Dark Laughter: Spanish Film, Comedy, and the Nation

Acknowledgments

xi Even though I dedicate this book to them, I also need to acknowledge my wife’s and daughter’s constant support and understanding. Writing on comedy can be fun, but it is still writing, and both Sarli and Sofía either forgave or pretended they did not notice the moodiness and the crankiness when things were not moving along smoothly. I think they do like me. I would also like to thank my colleagues in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. They have pushed my scholarship in great measure just by being solid and generous scholars themselves . It is peer pressure, and they do not even suspect it. I have a special debt of gratitude to those of them who actively participated in making my English and my thoughts clearer and sounder: Glen Close, Bill Cudlipp, David Hildner , Steve Hutchinson, Will Risley, and Kathryn Sanchez. John Burns, from Rockford College, also suffered my linguistic sablazos and provided me with much more than style recommendations. If my academic prose still has some awkward moments, it is solely due to the stubbornness of a nonnative demanding flexibility from rules he thinks should apply to him differently. Earlier versions of two chapters in this book were published in scholarly journals, and I am grateful to the publishers for their permission to use that material here. Part of chapter 2 appeared in Spanish as “Paralítico o no: Comedia irónica, disidencia e identidad en El cochecito,” Anales de literatura española contemporánea 28.1 (2003): 77–93. An earlier version of chapter 3, also in Spanish, was published with the title “Para una anatomía de la complicidad: El verdugo de Berlanga,” Letras peninsulares 19.2/19.3 (Fall/Winter 2006–7): 211–26. A section of chapter 7 was published in the book Contemporary Spanish Cinema and Genre, edited by Jay Beck and Vicente Rodríguez Ortega (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), 107–21, with the title “Justino, un asesino de la tercera edad: Spanishness, Dark Comedy and Horror.” I thank the people at Manchester University Press for their kind permission to reprint that text here. Finally, I also want to thank the two anonymous readers who helped me Acknowledgments xii  Acknowledgments with their thorough comments, as well as all the individuals at the University of Wisconsin Press who have made the publication of this book possible. I am especially indebted to Raphael Kadushin, who believed in this project from day one and pushed me, as gently as any editor would ever do, to stop taking forever and to not forget Almodóvar. While my family in Spain did not help me with any single word, I feel they are in each and every one of them. Their sacrifices for the one who left must be acknowledged at the onset of anything I would ever write. Dark Laughter ...