Gender Discourse and National Reconstruction. The Narrative of Historic Debt in Raza

Abstract

This article analyses the construction of gender in Raza (José Luis Sáenz de Heredia, 1942) from an interdisciplinary perspective that considers the contributions of both semiotics theory (analysing the narrative and rhetorical devices of the filmic text) and gender studies (which provide a critical understanding of the discursive constructions of femininity and masculinity). We start from the premise that gender works as a social technology that must be understood in relation to other sources of identity, such as race, class, religion and national identity. From this perspective, Raza emerges as a propagandistic text designed to justify the military uprising and implement a socio-sexual model based on a discourse of national reconstruction. Discourse analysis was applied to study the processes of meaning-making and meaningful communication established in the film’s staging of the dictatorship. The conclusions of this analysis show the connection between national/patriarchal discourse and the film’s narrative structure, which constructs its discourse on gender based on the structure of mythical tale and the particular rhetorical device of melancholic interpellation. In parallel, the film defends such anachronistic figures as the angel of the house and the soldier as role models that define Spanish identity and serve as guarantees of national reconstruction.