Abstract
This chapter explores the construction of a global Barcelona gaze; that is, of a look at the city constructed as a result of the global awareness of the brand, a gaze that in turn helped to perpetuate the city brand’s world purchase. We consider here how the brand is globally perceived as favoring, as producing, as encouraging, and as enriching particular modes of living, and therefore a particular kind of subject able to take advantage of and enjoy the experience. All of which is offered as a promise to the potential visitor, in the understanding that such results could not have been produced in their home cities, endowing Barcelona as a result with the means of producing a particular kind of life experience unviable for subjects elsewhere, and defining in this way the city’s qualitative advantage. We tackle the issue through the analysis of two well-known films set in Barcelona that have confirmed and reinforced a global image for the city by enjoying excellent global distribution, and good box office revenues, plus no little academic attention: Cédric Klapish’s L’auberge espagnole (issued in English in various countries as Pot Luck or The Spanish Apartment) (2002) and Woody Allen’s Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona (2008).
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Notes
- 1.
In L’auberge, the lyrics, in Spanish, of the original soundtrack, composed by Loik and Mathieu Dury aka Kouz-1, and sung by Ardag, reinforce the logics of this narrative. During the opening credits (00:01:10–00:02:08), the song “L’auberge espagnole” combines sexual proposals with a voluntarist narrative using the second person singular, you, to interpellate and incite the audience to find the courage in their hearts to change their lives and future. The soundtrack for the closing credits (1:52:33–1:56:40), on the other hand, through the song “Cambia la vida” (Life changes) speaks of a life changed for the best as a result of having had the right attitude in life.
- 2.
Romney (quoted in Perriam 2013: 188) speaks of Vicky as a “revamp of the age-old Americans-in-Europe story.”
- 3.
McCaffrey and Pratt, in their article on this film present it as being centrally about the anxieties of being a French male abroad, and as such reinforce French stereotypes. “Whilst manifestly extolling the virtues of European integration and the socio-cultural values associated with the university Erasmus exchange program, [L’auberge] simultaneously reinforce[s] conventional representations of French national identity in the form of republican universalism, symbolic masculine heteronormativity and French exceptionalism” (2011: 433). While I find this to be an overall correct argument, I argue here that there is also room to extend Xavier’s rejection of Paris beyond France and as epitomizing a particular concept of Europe.
- 4.
Through the same camera work and to the same interpretive effect the film portrays Xavier’s miserable time trying to navigate the Kafkaesque maze of French university bureaucracy in order to sign up to the Erasmus program (00:05:30–00:07:30).
- 5.
Significant of the way in which this new creative capitalism rejects what was radical and political of the 68 movements from where it got its ideas is the representation of Xavier’s mother, derogatorily defined as an annoying, vegetarian hippy (00:05:00–00:05:20). Xavier’s attitude toward her throughout the film is at best condescending, and at worst abusive.
- 6.
In a compatible reading to mine, Perriam (2013: 188) reads this scene and Juan Antonio’s proposition as coming out of Allen’s characteristic ideological ambivalence with respect to sexual politics and, more generally, sees Bardem and Cruz’s performances as self-aware of their own iconicity as actors and stereotyping in the characters they play (2013: 192).
- 7.
“María Elena went out photographing with Cristina. She had a superb eye and knew a lot about the art of photography and taught Cristina much about the aesthetics and subtleties of picture taking. She advised her to get rid of her digital camera and use an old one for more interesting results” (01:02:30–01:03:50).
- 8.
Fuller argues that María Elena incarnates in places the very spirit of Barcelona in the film (2009: 27), a point corroborated by Perriam, for whom Cruz becomes increasingly monumental (Perriam 2013: 186). Putting more ideological pressure on that identification of body to landscape, I would say that it allows for the visitor to both admire and extract value from them.
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Balibrea, M.P. (2017). Capital Subjects: Redefining Capitality in Global Films on Barcelona. In: The Global Cultural Capital. The Contemporary City. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53596-2_14
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