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Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 251 Even as Franco continued to squirm at female nudity (which he associated with the Marxist threat) and his right-hand man Luis Carrero Blanco (soon to be blown to smithereens) disparaged "maricas" and insisted on the patriotic exaltation of virility, this genre highlighted the sexual and economic inadequacy of Spanish men in their encounters with scantily-clad foreign women, and incorporated some of the first homosexual characters into the national cinema. Yet as Pavlovic admits, the films of hndumo typically ended with the chastened hero returning to his Spanish wife or girlfriend, thus reestablishing the status quo. Nevertheless, Pavlovic suggests that these films are perhaps as revelatory as the art house fare that has traditionally been the preferred focus of attention for critics, for they attest to the "inescapable ambivalences" of the era (89). The Nordic blonde bombshells of landismo usher in the platinum blonde drag queens of the movida (and most especially of Pedro Almodóvar's work), the subject of the fourth chapter. Pavlovic moves from a brief résumé of the celebratory clichés concerning the figure of the transvestite or transsexual in the culture of the fledgling democracy, to a critical consideration of those clichés (drawing astutely on Brad Epps's work), before analyzing homophobic and misogynistic rejections of the legitimacy of the movidas efforts to engage in subversive cultural practices. Here Eduardo Subirats's assertions are subjected to particular scrutiny, especially his characterization of both the "Quinto Centenario " celebrations and the movida as examples of "thought degradation." Pavlovic makes reference again to the writings of Epps, as well as to those of Paul Julian Smith, to highlight Subirats's refusal to consider gender or sexuality as valid epistemological categories. Pavlovic concludes that, notwithstanding Almodóvar's problematic relationship to feminism and homosexuality, in his films bodies "continue to disturb and refigure the limits of the nation already complicated by 'perverse' bodies ofthe past" (105). The book's epilogue on Jesús (a.ka. Jess) Franco is perhaps too much an appendage, and would certainly merit greater fleshing out. Here, importantly, Pavlovic rescues Franco's body of work from relative critical obscurity, arguing that the low-budget filmmaker questions the traditional family, deconstructs masculinity, offers up "hard, mean and uncontrollable women" (119), and eschews the conventional horror denouement in which order is restored. But although Pavlovic makes reference to Franco's cult status outside of Spain, she doesn't explain how Spaniards may (or may not) have seen his films. Were they released uncut abroad but in amputated form within Spain under the censorship policy of "dobles versiones"? Were Spanish filmmakers more likely than the general public to have seen his work? Pavlovic mentions, for example, that Pedro Almodóvar's film Matador begins with scenes from Franco's Bloody Moon, but she doesn't consider to what extent the "subversive" characterization of his female serial killer Maria may also be indebted to Franco. Similarly, while Pilar Miró is taken to task in this chapter for having created a film law (the "Ley Miró") that further marginalized Franco's product, no mention is made of Miró's own early work as a filmmaker, which featured gothic ambiences, sadomasochistic sex, and a Sadian murderess-cum-feminist heroine—also highly reminiscent of Franco's work. But all of these questions simply serve to confirm the intellectually titillating nature of Pavlovic's book: its scholarly pleasures will certainly leave readers desiring to view even more despotic and transgressive bodies through the author's obliquely revealing lens. Susan MartÃ-n-Márquez Rutgers University The Spectacu^ City: Violence and Performance in Urban Bolivia Duke University Press, 2004 By Daniel M. Goldstein This book offers a unique perspective of how public displays of violence through lynchings is a method used by inhabitants of Villa Sebastián Pagador, an unincorporated town 252 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies located in the southern part of Cochabamba, Bolivia, in a constant effort to gain the attention of local authorities that they are victims of the increasing level of crime in their community, but feel the police do not protect them but rather protect the criminals. The...

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