Month: November 2017

This week we discussed cinematic trends between 1992 and the present time, paying particular attention to the re-articulation of the “national” in Spanish cultural production.  The film by Julio Medem we watched today, Wednesday, entitled Los amantes del círculo polar / Lovers of the Arctic Circle and the novella When a Snake Stares at a Bird / Sugeak txoriari begiratzen dionean by Bernardo Atxaga (pseudonym of Jose Irazu) both address this rearticulation from the point of view of two Basque artists.

By Saturday November 18 at 5pm please post a comment on how you see these two text represent the rearticulation of the Spanish national.  This is the last blogpost of this semester.  Kudos, all those of you who have contributed to our Scholarblogs page have done a terrific job posting.

This week we discussed the web of Gothic, Gothic Cinema, Goth, Bromance, demons, ghosts, and other figures returned to life.  Today, we performed the comparative exercise in which we read together a point / scene / character / theme from Alex de la Iglesia’s Día de la bestia / Day of the Beast and poetry by Rafael Alberti, León Felipe, José Hierro, Pedro Salinas, Gabriel Celaya, Luis Cernuda, Blas de Otero, and Jaime Gil de Biedma.

As I said in class today, the exercise was quite moving for me, for you all brought up imagery, sentences, words, rhyme and rhythm that mobilized some of the most lyrical parts of what otherwise can be quite a dreary film.  Thank you.  Hence, I am not going to require that you post a blog this week; this and OPTIONAL blog.  You do NOT have to post unless you feel like commenting further what we discussed in class today.

This week we discussed the advent of globalization in post-Franco Spain, and how ‘democracy’ played a significant part in that period.  For your blogpost, compose a brief commentary about how you see these issues represented in ONE of the three literary pieces we are going to discuss on Thursday (by Carmé Riera, Paloma Díaz-Más and Juan Goytisolo) and Pedro Almodóvar’s film What Have I Done to Deserve This?

Please, note that for these blogposts you MUST address the literary text AND the film text in comparative fashion.  Some of you did not respect this part of the prompter last week, and that weakens your contribution and your grade.  No need to rewrite the past blogpost, but please, make sure you provide comparative readings when asked in the prompter.  Blogpost are due on Saturday November 4 at 5pm at the latest.