El homosexual como juguete cómico en el cine de Juan de Orduña: el tío Frasquito en Pequeñeces (1950)

Abstract

Abstract During the 1940s, Francoist censorship troubled and banned the representation of homosexuality in cinema. However, some representational cracks existed and some queer characters (sissies, transvestites, mannish women) were visible, almost always as comic figures. These representations (especially, effeminate men) were frequent in films directed by Juan de Orduña, a homosexual filmmaker integrated in the Francoist cinematographic industry. This article studies these characters and proposes some hypothesis to read Orduña’s authorial position towards them. In particular, it suggests that Orduña negotiated his creative expression with dominant discourses concerning homosexuality in order to represent it, as other homosexual creators had made before him and many others would make afterwards in Spanish culture. Scripts, censorship documents and films are compared to show how significant elements related to homosexuality were added when filming. Specifically, this article focuses in a queer character, Tío Frasquito, and how it was developed during the production of Orduña’s film Pequeñeces (1950).