Into the COLAverse – Episode 6: Jorge Pérez

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Into the Colaverse, a podcast that takes us on the unique journeys of faculty in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. Join me your host, Frederick Luis Aldama, as we learn of the many ways that our faculty and their cutting edge work is transforming the world today.

[00:00:26] Frederick: It is my great, great honor to be here in Into the Colaverse with Jorge Perez, Peter t Flo, Centennial, Professor and chair and chair of the Department of Spanish. And Portugese is welcome Jorge,

[00:00:40] Jorge: Thank you Fred. I’m happy to be here.

[00:00:45] Frederick: Jorge, your, your work on. Spanish cinema, uh, from Spain, the, um, culture, fashion.

[00:00:54] Jorge: Your also your

[00:00:57] Frederick: very important work on the Latin American Road movie.

[00:01:02] Frederick: Um, very significant in shaping the field of cinema studies. Globally. I wonder, was there an film, Was there, what was what? What was it? At what point did you realize you wanted to study research? Right, and teach on cinema?

[00:01:26] Jorge: Well, they were all the almo over films growing up. I grew up in Spain and growing up watching AL’S films were like a revelation.

[00:01:37] Jorge: You can imagine a little boy in a provincial town of Spain coming out of the dictatorship, and obviously his movies were a, you know, a breath of fresh air. And shocking and interesting in many ways. But at that time, I didn’t really think I would become a professor of film studies so that I would study his films.

[00:01:56] Jorge: I was just fascinated, and in fact, I’m kind of a little bit of a convert into film studies because my PhD was on literature, on Spanish literature, and it was later after my grad work that I kind of switched my research and teaching interest to. Film studies. So, but yeah, and Mullo was always there, uh, guiding me.

[00:02:19] Jorge: definitely

[00:02:21] Frederick: Jorge, tell for some of our listeners. You may not know. There is a very rich tradition of cinema in Spain. Different periods, you know, um, also very significantly impacted by different historical epics, uh, social political climates. Would you mind? Being kind of patiently walking us through, um, these different periods of Spanish, his, uh, of cinematic history.

[00:02:56] Jorge: Absolutely. Um, well, the history of Spanish cinema in the 20th century was definitely impacted and influenced primarily by the political events and the, the civil wars that kind of destroyed the. The, the, the booming, uh, film industry in the 1930s in Spain, and then the dictatorship of Francesco Franco from, uh, 1939 until 1975, kind of dominated and, and in shape the film industry because most of the films that were made in Spain during those four decades were pro regime commercial cinema.

[00:03:37] Jorge: That sort of, um, endorse the values of the regime or, uh, dissent cinema by, um, filmmakers as important as Louis Buel or Carlos Soda, Martin Patino, who, uh, they made movies that were really attacking the values of the regime, oftentimes in an indirect, very symbolic way because they, they needed to pass censorship.

[00:04:04] Jorge: So kind of that spini cinema. Was, uh, uh, for like 40 years. It was either pro films or dissident films until Franco die. Spains becomes, uh, democracy. And of course we have new cohorts of young filmmakers who start to make different kinds of cinema like Pedro Motor, who be like the most famous one, the most recognized.

[00:04:29] Jorge: Globally, and of course they start to make, uh, genre films, they start to like adjust or, or to converse with, uh, filmmaking, uh, trends and genres in other national cinemas in Hollywood. So Spanish cinema after the dictatorship definitely became much more diverse, more interesting. More, um, formally, um, accomplished.

[00:04:56] Jorge: And I would say that, uh, nowadays we have a, you know, established industry. In fact, lately what’s happened is that in the last 10 years or so, Thanks to the, uh, push of the platforms, especially in Netflix, it has really revitalized the Spanish film industry and the media industry. Uh, in fact, Netflix, six years ago opened, uh, brand, uh, like studios in Madrid.

[00:05:25] Jorge: So they’re making their own tos and their own, um, tv. Over there in Spain with Netflix money, it has really, really changed in a good way the possibilities for the film and media industry in Spain. So that’s kind of sort of like a. Trip or trajectory of the history of Spanish cinema in the last a hundred years or so.

[00:05:49] Frederick: Yeah. Really fascinating. Um, and of course world cinema different, different nations have their own, so stories of. Oppression, repression and censorship. Um, tell me a little bit about None Films. I know you write about this in a book, Confessional Cinema. Um, the 1960, up to 75, right. When Franco, you know, um, has to, you know, when Franco’s gone right off, you know, finely, uh, literally gone, um, what is, what are, what was going on there and.

[00:06:29] Frederick: How did that.

[00:06:31] Jorge: Maybe

[00:06:32] Frederick: help or mirror reflect the modernizing, say, if you will, of culture, the secularizing of, of, um, Spain. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Talk, talk a little bit about that

[00:06:45] Jorge: work. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was a project in which I, you know, religious cinema was very important during the Franco dictatorship because it was that dictatorship based on.

[00:06:56] Jorge: Fastest political views, but also with a strong, uh, Catholic backbone. Uh, so the regime, uh, financed, endorsed and really promoted the making of, uh, uh, religious cinema or cinema that would obviously, uh, Suggest or encourage people to become more religious and pro Catholic church. What happens is that in the 1960s there was a boom of comedies about nuns, uh, and funny enough, even though these were supposedly project regime films upholding the views of the regime, the conservative views of the regime, I noticed that’s why I started studying this sort of genre or south genre, how these non films were also vehicles to um, sort of promote the modern modernization of Spain in the late Franco period, but also the switch or let’s say new changes in gender, uh, uh, issues in Spain.

[00:08:02] Jorge: Obviously during the Franco, the cater ship women. Very oppressed. They were, uh, uh, pushed to the domestic space. Were not encouraged to work and or to participate in the P sphere. And these NA films were actually doing the opposite. They were showing these very active, these very entrepreneurial nuns. Who would solve the problems in their congregation and also train or, or help women best succeed in society.

[00:08:32] Jorge: So I noticed how these supposedly conservative films were in fact sort of, um, um, suggesting this new Spain that was becoming, Franco was still alive, but this society was changing towards becoming modern and. Democracy. So what I did in my book is to suggest how we should stop assuming that anything that has to do with the Catholic church was immediately conservative and anti-modern.

[00:09:03] Jorge: That was what, how it was always being approached because it was quite the opposite. The Catholic church, especially after the second Vatican Council in the mid sixties became, uh, really a force of modernization. In Spain and elsewhere. So it was actually the institution that really helped society to get a past the, the Franco conservatism.

[00:09:29] Jorge: So that, that’s kind of what I started this sub genre of, of man films.

[00:09:34] Frederick: Absolutely fascinating, Jorge. And of course, 75. Um, Is a kind of marker. Um, I don’t know if it’s arbitrary or not. Uh, I mean, that’s when Franco dies, but it’s also the marker of this sort of La Moda, the countercultural movements, uh, in Spain, and of course the flourishing of, of a cinema that had been, um, repressed for so long.

[00:10:02] Frederick: Um, would you, and in your book, do you. Talk then about the non films as being kind of paving the way to this.

[00:10:13] Jorge: I do. Um, and the book covers the period between 1960 and 1975. So the late Franco years. And as you know, sometimes we put this arbitrary, uh, temporal frames for our books cuz we had to end, begin and in, in the place.

[00:10:29] Jorge: And we also have to demonstrate knowledge about a certain period. Um, but I do talk in this chapter of non films. I do talk about how these films pave the way. For, in fact, there is a very, uh, famous, uh, Na film of the sixties that was used by Alva in one of his eighties movies and . It’s a movie about, uh, a convent and, and if you seen the movie, you remember, it’s a comment, a very, uh, eccentric nans.

[00:11:00] Jorge: And there were some, um, in, in that movie and in the later movie, La Mau. Specific scenes. There are a direct, not, I wouldn’t say copy, but an homage to this nine film of the sixties. So actually my book, I do, I do analyze that or make that comparison how these, uh, commercial and low budget film of the sixties really were then revisited by the great directors of the post, uh, post Democratic period because they recognize the cultural value that they.

[00:11:37] Frederick: Yeah. So important to all the layers, uh, that, you know, many might not even know about with the Alva and the, the, the illusions and the homage and the, of the cinema that had come before. Um, Jorge, tell me, um, We have in 2021, your fashioning, Spanish cinema costume, you identity and stardom, and you put together film and fashion, which of course, you know makes sense.

[00:12:09] Frederick: And in fact, I’m surprised more of this hasn’t been done. Um, but especially as it shapes and influences industries, how it shapes ideas, values. Um, and there are some, Actors that some of us are more familiar with. Maybe Penelope Cruz, maybe others that you talk about. Um, but also red carpet events like the Oscars and Goya.

[00:12:41] Frederick: But yeah, tell us about this connection, uh, between film and fashion.

[00:12:47] Jorge: Well, it’s something that’s always fascinated me. Obviously part of our fascination with cinema comes with the glamour of the Oscars, the red carpet events of, you know, stardom. Uh, but I did notice while I was working on. My broken religion in the late Franco period cinema that, uh, well, I became fascinated with the movie by, Although Broken embraces Los of Ratos Rotos and the use of.

[00:13:17] Jorge: Uh, Chanel, uh, uh, uh, outfits by groups at that movie actually. And then I, I started to make connections how Almo had used Chanel or, or outfits or, or, you know, um, suits from the House of Chanel in other movies. And I said, Well, this is not Ka coincidence. Obviously there’s a fascination with that particular fashion brand and why.

[00:13:40] Jorge: And I, and then I started thinking, no one has studied this. Not much. Of course I started to read just for fun, thinking that I would do like an article project, you know, after I was done with my book and started to read a little bit about fashion theory, about, uh, fashion, the connection between fashion and film.

[00:13:59] Jorge: And, and of course by the time I finished my book and I got to that, Project that I thought about, it was already a book project because I, I started to get so much material and became so interested about this. There’s so many facets of the connection or the intersections between the industries of film and fashion, and then how that gets the, in the movie.

[00:14:24] Jorge: And as costume design, because obviously we have the fashion industry and the film industry, but then the connection between both of them is, is also through just how characters in a movie are dressed, and that’s costume design, not necessarily fashion. So I, I thought there is so much. Here to explore. And of course there had been some work done in the context of Hollywood and some of the national cinemas, like Italy or France, but absolutely nothing or very little in the context of Spanish or Latin American cinema.

[00:14:54] Jorge: So I thought, you know, I’ve got a whole world to explore here. And that’s how I got interested in, in that book project. Jorge,

[00:15:03] Frederick: tell me. Um, if this ventured into the area as well, uh, with, I don’t know if people like an Antonio Banderas and many of us know, um, him actually, you know, for his work in the Alva films.

[00:15:20] Frederick: Um, and then he crossed over, um, in, in, Into Hollywood or Javi or others. Was there also. I mean, is fashion and kind of gender or masculinity or constructions of a kind of LA Latin lover also part of this?

[00:15:42] Jorge: Um, absolutely. Uh, at least two of the chapters of the book, I, uh, I focus in those chapters on how, um, cost and design and or fashion.

[00:15:54] Jorge: Uh, becomes a very powerful, uh, uh, channel or strategy to construct, reconstruct, or deconstruct, uh, cinematic identities related to gender, sexuality, race, and so on. Uh, in fact, I devote one whole chapter. To studying the evolution of the representation of male underwear in Spanish cinema, beginning with the early Franco Cinema, all the way to the present.

[00:16:24] Jorge: And what I do there is by studying the evolution of the representation of underwear and film, I sort of read that as also a, a representation of the evolution of gender and masculinity in Spanish society. From the Franco rigid masculinity codes all the way to, you know, current contemporary, more fluid versions of masculinity and gender in Spain.

[00:16:50] Jorge: So yeah, absolutely. And part of that chapter is studying the very iconic, um, eighties movies, uh, with Antonio Van as a sort of the male Hank of Spain cinema. And then, The first main movie the Javier made in Spain, which was uh, Ham, Hamon, Luna, and he’s very iconic, uh, uh, scene in which he was in underwear, sort of representing an Overthe top edical.

[00:17:21] Jorge: Through his very vintage underwear. So that became an iconic scene in Spanish cinema. So, so yeah. Um, I do study those main figures of Spanish cinema, but in this chapter, actually in the way they were dressed underneath their clothes, they’re under their Amazing. Yeah.

[00:17:44] Frederick: It’s um, Oh boy. Um, so much to talk about there, Jorge.

[00:17:49] Frederick: Um, but let me, let me move us along. Um, what another area that I know you’ve been very invested in, and that has a long tradition, of course going back to Servan, is the picker arrest. Um, and while you’ve published a, a, a volume on Latin American Road movies with, uh, a co-editor, um, It was Veronica Rito, and I just wonder.

[00:18:16] Frederick: You know, Spain, the esque, the, the road narrative, if you will, and then of course, Latin American cinema and the road film. Can you enlighten us a little bit? Why, why is this somehow situated in these different, um, cultural, sociopolitically shaped spaces? Is there something.

[00:18:42] Jorge: Absolutely. Um, my interest in Rome movies actually started initially just in the context of Spain.

[00:18:49] Jorge: My first book was actually on road movies and road novels, uh, from Spain. And then of course, at the time there was a boom in Rome movies in Latin America too. You know, beginning in the late 19. All the way to today. So when I was doing that book, I wanted to also do a crossover project with Latin America, but I didn’t quite dare to do it on my own because I’m a primarily a Peninsula scholar.

[00:19:17] Jorge: You know, I studied Spain mostly, so I wanted to do it in collaboration with an expert in Latin America. Luckily in my previous institution, prior to U. I was for 13 years, a professor in the University of Kansas, and I had a colleague there who is an expert on Argentine cinema, so I convinced her too. I come along and do that project together.

[00:19:39] Jorge: I was absolutely fascinated. Yeah, by the real movie genre, which is a. Originally, uh, US Center, uh, genre, you know, it’s a very popular genre in the US cinema in Hollywood, not necessarily in Spain, definitely, or Latin America until recently, even though, like you mentioned, really the precursors of this genre.

[00:20:02] Jorge: Was first of all, Donte, you know, like the proto road road story or road narrative, and then the pick, also the picker novel. Those are two. And even the scholars who study road movies in the context of the us, they recognize those two. As you know, some of the original road narratives. So obviously Spain had a tradition already in literature.

[00:20:31] Jorge: and then so I became interested. Why wasn’t there any road movies really, or very few before the 1980s and 1990s? Well, because Spain became modern, very late because the, you know, the booming of the, uh, roads, the, you know, the infrastructures were not there, uh, for people to travel. Uh, but, but. Through, you know, through the road.

[00:20:55] Jorge: So I became interested in why later that happened in the context of Latin America, I think is fascinating because you obviously the differing, uh, social political, uh, scenario. But I, I believe that in the, in the last couple of decades it had been a boom. In Latin American Rome movies in all countries.

[00:21:16] Jorge: And you know, some of them were like actually very prominent with a lot of international visibility. Oscar, uh, nominators or, or nominated or even got some Oscars like, uh, Central de Brazil from Brazil, uh, motorcycle diaries. I mean some of it are I from Mexico? There’s some of them were the global. So, you know, I convinced my colleague that we needed to bring together a group of scholars, were experts, all these different national cinemas for Latin America.

[00:21:48] Jorge: And that’s how that collective volume, uh, took, took form. And I’m so happy I convinced my colleague to do it because I, you know, it was fascinating probably to where I learned so much just from reading the work of people working on Rome movies. From countries I would’ve never thought of as producing Rome movies like Puerto Rico.

[00:22:06] Jorge: You know, it was fascinating to learn and learn about Puerto Rican Rome movies.

[00:22:12] Frederick: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, really important, uh, volume collection. And of course we do collections volumes like that, uh, to, to get the coverage and, you know, remarkably, you know, um, kinda lay the groundwork for an area of. Study that might not have been there before.

[00:22:32] Frederick: Yeah, absolutely. Fascinating. And of course, um, close to my heart, uh, when I wrote, uh, my Maxina book, um, you know, of course being the road novel and the kinds of pressure cooker situations as well, that being on the road, um, Bring out in the characters right, that other, other spaces, bigger spaces in cinema tend not to, to do.

[00:23:01] Frederick: Let me ask you, uh, Jorge, um, as we begin to wind this down, um, there, these, these really important not to genre, but also maybe less. Less centrally located, maybe understood as ancillary shaping devices like music, uh, in cinema, you, we’ve already talked about fashion, um, but music, um, and. Maybe we can use that as a way to segue into a piece you wrote on celebrity and fashion and this convergence, uh, or a brave new convergent world.

[00:23:42] Frederick: I know you mentioned Netflix already as being a significant shaper of that, but yeah. Music as part of this convergence culture that’s happening.

[00:23:51] Jorge: Absolutely. Well, that piece is actually part of my new project that I, I’m, you know, the pro, it’s a project on celebrity culture in Spain, but with an eye on Spain and connections with the global media industry.

[00:24:07] Jorge: And it quite, uh, the, the music part was not originally in the project until recently. When they’ve invited me to write about this, um, global phenomenon, this rosalia, this Spanish singer who is making a splash in the US music industry elsewhere. And then I started to think more of a music industry as part of this convergent.

[00:24:33] Jorge: Culture, even though I was initially not planning on doing that because I like, I’m already touching on so many things that , I don’t wanna continue to diversify my pro portfolio even more. But I guess now I am working on that and of course I’m beginning to, uh, learn. That the music industry has diversified a lot, and it has changed a lot since the days that I knew the industry more like 20 years ago, 15 years ago.

[00:25:04] Jorge: And of course, now no one is releasing or buying albums. Now it’s all, you know, Spotify and the artists have to sell themselves and market themselves and reach out in so many different ways using social media. I mean, Actually the main thing nowadays, they don’t have a social media presence in a smart social media presence.

[00:25:25] Jorge: They’re nobody. So, so yeah, I’m beginning to study that in, in the context of music, but also also cinema and television and how, uh, all these industries, cinema, television, uh, fashion, And social media, they all work together. We cannot understand movie, see movie stars or music stars without understanding how they work in this synergetic, uh, sort of ecology composed of all these industries and all these media.

[00:26:01] Jorge: There are no longer just the star of one media or the other. All these industries, all these media. Are together and it’s fascinating, but it also makes our task of studying this phenomena very complex. Mm-hmm. .

[00:26:19] Frederick: Yeah. The convergence and emergence as. A rich area for us to insert our scholarly lens, but also, as you just pointed out, it also means that we need to do our homework, our due diligence, and understand how music itself works.

[00:26:41] Frederick: Understand how fashion works, uh, along with the kind of visual. Um, you know, silver screen movie making imaginary. Um, I’m gonna put you on the spot here, Jorge. Um, we, you mentioned Netflix and this kind of renaissance of the globalizing of Spanish cinema today. Tell me, um, what are some Netflix shows we should be paying attention to?

[00:27:13] Frederick: Um, what are you watching now?

[00:27:16] Jorge: Oh, right now I am watching a not very good show, . It’s called Intra. It’s a Spanish show on Netflix, actually. Uh, and I watch, I’m watching it because I have to, because I have to watch every single release or, uh, sort of new show, new movie that gets release in there. It’s not very good.

[00:27:37] Jorge: The, what I recommend is one called that intimacy. It is also from Spain. It is also Netflix. It was recently released. And it’s interesting, A, because it has really good production values, and B, because, um, it talks about, The issue of, um, um, Invasion of Privacy. It’s a show. It is, it’s one of those, uh, sort series with like six episodes in that say there’s not gonna be a second season.

[00:28:05] Jorge: It’s about a politician in the Northwest Fame Bill. It’s gonna become the major of the city and there is a sexual video of her that gets released without her consent and it becomes the paneling scandal. So it a show that talks about very contemporary issue, like the issue of, you know, invasion of privacy and the use of social media.

[00:28:26] Jorge: And it was really well made and it, and I think just show that, I would recommend that show to a lot of people. It’s called Intimacy on Netflix. Intimate diving in Spanish. It’s obviously in Spanish, but they also have the subtitles or even the English, uh, translation or, or dubbing.

[00:28:43] Frederick: So much richness, hoarded that you have shared here.

[00:28:48] Frederick: I know you also bring this into your classroom spaces, students working with you on, gosh, not just Spanish, uh, Peninsula. Um, I, IBM American, um, cinema, but also video games and detective fiction and trans feminist movements. Um, You’ve taken us on a small journey. We’ve gone from servan to Bandera underwear to, uh, you know, the importance of, of music and the shaping of cinema.

[00:29:28] Frederick: Um, and. This sort of global phenomena that is Netflix, uh, you know, in spaces that have traditionally been kept out of global markets, out of the reach of viewers across the world. Jorge, I just wanna say thank you for taking the time and. Thank you for all that you do.

[00:29:53] Jorge: Thank you for having me here. It was a pleasure to talk to you about my work

[00:30:01] Outro: Into The Colaverse is produced by the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Liberal Arts Sound Engineering by the Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services you can find Into the Colaverse Podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. Thanks for listening and see you next time.