As seen on Times Square during the summer of 2019. Digital photography and Photoshop.
Edwin Roman’s recent book of photography, Brooklyn: Black and White, is now available. All proceeds will be donated to American Kidney Fund.
“Cultural institutions are essential for the survival of the human fabric and its patterns. They hold the remaining traces and artifacts of the interactions and processes of life; they capture the knowledge that follows these events.” – David Carr (Carr 1999)
Museums are social arenas where education, understanding, representation, and enrichment of cultures and the sciences happen. However, they did not start out that way. With origins in elitist collecting, often in the form of exoticism and cultural appropriation, the birth of the modern museum came from the French Revolution. Museums became symbols of the new French Republic and revolutionaries and politicians wanted to destroy all traces of the old regime while concurrently preserving French culture that was essentially dependent on the aristocrats and royals (Schubert. 2000.) This dichotomy still exists. Museums were supposed to be for the people; however, the aristocrats have never really left. What emerged was a challenge that has existed for decades: incorporating the old with the new via innovative methods of exhibiting collections (in France it was repurposed royal and religious structures). For a long time, museums largely drew scholars, artists, and the elite. We would see this in the United States as well.
Franz Boas, also known as the “father of American anthropology,” who conceived the first museum exhibition in the Northwest Hall of The American Museum of Natural to value indigenous cultures on their own terms and not in relation to Western cultures (American Museum of Natual History n.d.), wrote in 1907: “The value of the museum as a resort for popular entertainment must not be underrated, particularly in a large city, where every opportunity that is given to the people to employ their leisure time in healthy and stimulating surroundings should be developed, where every attraction that counteracts the influence of the saloon and of the race-track is of great social importance. If a museum is to serve this end, it must, first of all be entertaining, and try to instill by the kind of entertainment offered some useful stimulant.” (Alexander, Alexander and Decker 2017)
Since the 1970’s, museums have undergone fundamental changes stemming from evolving political viewpoints compelling museum professionals to shift their attention from collections towards visitors (Ross 2004). New Museology emerged in the 1980s and considered the role of museums in wider social and political processes, aiming to become more inclusive and accessible and placing visitors at the center of the experience (McCall and Gray 2014). Monica O. Montgomery, Cofounder and Strategic Director of the Museum Hue, notes in Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums: “The practice of diversity is no longer solely the realm of curators and captains of industry; it’s incumbent upon all of us to foster change at every level. If a museum is a mirror and its audience are a monolith, then there’s an internal problem: diversity and inclusion isn’t being centered in the ethos of the institution.”
The Economics of Art Museums (Blattberg and Broderick 1992) noted in 1992 that in the late 1980s, because of the changing tax laws, the donation of artifacts declined (“The number of donated works in 1988 was approximately 37 percent of the 1986 level.”) as well as the new efficiency in the art market (art as a monetary asset). Based on this, museums would need to rely more heavily on sources of revenues such as membership fees, corporate gifts, attendance, and government subsidies to enhance their collections. This report also notes that “…museums have a social responsibility to broaden their target audience to include less well-educated viewers in order to justify government subsidies. Thus, museums are forced to reconcile opposing desires in determining their mission or objectives.”
Over the last 30 years museums have understood the importance of adopting different communication and marketing techniques. Museum marketing is unique because museums have a mission to, first and foremost, educate the public while concurrently building an audience and revenue. The Economics of Art Museums devoted a chapter to museum marketing and noted that back in 1992, there were problems. Specifically, the curatorial staff, who are the product designers by proxy, did little research to understand what the audience wanted. Instead, they designed exhibits which they feel the visitor should see. The marketing department was then tasked with trying to convince the public that they should see these exhibits. The book recommends that “Achieving a museum’s full potential in the marketplace depends on the integrated effort of all departments to produce and deliver the museum’s product.” (Blattberg and Broderick 1992)
The Association of Art Museum Directors annual salary survey of 1989 detailed that fewer than one-fifth of the member museums had a Director of Marketing (17%). The percentage nearly tripled by 1999 to 50% (Smithsonian Institution Office of Policy & Analysis 2001). Interestingly, if you compare the 2017 (Association of Art Museum Directors 2017) and 2021 Association of Art Museum Directors annual salary surveys (Association of Art Museum Directors 2021), there has been an increase in salary expenses: the Western region has seen quite the spike and the Midwest has also increased spending while Mountain Plains states have decreased spending. The Mid-Atlantic states continue to lead in salaries.
Branding and Marketing the Museum
“To many outside of the museum, hiring the architectural team to design the building was the most important decision I would make. I disagreed. Bringing on the designer who work closely with a large team of educators, curators, collection specialists, and project managers to produce the exhibitions upon which the reputation of the museum rested was the most significant and thorniest decision.” – Lonnie G. Bunch III (Bunch 2019)
The importance of graphic design in museums is more than just a simple placard: it is congruent with the overall branding and marketing. A brand is the idea or image people have in mind, both in a practical and emotional way, when thinking about specific products, services, or a museum. It is not just the physical features that create a brand but also the feelings that visitors develop towards the museum. Branding includes the creation of a logo, a tagline, social media, and marketing strategies while congruently considering accessibility and technology. The American Marketing Association defines branding as follows: “A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s goods or service as distinct from those of other sellers.” (American Marketing Association 2017)
In 2014 The Guardian (Jones 2014) reported that, “The people who run museums have, over the past 20 years, learned to love the word “brand” – it’s now seen as an essential tool for leadership.” The article also notes that institutions like the Met have always had a strong identity and reputation with clear expectations regarding what audiences will find. However, until recently, this tended to happen organically. Museums have been putting more thought into what they stand for and managing their identity deliberately.
Last year, Museum Next (Coates 2021) noted that a successful brand communicates the essence of the museum. When branding works, it can generate publicity and bring more visitors. A good branding strategy encompasses the typical facets such as the logo, but it also includes social media branding. Social media provides a great opportunity for institutions to talk directly to the public. When this is successful, museums have used a unifying tone of voice and message throughout their communications which ties in with their overarching brand identity. While branding and marketing go together, they are two separate concepts, with marketing campaigns heavily impacted by the brand. Branding is timeless, as we have seen with museums like The Met, while marketing is current as we see with museum blockbuster shows such as The Met’s Costume Institute annual show.
The Smithsonian Institution Office of Policy and Analysis defines museum marketing as identifying leisure-time recreation needs and wants of potential audiences, mostly unmet needs, as well as Identifying ways in which potential audiences can be informed about and attracted to museum experiences (Smithsonian Institution Office of Policy & Analysis 2001). The American Marketing Association defines marketing as follows: “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” (American Marketing Association 2017)
Museum marketing doesn’t have to be costly, but it should certainly be creative. One excellent example was in 2014, when The Asian Art Museum in San Francisco made an announcement that it had “lost” its Chinese terracotta warrior and asked for help from its visitors and followers. Using Facebook, YouTube, and Google Maps, participants were asked to help the warrior make his way back to the museum. The museum also posted flyers that read: “LOST: Male, 2,122 years old, doesn’t speak English.” According to the San Francisco Business Times, the terracotta warriors campaign generated 15,000 new followers on Twitter and triple traffic to its website. The exhibition drew a record-breaking 238,000 visitors. “We know that the audience we want to reach is really connected to social media and technology,” said Ami Tseng, director of marketing for the Asian Art Museum. “We just had to figure out a way to reach them.” (Frojo 2014) I loved that this marketing campaign predated the popular game Pokémon Go by two years. The game uses mobile devices with GPS to locate, capture, train, and battle virtual creatures, called Pokémon, which appear as if they are in the player’s real-world location.
NEXT MONTH: Surveys of logos, typefaces, and color!
Edwin Roman’s recent book of photography, Brooklyn: Black and White, is now available. All proceeds will be donated to American Kidney Fund.
https://edwinroman.com/index.html
Works Cited
Alexander, Edward P. , Mary Alexander, and Juilee Decker. 2017. Museums in Motion: An Introduction to The History and Functions of Museums. London: Rowman & Littlefield.
American Institute of Graphic Arts . 2010. What is Design? Accessed 2022. https://www.aiga.org/what-is-design.
American Institute of Graphic Arts. 1994; amended in 2010. AIGA Standards of Professional Practice. Accessed February 2022. https://www.aiga.org/resources/aiga-standards-of-professional-practice.
American Marketing Association. 2017. American Marketing Association. Accessed 2022. https://www.ama.org/the-definition-of-marketing-what-is-marketing/.
American Museum of Natual History. n.d. Northwest Coast Hall. Accessed 2022. https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/northwest-coast.
Association of Art Museum Directors. 2017. 2017 Salary Survey. Survey, New York: Association of Art Museum Directors.
Association of Art Museum Directors. 2021. 2021 Salary Survey. Survey, New York City: Association of Art Museum Directors.
Baker, Kenneth. 2012. New logo touts vision of S.F.’s Asian Art Museum. March 2012. Accessed 2022. https://www.sfgate.com/art/article/New-logo-touts-vision-of-S-F-s-Asian-Art-Museum-3407584.php#photo-2622927.
Beveridge, William I.B. 1957. The Art of Scientific Investigation . New York City: W.W. Norton & Company Inc.
Blattberg, Robert C., and Cynthia J. Broderick. 1992. “Marketing of Art Museums.” In The Economics of Art Museums, by Martin S. Feldstein, 327 – 346. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bunch, Lonnie G. 2019. A Fool’s Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books.
Carr, David. 1999. “The Need for the Museum.” Museum News 31-57.
Coates, Charlotte. 2021. Museum Branding That Stands Out From The Crowd. May 1. Accessed 2022. https://www.museumnext.com/article/museum-branding-that-stands-out-from-the-crowd/.
Davidson, Justin. 2016. FEB. 17, 2016 The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s New Logo Is a Typographic Bus Crash. February 17. Accessed February 2022. https://www.vulture.com/2016/02/metropolitan-museums-new-logo-the-met.html.
Duong, Ariel. 2019. Weaving a new thread for LA museum Craft Contemporary. February 2019. Accessed February 2022. https://www.siegelgale.com/weaving-a-new-thread-for-la-museum-craft-contemporary/.
Frojo, Renée. 2014. Yoga, missing terracotta warrior draw crowds to Asian Art Museum. January 16. Accessed 2022. https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2014/01/asian-art-museum-terracotta-yoga-history.html.
Ignyte Branding. n.d. The Psychology of Color. Accessed February 2022. https://www.ignytebrands.com/wp-content/uploads/the-psychology-of-color-in-branding-ignyte.pdf.
Jones, Robert. 2014. Curators may be sceptical but branding is vital for museums. May 1. Accessed 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2014/may/01/curators-branding-tate-british-museum.
Kobayashi, Sachie. 2012. “Description of East Asian Seal Impressions as Metadata.” Journal of East Asian Libraries.
Mann, Jorrit. 2021. Dieter Rams: Ten Principles for Good Design. Munich: Prestel Art.
McCall, Vikki, and Clive Gray. 2014. “Museums and the ‘New Museology’: Theory, Practice and Organizational Change.” Museum Management and Curatorship 29 (1): 19-35.
Microsoft. 2021. Times New Roman font family. November 12. Accessed March 2022. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/font-list/times-new-roman.
Museum of Modern Art. 2019. New York City Subway Map. Accessed February 2022. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/89300.
National Museum of African American History & Culture. n.d. Brand Guide. Accessed March 2022. https://nmaahc.si.edu/about/brand-guide/visual-identity.
Newman, Damien. n.d. The Design Squiggle. Accessed 2022. https://thedesignsquiggle.com/.
North Carolina State University Color Science Lab. n.d. Color Perception. Accessed February 2022. https://sites.textiles.ncsu.edu/color-science-lab/current-research/color-perception.
Ross, Max. 2004. “Interpreting the New Museology.” Museum and Society (2): 84-103.
Schubert., Karsten. 2000. The Curator’s Egg : the Evolution of the Museum Concept from the French Revolution to the Present Day. L. London.: One-Off Press.
Shaw, Paul. 2015. The Eternal Letter: Two Millennia of the Classical Roman Capital (Codex Studies in Letterforms). Edited by Paul Shaw and Scott-Martin Kosofsky. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Singh, Satyendra. 2006. “Impact of color on marketing.” Mangement Decision (Emerald Group Publishing Limited) 44 (6): 783-789.
2020. A to Z: How Writing Changed the World. Directed by David Sington.
Smithsonian Institution Office of Policy & Analysis. 2001. Audience Building: Marketing Art Museums. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.
Smithsonian Libraries . 2017. The Science of Color. May. Accessed March 2022. https://library.si.edu/exhibition/color-in-a-new-light/science.
Solar, Matt. 2018. What Brand Colors Can Reveal About Your Business. May. Accessed February 2022. https://blog.marketo.com/2018/05/brand-colors-can-reveal-business.html.
Stamp, Jimmy. 2014. To Redesign a Design Museum Start with the Typeface. August 14. Accessed March 2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/redesign-design-museum-start-typeface-180952040/.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. n.d. Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals. Accessed February 2022. https://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/special-focus/nazi-persecution-of-homosexuals.
Webster, Garrick. 2019. Font vs typeface: the ultimate guide. July 4. Accessed March 2022. https://www.creativebloq.com/features/font-vs-typeface.
John Singer Sargent once said, “You can’t do sketches enough. Sketch everything and keep your curiosity fresh.” I am an avid people watcher and have published a book of photographs that explores this. As I note in my book, people watching in finding joy in people. I also love to people watch and sketch. Detailed here are some sketches I did last month while in a waiting room.
Edwin Roman’s recent book of photography, Brooklyn: Black and White, is now available. All proceeds will be donated to American Kidney Fund.
The last 25 years has seen corporations move into the Times Square area and make it one of the most touristy and congested places in New York City. Interestingly, many of the non-corporate businesses that once dominated the area have migrated to 8th Avenue. Despite the boutique hotels that have risen on 8th Avenue between 34th and 42nd Streets, the area has somehow resisted the gentrification. The Music Building is still there as well as a vintage liquor store, various bars, luggage stores, cheap souvenir stores, blue DVD stores, and New York eateries (I love that 2 Bros. Pizza opened a location in the area) beyond the usual fast food.
Since May of 2022, I have been spending some time in the area and my eye, as well as my camera by proxy, has been drawn to some of the fashions in that area. It is certainly not high-end fashion, but still interesting. It feels like New York City.
Governors Island is in New York Harbor. The National Park Service administers a small portion of the north end of the island as the Governors Island National Monument, including two former military fortifications named Fort Jay and Castle Williams. The Trust for Governors Island operates the rest of the island. The Lenape originally referred to it as Paggank or nut island” because of the various chestnut, hickory, and oak trees. Historians believe that the Lenape used the island for seasonal foraging and hunting.
I visited Governors Island during Memorial Day weekend 2022. Every time I visit, I love it even more. It is a wonderful oasis in the middle of a bustling city. This photo essay is actually my second one to feature the island. The first was of a Jazz Age Lawn Party. It probably won’t’ be my last.
Click here to read part one: https://theartistworks.wordpress.com/2022/03/05/the-depiction-of-disability-in-almodovars-live-flesh/
Click here to read part two: https://theartistworks.wordpress.com/2022/04/09/the-depiction-of-disability-in-almodovars-live-flesh-part-two/
Part Three: Reflection
“Like all my other films, Live Flesh is not easy to classify in terms of genre. All I know is that it is the most disquieting film I have made up to now, and the one that has caused the most unease. It is not a thriller, not a cop film, though there are policemen and gunshot and guilty men who are innocent. It is not a twilight western, although I would like to shoot one someday. It isn’t an erotic film either, although there are various explicit sex scenes, natural and didactic, and the story takes place in the field of bare carnal desire. Live Flesh is an intense drama, baroque and sensual that partakes both of the thriller and classic tragedies.” – Pedro Almodóvar on Carne trémula(Live Flesh) (Duncan 2017)
Portrayals of the Body by Almodóvar
Almodóvar, throughout his long career, has encouraged audiences to reconsider perfection and in fact, more often portrays the imperfect, going against the Hollywood standards of beauty. However, the actor playing Victor certainly conforms while the film embraces a typical storytelling troupe seen on stage and on film of the ordinary man whose life is turned around after encountering a femme fatale (think of the opera, Carmen). Almodóvar has also portrayed the human body in varied appearances that include the abused, the ill, the dead, and the disabled. He has explored disability in several films since Carne trémula(Live Flesh). Hable con ella (Talk to Her) follows two men who form an extraordinary friendship as they care for the two women they love who are both in comas which resulted from accidents. In Los abrazos rotos (Broken Embraces), we have a film director who loses his sight in a car accident. In Dolor y gloria (Pain and Glory), Almodóvar’s most biographical film, we have an ageing film director who is suffering from dysphagia and is rapidly declining physically and emotionally (interestingly, Almodóvar recently revealed that he is losing his hearing). While all the plots vary greatly for these films, the one thing they all have in common is that the characters became disabled. This is consistent with Franco’s mindset for the Jurisdiction of Labor legislation where safety regulations were aimed at preventing and addressing disability via workplace accidents, with no laws helping those born disabled. When I first saw the film in 1998, I found it to be a positive portrayal of a former police officer who is now an independent paraplegic and navigates the world with specially equipped cars and sexual inventiveness. My experienced eyes see it differently now because in the end Almodóvar falls into the same worn-out stereotypes of the disabled as incomplete human beings, especially when it comes to sexuality. Almodóvar notes: “When Elena spends the night screwing with Victor, at the end she caresses his legs, not his genitals, because what she misses most with her paralytic husband are his legs, full of life.” (Duncan 2017)
Catholic Guilt
Most of the Spanish population is Catholic. The Catholic Church’s close alliance with Franco caused many Catholics to be skeptical of the clergy and Almodóvar most notably explores this in La mala educación (Bad Education). The presence of Catholicism in Spain is culturally pervasive, and you see it in Almodóvar’s work. Guilt, particularly around sexuality, is a concept commonly associated with Catholics. (McMahon 2006) Some of Almodóvar’s portrayals of disability almost act like a religious reparation for sexual transgressions—the reverse of cure narratives and congruent with the religious model of disability, which views disability as a punishment inflicted upon an individual or family by God because of sin. In Los abrazos rotos (Broken Embraces), the film director who loses his sight in a car accident was committing an infidelity not unlike David and Clara in Carne trémula(Live Flesh). Was David punished for his sins? Was Elena atoning for her part in David’s disability? Is her devotion to charity part of this? Did Sancho and Clara die to atone for their respective sins? Why wasn’t Victor punished for sleeping with a married woman? Was it because he paid it forward via the time served in prison for a crime he didn’t commit? And while the film ends with Victor and Elena together, could she be repeating a cycle of atonement?
Part four: Disability in Spain today
Spain, in 2007, ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which requires governments to ensure that the physical environment, public services and most notably housing, are equally accessible to people with disabilities. (United Nations 2019) Spain passed a law in 2013 based on the premise that universal accessibility helps guarantee equal opportunities and treatment for people with disabilities. This legislation made homeowner associations responsible for ensuring their buildings are accessible to all people and set December 2017 as the deadline to eliminate architectural barriers. (Juridicas 2013) However, a March 2018 report by the UNESCO Chair on Housing and the Fundación Mutua de Propietarios found that only 0.6 percent of Spain’s 9.8 million residential buildings meet accessibility standards for those with physical disabilities. (UNESCO 2018)
The Confederación Española de Personas con Discapacidad Física y Orgánica (Spanish Confederation of People with Physical and Organic Disabilities) reported in 2019 that 100,000 people with physical disabilities in Spain remain trapped in their homes: of the 2.5 million people with physical disabilities living in Spain more than 1.8 million of them need help to be able to leave their homes. (Orgánica 2019) That same year the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (https://bit.ly/3o1UBe2) similarly criticized Spain noting that “measures taken to ensure universal accessibility, particularly for private buildings, have been insufficient or ineffective.” It recommended the government take “all legislative and budgetary measures” necessary to fix the problem. This same report also noted that women with disabilities face multiple forms of discrimination due to their gender and disabilities and may also be at risk of gender-based violence and that public policies on disability and gender equality do not include measures to combat multiple and intersectional discrimination against women with disabilities. (United Nations 2019)
iHuman, a blog from the University of Sheffield that explores Covid, noted in 2020 two cases that looked at discrimination against the disabled in Spain (“Dis/ableism and the COVID-19 crisis: A partial view from Spain”). The first looked at barber shops, which were initially treated as essential services at the beginning of the lockdown and that this was received with some rage among many non-disabled people. The government explained that some people need assistance to maintain their basic hygiene. One politician (Isabel Díaz Ayuso, President of the Madrid region) declared, “I must protect them above all (…) I would rather they have dirty hair, and they stay healthy.” As the blog noted these people demonstrated, “…an incapacity to see beyond the independent, able-bodied…” The complaints were so laced with vitriol that the government switched gears and allowed hairdressing as an in-home service at the discretion of the provider. Worse than the haircuts, are some of the comments that autistic people and their parents have been hearing from balconies and windows in their neighborhoods, even after the Spanish government legally recognized their right to be in the street during the Covid lockdown: “Irresponsible! You put all of us in danger! Shame on you! Die!” The number of reported cases of harassment have driven Autismo España to create a platform to report discrimination. Some families have taken to wearing blue armbands to avoid being booed and insulted by neighbors for being outside. However, some organizations have accurately noted that the armband is a label that might also cause stigmatization. As iHuman notes:
“The demonisation of disabled people, the criminalisation of dependence and disability hate speech constitute serious dangers during the pandemic. Disabled people’s rights could be threatened by reactionary attitudes towards the basic practices they need to live liveable lives, including therapeutic walks among others. Being discriminated during the pandemic might represent a double nightmare to disabled people. We must do better.”
Indeed. We must do better.
Antonio, Sánchez Cazorla. 2010. “The Politics of Fear.” In Fear and Progress Ordinary Lives in Franco’s Spain, 1939-1975, by Sánchez Cazorla Antonio, 18-49. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Bogdan, Robert, and Taylor, Steven. 1987. “Toward a Sociology of Acceptance: The Other Side of the Study of Deviance.” Social Policy 34-39.
Del Cura, Mercedes, and José Martínez-Pérez. 2021. ““Childhood, Disability and Vocational Training in Franco’s Spain during the 1950s and Early 1960s.”.” History of Education Review 50 (2): 241–57.
Duncan, Paul. 2017. The Pedro Almodóvar Archives. Köln: Taschen.
I Wanna Grow Blog. 2018. Cuantas plantas de maría puedo tener legalmente en España. July 5. https://www.iwannagrowshop.com/blog/cuantas-plantas-de-maria-puedo-tener-legalmente-en-espana/.
Juridicas, Noticias. 2013. Real Decreto Legislativo 1/2013, de 29 de noviembre, por el que se aprueba el Texto Refundido de la Ley General de derechos de las personas con discapacidad y de su inclusión social. November 29. https://noticias.juridicas.com/base_datos/Privado/517635-rdleg-1-2013-de-29-nov-se-aprueba-el-texto-refundido-de-la-ley-general-de.html#t3c1s1.
Malaga, Sociedad Federada Personas de. n.d. Nuestra Historia. https://sfsm.es/nuestra-historia/.
Martínez-Pérez, José. 2017. “Work, Disability and Social Control: Occupational Medicine and Political Intervention in Franco’s Spain (1938-1965).” “Work, Disability and Social Control: Occupational Medicine and Political Intervention in Franco’s Spain (1938-1965).” 28 (4): 805-24.
McMahon, Christopher. 2006. “Fecundity and Almodóvar? Sexual Ethics and the Specter of Catholicism Catholicism.” Journal of Religion & Film 10 (2).
Newtral. 2019. Esto con Franco no pasaba: bulos sobre la dictadura. November 20. https://www.newtral.es/esto-con-franco-no-pasaba-bulos-sobre-la-dictadura/20191120/.
Orgánica, Confederación Española de Personas con Discapacidad Física y. 2019. Confederación Española de Personas con Discapacidad Física y Orgánica. June 12. https://www.cocemfe.es/informate/noticias/18-millones-de-personas-con-movilidad-reducida-dependen-de-la-ayuda-de-terceros-para-salir-de-su-casa-y-100-000-no-salen-nunca/.
Reverte, Jorge M. 2010. “La Lista De Franco Para El Holocausto.” El País, June 20.
Seguin, Christopher Blow & Denis. 2019. The Dictator’s Playbook: Francisco Franco. Directed by Mark Stevenson. Produced by David, Kate Harrison, Michael Rosenfeld, and Matt Boo Brady.
Sotinel, Thomas. 2010. Masters of Cinema: Pedro Almodóvar. Paris: Phaidon Press.
UNESCO, Fundación Mutua de Propietarios. 2018. La accesibilidad de las viviendas en España. Madrid: Fundación Mutua de Propietarios / UNESCO.
United Nations. 2019. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. New York: United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Click here to read part one: https://theartistworks.wordpress.com/2022/03/05/the-depiction-of-disability-in-almodovars-live-flesh/
Part Two: Carne trémula (Live Flesh)
“I have never evoked Franco’s Spain before. I wrote the prologue for narrative and dramatic reasons but, really, there was also ‘something’ I needed to tell. Twenty years ago, I took my revenge on Franco by not acknowledging his existence, as if he never existed. Today I think I can’t forget that period, which is still relatively recent. That’s why there are two births in the film: the first is a city besieged by fear, and the second in a city full of people and happiness, that has forgotten fear. This optimistic ending in a story that has an obvious air of tragedy is like a breath of fresh air. – Pedro Almodóvar on Carne trémula (Live Flesh) (Duncan 2017)
The Shooting
The opening shot of the film is text declaring a state of emergency in Franco Spain and freedoms of speech, residence, and gathering have been suspended.
We next see text that reads, “Madrid, January of 1970.” A young prostitute named Isabel (Penelope Cruz, in her first collaboration with Almodóvar) gives birth on a public bus to a son she names Victor. Mother and son become minor celebrities, Victor is named an honorary citizen by the mayor of Madrid, and both are granted free lifetime bus passes by the transit company. The day Victor is born, Madrid is like an eerie ghost town, and it is pure chance (Almodóvar explores the motif of chance heavily in this film) that Isabel’s madame (Pilar Bardem, real life mother of Javier Bardem), was able to stop the bus when there was no other traffic or activity on the street.
The film jumps twenty years to 1990 and we see Victor (Liberto Rabal) working as a delivery person for Pizza Hut. Victor has fallen for a woman, Elena (Francesca Neri), with whom he had sex with a week ago in the bathroom stall of a nightclub. Elena conveys to him on the telephone that he has confused sex with love (odd since his mother is a prostitute and he will later reflect on how many “tricks she had to turn” to earn the inheritance she leaves him). Elena, who is hooked on drugs (addiction is an often-recurring motif in Almodóvar’s films), wants nothing to do with Victor, and when he shows up at her apartment, she carelessly waves a gun to scare him away. They get in into a scuffle and a shot is fired, and a neighbor calls the police. No one is affected by this gunshot.
The two police officers who respond, David (Javier Bardem) and Sancho (Jose Sancho), are friends and colleagues who are in the middle of their own crisis. Sancho is an abusive drunk and believes that his wife, Clara (Angela Molina, who will later play Cruz’s mother in Almodóvar’s 2009 film, Broken Embraces), is having an affair and suspects David of being her lover. When they arrive at Elena’s building, Sancho wants to storm the apartment while David is more sensible insisting that they follow procedure and call for back up. Sancho, the senior officer, refuses to do this. As Victor is peacefully leaving Elena’s apartment, Sancho storms the door and Victor, in a panic, impulsively picks up the gun and holds Elena hostage.
David tries to calmly defuse the situation and get Victor to drop his gun. Sancho repeatedly exacerbates the situation by threating Victor. David shockingly points his gun towards Sancho’s head and eventually gets Sancho and Victor to put down their guns. Victor lets Elena go free and David instructs her to flee. As Elena passes David, the film goes into slow motion: their eyes meet, and they have an intense moment of mutual attraction. Because David is momentarily distracted by Elena, Sancho lunges for Victor, and as they wrestle for the gun, it fires off.
Prison and Paralympics
The film jumps two years to 1992. Victor is in jail and while in the rec room watches a wheelchair basketball game featuring David who is now paralyzed from the gunshot. David is a star player in the 1992 Paralympics[1] and Elena, who is now his wife, watches, and cheers from the sidelines.
Victor is bitter watching this on television but has made the most of his time in prison, earning a degree via correspondence and exercising body and mind[2]. While Victor is in prison, his mother dies of cancer, but leaves him a house, (in a neighborhood amid what looks like an American style 1950s “slum” clearance program) and a small inheritance.
The film then jumps four years to 1996 and Victor is released from jail. As Victor is walking and relishing in his freedom, he sees a billboard for Champion athletic wear with David soaring in his wheelchair while playing basketball. Victor, under his breath, bitterly says, “Even when you lose, you win.” Two days later Victor visits his mother’s grave. By chance, David and Sancho are there for the funeral of Elena’s father. Victor boldly walks up to Elena and offers his condolences leaving her stunned. Before leaving the cemetery, Victor meets Sancho’s wife Clara (who looks a lot like a 1990’s version of Mrs. Robinson from The Graduate), also by chance, who has arrived late for the funeral. They leave together and she gives him a ride home. Victor and Clara establish a cautious relationship that will later evolve into an affair.
Money and Virility
Elena, who comes from a wealthy family, is now off drugs and running an orphanage that houses several children with Down Syndrome. The orphanage is friendly and inviting, but humble. We also see Elena and David in their expansive and expensive apartment equipped with its own basketball court and wheelchair lifts. This stands in stark contrast to the orphanage where we see a scene depicting one of the workers asking for her salary (“I have not been paid in two months”) and her supervisor conveying that they still have not gotten funds from the government. The message here is crystal clear: money makes disability easier.
We next see Elena helping David with a bath. It turns into a sexual encounter, and we see that David is paralyzed from the waist down as he is only able to perform oral sex on Elena. Curiously, just after she climaxes, she chooses that very moment to tell David that Victor was at the cemetery. Was she sexually stimulated by virile Victor?
While David may not be able to sexually perform completely in bed, he is not about to be bested by Victor. After Elena’s revelation, he later barges into Victor’s house and warns him not to go near his wife. Victor challenges him, but David punches him below the belt (in the area where he cannot perform). Before they could get into a real brawl, they momentarily put their differences aside when they both happen to catch and comment on a key moment in a soccer match on television and briefly share a chuckle silently conveying that they could have been friends under different circumstances. David then composes himself and sternly warns Victor to stay away from Elena. Victor then taunts him by dropping to the floor and doing clapping pushups, showing off his sculpted physique.
A visual motif that is seen often in Almodóvar’s films is macro photography, where he focuses the lens very closely on details. For example, in Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios(Women on the Verge), we see the inner workings of a film projector; in Todo sobre mi madre(All About My Mother), there is an EKG machine and macro shots of the paper feed; in Los abrazos rotos (Broken Embraces), we see the leading man using a computer that reads to the blind. In Carne trémula(Live Flesh), we see David, after leaving Victor’s house, go to his car, which is specially equipped to be completely driven with his hands (again, money makes disability easier as he does not have to rely on public transportation), and go through the motions of getting into the car and then dismantling his wheelchair. It is a lot of work and a lot of details and Almodóvar makes certain that the audience knows it. David will later convey how he now must constantly look down to make sure that he does not get any dog feces on wheels. After David goes through the ritual of getting into his car, he sees Clara arriving and watches them from a distance. We later see Clara talking with Victor agreeing to teach him how to make love while concurrently showering him with gifts and affection. David begins to regularly spy on them and secretly photographs their rendezvous (a detail Almodóvar missed here was having David use a telephoto lens—instead his lens looks like a wide angle).
Revelations and Truths
Victor starts to volunteer at the orphanage Elena runs. He applies when she is out of the office and the credentials he earned in prison, qualify him for the position. He works well with the children and the staff appreciate this as well as his many other technical skills, such as basic plumbing. When Elena discovers that he is there, she objects but cannot give a sound argument against Victor working there. David continues to follow Victor (both are deft stalkers) and discovers that he works at the orphanage. He confronts Victor again, and Victor denies responsibility for firing the shot that disabled him. Victor then demonstrates how Sancho made him squeeze the trigger because Sancho knew David was having an affair with Clara (Victor found this out during a rendezvous with Clara).
David later conveys to Elena, while they are smoking marijuana[3], what Victor said, admitting that he was indeed having an affair with Clara. Elena is appalled, but still plans to leave the orphanage to get away from Victor. The following day, Victor tells Elena that his original plan of revenge was to become the world’s greatest lover, make passionate love to Elena, and then abandon her. But he changes his mind because he now loves her too much. After this, Victor breaks up with Clara. Distraught, she nearly sets Victor’s home on fire while cooking a meal. The image is quite powerful: Clara is in hell: no more Victor and she is stuck with the abusive Sancho.
Later, while Victor is working the overnight shift at the orphanage, Elena arrives to remove her belongings from the office and offers Victor a night of passion on the condition he never contact her again. Their night of love making is lengthy and in blunt contrast to the earlier hasty scene with Elena and David in the bathtub. As dawn breaks in Madrid, Elena cries realizing she is in love with Victor.
David returns from a trip in Seville that morning and Elena then tells him about her infidelity. She also conveys that she will remain his wife because he needs her more than Victor does. Bogdan and Taylor note that an accepting relationship is one between a person with a deviant attribute and another person, which is of long duration and characterized by closeness and affection and in which the deviant attribute does not have a stigmatizing, or morally discrediting, character. (Bogdan 1987) Elena’s motives for wanting to stay with David are curious. In fact, I wish the film had explored how they came together. We see that moment of intense attraction the night that David was shot, but I have always wondered how their relationship evolved. Does Elena really love David? Or was she with him out of guilt because what happened was a result of her drug use? Bogdan and Taylor noted that typical people who are in caring relationships with people who are different de-emphasize the negative aspects of the person and stress the positive. Elena seemed to be doing this until she learned the truth about David and Clara.
The Fatal Shots
Even though Elena has conveyed that she will stay with David, he is still hell bent on avenging himself against Victor. Meanwhile, Clara has decided to leave Sancho. He confronts her, but she shoots him with his own gun and escapes. David later arrives and helps Sancho clean his bullet wound before showing him the photographs he had been taking of Victor and Clara. We then cut to Clara writing a passionate farewell letter to Victor. As she is writing it, Sancho and David arrive. As Sancho pounds on the door, she details the play by play in the letter she is writing. She finishes and gets up to meet Sancho at the door and they have one final confrontation at gunpoint and fire at each other. Clara is killed and Sancho is wounded. Sancho unable to live without her, kills himself. Here Almodóvar brilliantly recreates the suicide scene in Hitchcock’s Spellbound[4].
The film jumps several months to the Christmas season and in a voiceover, David reads a letter written to Elena from Miami, where he is spending Christmas with friends: he apologizes for the way everything turned out. At the orphanage, we see Victor working on an elaborate Christmas decoration when he is suddenly interrupted by a pregnant Elena who is going into labor. On the way to the hospital, she and Victor get stuck in a traffic jam. Victor reflects on the circumstances of his own birth 26 years earlier and tells his unborn child that the Spanish people no longer live with fear as they did on the day he was born. The film comes full circle and concurrently celebrates Spain’s journey from the repression of Franco to the open society of today (though lately, in 2021, I have seen that as in the United States and Brazil, extreme conservatism in Spain is trying to make a comeback).
Next month we will conclude with parts three and four.
Antonio, Sánchez Cazorla. 2010. “The Politics of Fear.” In Fear and Progress Ordinary Lives in Franco’s Spain, 1939-1975, by Sánchez Cazorla Antonio, 18-49. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Bogdan, Robert, and Taylor, Steven. 1987. “Toward a Sociology of Acceptance: The Other Side of the Study of Deviance.” Social Policy 34-39.
Del Cura, Mercedes, and José Martínez-Pérez. 2021. ““Childhood, Disability and Vocational Training in Franco’s Spain during the 1950s and Early 1960s.”.” History of Education Review 50 (2): 241–57.
Duncan, Paul. 2017. The Pedro Almodóvar Archives. Köln: Taschen.
I Wanna Grow Blog. 2018. Cuantas plantas de maría puedo tener legalmente en España. July 5. https://www.iwannagrowshop.com/blog/cuantas-plantas-de-maria-puedo-tener-legalmente-en-espana/.
Juridicas, Noticias. 2013. Real Decreto Legislativo 1/2013, de 29 de noviembre, por el que se aprueba el Texto Refundido de la Ley General de derechos de las personas con discapacidad y de su inclusión social. November 29. https://noticias.juridicas.com/base_datos/Privado/517635-rdleg-1-2013-de-29-nov-se-aprueba-el-texto-refundido-de-la-ley-general-de.html#t3c1s1.
Malaga, Sociedad Federada Personas de. n.d. Nuestra Historia. https://sfsm.es/nuestra-historia/.
Martínez-Pérez, José. 2017. “Work, Disability and Social Control: Occupational Medicine and Political Intervention in Franco’s Spain (1938-1965).” “Work, Disability and Social Control: Occupational Medicine and Political Intervention in Franco’s Spain (1938-1965).” 28 (4): 805-24.
McMahon, Christopher. 2006. “Fecundity and Almodóvar? Sexual Ethics and the Specter of Catholicism Catholicism.” Journal of Religion & Film 10 (2).
Newtral. 2019. Esto con Franco no pasaba: bulos sobre la dictadura. November 20. https://www.newtral.es/esto-con-franco-no-pasaba-bulos-sobre-la-dictadura/20191120/.
Orgánica, Confederación Española de Personas con Discapacidad Física y. 2019. Confederación Española de Personas con Discapacidad Física y Orgánica. June 12. https://www.cocemfe.es/informate/noticias/18-millones-de-personas-con-movilidad-reducida-dependen-de-la-ayuda-de-terceros-para-salir-de-su-casa-y-100-000-no-salen-nunca/.
Reverte, Jorge M. 2010. “La Lista De Franco Para El Holocausto.” El País, June 20.
Seguin, Christopher Blow & Denis. 2019. The Dictator’s Playbook: Francisco Franco. Directed by Mark Stevenson. Produced by David, Kate Harrison, Michael Rosenfeld, and Matt Boo Brady.
Sotinel, Thomas. 2010. Masters of Cinema: Pedro Almodóvar. Paris: Phaidon Press.
UNESCO, Fundación Mutua de Propietarios. 2018. La accesibilidad de las viviendas en España. Madrid: Fundación Mutua de Propietarios / UNESCO.
United Nations. 2019. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. New York: United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
[1] Disabled sports in Spain have a long history. In 1917 there were sporting events for the deaf. However, because of the unrest in Spanish society during the 1930’s due to the civil war and Franco’s subsequent terror, matters regarding disabled sports were quiet until the 1950s when the Spanish Red Cross organized disabled sports opportunities in the country, that included the first Olimpiadas de la Esperanza (Olympics of Hope) held in Tarragona. Spain competed at its first Paralympic Games in 1968. ONCE (Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles), in 1986, became the official organization for organizing Spanish representation in international blind sporting competitions. (Malaga n.d.) Here, I considered readings regarding adjustment talk and couldn’t quite get it to jibe because the Spanish language is more straightforward and not as nuanced as English in that the Spanish language has far fewer homonyms than English.
[2] Based on Almodóvar’s depictions of prison, the Spanish penal system appears to embrace humane rehabilitation: one scene in Hable con ella (Talk to Her), a guard notes that they don’t use the word inmate but instead use the word intern.
[3] In Spain, the sale and importation of any quantity of cannabis is a criminal offence, punishable by jail time. The purchase, possession, and consumption of cannabis in a public place constitutes a misdemeanor punishable by a fine and confiscation. Consumption and cultivation by adults in a private space is legal, the latter due to a legal vacuum and provided that it is shown to be for one’s own consumption. (I Wanna Grow Blog 2018)
[4] Almodóvar had previously used musical cues from Psycho and Vertigo in Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón and used other Hitchcock motifs in his film as well as professing in interviews his admiration for Hitchcock.
Part One: Franco Y Almodóvar
“According to Amnesty International, Spain has the highest numbers of mass graves in the world after Cambodia.” – Guy Hedgecoe (Seguin 2019)
One cannot explore the films of Pedro Almodóvar without considering how his art was molded by Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. It is also necessary to explore Franco to understand contemporary views of disability as well as Almodóvar’s portrayals.
Coup and Dictatorship
During the 1920s there was significant labor unrest, which was exacerbated by the Great Depression in the 1930s, and these things polarized Spanish citizens. The February 1936 election brought the leftist Popular Front government to power. Extreme-right wing fascists responded in July of 1936 with a coup attempt that eventually fostered a civil war. One side had the conservative Nationalists, led by Franco, who were largely made up of devout Roman Catholics, military leaders, landowners, and businessmen; the other side, were the leftist Republicans, who were largely made up of urban workers, agricultural laborers, and the educated middle class. With the help of Hitler and Mussolini, Franco marched across Spain leaving a colossal trail of death, encouraging his army to brutally kill anyone who was leftist. Picasso’s famous painting, Guernica, notably captures the death and destruction on the Basque town of the painting’s namesake. After the civil war ended in 1939, Franco remained in power until he died in 1975. (Seguin 2019)
Franco’s reign was marked by sheer terror. The first two decades of Franco’s rule following the civil war saw continued repression and the killing of an unspecified number of political opponents that is estimated to be between 15,000 and 50,000 individuals. (Antonio 2010) Documents were discovered in 2010 showing that he ordered his provincial governors to compile a list of Jews while he negotiated an alliance with the Axis powers to later facilitate efforts to deport and destroy them. Other atrocities committed by his government included kidnapping the babies of leftist women (known as the lost children of Francoism) and having them raised by Catholic families and monasteries. (Reverte 2010)
Economic Policy and Disability
Franco’s economic policy of autarky, envisioned self-sufficiency through the state control of prices and industrial development within an insulated national economy severed from the international market. Labor, considered a fundamental factor for economic development, was given an important position Franco’s political agenda. Projecting a putative Catholic work ethic provided the means by which the regime could exercise its power. The Fuero del Trabajo (Jurisdiction of Labor), taking cues from FDR’s New Deal, operated in Spain as the fundamental legislation that the Franco regime was going use to address the “problem” of disability. (Del Cura 2021)
Industrialization in Spain was a noticeable phase in the historic development of addressing disability. Franco considered disability to be an obstacle to performance of work and had to be included in the general measures directed at regulating and controlling the performance of productivity. Evidence of this can be seen in the steps adopted regarding health and safety in the factories and the recovery of victims of accidents that had occurred at work. Regulations were largely aimed at preventing and addressing disability via workplace accidents. The regulations fostered occupational medicine which reinforced the idea of disability as being congruent with the medical model (The medical model of disability says people are disabled by their impairments or differences, while the social model says that disability is caused by the way society is ordered). It also fostered the idea that the human factor had an important responsibility in the making of accidents and encouraged an image of the victims as being guilty of their invalidity. (Martínez-Pérez 2017)
Interestingly, the most powerful contemporary disability organization in Spain dedicated to a physical disability was formed during the Franco dictatorship. The Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles (Spanish National Organization of the Blind), or ONCE, was formed after the Spanish Civil War as a way of supporting the wounded and those who became disabled because of the war. Over the years it has become an umbrella-organization for the needs and rights of the physically disabled. (Newtral 2019)
Post Franco Spain and Almodóvar
Spain transitioned to a democracy after Franco’s death in 1975 and the change from dictatorship to parliamentary democracy saw the adoption of a new constitution, reforms, and an influx of younger people into politics and trade unions. Not surprisingly, democracy proved to be a more tolerant for those who had had suffered marginalization and exclusion under the Catholic and machoistic Spanish society of Franco. Censorship was gone and there was a significant increase in the production of literary, musical, and cinematic works. During the 1980s, identities of gender and sexuality that were excluded by Franco, notably women and the LGBTQ community, were celebrated, in the films of Pedro Almodóvar. (Sotinel 2010)
When Almodóvar arrived in Madrid in 1967, Franco was still in power, and, of course, the repression was also cultural. Franco’s rancorous regime had been inimical to the avant-garde movie aesthetics of the 1960’s. However, by the time Almodóvar showed up in Madrid, Franco was in his mid-seventies, and the stranglehold on artistic expression was loosening in the major cities and universities. (Sotinel 2010)
Almodóvar began directing feature films in the late 1970s. He was part of La Movida, a post-Franco counterculture movement, and we can see this time reflected in early films such as Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón (Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Average Girls); Laberinto de pasiones (Labyrinth of Passion); and ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto! (What Have I Done to Deserve this?) His early films were transgressive, not unlike John Waters’ early work, and featured transgender people, bondage, rape, and a lot of drug use and sex. They often blurred the lines between funny and repulsive as well as high and low art. As Almodóvar’s career continued to progress, his films continued to blur the lines between comedy and drama as well as LGBTQ and straight. In 1985, Almodóvar and his younger brother set up their production company, El Deseo (The Desire). Almodóvar’s films are produced on very humble budgets and creating his own production company allowed him the freedom to shoot scripts chronologically, which is not a common practice. Almodóvar feels that a chronological approach produces more convincing performances. (Duncan 2017) The first film he produced via El Deseo was Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) which was nominated for the 1988 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Almodóvar would win an Oscar and a Golden Globe a decade later for 1999’s Todo sobre mi madre (All About My Mother). (Sotinel 2010)
Pedro Almodóvar’s films reflect Spanish culture in passionate amatory and quixotic terms through a filter of studied cinematic philosophy: Hitchcock, Fassbinder, and Sirk are the benchmarks for Almodóvar to convey Spanish identity. This is embodied in Carne trémula (Live Flesh), which was loosely adapted from a Ruth Rendell novel (Almodóvar’s first time adapting material) and released in October of 1997.
Next month, in part two, we will delve into the film.
Antonio, Sánchez Cazorla. 2010. “The Politics of Fear.” In Fear and Progress Ordinary Lives in Franco’s Spain, 1939-1975, by Sánchez Cazorla Antonio, 18-49. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Bogdan, Robert, and Taylor, Steven. 1987. “Toward a Sociology of Acceptance: The Other Side of the Study of Deviance.” Social Policy 34-39.
Del Cura, Mercedes, and José Martínez-Pérez. 2021. ““Childhood, Disability and Vocational Training in Franco’s Spain during the 1950s and Early 1960s.”.” History of Education Review 50 (2): 241–57.
Duncan, Paul. 2017. The Pedro Almodóvar Archives. Köln: Taschen.
I Wanna Grow Blog. 2018. Cuantas plantas de maría puedo tener legalmente en España. July 5. https://www.iwannagrowshop.com/blog/cuantas-plantas-de-maria-puedo-tener-legalmente-en-espana/.
Juridicas, Noticias. 2013. Real Decreto Legislativo 1/2013, de 29 de noviembre, por el que se aprueba el Texto Refundido de la Ley General de derechos de las personas con discapacidad y de su inclusión social. November 29. https://noticias.juridicas.com/base_datos/Privado/517635-rdleg-1-2013-de-29-nov-se-aprueba-el-texto-refundido-de-la-ley-general-de.html#t3c1s1.
Malaga, Sociedad Federada Personas de. n.d. Nuestra Historia. https://sfsm.es/nuestra-historia/.
Martínez-Pérez, José. 2017. “Work, Disability and Social Control: Occupational Medicine and Political Intervention in Franco’s Spain (1938-1965).” “Work, Disability and Social Control: Occupational Medicine and Political Intervention in Franco’s Spain (1938-1965).” 28 (4): 805-24.
McMahon, Christopher. 2006. “Fecundity and Almodóvar? Sexual Ethics and the Specter of Catholicism Catholicism.” Journal of Religion & Film 10 (2).
Newtral. 2019. Esto con Franco no pasaba: bulos sobre la dictadura. November 20. https://www.newtral.es/esto-con-franco-no-pasaba-bulos-sobre-la-dictadura/20191120/.
Orgánica, Confederación Española de Personas con Discapacidad Física y. 2019. Confederación Española de Personas con Discapacidad Física y Orgánica. June 12. https://www.cocemfe.es/informate/noticias/18-millones-de-personas-con-movilidad-reducida-dependen-de-la-ayuda-de-terceros-para-salir-de-su-casa-y-100-000-no-salen-nunca/.
Reverte, Jorge M. 2010. “La Lista De Franco Para El Holocausto.” El País, June 20.
Seguin, Christopher Blow & Denis. 2019. The Dictator’s Playbook: Francisco Franco. Directed by Mark Stevenson. Produced by David, Kate Harrison, Michael Rosenfeld, and Matt Boo Brady.
Sotinel, Thomas. 2010. Masters of Cinema: Pedro Almodóvar. Paris: Phaidon Press.
UNESCO, Fundación Mutua de Propietarios. 2018. La accesibilidad de las viviendas en España. Madrid: Fundación Mutua de Propietarios / UNESCO.
United Nations. 2019. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. New York: United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
“Peut-on vivre d’un souvenir?” (“Can we live on a memory?”)
Last month I began a subscription to the streaming service MUBI. I wish I had done it sooner. MUBI, which was founded in 2007, offers an ever-changing collection of selected films from around the world, introducing one new film every day. MUBI also produces and theatrically distributes films by emerging and established filmmakers. This is the third review I have written since subscribing. Recently, I had the absolute joy to watch the 1968 French Film, Wall Engravings.
Wall Engravings (Au pan coupé is the French title) was written and directed by Guy Gilles and tells the story of Jeanne, a young woman reflecting on her relationship with Jean. Jeanne loves Jean deeply, but he only thinks of leaving as he can never truly embrace happiness (the film succinctly explores the couple’s respective psychologies). One day, he leaves and then dies. Jeanne will never know the truth because her father is keeping it a secret because he is worried about her state of mind. In Jean’s absence, she remembers him and confides in her friend Pierre, detailing their stay in Provence. She asks, “Can we live on a memory?” In this film, love is interrupted by departure (death) and explored from an obsessive untangling of the past. The past that is explored is brief and slowly becoming opaque for Jeanne.
The film’s direction and cinematography are nothing short of breathtaking. The scenes shot in black and white are in the present while those in color narrate moments from the past. It embraces still photography and reminds me of a time when we able to contemplate actors and scenery without constant cutting and excessive movement of the camera.
I also want to applaud Macha Méril’s brilliantly understated and restrained performance as Jeanne: she truly comes across as someone deeply hurt trying to keep it together. I found myself later wondering if Jeanne would ever find out about Jean’s death and how she may have reacted to it. I even wondered who Jeanne, an artist, would have become and who she might be in 2022. Did the loss of Jean foster her art? Death, in a way, is an act of living in art (and cinema).
If you have ever had a short, but passionate, love affair that you never got over, you will not want to miss this film.
BOOK REVIEW: A FOOL’S ERRAND: CREATING THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE IN THE AGE OF BUSH, OBAMA, AND TRUMP
“One can tell a great deal about a country by what it remembers. By what graces the wall if its museums.” – Lonnie G. Bunch III
The day I finished reading A Fool’s Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump by Lonnie G. Bunch III, founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), I learned that a school board in Tennessee banned the teaching of the holocaust graphic novel Maus and a House committee in Florida passed a bill aiming to ban discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. Throughout A Fool’s Errand Bunch notes the friendship he formed with Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, and I couldn’t help but to think of the marker outside of Glendora, Mississippi, where Emmett Till’s body was found in 1955. Until 2008, the spot remained unmarked, but when a memorial was erected, it was vandalized four times. The most recent iteration of the memorial, erected in 2019, had to literally be bulletproofed. The parallels to the Till Memorial and the obstacles Bunch faced and the overall history of the museum’s founding are palpable. Bunch notes that efforts to launch this museum started a century prior, and were still being stifled as recent as the 1990s by the likes of Jesse Helms. Silencing the voices of history is bigotry’s fundamental move toward enacting racism.
A Fool’s Errand is framed by three presidents. First, there was George W. Bush, who wholeheartedly endorsed the project and signed the legislation to get it started. Bunch formed a friendship with George and Laura Bush and portrays them rather positively. While he acknowledges Hurricane Katrina, he does so, in my opinion, with a rather light touch. Second was Barack Obama, who had the honor of officially opening the museum. Bunch compares his philosophy of the museum to the way Obama approached his presidency: the museum is an American museum for all Americans and not just African Americans. The story of African Americans is the story of America. And finally, Trump. Bunch describes giving him a private tour, which he rightfully did not bowdlerize as he had been asked to (because Trump had been in a bad mood that day) and noted that Trump did not acknowledge the Dutch role in the African slave trade but conveyed that the people of the Netherlands “love him.” Right on brand. Bunch describes how during the first months of Trump’s administration a noose had been found in front of an exhibition case that contained artifacts of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. As I read the last two chapters, I couldn’t help but wonder if the museum would have opened when it did had Bunch not been so determined in his vision and execution. He worked hard to make this museum “for the next century and not the last one” happen. The politics surrounding this museum is nearly breathtaking but not unexpected.
The book is indeed a template for creating a museum from nothing, but what makes it so incredibly relatable is its humanity. Bunch is an excellent listener and observer and can easily connect with the elite as well as everyday people. For me, it was his interactions with everyday people that stood out. There was Princy Jenkins who had once lived in a slave cabin with his enslaved grandmother; the people he met during Save Our African American Treasures; and Dr. Charles Blockson who donated previously unknown artifacts that belonged to Harriet Tubman. Blockson lovingly donated those items and like many after him, wanted to contribute to the museum without any monetary gain (“This belongs in a place where the public can enjoy the collections. It is yours.”) Perhaps the most moving story was when Bunch met an elderly woman who had an unknown artifact from his own family.
I recommend you read this touching book with an open mind and a very open heart. If you enjoy storytelling and history, you will find a great deal to enjoy in this book. For me, the book inspired a self-reflection of the last two decades. Could I have done better? Can I still do better? I hope so.
Edwin Roman 