Role of women and gender in the cinema of Perdro Almodovar

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Acknowledgement

I would take this opportunity to thank my research supervisor, family and friends for their support and guidance without which this research would not have been possible.

DECLARATION

I, [type your full first names and surname here], declare that the contents of this dissertation/thesis represent my own unaided work, and that the dissertation/thesis has not previously been submitted for academic examination towards any qualification. Furthermore, it represents my own opinions and not necessarily those of the University.

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Abstract

To Bette Davis, Gena Rowlands, Romy Schneider… to all actress who have played actress, to all women who act, to all men who act and become women, to all the people who want to be mothers. To my mother. (Dedication, All About My Mother, 1999) Since the film All About My Mother (1999) won the best foreign film in the year 2000 Academy Award and the best director prize of the Cannes Film Festival in the same year, the Spanish film-maker Pedro Almodóvar has become a preeminent “women's director” who has consistently placed women as central characters in his cinema. Almodóvar's films are famous for his representation of lives of women, drag queens, transsexuals, drug addicts, gays and lesbians, and other marginalized groups. Barry Jordan delineates the characteristics of Almodóvar's films in “Gender and Sexuality in Post-Franco Cinema” in Contemporary Spanish Cinema. His early work was as dismissive of the limits of conventional sexuality as it was of distinctions between high art and popular culture, good and bad taste. It is his flamboyant visual style and his treatment of gender and sexuality which have stamped an overarching identity on his films. Conventional social structures and patterns of behaviors are parodied or ignored and displayed by a parade of alternative lifestyles and relationships presented through hilarious subversions of popular film genres.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION1

CHAPTER ONE: CAMP THEORY AND GENDER PERFORMATIVITY7

I. Camp and Gay Sensibility: An Overview of Camp Theory8

II. A Survey of Judith Butler's Theory of Gender Performativity22

CHAPTER TWO: CAMP PERFORMANCE IN PEDRO ALMODÓVAR'S FILMS32

I.Male Camp: Camp Performance of Female Impersonators34

CHAPTER THREE: CAMP AND FEMALE SPECTATORSHIP IN PEDRO ALMODÓVAR'S FILMS51

I.A Survey of Female Spectatorship54

II.The Female Spectator's Reception of Male Camp58

III.The Female Spectator's Reception of Female Camp61

CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION66

REFERENCES74

Introduction

Almodóvar is a gay-identified director, his films appeal to not only queers, but also feminists and straight audiences who are interested in kitsch and camp y style of his films. Moreover, he is also considered as “the keenest architect of the camp esthetics in cinema today”.

In this thesis, I will examine the camp performance in three films by Pedro Almodóvar: Law of Desire (1987), High Heels (1991), and All about My Mother (1999). In fact, Almodóvar's early works are full of camp traces and kitsch. The reason why I choose these three films of different periods as my texts is because of the abundant gender performances and camp traces in them. I want to use these films to investigate how camp influences Almodóvar's ...