Topical Social Issues Research Articles

What Change?: Spanish Gender Ideology and Marital Rape in La malcasada (1923) and Sólo mía (2001)

What Change?Spanish Gender Ideology and Marital Rape in La malcasada (1923) and Sólo mía (2001) Leslie Maxwell Kaiura (bio) Carmen de Burgos's novel La malcasada, published in 1923, and Javier Balaguer's film Sólo mía, released in 2001, share striking similarities in their treatment of domestic violence and marital rape despite the nearly eighty years of history and the differences in form that separate them. The two works explicitly reveal the connection between gender expectations and domestic violence as well as the inadequacy of the legal system to protect its victims. Both works demonstrate that even when women technically stand to benefit from the protection of the legal system, the centuries-old gender ideology that is deeply ingrained in Spanish society (and western culture in general) can render that protection ineffectual and practically meaningless. Even though they are women from two different centuries, the protagonists of these works confront many of the same obstacles in the battle to reclaim their right to safety and dignity, a fact demonstrating that despite changes in the law and in the conception of domestic violence as a serious issue, the problem cannot be remedied without a greater change in the gender ideology that underlies Spanish culture. Carmen de Burgos (1867-1932), author of La malcasada, was one of Spain's first radical feminist figures, with her prolific journalistic and literary career spanning the first three decades of the twentieth century. Ana Martínez Marín [End Page 67] writes that Burgos "representó para algunos espíritus progresistas la encarnación viva de la 'Nueva Mujer'" (13). She was indeed an exceptional woman for her time—after leaving her unfaithful and abusive husband, Burgos supported herself and her daughter by teaching and writing. Her first articles in defense of women's rights appeared in 1903, and she published her first novel in 1907 (Davies 120). Over the next twenty-five years she published over one hundred stories and novellas as well as twelve full-length novels. Burgos used the mass-produced popular novel to critique patriarchal society's treatment of women, particularly the social and legal standards that left women nearly defenseless against a myriad of abuses. The disposable nature of these publications documenting her commitment to social and political reform allowed Burgos' work to be largely dismissed by critics until the 1970s, when feminist scholars began to reevaluate the merit of her texts and her contributions to early twentieth-century Spanish culture.1 Burgos's straightforward, sensationalist fictions can easily be compared to some of today's popular films that treat topical social issues in the same melodramatic fashion. In La malcasada, the aptly named Dolores faces the scorn of society and the inequity of the Spanish legal system as she tries to escape from her abusive marriage. In Balaguer's Sólo mía, another young wife, with the equally fitting name of Ángela, confronts a similar situation when her marriage becomes a nightmare of abuse and humiliation as her husband tries to force her into the traditional feminine role of the angel of the house. Due to inadequate legal resources and other obstacles, both Dolores and Ángela are left to rescue themselves with tragic results—Dolores murders her husband in self-defense, and Ángela's final confrontation with her husband leaves him physically and mentally incapacitated. Sólo mía, released in November 2001, is Balaguer's directorial debut, and although the film received mixed reviews it did win him three award nominations, including a Best New Director nomination at the 2002 Goya Awards ("Javier Balaguer"). In addition to directing Sólo mía, Balaguer also co-wrote its screenplay with Álvaro García Mohedano. In the "Making of Sólo mía" featurette included on the DVD, Balaguer describes how they were inspired by real life events (in particular by a newspaper article about a woman who was killed by her husband) to investigate the reasons why a marriage that must have begun with love, could come to such a violent end. Balaguer also stresses their desire to make a realistic film that would avoid common stereotypes: Sólo mía refleja muy directamente y...

Therapeutic use of soap operas in autistic-spectrum disorders

‘Soap opera’ is a popular television genre that ‘invites the audience to … identify with characters' (Livingstone, 1990). Storylines tend to be shaped by national and local culture, although they may feature a disproportionate number of unstable relationships and tragedies (Liebes & Livingstone, 1998). Narratives evolve continually, allowing scriptwriters to incite viewer debate on myriad topical social issues, including mental illness (Reveley, 1997).

Therapeutic use of soap operas in autistic-spectrum disorders

‘Soap opera’ is a popular television genre that ‘invites the audience to … identify with characters' (Livingstone, 1990). Storylines tend to be shaped by national and local culture, although they may feature a disproportionate number of unstable relationships and tragedies (Liebes & Livingstone, 1998). Narratives evolve continually, allowing scriptwriters to incite viewer debate on myriad topical social issues, including mental illness (Reveley, 1997).

Book Revew: The Dawning of American Drama: American Dramatic Criticism, 1746- 1915

Reviewed by: The Dawning of American Drama: American Dramatic Criticism, 1746–1915 John Russell Poole The Dawning of American Drama: American Dramatic Criticism, 1746–1915. Compiled and Edited by Jürgen C. Wolter. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1993; pp. 319. $59.95 cloth. Until recently, serious exploration of American dramatic criticism prior to the twentieth century has eluded the attention of theatre scholars. The inferior quality of scripts and the absence of incisive contemporary criticism prior to the advent of the realist movement are among the reasons given by Jürgen Wolter, editor of this compendium of dramatic criticism and commentary, for such neglect. Wolter systematically has investigated American theatrical and literary popular journals to provide scholars and students a resource guide to “the most representative and illuminating texts from 170 years of dramatic criticism in America” (2). This includes almost 500 firsthand accounts and “heated debates” marking the direction of the American theatre; these are narrative artifacts that Wolter regards not only as a “treasure house of cultural memorabilia” but, more importantly, as a first step in the reclamation of early American dramatic criticism (2). Representative voices articulating the merits and defects of the early American stage are compiled into five sections. Chapters 4 and 5 document Wolter’s exhaustive search for commentary on the theatre arts recovered from a wide variety of American periodicals between 1746 and 1915. He also provides a meticulous, chronological list of dramatic criticism that will serve as an indispensable resource guide for the further study of nineteenth-century American theatre. The third chapter represents the bulk of the publication; it is here that Wolter offers representative “jeremiads and eulogies” of the dramatic arts in America spanning some six generations of theatre practice. Wolter subdivides this section of developing dramatic criticism prior to 1915 into three chronological categories: the nascent period of American theatre, 1746–1789; the utility of dramatic expression as a tool for defining American character and morality from 1790 to 1860; and, lastly, the advent of realism, 1860–1915. These “mirrors of public taste” (2) reflect the developing voices of early dramatic criticism, largely a chorus of lamentation either bemoaning the poor artistic state of the theatrical institution or its threat to religious and cultural morality in colonial America. The chronology of selected “dramatic criticism” reveals the formation of the emerging national character and the discourses of topical social issues—from women’s enfranchisement through economic empowerment, to the social plays of Ibsen. More importantly, the compilation in this section brings to light the then-ubiquitous concerns regarding the proper role of the theatre within the newly formed democratic nation, particularly as a tool for shaping a national identity and value system reflective of “American follies” and “American virtues” (11). On the whole, the collection becomes something more than a narrative of the shifting theatrical scene or of the economic dynamics of entertainment. Both critics and crusaders deal with significant issues—among them, the emergence of native playwrights from the shadow of European dramatists, the rise of melodrama, the decline of touring companies, the ascendance of the star system and its debilitating effect on the dramatic maturity of the writer’s craft, and the emergence and eventual domination of first “spectacle” and later realism. Often-lengthy passages become quite striking when intersected with the polemics of national ideology and contemporary social debate. Here, the theatre becomes a host for the immutable presence of both [End Page 252] the popular and the detested. When attacked, defenders of the theatrical institution aligned the issue of public performances to that of censorship and free assembly as a test of the underpinning principles of the fledgling democracy. If conservative moralists could indeed dictate “appropriate” forms of dramatic expression from above, as was their argument, what other forms of oppression might be impressed upon the people? When the role of theatre shifted away from one of social corruption to become an “instrument for the formation of national character” (13), it served to inculcate a strong sense of nationalism through its own peculiar representations of regional characteristics. American dramatists tapped into the young nation’s raw energy to create cultural icons of American folly as well as those...

The Infill House

The paradoxical question posed by this issue's theme, namely, can any system of design values be relevant in a multicultural world, is cleverly constructed for the way in which it places the consideration of design squarely within the context of topical social issues. The scope of the discussion is expanded beyond that of a more narrow formalist discourse and instead implies the consideration of the built object's end-users, that is, those persons who experience buildings as part of the environment within which their lives unfold.

Negative persuasion via personal insult

A controlled experiment was performed in a field situation to test the hypothesis that an individual directly insulted by a communicator attempting to persuade him will show a “boomerang effect” by increasing the extremity of his initial attitude position. The field situation consisted of a park-bench discussion of a topical social issue, arranged by a public-opinion interviewer. Prepared experimental variations were introduced by one of the discussion partners, a confederate of the interviewer. In the critical variation, the confederate insulted the subject during discussion. In other variations, he tried to persuade but did not insult, or else simply gave certain arguments without intent to persuade. Attitude-change results supported the hypothesis of negative change in the insult condition. Other experimental variations were whether the insulter stayed or left following his last argument, and whether or not a crowd hostile to the insulter was present. No significant differences in attitude change were attributable to these variations. The mechanism for the obtained “boomerang effect” remains unexplained, although a “social equity” explanation has some plausibility.