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Spain, Reincarnated: Julio Medem’S Caótica Ana And New Spanish Media(Tion) In The World, Susan Martin-Márquez

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Spanish director Julio Medem’s visually stunning yet controversial 2007 film Chaotic Ana was panned for its ostensibly Manichaean treatment of gender relations and its crudely scatological ending, both of which have distracted attention from the work’s fascinating incursions into global politics. While the film’s complex layering of hawk and dove imagery figures centuries of male violence against women, it is also imbricated with an extended meditation on the divergent roles of the United States and Spain on the contemporary world stage. Through the male protagonist Said, a Saharawi painter, the film artfully shifts postcolonial guilt for the fate of the …