From rags to riches: Ideological contradiction and folklorica stardom in Andalusian musical comedies, 1936--1949

Pejoratively termed espanoladas, many Andalusian musical comedy films of the period from 1936 to 1949 are characterized by melodramatic narratives portraying the rise to stardom of young working-class women and a wide array of stereotypical images of Andalusia, Gypsiness, and Spanishness. These films invariably featured a female "gypsy" protagonist, almost always played by a well-known non-Gypsy singer and dancer who, in her off-screen career, adopted a popularized flamenco performance style, thus meriting the title of folklorica.;In this dissertation I discuss a series of Andalusian musical comedy films that flaunt contradictory and ambiguous representations of their female protagonist. Such contradictions reside, I will argue, in the juxtaposition of the ideological discourses of stardom with those that promoted a model type of womanhood based on traditional Catholic, and from 1939 onwards, nationalist values. These films characterize the folklorica as a woman materially and professionally ambitious, unconcerned with marriage or child bearing and intent on directing her energies toward furthering her career. Complicating this narrative of stardom is the fact that the folklorica tradition had grown out of the varieties (variety shows including the genero infimo and the cuple, and performed in conjunction with film screenings) distinguished by their erotic overtones, and disapproved of by the more conservative sectors of society. The folklorica proved to be a star who remained in the collective memory of Spanish spectators as a unique alternative to traditional models of femininity.;Indeed, both the fictional and the actual folklorica star constitute a problematic site within which ideologies of consumer capitalism and mass culture intersect with nostalgia for a monarchical and ecclesiastical past. I therefore examine the conditions that allowed for the development of such overdetermined films, as well as how cinema goers in the late 1930s and 1940s might have reconciled these contradictions. To this end I focus on two aspects: first, I analyze the ideological and historical underpinnings of "folklorica stardom" and its manifestation in Spain. Secondly, I offer selective readings of individual films that foreground the role of human agency in complex relationship with social structures and their reconciliation through the contradictory spaces of these films.