Satanic Rituals in Spanish Horror Films and the Franco Dictatorship
Articles
Overview
published in
- Cultural History Journal
publication date
- October 2023
start page
- 251
end page
- 271
issue
- 2
volume
- 12
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 2045-290X
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
- 2045-2918
abstract
- Spanish horror films set in the late Franco period are a highly successful genre. However, academics have criticised its study, arguing that such films are of low quality. Nevertheless, the genre is a fundamental cultural source for understanding how fiction interacts with a society’s fears as it undergoes a profound transformation. This article aims to analyse the ways rituals were represented as allegorical figures of the anxieties and conflicts in the final years of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship (1968–1975). On the one hand, we will examine the three main discourses that were instrumental to the founding of monstrous cults based on gender, class and nationalism. On the other hand, we will analyse the intermingling of political violence and modernisation through the performance of rituals. Satanic rituals served as visual metaphors for a reality constructed from the Manichaean vision of Catholicism and the exclusionary nationalism of Francoism imposed through political violence.
Classification
keywords
- spanish horror cinema; satanism; rituals; franco dictatorship; desarrollismo; deviation; monster