Cine, literatura y otras artes al servicio de las ideologías
Javier de Santiago Guervós (Volume editor)
Miguel Soler Gallo (Volume editor)
Summary
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cubierta
- Título
- Copyright
- Sobre el autor/el editor
- Sobre el libro
- Esta edición en formato eBook puede ser citada
- Índice
- Lista de autores
- Lara A. Garrido
- Beginning and Evolution of the ‘Un violador en tu camino’ movement: From Chile to the World
- Lorea Azpeitia Anta
- Jenisjoplin: conflictos políticos que atraviesan la identidad de un personaje literario
- Alfonso Bartolomé
- Contradiscurso y dialéctica de resistencia: experiencia migratoria en American Poems (2015) y Año 9. Crónicas catastróficas en la era Trump (2020), de Azahara Palomeque
- Carlos Arturo Caballero Medina
- El discurso autobiográfico de Memorias de un soldado desconocido
- José Antonio Calzón García
- Desmontando tópicos: hacia una lectura social e ideológica de ciertas ucronías steampunk
- Inmaculada Caro Rodríguez
- Diarios del Holocausto: realidades con apariencia de ficción
- Gabrielle Carvalho Lafin
- We just speak English, no hablamos español: el impacto del nuevo currículo escolar en la enseñanza y oferta de ELE en Brasil
- Rafael Castán Andolz
- Discursos contra heteras en el mundo griego: acto jurídico o pervivencia del statu quo social
- Jiří Chalupa / Eva Reichwalderová
- Ortega y Gasset en la montaña rusa de la historia centroeuropea
- Ayşe ÇifterMaría Toledo Escobar
- ‘El turco’ en la novela latinoamericana: crónica de un viaje a… ¿América?
- Marco da Costa
- Adoctrinando el Nuevo Estado español a norteamericanos de izquierdas: el Mein Kampf de Franco
- Melissa M. Culver
- El discurso de las ciencias y el discurso de ‘lo humano’ en la novela criminal española: el caso de La cara norte del corazón
- Teresa Fernández-Ulloa
- La imagen al servicio de la educación en lo subalterno. Las rutinas de pensamiento del artful thinking ejemplificadas con fotos de Rebeca Lane
- Hernán Fernández-Meardi
- La re-emergencia de reivindicaciones identitarias subalternas en Argentina, Brasil y México
- María Eugenia Flores Treviño
- El infierno mexicano: Un estudio semiótico-discursivo del filme de Luis Estrada
- M.ª Victoria Galloso Camacho / Alicia Garrido Ortega
- A vueltas con la persuasión: la imagen de la actriz Emma Watson
- Alba N. García Agüero
- De la educación a las narrativas: el discurso oficial sobre la ‘patria mexicana’ en las narrativas de usuarios de libros escolares
- Pedro García Guirao / Elena del Pilar Jiménez Pérez
- Lectura crítica y humor gráfico del exilio español en el México de mediados del s. XX
- María Lourdes Gasillón
- La isla de Tomás Moro existe en el Caribe. Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, un lector influido por la ideología revolucionaria
- Eva Gómez Fernández
- De Thomas Dixon a William Luther Pierce: la literatura y el cine como herramienta de control social
- Maite Goñi Indurain
- Y el recuerdo se hizo canción. La construcción del discurso memorialista a través de la música popular
- Nancy Granados Reyes
- Análisis del control social y la violencia de género en Premio del Bien y Castigo del mal (1884) de Refugio Barragán de Toscano
- Michaëla Grevin
- «Solo vencen los que luchan y resisten»: la propaganda revolucionaria en la gráfica cubana de los años 1960
- Alexander Gurrutxaga Muxika / Lourdes Otaegi Imaz
- Reverberaciones de Antígona: ética y disidencia en las reescrituras contemporáneas
- Manuel Santiago Herrera Martínez
- La gastrosofía como control social en el cuento El cocinero de Alfonso Reyes
- Qian Kejian
- La lectura de Largo noviembre de Madrid (2011) de Juan Eduardo Zúñiga como narrativas del trauma
- Covadonga Lamar Prieto
- “Esta tierra no ‘e más que miseria”: emigración y transglosia histórica en Pinceladas (1892) de Antonio Fernández Martínez
- Vicente Marcos López Abad
- The Short Story as a “Statement of Force”: Julio Cortázar’s “Graffiti”
- María del Mar López-Cabrales
- Rosalía: ¿Puede servir el discurso musical como instrumento de empoderamiento para la mujer?
- Oleski Miranda Navarro
- Crudo y denuncia: la migración negra en la novela del petróleo en Venezuela (1935–1936)
- Futuro Moncada Forero
- La tergiversación como contradiscurso político en un proyecto de investigación en las artes
- Diego Ernesto Parra Sánchez
- La subversión de discursos hegemónicos en la novela neopolicial No habrá final feliz
- Oier Quincoces
- Juan y José Agustín Goytisolo. Lo autobiográfico como hermenéutica de un ‘antidiscurso’
- María José Rodríguez Campillo / Antoni Brosa Rodríguez
- El discurso de las dramaturgas áureas como deconstrucción del discurso persuasivo tradicional de su época
- Inmaculada Rodríguez-Moranta
- La recepción del Premio Ciudad de Barcelona concedido a Carmen Kurtz (1955): el medio era el mensaje
- Paula Romero Polo
- Discurso novelesco, cuerpo y deseo: formas de resistencia en Lectura fácil (2018)
- Cristina Ruiz Serrano
- La monstruosidad como discurso ideológico en El laberinto del fauno y La forma del agua de Guillermo del Toro
- Juan Saúl Salomón Plata
- Dejar la aguja para coger la pluma. El discurso prologuístico zayesco «Al que leyere»
- Margarita Savchenkova
- Traducción y memoria traumática: construcción del discurso sobre la guerra en la obra de Svetlana Alexiévich
- Miguel Soler Gallo
- El ‘embellecimiento’ del fascismo: técnicas del discurso político adaptadas a un tipo de novela romántica ideologizada en tiempos de la Guerra Civil y la posguerra españolas
- Martín Sorbille
- El juego de Arcibel: la negatividad en un nuevo discurso contra hegemónico
- Beatriz Soto Aranda
- El prólogo de una traducción como discurso político: el papel de Mohammed Larbi Messari en la recepción del ensayo Los moros que trajo Franco (Madariaga, 2002) en el mundo árabe
- María Toledo Escobar
- Injusticias sociales bajo la pluma de Blanca de los Ríos
- Ana Lizandra Socorro Torres
- Amadeo Roldán y la Orquesta Filarmónica de La Habana en el contexto de la Revolución del 30. Repertorio y discurso
- José Torres Álvarez
- La reparación de la imagen social corporativa: Telecinco y la docuserie Rocío, contar la verdad para seguir viva
- Manuel Zaniboni
- Paralelo 35: Carmen Laforet y su primer viaje a Estados Unidos
- Manuel Zelada
- Mentiras verdaderas: la autoficción como estrategia política en tres obras recientes sobre la violencia en Latinoamérica
Lara A. Garrido
Beginning and Evolution of the ‘Un violador en tu camino’ movement: From Chile to the World
1. Beginning: When? Who? Why?
It was on between the 18th and the 23rd of November 2019 that various cities in Chile trembled with the determination and the power brought by a large group of women summoned by the feminist collective LasTesis. On the 25th of November, they reenacted their performance in the capital, Santiago de Chile, with a more substantial group of women from all around the country. It was no coincidence either that they chose to enact their performance on this day, it was prearranged so that it could coincide with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. The goal was not simply to protest against the inaction and impunity feminicides and violence women suffer were dealt with, the aim was to carry out their protest visibly, to gain notoriety and to create a visual identity.
LasTesis is a collective of four women who decided to turn feminist theory into performances that could reach more people, to make the message more available from the academia to the rest of the world outside of it. According to the creators of the performance, ‘tomamos la tesis de (la antropóloga argentina) Rita Segato sobre el mandato de violación y la desmitificación del violador como un sujeto que ejerce la acción de violar por placer sexual’ (ene, 2019). In addition to this, they manifest the importance of realizing that violence against women is a blight on society: ‘desmitificar la violación como un problema personal o que se le atribuya a la enfermedad del violador porque lo que se busca decir es que es un tema social’ (CNN Español, 2019). The first performances drew attention to the message, and through the use of social media in combination with other feminist associations calling for action, it became known first in Chile, then throughout Latin America, and finally it expanded worldwide. In fact, based on the information gathered by GeoChicas, a group of women who do mapping to work towards closing the gender gap, “Un violador en tu camino” has been performed in over 50 countries around the world, and in more than 400 locations (GeoChicas, 2021). To help with the spread of the message and the performance, the song was also translated to other languages, and even the lyrics were adapted to name specific influential people such as Donald Trump (Martin and Shaw, 2021: 1—18) and Brett Kavanaugh (Tavel, 2019) who wield their power to exert any type of violence against women with complete immunity.
Considering the success that LasTesis’ performance has had, it is paramount to recognize what have been the key elements of its success, the reasons behind the level of engagement that it has achieved. Therefore, this paper is set to analyze what elements of the lyrics, as well as other visual elements were so compelling, and if all women are truly represented in the message delivered by the performance. Therefore, I will be using two frameworks: first, critical discourse analysis to examine the lyrics, and second, multimodal analysis for the visual aspects of the song such as the dance, the music, the clothing and the space they occupied.
2. Analysis: The lyrics
Even though the song has been adapted to include the names of certain people, and even translated into other languages, LasTesis wrote the original version of the song in their manifesto (LasTesis 2021: 102—103), and it is this version that I will be referring to. Upon reading the song, the first thing to be noticed is the meta narrative of ‘them against us’ narrative, specifically ‘patriarchy’, ‘men’ and the ‘oppressive state’ against ‘women’. However, it is necessary to delve deeper to understand not only who is involved, but also what are the actions being. According to Simpson and Mayr:
When analyzing agency (who does what to whom) and action (what gets done) we are interested in describing three aspects of meaning: participants (which includes both the ‘doers’ of the process as well as the ‘done-tos’ who are at the receiving end of action; participants may be people, things or abstract concepts) processes (represented by verbs and verbal groups) circumstances (these are adverbial groups or prepositional phrases, detailing where, when and how something has occurred) (Simpson and Mayr, 2010: 66).
Following the notion of agency with relation to the social actors previously identified [namely ‘patriarchy’ and ‘men’ against ‘women’], I have separated their actions in their respective categories. The actions attributed to ‘patriarchy’ are punishing, judging, killing [women specifically as indicated by the word ‘feminicidio’], kindnapping, exerting violence, exonerating and blaming. At the same time, some of these are connected to the actions of assassinating and violating that are ascribed to ‘men’ because despite doing this, patriarchy exonerates them from them. Following on more activities that are intertwined, the song also identifies ‘the state’ as a social actor that rapes and oppresses. Even though women are not explicitly mentioned, they are present as the group upon which all the above-mentioned actions are done, they are in turn judged, punished, abused, killed, kidnapped, violated, blamed, and oppressed. The simple message of ‘them against us’ had to be unpacked to identify that women are presented as the victims of a patriarchal system that enables men as part of an oppressive state.
Nonetheless, if the analysis carries on, there are other elements that contribute to the meta narrative previously identified. Machin and Mayr have compiled a classification of social actors that will help to peel off another layer of meaning within the lyrics. I will be focusing on personalization and impersonalization, specification and genericization, individualization versus collectivization, nomination, or functionalization, objectivation, suppression, and pronoun versus noun (Machin and Mayr, 2012: 79—85). On the one hand, ‘patriarchy’ and ‘the state’ are two social actors that appear to be impersonalized, however, their actions are also tied with those of ‘men’ and the ‘oppressive state’, making the impersonalization gendered, as it so happens that these words are all masculine in Spanish1. In more detail, the impersonalization of this social actor is also tied to the genericization, and collectivization of it as it creates a generic category that is dehumanized, thus creating distance, and contributing to add to the idea of a fight or conflict. The use of ‘men’ in the lyrics seems to be masterfully placed between ‘Patriarchy’ and ‘the state’ to tie both of these impersonal and general collectives together with this specific social actor. The result is that ‘men’ are signaled to be in the institutions, and in the system itself doing all the actions previously attributed, thus setting the individual focus on them as the perpetrators of violence against women to be fought.
On the other hand, women, fighting on the opposite side, only appears in pronouns [specifically ‘us’, ‘mine’ ‘feminicide’ as a reference] instead of nouns. The deliberate use of pronouns can be problematic as Fairclough says because the concept of ‘we’ is slippery (Fairclough 2000: 152). Furthermore, this fact can be used by text producers and politicians to make vague statements and conceal power relations (Machin and Mayr, 2012: 84). In this case, the suppression of women or their absence aligns with the idea that ‘women’ are suffering the infliction of the actions by ‘patriarchy’, ‘the state’ and ‘men’. Moreover, the use of ‘mine’ referring to women denying they are to blame for provoking the violence forced on them denotes two important aspects; first, they are having to defend themselves as being accused of inciting men’s violence, and second, they blame men for it.
Although the social actors have been identified, the use of pronouns instead of nouns in one group, in combination with impersonalization, collectivization and genericization of the other groups has a more profound impact in the profile of these actors. The idea that ‘men’ as a whole are at war with all ‘women’ only operates in absolutes, however, it has been established that there are women who contribute to patriarchy with their actions, as there are men who also suffer the violence of the patriarchy. The way in which the participants have been portrayed in the lyrics has been carefully and deliberately created to comply with the idea that women have to fight men because they are the problem. Taking this into account, it is also important to point out that Van Dijk has shown how the news aligns us alongside or against people can be thought of as what he calls ‘ideological squaring’. He shows how texts often use referential choices to create opposites, to make events and issues appear simplified in order to control their meaning (Van Dijk, 2003). Therefore, the dismissal of any case outside the dichotomy men-against-women is a misrepresentation of either group’s situation as it identifies ‘men’ only as perpetrators of violence and ‘women’ just subjects who endure said violence. It also erases the different ways in which a patriarchal system and an oppressive state operate depending on who is challenging them by concealing certain intersectional issues that are also real and valid experiences, even if they do not fit within the men-against-women narrative. This could be the example of a trans woman who not only suffers at the hands of the patriarchy or the state, but also faces discrimination from other cis-gendered women. Likewise, those who identify as non-binary, therefore not ascribing to the heteronormative ideal will have to fight those men and women who do not accept it.
2.1 Analysis: Other visual elements
The power of seeing is undeniable, that is why people say that an image is worth a thousand words. Seeing is believing, and according to Kimberlé Crenshaw, when a problem is not identified, it cannot be solved (Crenshaw, 1991: 1252). From the moment LasTesis decided to take their performance to the streets, the message stopped being private, and they made the problem a public matter. In their own words:
Hablar es un acto cotidiano, lo hacemos todo el tiempo con nuestras amistades, familia, personas conocidas y desconocidas. Sin embargo, cuando lo hacemos como colectivo, en la calle, en el espacio público, toma un peso, una carga, una potencia distinta. Mujeres y disidencias en las calles, luchando desde sus cuerpos y cuerpas, desde la performance, aún perturban (LasTesis 2021:106).
The visual aspect of their performance was key to their message and essential to obtain the level of engagement they wanted to achieve from those who watched it. The goal was not just to have people join them, but also to force people to see it, to deal with it so that they could not look the other way anymore. The combination of clothing, music, dance, and location was powerful and more than anything full of meaning. This section of the analysis will serve to connect the meaning that these other elements add to the lyrics and how they all connect. To carry out this analysis, I will use Barthes notions of denotation and connotation to make this connection between the elements and the song.
Barthes explained how denotation is a description of the image, what one could be looking at or what parts made a composition, meanwhile, connotation is the potential meaning of the parts that have been previously identified and how they all blend to deliver the final message (Barthes, 1977).
The dressing-code to attend the performance was specific: provocative outfits or clothes that could be worn on a night out, a black blindfold and a green or purple scarf. The public representation always had to have a large group of women positioned in long rows to dance and march at the sound of the music and while singing the lyrics. The chosen locations were emblematic centers of power. The significance behind this denotation, or the connotation becomes apparent in different layers. Initially, a group of women dressed up provocatively will attract attention to themselves, especially if their dress code is deemed inappropriate to be worn in broad daylight. Once they put on their blindfold, it is a manifestation of the vulnerable position they find themselves in, and yet, they are all together and even representing other women, hence the purple2 scarf or the green scarf3. Given that the group is large, and that they are organized in a specific formation, it can be perceived as an army, especially as they start marching to the beat of a song that resembles a military march. The dance they do includes squatting with their hands above their head to symbolize sexual violence, but particularly as it was used to torture women by the police and the army during the dictatorship. During the song, while blindfolded, women also point forward and around them to identify who is responsible for the violence they suffer, hence the importance of the location. In fact, Ledin and Machin state that there are a number of spaces designed to channel our behavior and foster particular kinds of experience or elicit a specific behavior (Ledin and Machin, 2018: 110). Performing in an epicenter of patriarchal power is not only challenging, but it is disruptive because it is not the kind of behavior expected or allowed in there. Verónica Gago even suggests that this type of behavior is a direct response to all the different ways in which women experience violence:
Las violencias machistas exhiben una impotencia que responde al despliegue de un deseo de autonomía (en contextos frágiles y críticos) de los cuerpos feminizados. Llevar adelante este deseo de autonomía se traduce inmediatamente en prácticas de desacato a la autoridad masculina (históricamente refrendada en el poder del salario, en el contrato sexual y en el orden colonial actualizado), lo cual es respondido con nuevas dinámicas de violencia que ya no pueden caracterizarse sólo como “íntimas” (Gago, 2019: 8).
The effect that these connotations can have depends of the audience. If someone who has been affected by the violence and the oppression of men is in the audience, they might perceive that the message is in part his or hers, and it might join them, or record it to share it with others on social media. However, if someone in the audience feels threated by these group of women and their message because of the challenge that they pose, they might look away or have a negative reaction to it. In either case, the performance has accomplished its goal by making their message heard through the engagement that pedestrians cannot avoid. It inevitably poses a disruption for the institutions too as they regulate public spaces and everything that concerns them4. The collective has always expressed their belief in the power of women coming together as they state: ‘A través de la internalización real de la empatía y sororidad, en vinculación con el colectivo, es que podemos defendernos de las jaulas patriarcales’ (LasTesis, 2021:9). After the success of their performance, it is unquestionable that there are many other women around the world who have the opinion as they have showed by taking back public spaces and declaring their will to make visible violence against women.
3. Conclusion
It is impossible to deny the ability to engage that LasTesis’ performance has had, and there are several factors that have played a part in its success. When considering memes as continuous hijacking of ideas and content in a way that makes them recognizable and instantly relatable, it is clear that the performance ‘Un violador en tu camino’ became a viral sensation in Chile and other sites around the globe. Moreover, it was a feminist appropriation of protest performances that has reframed and enhanced the original discourse to amplify local struggles that were relatable to many. These have been some of the advantages, but there are also others to mention as well. For instance, the ability of having a large group of women performing made them visible despite not being specifically named in the song, and in many countries the public representation forcibly made the invisible—even taboo in some cases—visible. In addition to this, due to the rhythm of the song, and the location where they took place, bystanders were forced to take part as witnesses or to engage through social media.
Nevertheless, there are other negative aspects that have also impacted the message they created. The visual representation in combination with the analysis of the lyrics show that supporting a narrative of ‘men against women’ risks concealing power relations as they are perceived within the paradox of ‘men are always the aggressor’ and ‘women always the victim’. Therefore, the message conveyed calls for more intersectionality to be representative of those exceptions that contradict this rule.
1 Despite this detail not being transferred to the modern English language, or any other language that does not have a system of grammatical gender, it could be inferred that ‘patriarchy’, along with the ‘oppressive state’ are generally considered to be male rather than feminine.
2 The color purple has been used in the last few years to symbolize women. It is common to see it particularly on the 8th of March for International Women’s Day.
3 The color green has been designated in Latin America as a symbol for activists and those who support abortion laws or the right of women to choose.
Details
- Pages
- 528
- Year
- 2023
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9783631885192
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9783631885208
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9783631885185
- DOI
- 10.3726/b19987
- Language
- Spanish; Castilian
- Publication date
- 2023 (July)
- Keywords
- Manifestaciones artísticas y culturales La cultura de la imagen, los sonidos, las letras y otros formatos creativos Mediadores de pensamiento
- Published
- Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien, 2023. 528 p., 59 blanco/negro, 4 tablas.
Biographical notes
Teresa Fernández-Ulloa (Volume editor)
Javier de Santiago Guervós (Volume editor)
Miguel Soler Gallo (Volume editor)
Teresa Fernández-Ulloa es Professor/Catedrática de Lengua y Lingüística Españolas en el Departamento de Lenguas y Literaturas Modernas de la California State University, Bakersfield. Sus áreas de especialización e investigación son la sociolingüística, el análisis del discurso (sobre todo, el político y el de mujeres creadoras) y la enseñanza del español como primera y segunda lengua. Javier de Santiago-Guervós es Catedrático de Lengua Española y Comunicación en la Universidad de Salamanca. Sus áreas de especialización e investigación son el análisis del discurso persuasivo (lenguaje político, publicitario, comercial, etc.) y la gramática del español. Miguel Soler Gallo es doctor en Filología Hispánica por la Universidad de Salamanca. Sus principales líneas de investigación son el análisis del discurso político-ideológico en España durante la II República y el franquismo, el discurso romántico como vehículo de adoctrinamiento, las relaciones entre mujer, poder y escritura, y la literatura escrita por mujeres, especialmente desde el siglo XIX.
