From Counter-Culture to National Heritage: "La Movida" in the Museum and the Institutionalization of Irreverence

The museum is indeed a site into which bourgeois society projects its dreams and utopian projects.

Herbert Marcuse "On the Affirmative Character of Culture" (1937)

In the past few years, the period known as the Movida in Spain, an uninhibited and vibrant era in Spanish culture during the early1980s marked by an explosion of film, music, painting, fashion and graphic design, has found itself auspiciously recalled and retold through various discursive modes. Through the songs of Mecano, the Spanish pop super-group that gained fame in the early 1980s, the musical play "Hoy no me puedo levantar" (which opened in March 2005 in the Movistar Theater in Madrid) exemplifies the kind of recent cultural expression that retells the narrative of Spain's transition to democracy through a nostalgic filter that yearns for a perceived lost innocence and vitality of that bygone era. Mecano, though never seen, becomes the comedic foil in "El mundo asombroso de Borjamari y Pocholo" (2004) when two "niños pijos" from the 1980s (played by Santiago Segura and Javier Gutiérrez) undertake a quixotic adventure in search of Mecano's surprise reunion concert some 20 years later. Emotionally and linguistically stuck in the 80s, the innocence of the title characters contrasts sharply with the heavily corporatized consumer culture in Spain of the 21st century.¹ In "La mala educación" (2004) Pedro Almodóvar sets the exhuberance and excess of the 80s as a backdrop for a noir exploration of self, memory, guilt, and desire. Though Almodóvar has clearly stated in interviews and articles that the film is not autobiographical and should not be considered a reflection on the Movida nor an "ajuste de cuentas" with the Catholic clergy, the era in question offers a perfect historical frame, in his words, to understand "la borrachera de libertad que vivía España, en oposición al oscurantismo y la represión de los años 60"(Almodóvar). Chus Gutiérrez's film, El calentito (2005) offers easily recognizable cultural references to the era of the Movida by integrating original early footage of Pedro Almodóvar, Fabio McNamara and Juan Carlos de Borbón (though not all together) and reproducing the "soundtrack" of the era with music from Los Nikis, Aviador Dro, Décima Víctima, Derribos Arias, Parálisis Permanente, Zombis, and Aerolíneas Federales. By evoking in the viewer a desire to recuperate a perceived collective space, time and experience, Gutiérrez articulates a nostalgic yearning for the manic energy and boundless freedom associated with the Movida. Recent documentary films like La movida: La edad de oro (2001), Rock-Ola: El templo de la Movida (2006), La empanada de la removida (2007), Rock-Ola: Una noche de la Movida (2007), Costus: el documental (2007) have likewise found fertile ground in revisiting the era and exploring the legacy of the Movida. Novels like Luis Antonio Villena's Madrid ha muerto: Esplendor y caos en una ciudad feliz de los ochenta (published in 1999, then reissued in 2006) and Kiko Méndez Monasterio's La calle de la luna (2008), along with such non-fiction as José Manuel Lechado's self-proclaimed chronicle La movida: Una crónica de los 80 (2005) or Silvia Grijalbo's recent testimonial Dios salve a la Movida (2006), offer distinct narrative approaches to the Movida that, however, claim authority in asserting the verity of their vision (or version) of the past.² Even the weekly Sunday magazine, El País Semanal, offered a retrospective "where-are-they-now" in May of 2005, an attempt to "resumir los últimos 25 años" by profiling the trajectory of some of the Movida's more well-known protagonists like Jesús Ordovás, Johnny Cifuentes, Antonio Vega, Borja Casani, Rossi de Palma, Iván Zulueta, and Ouka Lele. Lastly, museum expositions and state-sponsored commemorations³ seemingly contradict the uninhibited counter-culture vibrancy of the Movida with an institutionalized vision of it⁴: "Caminos de un tiempo (1973-1987)" at the Asociación Cultural Caminos in 2005, Pablo...