Subverting superhero and meiga imaginaries in street art narrative Fenómenas do rural

Abstract

Heroic narratives are often biased towards a conceptualization of the rural/urban difference that positions rural identities at the margins. In particular, superhero stories have traditionally offered a vision of heroism assumed to be male, urban and young. How can post-rural contexts shaped by migration contest these narrative patterns? This article examines the street narrative of Fenómenas do rural, which recognizes older female rural identities and casts them as superheroines. Through a multimodal discourse analysis, I examine its contestation of heroic patterns, its recognition of older female rural identities and its creation of affiliation opportunities for the Galician community. I argue that this narrative stands as a reflection of the rurban (rural + urban) and the glocal (global + local) elements that subverts pre-existing canons in the superhero and the meiga (‘witch’) mythology imaginaries.

Keywords

Galicia identity narrative repair rural street art superheroine

Disordering heroes through street art

Heroic narratives have been widely studied in English-speaking contexts through the study of the epic (Carlyle, 1841; Henderson, 1964; Nagy, 2006) and superhero comics (Chambliss, 2012; DuBose, 2007; Gavaler, 2017), including recent proposals on superheroines (Cocca, 2016; Coogan, 2013, 2018a; McCausland, 2017). While the study of superhero narratives has explored urban identity and the conflicts arising with urbanization, rural representations have been neglected. Narratives of identity often reflect the cultural hierarchies of rural/urban difference that represent rural notions as inferior to urban notions (Berry, 2002). Studies on rural identities consistently present the innovations of urban technology and machinery in rural identities (see Brandth, 1995; Waterhouse, 2000), whereas the ability of rural identities to influence urban practices is commonly underestimated, given a loaded conceptualization of the rural/urban dichotomy that positions rural identities at the margins (see Bell, 2000). A tendency in academic research to focus on urban narratives for being ‘more worthy of attention’ is calling for work which helps undermine this narrative binary of rural inferiority versus urban superiority (Vanderbeck and Dunkley, 2003: 246). On this basis, Nelson (2001) emphasizes the relevance of research that challenges stereotypes and stigmatizing narratives through counter-stories that expose the power dynamics behind prevailing accounts and labels, a process known as ‘narrative repair’.

Both connected to the land and shaped by migration, the post-rural region of Galicia in the North West of Spain, has historically been positioned in the periphery of the Spanish nation and subject to stereotypes (see Colmeiro, 2009; Jiménez-Esquinas, 2013; Rasch, 2014). Given Galicia’s hybrid culture grounded in agriculture and migration influences, it is worth examining the narrative repair processes being undertaken by local artists, and which individuals and collectives are being portrayed as regional heroes. On one hand, Galician heroes provide a favourable context to undermine the simplification of rural inferiority versus urban superiority, given their hybrid background. On the other hand, artists face the challenge of drifting apart from stereotypes deeply rooted in the collective imagination. Such stereotypes have historically become regional icons that have enabled regional affiliation opportunities while also perpetuating connotations of superstition and backwardness.

One of the media characterized by the interventions of the urban imagination in the public space is street art (Young, 2014). Compared to the sudden valorization and ephemeral visibility common in mass media, as seen in the glorifying of diverse collectives during the COVID-19 pandemic (see health-care professionals in Cox, 2020), commissioned street art offers a longer timespan for recognition and community affiliation in the public space. Although street art has been previously explored in relation to heroism, research has focused on the heroic role of street artists as political protesters in the predominantly masculine world of street art rather than the subversions of masculine values in their representations (see Campos, 2013; Chaffee, 1993; Glover, 2010).

The street art series Fenómenas do rural, or ‘Rural Phenomena’ – hereinafter, FdR – by Joseba Muruzábal (aka Yoseba MP) has been selected in this study as an object that allows for the exploration of a heroic narrative, rurban identities (rural + urban) and narrative repair processes. FdR is a series of paintings and murals that present a humorous incongruity in the overlapping of Galician rural reality with science fiction. The artwork features real local women as superavóas (‘supergrandmas’) performing a visually hyperbolized version of their work activities related to the regional minifundio (‘smallholdings’) economy across different locations of Galicia. All protagonists share a rural identity, Galician language, a birth date before the 1960s and resilience – raised during the Spanish civil war or postwar, they started working as teenagers and continue working in their post-retirement. Their superpowers are defined after an interview with the artist, which he uses to connect the model’s attitude and context with science fiction. The artist was inspired by the ordinary display of extraordinary abilities by Galician rural older women that he observed: from firsthand witnessed cases, such as an octogenarian working a steep orchard with the strength of a triathlon athlete, to viral videos, such as a woman performing domestic chores hanging on the facade like Spiderman (Muruzábal in Cantó, 2017). FdR aims to record and acknowledge the outstanding contributions of this generation of Galician rural women to their homes and communities. The superheroine universe emerges from a humorous combination of superhero stories and a rural feminized reality. Premiered at Feira do Cocido (Lalín, Pontevedra), the work performed through urban festivals celebrated in Galician villages such as DesOrdes Creativas in Ordes, Rexenera Fest in Carballo, and Compostela Contemporánea or Cromático Mural Fest in Cambre. After the positive reactions to its initial works, educational, community and institutional organizations have provided space and raised funds to continue the series (Instituto de Baio, Desenvolmento Rural Monteval, Asociación Quiroga, Concejalía de Igualdade de Soutomaior, programa A Memoria das Mulleres, etc.) as an incarnation of feminist values and events such as International Day of Rural Women. The murals are scattered in party walls (‘medianeras’) through the Galician landscape; a non-exhaustive map of the murals, created by viajandoelmapa.com, can be accessed at the bottom of the site https://viajandoelmapa.com/ruta-por-los-murales-de-las-superabuelas/.

For the purposes of this study, the common iconography, discourse and performances related to 25 artworks were analysed using a superheroines theoretical framework that underscores FdR’s subversion of superhero and witch imaginaries. Through a multimodal discourse analysis, its sources, sociocultural context and symbolic values were explored with a focus on the ability of street art to contest prevailing heroic narratives. As detailed in the discussion, this narrative stands as a reflection of the blend of rural and urban, global and local elements in a Galician identity. Through these mechanisms, the murals subvert both the US-born idea of the superhero, as well as the stereotypes around Galician witches. Literature around superhero stories has been used to interrogate how FdR stands out from traditional superhero narratives through core elements that define the genre, including superpowers and superhero costumes. This framework is complemented by heritage studies on the representation of witches in Galicia that contextualize FdR in a historical journey from stigmatization of witchcraft and magic through commercialization to narrative repair.

Given its commodification and the notoriety of contemporary artists such as Banksy and Obey beyond subcultural recognition, street art occupies an ambivalent position in upholding and subverting societal norms.¹ Some graffiti artists are using the proliferation of cultural initiatives and public art policies to resignify their art ‘as productive creative practice’ (McAuliffe, 2012: 189). In Galicia, this ambivalence is reflected in the proliferation of street art festivals that legitimize and provide an official platform to, otherwise, traditionally illegitimate and unofficial creations. The subversive aim is implicit in some of the festivals’ denominations, such as DesOrdes (‘DisOrders’) and Rexenera (‘Regenerate’). Research on major local Galician street artists (Liqen, Peri, Sokram, Mou, Nana, Nas! and Xpen) identifies a concern with the following: (a) individualism and (b) the established power within economic, political and social systems as overarching themes² (Iglesias, 2014). Such concerns can be also traced in FdR’s challenge of prevailing male heroic narratives as well as in the reflection of values that represent Galician identity (vs individualism), providing opportunities for regional affiliation away from stereotypes.

Muruzábal’s career has moved between legitimate art (paintings and commissioned murals) and subversive art (graffiti). He experimented with graffiti at 15 years old and at 18 years old he moved to a normative Fine Arts education that awoke his philosophical conscience and he was later influenced by 19th-century Russian realism (Muruzábal in Camino, 2018). His artistic skills made him attractive to O Temple retailers who paid him to paint their business’ facades, ironically, as a preventive measure to dissuade graffiti interventions (Muruzábal in Casanova, 2019). After his commissioned painting of facades for economic reasons, the artist started creating figurative social portraits starring his friends from A Barcala and their dogs, Mis amigos y sus perros, the immediate antecedents to FdR (Muruzábal in Camino, 2018). In contrast with the realism of the dog series, FdR stands out for his hybrid nature, intertwining realism with science-fiction and superhero stories to create new heroic models.

Subverting global and urban superhero patterns

Classical myths are the basis of subsequent heroic models; they vary in detail but share a structurally universal pattern (Henderson, 1964). This universal pattern has been heavily conditioned by the construction of our collective memory around the biography of great men portrayed as heroes (Carlyle, 1841) where women are absent or assigned secondary and passive roles (Berger, 2000; Kaplan, 1994). Stemming from pulp heroes, superheroes addressed conflicts created by urbanization at the end of the 1930s, adding urban and national representations to the existing ‘great men’ pattern:

In the development of the American popular hero from traditional frontier folk hero to pulp magazine adventurer to comic book superhero, we see creative responses to urbanization and social change that nonetheless retain deeply rooted cultural assumptions of race, masculinity, and values shaped by European heritage and frontier experience. Adventure heroes have provided successive generations of readers with frameworks for coping with and ultimately embracing change, fortified by a concept of heroism assumed to be white and male. (Chambliss and Svitavsky, 2008: 27–28)

The perpetuation of a ‘great men’ hierarchy reinforced by an urban and national standard explains the superhero’s core values: power and responsibility (Coogan, 2013). One of the core symbols in superhero identity is their ‘iconic costume, which typically expresses their biography or character, powers, and origin (transformation from ordinary person to superhero)’ (Coogan, 2013: 3). In fact, many US superhero costumes display the colours of the US flag, as a symbol of national identity (Brownie and Graydon, 2016). Thus, Capitan America, Wonder Woman and Superman wear a costume inspired by the ‘red, white, and blue’ US national flag, where the white in Superman’s case is his skin colour (Chambliss, 2012; Chambliss and Svitavsky, 2008).

While influenced by the conventions of the superhero genre, FdR moves away from the ties to national identity. Representations of national identity can be identified in Captain America’s protection of the American Dream (Dittmer, 2012; DuBose, 2007), Iron Man’s embodiment of US technology or military defence and Superman’s ‘battle for truth, justice, and the American way’ (Chambliss, 2012: 150). These narratives reinforce US-centric beliefs reproducing a homogeneous vision of society that denies diversity in favour of cultural subordination (Smith, 2001). Iberian superheroes have failed to reflect the pluralities and contradictions of Spanish identities aiming to protect an icon of unique ‘Spanishness’, from Iberia Inc.’s service to the Spanish government to Ibéroes’ rejection of Spanish–Chinese identity (Del Pozo, 2019). Humoristic comics such as Superlópez, Ibéroes and the Galician Centoloman have appropriated the US superhero narrative to create social awareness, showing a subversive role of humour also present in FdR. The relevance of these models to regional identity should be framed in Galicia’s historical marginalization from a Spanish-centric cultural and linguistic norm (Rasch, 2014). In this context, Muruzábal’s reinterpretation of superheroes, who are often associated with coloniality and patriotism,³ reasserts a traditionally unrecognized rural identity, around which he creates opportunities for regional affiliation.

Despite the urban essence of superhero and science-fiction narratives influencing FdR, the murals cannot be purely defined as urban or rural, in accordance with the ‘post’ nature of Galician contemporary culture: ‘paradoxically, both post-industrial and post-rural (or rurban)’ (Colmeiro, 2009: 223). A rurban identity is reflected in the exaltation of the rural, evident in the title and rustic activities, intertwined with urban references (superhero stories, science fiction) and media (street art culture). Given the limitations of the rural/urban difference, which positions the rural as marked in opposition to an urban centre (see Bell, 2000; Berry, 2002), the rurban redefinition of Galician identity allows for reclaiming a space unavailable within the loaded dichotomy.

Wearing bata/mandilón (apron) as a superheroine costume

Among the iconic elements that subvert the urban, national and male hegemonic superhero patterns in FdR, bata – a plaided apron that the artist defines as the superheroine costume – stands out as a cohesive element. Some of Muruzábal’s early work in the series include Equilibrios na horta, a painting selected for the 2016 biennial festival Auditorio de Galicia (see Figure 1 right), and the mural Fina de Carballo, A muller nitromón, featured in Carballo for 2017 Rexenera Fest festival (see Figure 1 left). Both artworks portray the extraordinary physical abilities that Muruzábal has witnessed in real Galician rural women. In Figure 1 (left), the protagonist wears a capelike bata while carrying a menhir-size potato of the fina de Carballo variety with equal extraordinary strength to Obélix; on the right, a crossed version of bata emulates Tao Pai Pai’s martial arts uniform (a Dragon Ball character). The humorous incongruity implicit in the juxtaposition of reality and fiction references creates intergenerational affiliation opportunities for the community through a co-valorization of rural and urban motifs.⁴ I argue that the portrayal of bata as superheroine costume in Muruzábal’s work contributes to reinforcing its symbolism of Galician identity as part of a dual narrative repair process that allows the community to acknowledge women’s stories and recognize themselves in them.

Figure 1.

Bata/Mandilón as a superheroine costume: Fina de Carballo, A muller nitromón (left) and Equilibrios na horta (right) by Joseba Muruzábal.

Bata is already significant in film, photography and educational projects in Galicia and has been referred to by Austrian artist Petra Buchegger (1970–2017) as the Dorado of batas. This registers the centrality of women’s smallholding work to the local economy. Buchegger carried extensive artwork on aprons drawing on her fieldwork in Galicia, including apron factories and markets. She used aprons to explore the concepts of subsistence economy, female strength and female genealogy. Based on Buchegger’s work, Galician filmmaker Claudia Brenlla created the artistic documentary Bata por fóra (muller por dentro) ‘Bata on the outside (woman on the inside)’, which portrays bata as a uniform to work the land in the smallholding context and connected to previous female generations. This key intergenerational role is articulated in a version of the Italian aria Sposa, son disprezzata (‘I am wife and I am scorned’; Giacomelli, 1734) featured in the documentary that voices the accumulative delegitimization of knowledge and experiences embodied by batas communicated from mothers to daughters. As seen in (1), Brenlla’s reinterpretation of the aria conveys that the performative act of wearing bata entails accepting a sacrificial role of unrecognized instrumental and emotional labour:

1. Bata, son disprezzata/ Fida, son oltraggiata/ Filla, que fixen mal (bis)/ É para ti a miña suor/ o meu sangue, a miña dor,/ a miña esperanza (Brenlla, 2008).

‘Bata, I am scorned/ Faithful, I am insulted/ Daughter, what did I do wrong? (bis)/ It is for you my sweat/ my blood, my pain,/ my hope’.

The lack of recognition of women’s labour is also manifest in the 2010 educational project Proxecto Bata at Alexandre Bóveda high school (Vigo), where students and teachers wore batas, and created and shared bata-inspired art. Encompassing different disciplines, the high school used bata as a symbol of invisible, non-remunerated women’s labour aiming to raise awareness among students of gender equality. Within Proxecto Bata, the poem Día da mulher trabalhadora (‘International Women’s Day’) in (2) used bata to create relations of opposition between women and men’s workloads:

2. As mulleres/ bata,/ os homes/ garavata./ Por que esta diferenza?/ Eles na empresa,/ elas na casa./ Elas guisan, /Eles revisan./ Eles mandan,/ elas traballan,/ Eles recoñecemento,/ elas esgotamento (Abelleira et al., 2010).

‘Women/ bata,/ men/ tie./ Why this difference?/ They (masc.) in the enterprise,/ they (fem.) at home./ They (fem.) cook,/ they (masc.) supervise./ They (masc.) command,/ they (fem.) work,/ They (masc.) acknowledgment,/ they (fem.) exhaustion’.

These verses reflect the stable gender connotations present in home/work urban dichotomies that have long ago been contested in agricultural contexts (Bondi, 1992). The opposed combinations (ties + acknowledgement) versus (batas + exhaustion) imply the impossibility of obtaining recognition wearing bata, an assumption that FdR subverts through visual recognition. These filmic and educational bata portrayals share the principle formulated by Austrian artist Petra Buchegger, the first link in the chain of bata artwork; Buchegger reclaims bata as symbolic tool to individually reconnect with female ancestors and their working experiences.

Bata has been portrayed in other artworks outside Galicia. For instance, Spanish photographer Lucía Herrero’s 2020 Tribute to La Bata project places batas at centre stage in a wider European context, starting her journey in the Spanish northern regions of Galicia and Palencia.⁵ Batas in Herrero’s work differ from Muruzábal’s in their presentation as colourful theatre costumes and the protagonists are often moved away from a working to a playful setting. In contrast to Herrero’s photography, FdR highlights the ‘Galicianness’ and ‘supeheroiness’ aspects in the murals, where bata operates both as an identity symbol and storytelling device that contains rich information about women and family structures in Galicia. Muruzábal underscores the ‘Galicianness’ of batas through his portrait of distinctive bata-patterns and a rural setting, as well as through his language. Importantly, when asked about costumes in his murals, Muruzábal uses the term mandilón instead of bata (Muruzábal in Cantó, 2017). While the word bata appeals to a wider (inter)national identity, the use of the augmentative affective suffix – ón, characteristic of Galician language, added to the term mandil (‘apron’), emphasizes regional identity. Augmentative and diminutive suffixes in galego convey a sense of affection ( ‘xente agarimosa’ ‘affectionate people’) as well as the language’s ability to express a variety of nuances (Ligero Valladares, 1999: 92).

In terms of design, Muruzábal identifies and reproduces plaided patterns as the Galician staple for mandilón, which differ from Herrero’s fantasy-patterned and bright-coloured batas. The sobriety of the squared pattern reminds the audience of the uniform role of the piece of clothing, elevated in FdR to superheroine costume. As a commercialized item that is the result of industrialization, mandilón refers to the postindustrial element in Galician identity. As for the setting, the depiction of mandilón is always linked to the land and the sea, reinforcing the agriculture and fishing economy in the region, whether it is displayed in the setting or its elements (potatoes, hens, mussels, radishes, etc.). Although apron portrayals are often associated with domestic settings, mandilón in FdR artworks is worn out by the land and the sea. As any superheroine costume, mandilón expresses the characters’ biography, country-grounded instrumental powers and their transformation from ordinary women to extraordinary superheroines.⁶ In a way that the costume is worn by real contemporary Galician women, allowing for members of the community to identify with heroic models, mandilón achieves realism and authenticity, two qualities of contemporary superheroines (see Batgirl’s costume redesign by Cameron Stewart in Coogan, 2018b).

Depicting superheroine powers

The subversion of the urban and national hero patterns through the mandilón is complemented by a subversion of the superhero genre itself that reasserts feminist values. According to Coogan (2013), superpowers in superhero stories are defined as ‘extraordinary abilities, advanced technology, or highly developed physical, mental, or mystical skills’ (p. 3). However, in superhero stories, these superpowers are used to resolve physical tensions and re-establish order using violence (Coogan, 2018a). Therefore, the mere substitution of a male hero model for a female model would not represent a female identity, as exposed by Goodrum et al. (2018):

Placing a female character in a superhero role does little to alter an essentially masculine narrative wherein threats to traditional power structures are resolved through violence. For a superhero narrative to be truly feminist, it requires the (super)empowered agent to not only identify as female, but also to open discourse around the problems of traditionally male phallocentric violence, and to offer an alternative.

The limitations of simply substituting a male hero model with a female model without reflecting on a perpetuation of the ‘great men’ heroic pattern can be identified not just in comic books but also in a real-world case, source of inspiration for FdR: a woman from Riveira known as the Galician spiderman (see Muruzábal in Cantó, 2017). This woman went viral for regularly climbing outside her window ledge on the fourth floor to clean windows. Based on her extraordinary skill, she was baptized in virtual communities across Spain as ‘la spiderman gallega’ ‘the Galician spiderman’.⁷ This non-fictional example reveals the extent to which the male identity of superheroes is deeply embedded in the community, as the popular intuition was to automatically label the personality as Spiderman. The lack of debate around the label and her gender implies that the recognition that comes with superheroic powers is reserved to men. This case reveals how the substitution of Spiderman for a female model was not enough to change the discourse around superheroic models, exposing the limitations in superhero narratives and calling for alternative heroic models.

Given the permeability of the ‘great men’ pattern in iconography, language and performance around superheros, it is worth examining what features in Galician communities contest this pattern. Galician peasant identity has been described to be shaped around affiliation and pride on the activities of travallo do campo (work of the land), travallar pra comer (‘work to eat’), and comida caseira (‘homemade food’; Roseman, 2002). In her ethnographic study of a Galician worker-peasant rural village, Sharon R Roseman (2002) argues that the public recognition of the value of women’s unpaid labour has contributed to crafting gender and class identity in the community concluding that ‘because subsistence production is the crux of the alternative positioning of these Galician worker-peasants and is largely performed by women, it has resulted in men defining their own class identities at least partly through women’s unpaid labor’ (p. 32). In this context, women win social acceptance through being seen working the fields conveying an image of muller forte (‘strong woman’), the same idea present in FdR that directly counters the patriotic urban heroic male pattern. Although the idea of strong women could be interpreted as a feminine substitution of superheroes associated with violent behaviour, unlike in superhero stories, this concept of strength is not related to the values of power and violent demonstrations but rather to ideals of resilience.

FdR frames its representation of Galician peasant identity through the recognition and valorization of women’s work, in keeping with feminist genres which work with superheroines. Emerging from feminist utopian science fiction (e.g. Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Angel Island by Inez Haynes Gillmore), superheroine stories (e.g. Wonder Woman by William Moulton Marston and Elizabeth Holloway Marston) address conflict through loving kindness and mentorship as distinctive core values that replace an often-violent notion of power and responsibility (Coogan, 2018a). The violent exchange with positive resolution has been identified as essential in superhero narratives, including recent attempts to move away from US models and assert Spanish identity such as the 2009–2017 series Ibéroes (Del Pozo, 2019). While using the same kind of superpowers as in superhero stories (extraordinary strength, massive volume, telekinesis, flight, etc.), Muruzábal’s superheroines are not portrayed using their extraordinary abilities in violent exchanges but resolving the ordinary conflicts of rural life. In one of the first paintings, Preparando o cocido (‘Preparing the stew’), the protagonist peels a levitating potato – a key product in the region’s food system (Trabazo et al., 2019) – through her telekinetic power, in a Galician reinterpretation of stoic jedi mentor Yoda, from Star Wars (see Figure 2). The non-violent use of superpowers to resolve rural ordinary conflicts illustrates how FdR moves away from the prevailing violent exchanges in the superhero genre (e.g. imagine the violence in levitating and peeling a supervillain instead of a potato). Since these superpowers are granted jointly with the recognition of the protagonists as (super)grandmas of the community, together they reflect loving kindness and mentorship, the superpowers characteristic in superheroines influenced by feminist utopian stories.

Figure 2.

Peaceful resolution of conflict through superpowers. Preparando o cocido (above) and A cortesa de Cambre, a muller acrobata (below) by Joseba Muruzábal.

This resolution of ordinary conflict through non-violent means connects back to Schatz’s (1981) genre classification based on the resolution of cultural tensions through two tendencies: rites of integration (in romantic comedies, melodramas, musicals, etc.) and rites of order (in westerns, superhero stories, detective stories, etc.). While superheroes restore order through a violent use of superpowers against the supervillain, in superheroine stories, social conflict is resolved through rites of integration that involve a reconciliation of oppositions among characters (Coogan, 2018a). The lack of villains in FdR contributes to a vision of the narrative as rites of integration to address the harsh elements of Galician land and sea, or to address domestic and community challenges. The images convey a vision of resilience featuring real local women such as a trolleyrider protagonistErundina – who collected wood even after breaking her hip, a pioneer female vine-grower who, took care of her six siblings from an early age, or a barista who embodies the concept of muller forte (‘strong woman’) carrying a heavy gas bottle while balancing on another (see Figure 2).

Superpowers and farming tools in FdR portraits challenge the prevailing discourse of hegemonic masculinity in rural communities. Brandth’s (1995) pioneering rural research demonstrated that the exclusive portrayal of men using farming machinery in advertisements supported the connection between men, tools and management, while simultaneously denying women’s farm presence and their management roles. In contrast, from hoes to rakes, hoses, bricks or gas bottles, rural tools in FdR are portrayed in close connection to women almost as an extension of their bodies, as it can be observed in Erundina’s pruning shears and wheeled structure in mural Erundina, vendimadora sobre rodas (‘Erundina, grape gleaner on wheels’) or Isabel’s scissor hand in Isabel man de tixera (‘Isabel scissor hand’). This connection between men, tools and management has been also documented in dressing. In relation to clothes, for instance, the historical privilege of generous pockets in menswear guarantees access to tools in contrast with the typically minimal, non-existent pockets in women’s clothes (Carlson, 2008). In FdR, mandilón’s deep pockets (see Figures 1 and 2) provide access to tools, reinforcing the centrality of this piece of clothing in the project as both identity symbol and superheroine costume.

The analysis of two defining characteristics of the superhero genre, the superhero costume and superpowers, has shown how FdR subverts superhero narratives. In a genre dominated by male, urban and national identities, the mandilón costume underscores female, rural and regional identities. Mandilón in FdR enables narrative repair through the acknowledgement of Galician women’s rural work and their representation as empowering regional icons, allowing for the community to recognize themselves in them. Superhero stories have demonstrated limitations as feminist narratives when they place a female protagonist in a superhero role but continue using violence to resolve conflicts. FdR builds on a Galician heritage of rural identity defined around the valorization of women’s work and resilience that moves away from the ‘great men’ pattern and violent narratives. For these reasons, FdR is presented as a superheroine narrative that, while approaching the subject of rural Galician older women drawing on superhero references, contributes to a more evolved vision of the genre by incorporating opportunities for diverse representation.

Subverting local and rural meiga (witch) stereotypes

The Galician ageing population is characterized by feminization caused by women’s longer life expectancy and gendered patterns of migration (Hernández Borge, 2008). Although the tendency is changing in younger generations, Hernández Borge refers to a Galician tradition of women becoming smallholders, while husbands migrate overseas resulting in a more feminized rural population compared to other parts of Spain. Taken together, the tradition of women smallholders and the feminization of the ageing population in Galicia explain their relevance as a subject in Muruzábal’s street art project.

FdR is presented as a representation of the feminization of the rural Galician reality with recurrent strategies for repairing stereotypes associated to regional identity. According to Rasch (2014), in a context of women’s relative silence and underappreciation in Galicia, contemporary local artists are making ‘an attempt to rewrite and reorient traditional identity politics toward those who have been historically underrepresented’ (p. 190). These attempts should be read as a part of a wider narrative repair process of acknowledgement and identification with women’s stories. In this sense, the iconography in FdR is part of an artistic trend that aims at reconstructing collective identity and collective memory by distancing itself from an obsolete vision of Galicia as a mythical terra de meigas (‘land of witches’). Among the strategies used by Galician artists to define local identity and challenge the silence regarding the region in national history, a commitment to act as spokespeople for the community as well as reinterpret foundational myths of Galician identity stand out. Through ‘the inclusion of rewritten myths, many of the most well-known myths of Galician history as well as other foreign elements’ (Rasch, 2014: 102), artists recreate a collective identity, inclusive of the hybrid nature that Galician post-culture refers to. This is evident in FdR’s reinterpretation of myths around Galician women and magic through US science-fiction and superhero influences.

Reimagining a land of witches

Since the cultural revitalization of the Rexurdimento (‘Revival’) movement in the 19th century, Galicia’s tradition of xenealogía mítica (‘mythic genealogy’) has integrated global symbolism from classical, Christian, Celtic and Arthurian myths (Palacios and Lojo, 2009). In previous historical moments, artists have sought inspiration for their symbolic collective identity in the local rural; for instance, from 1937 to 1943 regionalist author Castelao used feminine metaphors to describe Galician land (a terra), including its landscape, people and traditions (Kelley, 1994: 75). In contrast, more contemporary artists look for inspirational sources and ways of expression that convey the hybrid sense of the glocal and rurban. In the 1990s, FIGA: Feministas Independentes Galegas (‘IGA: Independent Galician feminists’) group incorporated the values of ‘transnational border crossings and global solidarity’ through Galician language in the pages of the cultural review Festa da palabra silenciada (Roseman, 1997: 65) and the musical movement rock bravú emerged as a fusion of local popular culture and foreign elements from various forms of rock (Colmeiro, 2009). These cultural manifestations reflect a willingness to express the coexistence of the borderland status and connection to the local land, in the rejection of a simplified representation of an obsolete folkloric vision of rural Galicia (see Cid and Ogando, 2010; Lamela, 2018).

Within xenealogía mítica, references to the meiga figure impregnate the local imaginary. Although meiga is often used as an umbrella term that encompasses Galician witches, in his study of witchcraft, social structure and symbolism in the region, Lisón Tolosana (1979) differentiates between the sabia (wise woman), bruja benéfica (benevolent witch) and meiga (evil witch). The concept has since evolved from the persecution and stigmatization around the meiga’s social image (from the Middle Ages to the 18th century) to the positive values it has acquired more recently as a patrimonial product, creating complexities around its significance in its more recent recreations (Jiménez-Esquinas, 2013). In this process of valorization, meiga representations have been idealized by some forms of feminism as icons of rupture with the social norm and a symbol of the values of ecology and sorority. This idealization has maintained a stereotyped vision of Galicia as outdated and superstitious and has failed to acknowledge the historical prosecution and stigmatization of witchcraft in the region.

However, Muruzábal deliberately distances his work from the obsolete concept of the broomstick-riding meiga associated with Galician women and reinterprets it through contemporary science fiction. Jiménez-Esquinas (2013) argues that, given their history of stigmatization, any contemporary meiga representations should facilitate a reflection around their historical meaning in the collective memory marked by a past of misogynistic exclusion. Considering a vision of meigas as women who subverted the mandates of society, the protagonists in FdR share this subversive function of the prevailing representations in the urban genres of street art and superhero stories. Therefore, meigas in FdR are only present as a reference to the collective imaginary of magic in Galicia and the values of subversion that witches represent, but not in their aesthetic representation that draws, instead, from science-fiction. In doing so, the author acknowledges the connection of the region with magic and witchcraft, while maintaining the role of street art to connect with audiences through contemporary science fiction references (Muruzábal in Cantó, 2017).

Both global and local iconography of women in the science fiction and mythology genres have traditionally followed an objectifying canon, as seen in representations of superheroines, princesses and meigas (Coogan, 2018a; Jiménez-Esquinas, 2013; Palacios and Lojo, 2009). Meiga representations have followed the religious archetype of women as vicious sinners in an androcentric system as dictated by Kramer and Sprenger’s (2005) 1486 publication Maellus Maleficarum (aka The Witch Hammer), a handbook for prosecuting and punishing witches during the Inquisition. Jiménez-Esquinas’ (2013) analysis of Galician witches in heritage resources describes a progressive erasure of the negative representations associated with meigas, moving instead to young benevolent and eroticized versions as a strategy to obtain social and institutional acceptance for organizing touristic activities around meigas from the 1990s. While contributing to more social acceptance for meigas, benevolent and eroticized representations failed to reflect the ugly reality of oppression suffered by Galician subversive women during the Inquisition. In addition, these representations homogenized meiga bodies as youthful and attractive, discarding ageing bodies.

Representing old women’s bodies

Artistic representations and scholarly research have given little attention to the subjects of older women and ageing. It is true that movements such as ‘Old Women’s Project’ (Created in San Diego, with their first action in 2001) advocate to combat stereotypes and intersectional discrimination towards older women.⁸ However, ‘successful ageing’ concepts carry a contradictory definition of ageing as they imply staying fit and maintaining a youthful appearance (see Calasanti et al., 2006). In order to vindicate feminine identities, artists should incorporate the topic of women ageing in their work through portrayals that subvert the negative images created by mass media (see Bernárdez, 2010). Considering that ageing is often associated to a loss of authority and autonomy, FdR offers an acknowledgement space that empowers Galician older women through the hyperbolic representation of superpowers while also repositioning older women as an essential part of community memory and identity.⁹

Body representations in FdR subvert the expectations in the superhero and science fiction genres as well as challenging the stereotyped representation of meigas as either extremely evil or benevolent. The portrayal of superheroic females in comics focuses on an image of physically perfect women according to the artistic canon. From Lois Lane’s ideal wife image in the 1950s, to a hypereroticized Wonder Woman by David Finch or even more progressive narratives such as Hopeless and Rodriguez’s (2016) athletic single-mum Spiderwoman, all show ever-young and physically perfect models (see Larson in Baskind, 2018; Coogan, 2018a). In turn, meiga referents in Galician heritage have evolved from conveying a vision of dark sabbath gatherings, distorted bodies and facial expressions into more friendly images lacking references to any potential ugliness in witchery. For instance, Francisco de Goya’s El Conjuro (‘The Spell’) painting inspired a 1972 poster for A Coruña noite meiga (‘witch night’) festivity, as seen in examples (3) and (4). Containing references to black magic embedded in the composition and iconography – including the seal of Salomon, often used for invoking the devil – the painting depicts a group of grotesque old witches with deformities casting a spell on a terrified person (Heckes, 2003). Over 40 years later, a 2013 poster proposal for Ribadavia noite meiga depicts an elf-like young meiga posing for the artist, wearing trendy punk off-shoulder clothes that enhance her slim figure, as seen in example (5). Yet, each of these representations conveys a stereotyped view of Galician identity. The distorted old witch reinforces a superstitious and backward image of Galicia, and the young benevolent witch maintains a weak femininity which fails to register the harsher realities of women prosecuted for witchcraft. The negative connotations in old paradigms and lack of sociocultural relevance in more recent paradigms may explain why authors such as Muruzábal have turned towards alternative references that aim at reconciliating Galician identity and memory:

3. 1797-1798 El Conjuro by Francisco Goya: https://fundaciongoyaenaragon.es/obra/el-conjuro/527

4. 1972 Noite meiga poster proposal: http://meigascoruna.blogspot.com/2015/05/nuestro-primer-cartel-general.html

5. 2013 Noite meiga poster proposal: https://www.domestika.org/es/projects/104590-cartel-para-el-concurso-noite-meiga

6. 2015 Noite meiga poster proposal: https://www.domestika.org/es/projects/214823-concurso-cartel-noite-meiga-2015

FdR subverts the violent and eroticized traits in superhero stories and science-fiction while simultaneously avoiding superstitious stigmatized representations of Galician identity. In order to illustrate how FdR stands out from conventional superhero and meiga representations, it is worth comparing one of the murals with its most immediate science-fiction referent. A comparison of the Attack of the 50 Foot Woman poster and the A greleira de 50 pés (‘The 50 foot radish-greens’ seller’) mural reveals a contrast between the eroticized representation of young Allison Hayes’ body, attitude and attire that follow a superhero pattern, and the greleira’s subversion of the genre through anti-normativity and feminine local iconography (see Figure 3). Besides the evident lack of focus on attractiveness and youth, the greleira’s portrait reinforces a female-led collective identity through her mandilón and defies the violent pattern in superhero stories present in the verbal (‘attack’) and visual (car smashing) levels of Allison’s poster. This contrast shows how, despite being influenced by superhero stories, FdR challenges the genre, moving closer to feminist genres, where rites of integration replace rites of order (Coogan, 2018a; Schatz, 1981). In turn, backward stereotypes associated to meiga imaginaries are countered in FdR. Despite the visual hyperbole of the greleira’s story, the realism of her portrait contrasts with both the deformities typical of meiga early representations, including Goya’s early-expressionism black paintings–see examples (4) and (6)–, and the naïve art of benevolent meigas–see example (5).

Figure 3.

©Reynold Brown/ARS. Copyright Agency, 2021.

This counter-representation that avoids falling into a simplification of Galician identity as backwards or naïve has been embraced by the community in performative practices such as the Carnaval festivities¹⁰ —see examples (7) and (8). Beyond the humorous overlapping of rural and urban references, the portrayal of the models’ attitudes radiating joy and good humour contests a notion of Galician avoas (‘grandmas’) as lethargic, backward and depressing. Younger generations embrace and vindicate their affiliation to this vision of Galician culture dressing up as FdR icons and commissioning murals for their local superheroines across the region. In turn, media interviews with the protagonists show a mix of feelings of being overwhelmed with the large dimensions of the portraits and a sense of pride for the community recognition.¹¹ The emergence of superheroine models in FdR, therefore, offers an important correction to the historical depiction of Galician peasant women, foregrounding their strong connection to the land and to a more complex rural identity as part of a new rural mythology. Simultaneously, FdR shows that non-normative superheroic models are possible and useful for conveying the agency and autonomy of women.

7. Recreation of FdR by the community in Cambre: https://www.instagram.com/p/BfX9WkKnLvw/

8. Recreation of FdR by the community in Carballo: https://www.instagram.com/p/BfB2sG_Hmxt and https://www.instagram.com/p/BfB2kHNHmz0/

Conclusion

The street art narrative, FdR, is presented as a subversion of the superhero and meiga imaginaries as much as a subversion of the rural/urban difference. As such, this work fits into a wider panorama that defines Galician identity through processes of hybridization, glocalization and post-culture – marked by its postnational, postindustrialized, post-rural and postperipheral condition (Colmeiro, 2009; Rasch, 2014). Each of these elements contributes to the hybrid network of references that FdR representation and storytelling draws on. It is important to situate this narrative in Galicia’s historical position in the geopolitical periphery of the Spanish nation’s centre together with its past of migration, which has promoted the strengthening of international connections, particularly with the United States and Europe. In FdR, this postperipheral stance allows for a simultaneous internal and external perspective, complementing the nation-state’s central vision.

Against the persistence of a rural/urban binary that explicitly or implicitly perpetuates a cultural hierarchy of urban superiority to rural perspectives, FdR reveals a symbiotic relation between urban and rural perspectives that rejects simplifications of Galician identity as a fixed construct. The consistent depiction of urban imagery as equivalent to progress, sophistication and creativity versus the backwardness and conservatism assigned to rural motifs could lead to the assumption that in FdR rural identity is updated and enhanced through urban innovation. However, an analysis of the iconography, discourse and performance around FdR shows a celebration of Galician rural values that contest the ‘great men’ pattern found in traditional superhero narratives. This is consistent with similar processes of identity construction documented in the Galician community, such as how the recognition of women’s unpaid labour in villages contributes to community identity (Roseman, 2002). In this sense, FdR shows the potential of often-stigmatized rural identities to subvert male hegemonic narratives in street art and superhero genres through a counter-story of recognizing rural older women as a part of what Nelson (2001) calls narrative repair, the challenge of existing stereotypes in place-based narratives. This argument contributes to current debates on gender, power and representation in urban (super)heroic graphic stories (see Cocca, 2016; Coogan, 2013, 2018a). In particular, it overcomes the implicit simplification in bidimensional categorizations of the rural/urban difference and recognises, instead, the ability of rural realities to contest the masculinization of urban superhero references.

With the aim to counter prevailing narratives, mandilón stands out as a narrative repair device imbued with visual, performative and linguistic meaning. At the visual level, mandilón acts a symbol of a feminine rural essence in Galicia and a realistic superheroine costume. Its costume role is reinforced by Carnaval performances, where FdR superheroines are honoured and reproduced. Linguistically, the denomination of the piece of clothing reasserts Galician identity in contrast with the prevalence of bata in the Spanish national discourse. It becomes relevant that among the predominance of male authors and masculine themes in street art (see Macdonald, 2016; Pabón, 2016), Muruzábal makes mandilón a centerpoint of his paintings. Just as Buchegger wears bata in Bata por fóra (muller por dentro) (Brenlla, 2008) to symbolically connect with the role of her female ancestors and restore authority, Muruzábal uses the icon as an intergenerational connector and repositions its eminence intertwined with science fiction references. It is interesting that both Muruzábal in FdR and the photographer Lucia Herrero in Tribute to La Bata refer to women in bata/mandilón together with their instrumental and emotional workloads being at threat of extinction. Will the mandilón be hung up after this generation, in extinction, or will it be embraced beyond women? Who is going to rescue us once mandilón superheroines are extinct? Perhaps, the conceptualization of mandilón as superheroine costume and its use as a narrative repair device in FdR does that in a sense: hanging up mandilones as large murals visible on main roads act as memorials and as pieces of dialogue inviting us to connect with the superheroines of our past and present.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the artists Joseba Muruzábal and Reynold Brown/ARS. Copyright Agency for providing permission to feature their work in this article. Thanks also to Enrique del Rey, Pamela Graham, and the anonymous EJCS reviewers for their helpful comments.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Beatriz Carbajal-Carrera

Notes

Biographical note

Beatriz Carbajal-Carrera is a Lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of Sydney. Her research examines sociocultural, linguistic and cognitive aspects of communication through multimodal discourse analysis and pragmatic approaches.

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