SEX AND SPANISH CINEMA FROM THE SCREEN TO ACADEMIA

Sex and sexuality have permeated Spanish cinema scholarship for the last three decades or so. With few exceptions, however, eroticism has only been considered as part of studies on other issues such as gender (for example, the collection by Marsh and Nair 2004), the body (Fouz-Hernández and Martínez-Expósito 2007), queer cinema (Perriam 2013a) or in the context of the work of specific directors known for the sexually explicit content of their films – Pedro Almodóvar, Vicente Aranda, Luis Bunuel or Bigas Luna, for example. Understandably, discussions on eroticism have tended to revolve around the so-called destape (literally ‘uncovering’/‘undressing’) films of the late 1970s and early 1980s. This distinctively erotic genre of films that burgeoned after the abolition of Francoist censorship at the end of 1977 has often been dismissed by critics and scholars alike for its weak and often sexist plotlines, debatable aesthetic value and in some cases poor acting performances. More recently, however, the films have experienced a critical re-evaluation on the basis of their socio-historical interest, but also for their significance in terms of gender and sexual politics in the context of the Transition. This volume aims to extend that re-evaluative effort to cover erotic content in Spanish cinema from the silent period until today.

It is worth noting that, although not focusing explicitly on eroticism, the work of Pilar Aguilar (1998), Isolina Ballesteros (2001), Barbara Zecchi (2014) or Susan Martin-Márquez (1999) has been essential in building a feminist perspective on studies of sex and the erotic image in the history of Spanish film. Lengthy studies by Alejandro Melero Salvador (2010), Alberto Mira (2004) or Perriam (2013a) have been equally important from GLBT and queer standpoints. Indeed, Melero Salvador has been a key voice in the critical re- Evaluation of erotic films of the Transition more widely: see, for example, Melero Salvador 2010, 2011, 2014 and his contribution to this book. Yet, despite the inescapable presence of the erotic in writings about Spanish cinema, work focused solely on Spanish erotic films is rare. This is all the more surprising when we consider that, as Xavier Mendik notes, ‘recent years have witnessed an explosion of critical interest in the pervasive influences of the erotic image’ and ‘the study of the “cine-erotic” has emerged as one of the most significant and subversive aspects of film cultural studies’ (2012: 1).