'. � .

Spanish Culture from

Romanticism to the Present
Structures of Feeling

Jo LABANYI

LEGENDA
D
Selected Essays I I
Modern Humanities Research Association
2019

CHAPTER 17
Musical Battles:
Populism and Hegemony in the
Early Francoist Folkloric Film Musical
This article will analyse the Spanish cinematic genre of the folkloric film musical,
which enj oyed massive p opularit y with lower-class and especially female audiences
in the early Franco period, th rough Gramsci's key concepts of the 'national­
p opular' and 'hegemony'. Th e genre h as generally been dismissed by Spanish film
directors and critics, reflecting the unfor tunate tendency in Spanish film criticism
to sco rn p opular cinema. The pr oliferati on of folkl oric film musicals in the 1940s
and early 1950s has encouraged perceptions of it as mindless escapism serving the
early Francoist political project. Of the two b ooks on the subject, Pineda Novo
(1991) consists in trivializing anecdote ab out its hugely p opular female stars; while
Moix (1993) lays the ground for a contestatory reading by reclaiming th e genre
' collusion and contestation. Indeed, Gramsci notes that collusion can be a strategy
for gay spectators. I should like here to develop the p ossibilities for a different
contestatory reading - without forgetting the genre's o bviously conservative plot
structures - on the assumption that the popular and especially female audiences
who enj oyed these films were not simply duped by them but found in them
res onances that struck a chord with their own life-experiences, needs or aspirations.
Gramsci's theories h ave formed th e basis of British cultural studies, as developed
by Raymond Williams and the Birmingham Centre for Contemp orary Cultural
Studies, because - unlike Adorno's and H ork h eimer's tendency to view popular
culture as the culture industries' manipulation of the masses - they credit po pular
audiences with discrimination and the abilit y to resemanticize the cultural products
they consume for th eir own ends. 1 One of the unfortunate cultural consequences
of Francoism is tha t it encouraged opposi tion cri tics to ad opt an or thod ox Marxist
position that viewed popular culture as lit tle more than ideological manipulation
- a view which at th e time was excusable given state cens orship and control of
the media (though one must remember that th e film industry remained in private
hands). Curiously, th e acknowledged debt of the Spanish opposition cinema th at
developed in the 1950s to Italian neo-realism, itself based on Gramsci's theories of
1 A good outline of the development of cultural studies as a
1-25). discipline is given by During (1993:
MUSICAL .BATTLES 227
the 'national-popular', did not lead to the assimilation of Gramsci's un orth?dox
.
Marxist analysis of culture, which to this day remains largely ignored by critics ?f_.
Spanish culture. 2
T here are, in fact, many reasons why Gramsci's theories should be applied to
Spanish culture. First, Gramsci was analysing another Medite�ranean c�l�ure
(Italy), marked by the dominant influence of p opular and official �ath olic1sm,
.
and by a nor th-s out h divide. Coming from underdevelo ped Sardinia, Gramsci
was keenly aware of the divorce between the state and the mass of the sout��rn
Italian peasantry, whose incorporation into the nation he regarded as a polit ical
priorit y. Here Gramsci was rejecting what he called bourgeois 'voluntarism', t hat
is, the co- option of select individuals moulded in t he image of their 'superiors' - a
.
cultural strategy that has t ypified Spanish liberalism, Or tega y Gasset's emphasis on
the need to create 'select minorities' being the cleares t example. Ins tead, Gramsci
sought to emp ower the peasant r y t hrough an int er-active process of cultural
alliances and contestation: what he famously termed ' hegemony'. It is important to
remember that, for Gramsci, hegemony was not so much a negative description of,
the way the dominant classes used culture to manipulate the people as a p olitical i
the ory designed to enable th e Italian Communist Party, of which Gramsci was
leader when arrested in 1926, to secure a mass political voice. For, even when l
hegemony is exercised by th : tradi tional ruling classes, t he n ed to negotiate,•'
�
···�> \..
.
consent by cultural means leaves a space for subalt.;r� groups. It is also import mt
��
to remember that Gramsci's concept of hegemony msists on culture as a plural site ,, .,. ''.i.
_
of str uggle between competing constit uencies, w hich are int ernally he terogeneo us
,;•
1 and fragmented, and which relate to each other through a do uble pro cess of ·; .;:'
.
for survival·. subversion and subordination overlap. There is no place in th is cultural
map for binary oppositions.3_
. .
= Gramsci's theories are par ticularly salutary w hen dealing with early Franc01sm,
who se Manichaean rhetoric has tended to fo ol critics into supposing that the period
was one of relatively straightforward opposition between victors and vanquis hed.
This is what Gramsci sugges tively calls a 'melodramatic' representation of history,
according to which the oppress ors simply impose their rule on the oppressed,
..-
constituted as passive victims. In her bo ok Film, Politics, and Gramsci, Marcia Landy
(1994: 32) not es th at this melodramatic conception of history char �cte�·ized fasci�m.
Despite its rhetoric of exclusions, fascism was as concerned with mcorporatmg
th e people into the nation as was G ramsci. Indeed, Gramsci developed h is notion
�
of th e 'national-popular' as a cultural strategy for securing hegemony th rough �
his analysis of Italian fascism during his year s in prison under Mussolini from
2 Addition to origi�al article: Gramsci's political theories were introduced into Spai.n by Manuel
Sacristan in the 1960s but seem not to have influenced opposition views on culture, which remamed
largely indebted to Lukacs. See Sacristan 1983 for his 1967 study �f Gramsci, �!us his 1970 anthology
of Gramsci's writings, published in Mexico thanks to the Francoist censorship. .
3 My account of Gramsci's theories is taken from Forgacs and Nowell-.Smith's _ anthology of his
cultural writings (1985), and from Landy (1994) who is particularly helpful 111 showmg the_ relevance
of Gramsci's writings for the analysis of cinema (specifically Italian cinema under Mussolini).
 j� 1f��'«{c_�� -\J:\0� t •.
228 MUSICAL BATTLES
-\\

·. \ cP;J_f�\\1.5 1,. . . . ,. ·
I, . I MUSICAL BATTLES 229

. .
1926 t� r937. Gr.amsci 's. theories are thus directly relevant
for an analysis of early includin cultural relics from the past. Indeed, as he acutely ob serves, 1t 1s 'a .
Franco1sm. Spamsh fascism had always been ideologically
closer to Mussolini than repertory of cliches:,.(1991: 378. o� enng on p�stiche. T he lower-class her91n�
to Hitler, and. the fact th at. Franc ism was an al liance of
� disparate extreme-righ t of the early Francoist Jolklorica 1s, without exception, a performer, who expresses
forces, of which t he Spamsh fascist party Falange Espanol
a was one, confirms hers elf by mimicking a mixture of popular and high cultural forms. This is both
1

Gramsci's insistence th at even power blocs wh ich present themselve

s as monol it hic because th e popular cultural traditions represented are already hybrid mixe s pf /
are a precarious amalgam of competing groups. A significant
feature of Gramsci's hig h and low (as well as mixes of traditional rural culture and modern urban mass
writings is h is u?derst n�ing of th� ideological strengt h of fascism
� because, contrar y cyJt ure) and also because the bargaining process that secures her hnal marnage
to the bourgeois capitalist exclusion of the masses and particu
larly of the rural to thehndowner involves her mimicking h is habits and spe ec h . However, it also
populace wh ich had no place in the capitalist scheme, fascism
soug ht to construct involves her hig her-class suitor, despite the fact that he is not a performer and is
an all-inclusive national culture based on an organic concept
of 'the popular'. acted in a 'straight' if not wooden acting style, to an extent mimicking t he cultural
The repressive effects of early Francoism - which l ike the
Italian fascist state signs of her class. The populist use of folklore in the early Francoist folkl6rica, despite
sought to manufacture consent th rough the manipulation
of popular culture some et hnograp hic touches, makes relatively few gestures to the 'purist' concept of

t
especially cinema - must not, however, be underestimated. As
fas�ist co�cept of the .'natio al-�opular' is a e emonic tool for
�
I nat10n,s �1v rse const1tuenc1es .mto a m nolith1
� �
Landy notes, th�
incorporating the
folklore cultivated by 1920s' avant-garde artists like Falla and Lorca and by 1950s
Francoist intellectuals, for, in opting for the modern mass-cultural medium of

J
� ? c state; it is an 'organic' concept film as a tool for manufacturing national consensus �arly Francoism is �cc7ting
because it aims to subsume difference mto wholeness. W hereas .
the Gramscian a concept of the 'national-popular marked by hybnd1ty and by modernity. The •
notion of the 'national-popular' is concerned with incorp
• orating the masses
'.

th rough a hege onic proces hat allo s t he expre.ssion of .c

·�'"f genre thus echoes Gramsci's insistence th at popular culture is always touched by
n:, �� � ultura.l differences. But official culture and by historical ch ange. Inde ed, the low er-class heroines frequently
no m�tter how melodramatic the fascist conception of h istory,
m practice fascist triumph in the modern city (in Spain and abroad) as performers. The resourcefulness j
....:: � populism sought to manufacture consent by atizin , in its cultural roducts,
--Pl �
of the genre's lower-class female protagonists, and even of the caricaturesque work­
�j Cill!lplex bargaining processes between dominant and su a lte
rn groups, in wh ich shy gypsy males, supports Gramsci's view that folklore contains 'various strata: the
� �<'bcollusi�n �nd cont:station c ex1st or blur. The romance plots
� of the early Francoist fossilized ones wh ich reflect conditions of past life and are therefore conservative
fo�klonc film musical (folklorica) are just sue an exampl e of manuf
. � actured consent, and reactionary, and those wh ich consist of a series of innovations often creative and
I 1th the lower-class gypsy heroine
a who figures the people surrendering to the /
I
\T gher-class male �rotag.onist . (usually a landowner) only after using
her seductive
\ progressive [...] wh ich are in contra_Sj.ction to or simply di�ferent from the �orality
of t he governing strata' (1985: �. Above all, the Jolkl6nca's use of hybnd forms
"tJ./)
.? 3,5�
wers to secure h is cap1tulat1on to her cultural values
of popular song anq dance as the s�baltern's strate�y fo r seducing the d��1i�ant /
G�amsci . is especial ly relevant to . stu.dy of the folkJ6rica bec:u� e
,. . _ /
of the centrality classes, in a double process of collus10n and subversion, illustrates Gramsc1 s view
I m h is wntmgs of folklore. Gramsc1 rejects the prevailing 'pictur
esque' concept of th at all forms of popular song, whet her or not composed by or for the people ·
folklore, produced by intellectuals who view the peasantry as I
/ 'foreign' and who 'adopted' by the pe ople ' be cause the conform to their wa of thinking an eeling'
frequently are themselves foreigners. 4 Instead he argues for
an 'organic' concept of (1985: 194) and thus serve as a strate�y or survival. Grams�i a so no�es t at �o . ar '­
fo�klore �hereby the intellectual al lies h imself wit h the pe . _
asantry by identifying songs are commonly recycled for different purposes (1985. 352), th is recycling �s a ,
wit h their way of looking at the world. The fact that the he
roines of the early characteristic of the folkl6rica genre, with many 0lms of the �arly Franco p enod � ..
Francoistfolkl6rica are overwhelmingly 'other-race', usually gypsy,
on the one hand being built around a son that had en o e rev10 ulant often under the •
� e h e picture
rpetuates
sque idea of tthe 'pueblo' as foreign; but the point of the plot I
c t us carr in ov considerable cultur, m ivalence. �
1s to ate her, in return
assimifor lher h igher-cl ass suitor assimilating, and being
� •· · .;,.w l enriched
her values; indeed, by,in several films, the h igher-class suitor has been
The rnmance plot of t he folk/6,;ca is an attempt to s , ,c final maniage,
the fascist dr�a� of a soc�ety transcending c�pital�st class conflict, ":h ich diffe�·s
'S! :;_,ije
educated abroad, constructing him as foreign.5 _
from the egalitarian socialist dream of Gramsc1 (or mdeed of the Spanish Republic • - �
Gramsci notes that, wh ile folklore - in th is sense of the p easant
worldview - w h ich first promoted the folkl6rica as a 'national-popular' genre) in its vertical f'!s
is largely opposed to officialdom, it incorporates elements from
official culture, ordering: hig her-class male marries lower�class fer�ule. Never.theless, in the proce ss,\
class relations are shown to be complex, mter-act1ve bargammg processes between· - d
tt:)
!-1J
different cultural groups that are internally heterogeneous and contradictory. In
4 Hobsbawm (1990: ro3-04) notes that the folkloric 'rediscovery' of 'the people' that typified the

an article drawing parallels between Gramsci's notion of hegemony and Bakhtin's

.
..
nse of European nationalism from the late eighteenth century through the nineteenth century was
� largely 'the work of enthusiasts from the (foreign) ruling class or elite'.
't-. 5 Fm a more detailed analysis of the racial dynamics of the Jo/k/6rica than can be given here, see
., Labany1 1997 and 1999, and particularly Woods Peir6 2012, published after the original version of 6 For a critique of the primitivist co-option of flamenco for the purposes ofhigh culture by Lorca
•'\•·
this essay. and Falla, and by 1950s intellectuals, see Mitchell 1994: 160-77.
. -