II International Conference Gender and Communication Facultad de Comunicación de Sevilla 1, 2 and 3 de april 2014 Conference proceeding Juan Carlos Suárez Villegas Rosario Lacalle Zalduendo José Manuel Pérez Tornero Editors 1 De los autores y las autoras Dykinson S.L. TODOS LOS DERECHOS RESERVADOS No está permitida la reproducción total o parcial de este medio ni su tratamiento informático, ni la transmisión de ninguna forma o por cualquier medio, ya sea electrónico, mecánico, por fotocopia, por registro u otros medios sin el permiso previo y por escrito de los titulares del copyright. EDITADO POR: Juan Carlos Suárez Villegas Rosario Lacalle Zalduendo José Manuel Pérez Tornero Abril de 2014 I.S.B.N. 978-84-9085-029-9 2 INDEX PART 1. The representation of male and female identities in the media in any format Witching y bitching: gender representations in contemporany Spanish film Baena Cuder, Irene Hoe gender representations matter with generation in televisión? Hannot, Muriel; Derinoz, Sabri and Levant, Bertrand Egypt: a feminist identity Heikal, Azza Ahmed Feminism and women´s magazines: a discourse analysis of women´s identities and (partners) relationships as articulated in two flemish women´s magazines of the twentieth century´s sixties and seventies Maaike, Van de Voordre and Martina Temmerman Women sport reporters: feminity in a traditional male field Marilou St. Pierre Woman without body in Turkish cinema: fetishism in mass communication M. Sami Bayran and Guncel Onkal The magnificent century: reconstruction of the Ottoman empire family Murat Iri Overt sexism in media: a lexico-grammatical analysis of androcentricity in Egyptian print media Nayef, Heba Old-fashioned women. The representation of female image in the Italian television advertising Panarese, Paola PART 2. Analysis of discourses on gender identities in the media and other communicative contexts (social networks, education systems) Academic female subject amidst Bourdieu´s “habitus” and Butler´s “performativity” Berfin Varisli and Gokcesu Aksit Audience reception in Moroccan women´s magazines Bouchara, Aicha A reading of masculinity in crises: Behzat Ç Merve Ayge Koseoglu 3 PART 3. The co-education of children and young people through communication in gender equality Gender, nationalism and genocide Azra Rashid PART 4. Treatment and prevention of gender equality through education and communication Strategies to raise public awareness about gender problems through critical games Prosperi, Valeria PART 5. Criticism of reality and the representation of gender roles in the field of social, economic and scientific labor relations Women´s war work through a gendered lens: a critical feminist analysis of media representations of women´s labour in the Canadian press (1939-1945) Moniz, Tracy ABSTRACTS Telling the truth about Media and gender equality Mariapia Ciaghi Anti-violence initiatives in Europe: a comparative study on visual discourse to end gender-based violence in Austria and Spain Wolf, Birgit 4 PART 1. The representation of male and female identities in the media in any format 5 WITCHING AND BITCHING: GENDER REPRESENTATION IN CONTEMPORARY SPANISH FILM Irene Baena Cuder School of Film, Television and Media Studies University of East Anglia [email protected] Abstract: in the last thirty years Spanish women have entered the public sphere and have achieved a progressive empowerment in their struggle for gender equality. These changes in women’s roles have provoked anxiety among some men, who see them as a threat to their privileged position in patriarchal society. This tension is suggested or openly depicted in contemporary Spanish horror films created by a new generation of young male filmmakers in which the threat and the element that brings horror to the narrative is usually a female character. The film Witching and Bitching aka Las brujas de Zugarramurdi (de la Iglesia, 2013) offers a filmic materialisation of this tension within the Spanish context, by presenting a battle between male identities in crisis, anxious about the emergent role of women, and strong, independent female characters, who are depicted as monsters. Keywords: Gender, masculinity, monstrous-feminine, identity, horror film, Spanish cinema 1.Introduction Women were the great defeated in the Spanish Civil War, independently of the side they supported. The rights they had achieved during the Government of the Second Republic were denied by the Franco's fascist regime, which imposed over women an extremely reactionary role. Thus, according to the new order established, women had to stay at home, looking after the house and the family, preserving family values and the Roman Catholic moral. As a consequence, "until 1975, the date of Franco's death, a married woman in Spain could not open a bank account, buy a car, apply for a passport, or even work without her husband's approval, and he had the right to claim her salary" (Montero, 1995: 381). With the transition into Democracy, Spanish society started a process of deep change that had a special impact on women who started to move away from these roles and to strive for others that had been denied to them for so long. In the last thirty years women have entered the public sphere and have achieved a progressive empowerment in their struggle for gender equality. These changes in women’s roles have provoked anxiety among some men, who see them as a threat to their privileged position in patriarchal society. This tension is suggested or openly depicted in contemporary films, particularly within the horror genre, as one filmic materialisation of this tension is the representation of strong and/or independent female characters as monsters. However, these anxieties resulting from the emergent role of women in society are present in most of Western societies and so is its filmic materialisation, mainly but not exclusively, through monstrous representations of women, female bodies and femininity in general, as Barbara Creed pointed out in The Monstrous-Feminine. Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysys (Creed, 1993). The film Witching and Bitching, aka Las Brujas de Zugarramurdi (de la Iglesia, 6 2013) offers a good example of a filmic representation of this male tension towards the female empowerment. The film was released in Spain the 27th of September 2013 and its release was surrounded by controversy, due to the way it portrays women as monsters and men as sympathetic victims. “La última película de Alex de la Iglesia se caracteriza tanto por un enfoque misógino basado en los estereotipos de la guerra de sexos, como por unas brujas con discurso feminista que se libran de la hoguera” (the last Alex de la Iglesia's film is characterised both by its misogynistic approach based on sex war stereotypes and witches with a feminist discourse who avoid the stake) (Píkara magazine 31/10/2013). The film introduces a desperate father who organises and perpetrates a robbery and tries to escape to France. However, his initiative will be abruptly interrupted by a coven in Zugarramurdi, who has another plan for his young son. 2. Hypothesis The film is told from the male point of view and it displays male and female characters in opposition to each other and in an open confrontation. Thus, whereas male characters are in crisis and fighting to regain their advantageous position in a patriarchal society, female characters are depicted as monsters, organised in a threatening matriarchy. This dichotomy seems to give expression to the shared gender anxieties mentioned above, resulting from the emergent role of women in contemporary Spain. Furthermore, Álex de la Iglesia, the director of the film, recently commented in an interview with Diario Público: "hay en la película cosas que me han pasado a mí. (...) De alguna manera, la película refleja un sentir extendido" (there are things in the film that have actually happened to me (…) somehow, the film reflects a shared feeling) (Diario Público 22- 09-2013), when asked about the relation between men and women in the film. Moreover, the director openly talks about his fear of women in the same interview. 3. Methods The methodology used was textual analysis framed mainly in Creed's theory of the Monstrous-feminine. Moreover, the analysis has been historically contextualised in Spanish society and its recent past. 4. Results Told from a male point of view, the film presents a group of male characters struggling to cope with women in general. Moreover, these personae embody the masculinity stereotype and therefore, cannot talk openly about their anxiety concerning women as, according to this gender role, men cannot show any weakness or feelings: "they are conditioned to keep their anxieties to themselves" (Horrocks, 1994:144). The film seems, then, as a way to materialise these shared anxieties and release the tension through the comedy catharsis. As the filmmaker has expressed, "es una forma de reírme de mis carencias y de mis problemas" ("It is a way to laugh about my lacks and my problems") (Publico, 22/09/2013) 4.1 Men on the verge of a nervous breakdown The male protgonists of the film embody different kind of gender tension related to women. As they explain, they have been suffering this anxiety for some time 7 and it was just a matter of time that they exploded. The catalyst of this explosion is José's (Hugo Silva) divorce and his powerlessness regarding his son's custody. He is living a situation of disadvantage in relation to his ex-wife and he cannot cope with that. Thus, he decides to abduct the child, rob a we buy gold shop and escape to France, where he hopes to start a new life, without his ex-wife. The film introduces the protagonist duo (Silva and Casas) far from the galán roles that they usually play. They are dressed as Jesus Christ and a soldier, two highly influential symbols in masculine identities, and they carry heavy weaponry, displaying power.