Buñuel and the Bourgeoisie

Abstract

Dadaism, the revolutionary artistic movement that emerged in different European countries around 1916 and that preceded Surrealism, was, in effect, an angry and outraged reaction to the values of contemporary society, and was fuelled even more by the senseless destruction of the First World War, which many saw as the consequence of those values and beliefs. The fate of millions of young men dragooned into fighting for their country and exposed by their superiors to the most terrible conditions – clinging mud, stinking trenches, endless shelling, mustard gas, disease, hunger and, in many cases, death or chronic illness and injury – intensified a fundamental questioning of all those hitherto sacred cows that had led to and were manifest in the course of that catastrophic conflict: patriotism, honour, and self-sacrifice among them. These were, of course, ideals that were identified with those groups that exercised power and control, that enjoyed position and wealth, and in which the bourgeoisie figured prominently. In relation to the French social structure in particular, the word ‘bourgeois’ covered a broad economic spectrum, which included those families that were extremely rich, as well as those that were salaried or self-employed but not necessarily very well off. Wealthy or not, they nevertheless shared similar views, those at the lower end of the scale aspiring to the status of those above, and therefore embracing all those things that the latter believed in, be it decency and propriety, the importance of money, good name, respect or love of one’s country. In short, these were the traditional and essentially conservative principles that had been at the heart of French and European society for many years and which the Dadaists made every effort to undermine.