I. PROJECT DESCRIPTION

     This project explores the interactions of eroticism and politics in contemporary Spain through a study of the processes of political liberalization--apertura--the successive legislation on freedom of expression and information, the evolution of the norms and methods of official censorship, and the representations of eroticism in literature, film, and media through the last stages of Francoism and into the early years of the democratic transition.  1962, the starting point of my research, marks the beginning of the first process of Francoist apertura—a timid step that nevertheless constitutes a hugely significant turning point in Francoist politics.  In turn, 1982 is the year when the transition to democracy initiated after Franco’s death in 1975 reaches a new stage of consolidation upon the Socialist Party’s victory in the general elections.  The twenty-year span covered by my study bears witness to radical social and economic transformations, as well as evolving approaches to cultural and sexual politics and a growing display of erotic imagery in film and media that has come to be known as destape—literally, undressing.

     Throughout the Franco years (1939-75), the pervasiveness of censorship as an instrument of cultural control politicized all aspects of public and private life, from the press, literature and the arts to sports, entertainment, and fashion.  Because of this, and also because the traditional catholic morals ostensibly adopted by the Franco regime strictly repressed eroticism and sexuality, the progress of destape  from its timid beginnings in the early 1960s was quickly perceived as an index of the changing political climate of the country.  After Franco’s death in 1975 and the abolition of censorship, destape  came to be perceived as a liberating impetus, a harbinger of democracy, and therefore as a facet of the political, social, and cultural reforms that characterized the early transitional period.  But destape  was a contradictory phenomenon:  embraced by the political left as a symbol of the struggle for freedom of expression, the overcoming of Francoist repression, and the critique of bourgeois morals and religious puritanism, destape  was outwardly frowned upon by a political right who nevertheless invested in its massive commodification through a spectacularly profitable net of erotic publications and film productions.   A paradoxical emblem of both liberation and exploitation, destape also became a key issue in the debates over women’s rights, gender roles, and the incipient feminist movement that evolved in the intense political atmosphere of the democratic transition.

    While there is no question that a close correspondence exists between apertura and destape, my study goes beyond the true but rather obvious assertion that political liberalization tends to bring about greater permissivity in matters of sexuality and erotic representation.  What I aim to demonstrate is how, and to what degree, between 1962 and 1982 eroticism repeatedly became a site for the negotiation of political interests and ideas, and how the visual and verbal discourses of erotic film and media often functioned--implicitly or explicitly--as substitutes, or supplements, of political discourses.  My research shows that the above-mentioned processes--by which destape became both a product and an agent of political and cultural change--occurred not only under Francoist censorship but also after its abolition following the dictator’s death.   This realization helps to define a key aspect of my project: the analysis of how the articulation of eroticism and politics in contemporary Spain was affected as much by the presence of censorship in the late Francoist period as by its absence in the early transition.

II. CHAPTER ORGANIZATION

    I have tentatively divided this book-length project in six chapters.  Chapter One will analyze the development of official censorship, apertura, and destape in the Franco regime from 1962— the beginning of a relative liberalization under Minister of Information and Tourism Fraga Iribarne and Director General of Cinematography and Theater García Escudero—to 1975—the end of the dictatorship and the culmination of a six-year period of advances and recessions in freedom of expression and information under Ministers Sánchez Bella, Cabanillas, and Herrera.  Chapter Two will study the re-adjustments and re-negotiations of eroticism and politics in the early transition between 1975 and the historical turning point marked by the socialist victory of 1982.  Those years are particularly significant in that they witness the decline and abolishment of Francoist censorship, the subsequent commercial boom of eroticism in the press and audiovisual media, and the development of post-Francoist discourses on destape that are produced by both the political left and right.  Chapter Three will explore the paradoxical condition of destape as a symbol of both liberation and exploitation in the context of the Women’s Rights debate, and will investigate the opposing views on destape within the Feminist Movement in the early transition.  Chapter Four will consider the socio-economic and cultural impacts of tourism to/from other Western European countries since the late 60s and the issues of modernization and "europeization" throughout the transition, all of which are influential factors in the re-shaping of habits and attitudes towards eroticism and sexuality across Spanish society.  Chapter Five will delve into the interactions of eroticism, politics, and the press, and will feature a comparative study of the cases of Interviú and the Spanish edition of Playboy.  The products of large publishing and multi-media corporations, both magazines carry on elaborate attempts to justify erotic representations and incorporate them into wider projects that include social and ethical "philosophies" and ambitious financial designs.  Chapter Six will examine the reflections on apertura and destape in the journalistic and novelistic works of Francisco Umbral and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, two of the most prominent contemporary Spanish writers.  In their attempts to understand and explain the interactions of eroticism and politics in Spain throughout the last thirty years, both Umbral’s and Vázquez Montalbán’s discourses articulate, with varying degrees of success, the very social, political, and cultural conflicts that make destape a phenomenon as paradoxical and full of tensions as the historical period to which it belongs.

III. IMPORT, SIGNIFICANCE, AND SCOPE OF THE PROJECT

     To this day, there are no rigorous book-length works that treat destape  as a cultural-ideological phenomenon.  Many reviews and commentaries published on destape lack critical depth and usually restrict themselves to the most obvious aspects.  Existing scholarship is limited to a relatively small number of articles and sections of book chapters.  My goal is to produce the most comprehensive study of the subject.  Through the analysis of literary texts, films, stage productions, newspaper articles, TV programs, official documents and critical and theoretical works, I aim to discern what I call "the rhetoric of destape", that is, the arguments, values, symbols and metaphors through which destape is represented and which help it to acquire political significance.  By studying the construction of destape as a cultural artifact and by exploring its interactions with the political discourses of the period--both those supportive of destape and those opposed to it--my work will contribute to a better comprehension of the  complex network of communicational processes of contemporary Spanish culture.  It will also provide a framework for more accurate critical approaches to numerous erotic film, media, and literary works whose cultural relevance entitles them to more serious attention than they have received so far.

    The present project stems directly from my interests in contemporary Spanish film, literature, and culture, which have been the main focuses of my research since graduate school.   Greatly benefiting from the expertise I acquired through the writing of my first book--currently under examination by a Spanish publisher—I expect Apertura and Destape to be a major contribution to my chosen field of Spanish Cultural Studies.  Given the import of the topic and the interdisciplinarity of my research, this work will appeal to a wide variety of readers, from those interested in contemporary Spanish social and intellectual history, politics, literature, film, media, and mass culture, to those engaged in women’s studies and questions of eroticism, censorship, and representation.  Inasmuch as destape  is linked to issues such as the "europeization" of Spanish lifestyles and values, the impact of the tourist boom of the 60s, and the opening to foreign press and media, my study has an important international dimension that will help it reach beyond the traditional frontiers of Hispanism.

In addition, this project has exciting pedagogical dimensions.  It is directly relevant to courses I teach regularly, such as Spanish Cinema and Contemporary Spanish Literature, in which the questions of freedom of expression, censorship, representations of eroticism and sexuality, marketing and commodification of culture in contemporary Spain are of crucial importance.  I am also developing a theoretical/historical course on censorship in the Hispanic World and another on the Cultural Production of the Spanish Transition that will encompass an exploration of political, literary, artistic, and media discourses of the period.  Such courses should attract a variety of students with interests ranging from Spanish and other languages, History, Communication, Women’s Studies, Sociology, and Political Science, among others.