THE SKINS OF DESIRE: SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS OF THE FEMALE IN PEDRO ALMODÓVAR
Social Representations; Almodóvar; Gender; Sexuality.
This dissertation has as main objective to problematize the theme of gender and sexual diversity, regarding the gender identities in the cinema of the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. We used as corpus of analysis the films La piel que habito (2011), La Mala Educación (2004) and La Ley del Deseo (1987). These were elected for the present work, firstly for their artistic and cultural relevance and, secondly, for providing us with generous material for the investigation of the subject upon which we dwell. Almodóvar is known in the world of cinematography for highlighting controversial themes, social taboos and for his creative subjectivity. We interpret how the social representations of gender and sexuality, stereotyped and distorted by historical-social processes, are reconstructed and represented by the director as antithesis to the standard representation model of current society and from these representations how we can reflect the machismo in contemporary times. The assumptions developed by Pierre Sorlin (1985), Francis Vanoye (1992), Jaques Aumont (1995), Gilmar Santana (2007), among other film theorists and sociology of cinema, helped us through film analysis to draw methodological reflections. The sociology classic Émile Durkheim (1912), Denise Jodelet (2009) and other updates of the concept of social representations are the guiding thread of this analysis that defends our hypothesis.