Madonna is perhaps one of the most consistently transgressive and self-transforming artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The recent release of two critically acclaimed and best-selling albums and a sold-out world tour have renewed media and academic interest in the artist. Madonna presents a set of strikingly new challenges to cultural analysis, and new developments in Gender, Queer and Ethnic studies have shed more light on her entire oeuvre. Whilst the contributors do refer to classic cultural theorists such as Baudrillard, Zizek, Foucault and Barthes, new theoretical approaches to Madonna's work feature prominently. In view of this, the present volume offers new perspectives on Madonna's work to date, addressing her configurations of race, gender and sex(uality) and with special emphasis on her resurrection after the Sex backlash in the early 1990s. The collection focuses on new Madonna-related topics such as Hinduism, Judaism, Japanese culture, All-American culture, Queer culture, Motherhood and her influence on newer 'girl acts' such as the Spice Girls and Britney Spears. The book explores the themes of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and celebrity consumption through the lens of Madonna's songs, videos and shows. An international array of scholars portrays Madonna's popularisation of the notion that identity is not fixed and can be continuously rearranged and revamped. The book should have wide appeal for all those concerned with gender studies, cultural studies, ethnic studies, lesbian and gay musicology as well as popular music studies.

This book covers a significant part of the history of Spanish film, from the 1920s until the present day. Starting with a study of the kiss in silent films, the volume explores homoerotic narratives in the crusade films of the 1940s, the commodification of bodies in the late Franco period, and the so-called destape (literally undressing) period that followed the abolition of censorship during the democratic transition. Reclaiming the importance of Spanish erotic cinema as a genre in itself, a range of international scholars demonstrate how the explicit depiction of sex can be a useful tool to illuminate current and historic social issues including ageism, colonialism, domestic violence, immigration, nationalisms, or women and LGBT rights. Covering a wide range of cinematic genres, including comedy, horror and melodrama, this book provides an innovative and provocative overview of Spanish cinema history and society in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The first comprehensive scholarly study of Spanish erotic cinema, this book covers a significant part of the history of Spanish film, from the 1920s until the present day. Starting with a study of the kiss in silent films, the volume explores homoerotic narratives in the crusade films of the 1940s, the commodification of bodies in the late Franco period, and the so-called destape (literally 'undressing') period that followed the abolition of censorship during the democratic transition. Reclaiming the importance of Spanish erotic cinema as a genre in itself, a range of international scholars demonstrate how the explicit depiction of sex can be a useful tool to illuminate current and historic social issues including ageism, colonialism, domestic violence, immigration, nationalisms, or women and LGBT rights. Covering a wide range of cinematic genres, including comedy, horror and melodrama, this book provides an innovative and provocative overview of Spanish cinema history and society in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

In post-Franco Spain, a re-shaping of notions of the masculine has been under way for some time. The authors of "Live Flesh" demonstrate how contemporary Spanish films, during this modern period, have contributed to this process. They do so by visualizing the ways in which Spanish men have been abandoning old self images and adopting new ones, and they explain and explore the complexity and diversity of these fresh cinematic creations of masculine identities.
The book's point of focus is Spanish films of the democratic period, both popular and auteur, made by directors of national and international prominence, such as Pedro Almodovar, Alejandro Amenabar, Bigas Luna or Julio Medem, as well as films featuring acclaimed actors who have contributed to the construction of contemporary ideas of the masculine in their country, including Antonio Banderas and Javier Bardem. Using a fresh theoretical framework, embracing queer and feminist theory and concepts of nation, race and class, each chapter examines key films that represent the male body, highlighting notable elements - young, muscular, homosexual, (dis)abled, foreign and so on - and goes on to focus on recent case studies from the early 1990s to the present.
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An increasingly transnational Spanish cinema is a most promising field in which to explore questions of how male bodies are represented - and mediated - in film. "Live Flesh" more than fulfils this promise and goes further, to reveal how these representations have intervened in the Spanish cultural imagination.