Abstract
Over the past decade several studies by Spanish/European scholars (Pura Fernández, Maite Zubiaurre, Serge Salaün, Christine Rivalan-Guégo) have explored fin-de-siècle literary, artistic and cultural production as a source for new perspectives in cultural and gender studies. Among them, the work of Isabel Clúa stands out as an inspiring contribution to the field. Clúa’s main line of research focuses on the significance and implications of female celebrity in relation to the birth of mass culture. Female celebrity is a ‘device’ enabling women’s agency in terms of authorship, gender construction, and negotiations of identity.
Cuerpos de escándalo. Celebridad femenina en el fin-de-siècle [lit. tr. Scandalous Bodies. Female Celebrity in fin-de-siècle] outlines the main interests that have fuelled this Catalan scholar’s work with a study on the impact of female performers in Spanish and international popular theatre at the turn of the 20th century. Born in a period in which the new visual paradigm drives the culture industry and the mass production of images, celebrity is a new phenomenon ostensibly enhancing the idea of the female body as a product for male consumption. However, it is also a creative device for many women artists joining the growing show business. In defending this perspective, Clúa is especially convincing when, following Foucault, she shows how cultural modernity developed the two following scenarios: on the one hand, the emerging notion of a visual, spectacularized society establishes cultural production and consumption as a system of circulation of the gaze in which, besides the centrality of the female body as an element of visual pleasure, the position of object and subject becomes interchangeable. On the other hand, female performers are active agents, able to use their bodies and their looks to devise new subjectivities; as such their activity has a political potential in terms of gender normativity and transgression.
Aware of the contradictions surrounding the position of the female body in the emerging culture industry, Clúa does not deny the ambiguous implications of celebrity for women in terms of public display and commodification. But she equally stresses the active role of women performers as creators of cultural messages. Following Judith Butler, Clúa understands performance as a creative process and considers celebrity as a tool allowing women to construct and negotiate their identity. Even though celebrities are bought and consumed, they are nevertheless active agents, creators of their own subjectivity. In this regard, the book focuses in particular on the ways specific actresses reinforce progressive ideas about femininity by constructing extravagant personalities that break conventional roles and lifestyles on stage and beyond.
The author peruses her hypothesis by dwelling on specific questions: how could these women manage the ambiguity of their status (objects of consumption/subjects of creation)? To what extent did their visibility reinforce or reject established gender roles? How could some of them become figures of public interest and debate, celebrities, beyond their status as actresses? Clúa pursues her research by considering the reception of celebrities in Spanish cultural magazines such as Vida Galante [Galant Life] and tracks the significance of celebrity through particular case studies taken from popular theatrical forms such as vaudeville, music-hall and café chantant. She considers divas such as Carolina Otero – best known as La Bella Otero – Tórtola Valencia, Carmencita and Rosario Guerrero. Studying the ways these performers rose to fame, the book also reveals how these women ‘influenced’ contemporary celebrity culture.
At the turn of the century performers were at the centre of cultural debates. The first chapters focus on the emblematic status of the actress as an icon in Decadent culture and society. Scholars have usually looked at fin-de-siècle cultural production by considering serious or ‘high’ art and literature and dismissing popular, ‘low’ culture. Clúa forcefully argues against such positions and considers the emergence of eroticism in popular forms of consumption as a serious and most relevant object of study for understanding cultural and social dynamics. Through the analysis of the circumstances that led to a massive incorporation of women in popular show business and of the implications of this new female presence, the book sets out to explain the role of women and female agency in early celebrity culture. While the icon of the actress emerges as an ambiguous consequence of the new economic order of bourgeois capitalism – so that she is often perceived as a homologue of the prostitute – the way performers experienced the commodification of their own body was far more complex than one might expect. While it would be easy to look at these female figures in popular theatre through the lens of 19th century ideology, that is, as an example of women’s passive and objectified role in patriarchy, the study of their professional profiles and the strategies they chose to present and display themselves in public, point to a very different scenario. First of all, performers were role models for female spectators. As such they could suggest new modes of behaviour which women could imitate. In particular, performers could spur women to enter the public sphere and to become aware of new possibilities even in relation to sex and sexual pleasure. The use of their own image in promotional pictures and narratives forged a notorious presence that would breach the paradigm of an ideal femininity associated with virtue and domesticity. To put it the other way round, the cult of celebrity enabled public femininity to go beyond the duality actress/prostitute and to break up ideological associations with late 19th century gender debates.
In order to reinforce hypotheses around actresses’ creativeness, the second part of the book explores how female performers made the most of industry mechanisms and cultural codes to control and promote their professional careers. The promotion of the identity of the star benefited in particular from the recent medium of photography while biographical storytelling introduced ‘unique’ elements of the performer’s life thus facilitating the construction of a ‘real self’ for a large audience. Thus, far from just feeding a patriarchal economy of desire by legitimating their position as passive objects of consumption, celebrity status enables a process of transcendence beyond the stage through which actresses emerge as individuals able to manage their careers, to achieve financial autonomy, and to intercede in the production of gender roles and norms.
The way these women constructed their public – and fictional – identities leads to an analysis about the origins of celebrity as a mass culture phenomenon. In the late 19th century, features such as eccentricity and exoticism were fundamental cores of fame. Clúa shows that an eccentric personality could be a strategy allowing women to negotiate their public presence. Indeed, according to the codes of domesticity a ‘proper’ woman couldn’t be publicly exposed. Having a public image is itself part of an eccentric lifestyle. As boisterous conducts set out the capacity of a diva to influence public opinion, Clúa points out that (public) scandal was the main motor of celebrity. Also resorting to interviews and personal memories, Cuerpos de escándalo shows how performers like Carolina Otero and Tórtola Valencia consciously promoted sexual attitudes and relationships opposite to traditional femininity. In such a way, while arousing the interest of the audience for their careers, these performers were also opening the cultural imaginary to new ways of being a woman.
The last part of the book focuses on the political significance of eroticism and frivolity in female performance. This aspect is addressed by considering how performers negotiated their public persona with the image of the femme fatale: celebrities often played a conscious game imbued with irony, parody or metafictional allusion. Playing with the image of the femme fatale was often a mark of authorship. These dynamics persisted in film stardom, and continue to nourish today’s celebrity culture.
To conclude, Cuerpos de escándalo makes us aware how notions of gender have played a key role in the construction of female stardom since its origins. Women artists have shaped their status as celebrities by challenging gender rules and conventions. Cuerpos de escándalo not only demonstrates how celebrity can reshuffle the idea of female agency in visual and performing arts, but also confirms Isabel Clúa’s key role in Spanish cultural and gender studies. Her work on female performers in fin-de-siècle Spain forces us to consider the role of women in popular culture and finally makes us aware that the dynamics of modern cultural production can be understood only if we take gender seriously.