Filmic Gendered Discourses in Rural Contexts: The Case of the Camino de Santiago (Spain)

Lucrezia Lopez

doi:10.3390/su12125080

Abstract

Rural areas have turned into multifunctional areas. They satisfy different economic and social requirements; among these, they are consolidating their position as film production locations. Becoming a film location ensures visibility and provides new forms to access sustainable economic trajectories to promoting rural areas and rural vitality. In some cases, filmic discourses present unequal gender treatment that may be associated with their locations. Considering this, the aim of this research was to explore cinematic discourses based on the symmetry or asymmetry in gendered cinematic representations that mainly occur in the rural space of the Camino de Santiago (Spain). This First European Cultural route crosses urban and rural centers that have benefited in different ways from its international recognition. By combining both the linguistic and visual codes, I engaged in a qualitative film discourse analysis concerning female pilgrims along the route. Despite of the feminization of the Camino, the results prove the permanence of gendered norms and societal roles in audio-visual productions based on a common latent ideology. The conclusions introduce the concept of social and relational sustainability as a way to achieve equal gender treatment when creating media discourses.

Highlights

Creative and cultural media are common communicational tools conveying social and cultural messages; their content is diverse and affects the perceptions of their targets, contributing to the production of gendered cultural identities [1,2,3]
The quantitative information introduced in the table refers to those actors who are reproduced in the foreground
The representation of rural spaces and their transformation into locations have contributed to a process of renegotiation, producing multiple moving images with their cultural message

Summary

Introduction

Creative and cultural media are common communicational tools conveying social and cultural messages; their content is diverse and affects the perceptions of their targets, contributing to the production of gendered cultural identities [1,2,3]. The cultural and creative audiovisual industries satisfy different aims, as they can contribute to promoting the values of the territory identity elements; all of them ensure visibility while contributing to the construction of attractive and unique tourist rural spaces [9,10] For this growing importance, the present research draws attention to the production of filmic discourses, both textual and visual, associated with the rural context of the Camino de Santiago (Spain) ( the expression used will be the Camino). Sarah, the main female character, is initially mysterious and rude, her other companions define her as “sexy”, and do not reveal the real reason why Tom is walking the Camino Her statement “European guys are too confident, so I prefer to leave” (minute 38) envisions a typical relationship between a man and woman, predator and prey.

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion