Abstract
This study argues that the popular comedy cinema of late Francoism (roughly 1960-75), known as comedia sexy, comedia celtibérica, or simply landismo, aimed to shift the international perception of Spain away from racialized stereotypes of the nation’s Africanness in order to move it closer to a white European identity. Troubled by the reputation of Francoism as anachronistic in a context of global decolonization, civil rights in the U.S., and rapid social and economic change within Spain, the regime used the popular cinema industry, which was closely aligned with it ideologically, to portray Spain as upwardly mobile on a geopolitical hierarchy that was imagined as a black/white racial paradigm. Specifically, by intertwining the macho ibérico/sueca narrative trope with racist caricatures of blacks, this cinema aimed to accentuate Spain’s upward geopolitical and racial mobility by contrasting it with the fixity of racial others, while simultaneously retaining a deracialized, commodifiable “difference” as a competitive advantage on the world stage.
Highlights
Critical studies of racial ideologies in Spain have tended to emphasize the national context rather than linking Spanish racial discourses to global rhetorics of whiteness.1 The scarcity of whiteness scholarship on Spain is, to some extent, understandable, given that Spain was long perceived as racially distinct from white countries
Given Spain’s legacy as one of Europe’s foremost colonial powers, its imposition of Eurocentric racial hierarchies throughout its global empire, and its extensive participation in the transatlantic slave trade, the present study begins from the premise that further examination of Spain’s shifting and unstable relationship to global whiteness is both productive and necessary
The first is the cultural, political, and economic Europeanization of Spain, a process that began in the later decades of Francoism and reached a symbolic culmination in Spain’s admission in 1986 to the European Union, “the unofficial international club of white countries” (Fra-Molinero 147)
Summary
TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World Title Spain Is (Not So) Different: Whitening Spain through Late Francoist Comedy Journal TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 8(2)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
