7. Memory, Politics, and the Post-Transition in Almodóvarós Cinema

Summary

In this chapter, the author analyzes the construction of political discourse in Almodóvar's cinema in a context far removed from that of the early 1980s. The problem with the line of interpretation of the film is that it derives from the figure of Franco as the origin of the social conflicts and cultural specters affecting contemporary Spain; the persistence of the myth or shadow of the dictator over present-day decentralized Spain of the autonomous communities; and/or the vision of the transition to democracy as an experience of collective amnesia and the erasure of memory. What this chapter proposes instead is an approach more closely tied to historical and social reality and thus to the conditions of the emergence in Spain of a “postmodern ethics,” the expression of a “loss of innocence,” and the shattering of the illusions created during the promising era of the 1980s.