Melodrama and the Production of Empathy in Manuel Puig’s El Beso de la mujer araña

Irina Popescu

doi:10.26824/lalr.153

Abstract

Manuel Puig’s 1974 novel, El Beso de la mujer araña, investigates how empathy can be incrementally learned through a melodramatic storytelling pratice and, eventually, mobilized to effect political and social change. As Molina and Valentín, the two protagonists, coinhabit the same jail cell in Buenos Aires, Puig uses the sentimental, aesthetic and formal qualities of nineteenth-century melodrama, seen primarily through the Hollywood B-film, Cat People, to structure the reader’s understanding of how political, sexual, and class-based empathy is constructed inside Argentina’s first “Dirty War novel.” Puig employs the structure of melodrama as a means of mobilizing empathy vis-à-vis the psychological and physical body of the other. What develops in El Beso is a model for narrative empathy centering on the body as a vehicle for empathetic connection. Empathy, therefore, becomes a space for political action. This empathy is constructed through reading and the excess of identification, which in turn diminishes the self/other divide, and enables the surrender to touch and desire which subsequently shapes a new identity.

Highlights

Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel, El beso de la mujer araña, demonstrates how the mobilization of empathy between individuals can transform political ideology, the structure of desire, and the rigid gender norms framing Argentine masculinity
Manuel Puig’s 1974 novel, El beso de la mujer araña, investigates how empathy can be incrementally learned through a melodramatic storytelling practice and, eventually, mobilized to effect political and social change
The novel focuses on the relationship and discourse between two strikingly different individuals sharing a jail cell in Buenos Aires in 1975, months before the formal establishment of Argentina’s military regime

Summary

Introduction

Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel, El beso de la mujer araña, demonstrates how the mobilization of empathy between individuals can transform political ideology, the structure of desire, and the rigid gender norms framing Argentine masculinity. The initial struggle between the two prisoners is transformed as Valentín begins accepting Molina’s sexual identity as well as restructuring his own matrix of desire and empathy.

Results

Conclusion