a child’s process of national disenchantment, and Jojo Rabbit would be the bloody transition out fascism. In Germany, Fascism’s fall came as in the form of blood and war, in Spain it left a mark that was not wiped away. For children especially, there was no event that marked its end. It was simply a whimper that left so many questions unanswered. It left so much pain unacknowledged.