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Like texts, cultures are seen as indeterminate sites of conflict that cannot be pinned to a single totalized meaning.
—Gerald Graff and Bruce Robbins
THE EPIGRAPH suggests both a challenge to and a goal of foreign language instruction, a discipline that usually interweaves the study of culture with the teaching of language skills. As we teach students about Spain, for example, we find that art in Spain has frequently revealed a variety of conflicts within the culture. On examination we see that these conflicts expose a multifaceted world that has struggled to come to terms with issues that span centuries of its history. Graff and Robbins point to the risk and the opportunity of cultural study; on the one hand, there is the danger of reducing or simplifying a culture, and on the other hand, there is the chance to explore the complex, yet provocative, collage-like image that emerges from in-depth study.
I’d like to explore the role of a course on Spanish cinema in an undergraduate, university-level curriculum in terms of its potential to acquaint students with significant cultural issues and to develop language skills.
In an article from Profession, Alan Purves argues that “[A]ll media should be at the heart of our literature classes” (138). Although he refers to literary study in English programs, his observations apply to foreign language programs as well:
There is no reason why students should read Shakespeare; he wrote not to be read but to be performed in a noisy amphitheater with no scenery and few seats for the audience. There is no reason why students should not deal with film, video, audio, hypermedia and other forms of presentation. [. . . T]he texts and the canon that many of our students have acquired are texts and canons built on images. Images, although they have a distinct visual character and set of principles, are used in ways similar to the ways in which words are used. There is the medium; there is form; there are a variety of artistic purposes and methods; there are genres and conventions, traditions, and a canon not just of written words but also of images. [. . . W]e must bring in the newer media—not to change the talk but to broaden the focus of our activities and to bring ourselves to an understanding of the world inhabited by our students as well as by ourselves. (138, 140)
A course on Spanish film in an undergraduate curriculum responds to the educational goals of both the Spanish major and the institution. Film, with its ability to pack a two-hour period with plot, emotion, drama, events, images, and ideas, draws attention uniquely to ethical boundaries, conceptual frameworks, national memory and identity and, significantly, to the use of language and idioms. It offers profound access to the cultural forces and attitudes that shape the civilization. Moreover, students’ reading skills are often not sufficiently developed to read essays and literature until the senior level (if then). By the time Spanish majors have satisfactory linguistic skills, they have little time left to explore content. I do not, however, wish to suggest that literature and the study of written texts should no longer be essential components of a curriculum but only that by expanding we increase and facilitate other skill development.
As we study a culture, we confront the issue of how the culture is defined: by national boundaries? by language? by common history? by ethnicity? by traditions? In an article on the cultural component of language teaching, Claire Kramsch observes that the study of culture reveals laws that regulate people’s lives:
Laws, rules and regularities are not only the fabrication of scientists. They are constantly generated by people in everyday life. They are what distinguishes cultural meaningfulness from natural randomness. Because they allow people to anticipate events, they often acquire a moral rigidity and righteousness that engender stereotypes and even prejudices. Indeed, they tend to “naturalize” culture and to make one’s own ways of thinking, speaking, and behaving seem as natural as breathing, and the ways of others seem “unnatural.” Culture is always linked to moral values, notions of good and bad, right and wrong, beautiful and ugly. (84)
Kramsch rightly emphasizes that human beings tend to see behaviors, attitudes, and perspectives that are culturally dependent as normal and natural and hence, “more right.” Contact with foreign languages and cultures clearly exposes the default value of our own culture, but this awareness comes often only after repeated exposure to the other culture and a certain degree of self-reflectiveness—experiences that may elude our students. Yet, in order to address the common administrative ideals reflected in mission statements and in the buzz words globalization, internationalism, and multiculturalism, we have an obligation to move students beyond mere tourist knowledge of foreign cultures. As Sylvie Debevec Henning notes:
[W]e must not allow the residual (if not resurgent) isolationism, chauvinism, and even xenophobia of American culture to promote trivialization and marginalization of foreign languages and culture. If colleagues and administrators cannot respect foreign peoples, languages, and culture in terms that reach beyond tourism, our students will be not better able to function effectively in a global context than they are at present. (54)
It’s important to note that we must overcome a medley of obstacles, not the least of which are administrative misunderstandings of the buzz words that are generously used and the enormous difficulties facing those who pursue language acquisition and deep cultural understanding. Add to these misapprehensions an administrative preference for appealing yet pragmatic-sounding goals that more often reflect the concerns of tourists than the needs of students who wish to function on more profound and integral levels in another culture.
The cinema of Spain not only effectively traces a century of significant historical events detailed in standard civilization books, such as the Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship, but also offers insight into the attitudes and values that led to and resulted from these events. Film furnishes an accessible window into Spain that would otherwise be blocked or unavailable to undergraduate students unable to read novels or plays or to read enough of them to gain a broad understanding. Moreover, film perhaps more directly points to issues of cultural specificity through its images, sounds, camera, plots, and dialogues, whose combined effects are captivating and instructive.
It would be impossible and inappropriate to attempt here to put forth a thorough analysis of Spanish film, but three broad issues or themes merit study and analysis in a film course: the prevalence, meaning, and effect of violence; the shifting filters through which films present gender and sexuality; and competing images of Spain as a nation: those promoted by Francoist ideals and those promoted by films who directly or indirectly challenged Francoist viewpoints. These areas are inextricably linked and invite the discussion of censorship and art, the ethical models that influence behavior in Spain, and the varying effects of artistic form and technique.
Before I address these issues further, it’s useful to mention several caveats and offer some food for thought:
The goals, then, for a course in Spanish film should be grounded in linguistic competency objectives as well as content-based knowledge about Spanish culture on a broad level. The in-depth study of film, for example, highlights the obvious role of violence as a catalyst for repression, as a mirror of the brutality that lay buried under the façade of the Francoist aesthetic, as a mode of expression, as a catharsis, and as evidence of the human condition. Ideally, the study of film combined with active oral and written commentary by students would expand their notions of violence, which, though usually prominent and memorable in a film, tends to be defined in a rather limited, watered-down fashion in American cinema. Students would be asked to rethink the significance of violence in political, emotional, sexual, and religious arenas, elements of Spanish culture that are repeatedly linked with it in film.
For example, scrutiny of violence in Spanish cinema reveals that it is at times notably absent and at other times horrifyingly graphic. Examining the role of violence in more detail would suggest ways one theme or issue might relate to other issues. For students, Spanish films could serve as a catalyst to study the relation between the presence or absence of violence and the concept of power. Hannah Arendt explains in her book On Violence, “Rule by sheer violence comes into play where power is being lost” (53). Many films facilitate a study of the interplay of violence and power in political, sexual, ideological, familial, and interpersonal situations. For example, in Spain in the 1940s, violence, sex, sacrilege, and politics were all repressed in film. Films such as Raza (based on a screenplay by Franco) and Los últimos de Filipinas linked violence to national unity and emphasized the otherness of Spain’s enemies, which were not just other nations but also those individuals and institutions whose ideologies did not uphold the ideals of God, nation, and church and the integration of all three. These films become the prototype for later films sanctioned by Franco and against which the opposition would model its films. In the 1950s, violence was incorporated in a generic context, such as the gangster film. The 1940s and 1950s were decades when Franco’s power was being consolidated. Later, as his monolithic hold began to crack somewhat in the 1960s and 1970s, filmmakers who were opposed to the Francoist regime used violence to make political statements, especially during what has been termed the “dictablanda,” a period of weakening dictatorial power in the five years or so immediately before Franco’s death. Marsha Kinder observes:
Anyone attempting to describe the distinctive characteristics of Spanish cinema usually begins with its excessive violence. [. . . T]he eroticization of violence, by targeting the genitals and by using fetishizing close-ups, ellipses, and long takes; . . . the displacement of violence onto surrogate victims, especially animals, children, and women; and the displacement of violence from one sphere of power to another, between sex and politics, between public and private space, and between the body, the family, and the state. (137–38)
The instructor can call students’ attention to the following features: the motifs of sacrifice, massacre, and what Marsha Kinder argues is the undermotivation of violence in Spanish cinema, which creates emotional distance between the audience and those characters who commit violent acts.
Through its notable ability to juxtapose particular emotions, events, and images, mediated through form and technique, art forces us to frame themes and issues in particular ways. In film, students can experience this effect and learn to analyze and evaluate it. For example, we may pose the following questions as points of departure for class discussion:
As students evaluate the role of violence throughout Spanish cinema, they will become more aware of the entrenched values caught in a political and cultural tug-of-war throughout Spanish history. The political struggle of the Civil War is often framed as a clash between the two Spains: two competing visions of Spain, which are fleshed out repeatedly in Spanish cinema. As Kinder explains, one vision advances a traditional Catholic identity that resists outside forces; the other depicts a Spain that welcomes more subversive ideals and influences. The jingoistic cinema supported by Franco contrasts sharply with later films that seek to redefine the nation’s identity and the effects of oppressive rule. The representations of or allusions to violence are but one strategy to expose the savageness and hypocrisy of the Franco era. Other filmmakers satirized official Francoist mythologies that included parodies of the “españolada,” such as Bienvenido Mr. Marshall (1952).
Gender and sexuality, which are frequently linked to violence in Spanish film, reveal a dynamic interplay of stereotypes or roles and their distortions or inversions. In conjunction with the study of violence and the concept of national identity in Spain, these issues give students an awareness of the concepts related to gender and a chance to experience the twists, spins, and reversals that ultimately stretch and undermine the strength of gender boundaries and roles. Films such as Belle Epoque, Cámada negra, La ley del deseo, Matador, Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios, and Amantes, problematize such issues and therefore help students infer the framework against and in which artists work.
Depending on the abilities of students, a film course can be adapted to demand either more or less written and oral analysis. Dorothy James argues that most students reach only the Intermediate-Mid to Intermediate-High level of proficiency of the ACTFL guidelines after four semesters of language study. James explains that at this level, students can “converse simply on essentially personal everyday matters, still with a great deal of grammatical inaccuracy. They can survive in the country of the target language, provided that they do not run into complicated situations” (91). Clearly, we should be aware of the limitations of students in the last two years of language study. A film course, however, exposes these students to oral and written texts and thus improves their receptive skills, which allow them to read and listen to in-depth analyses of films more readily than to write or speak about them. A course in cinema offers a fruitful supply of possible activities, including the outside research and presentation of a film by students to their peers.
As instructors, we should continually endeavor to problematize the unifying concept of culture and help students to see culture as a site of conflict; film is but one way of accessing and framing the tensions and conflicts over culture. Robbins and Graff ask in their essay on cultural studies: “How was culture—and the teaching of culture—to be at once the essential expression of the national consensus and a profound critique of the national consensus?” (424). This question captures the dynamic constantly at play in the study of film in Spain; students confront cultures that are at once linked and divided by concepts that imply power and loss. Students encounter myths and ideals that are asserted—especially those promoted during the Francoist era—and also dismantled in film; these ideals relate to the struggle to define Spanish values, a battle frequently mediated by violence.
At the program and university level, the addition of a course on the film of Spain acknowledges the disparate goals of all constituencies and, most important, it signals an effort to reach students where they are, while not compromising the basic pedagogical values humanists and linguists share.
Graff, Gerald, and Bruce Robbins. “Cultural Criticism.” Redrawing the Boundaries. MLA: New York, 1992. 419–36.
Henning, Sylvie Debevec. “The Integration of Language, Literature, and Culture: Goals and Curricular Design.” ADFL Bulletin 24.2 (1993): 51–55. [Show Article]
James, Dorothy. “Re-shaping the ‘College-Level’ Curriculum: Problems and Possibilities.” Shaping the Future: Challenges and Opportunities. Ed. Helen S. Lepke. Middlebury: Northeast Conf. on the Teaching of Foreign Lang., 1989. 79–100.
Kinder, Marsha. Blood Cinema: The Reconstruction of National Identity in Spain. Berkeley: U of California P, 1993.
Kramsch, Claire. “The Cultural Component of Language Teaching.” Language, Culture, and Curriculum 8.2 (1995): 83–92.
Purves, Alan. “Telling Our Story about Teaching Literature.” Profession 1997. New York: MLA, 1997. 133–41.
© 2001 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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