Imagined Communities and Gypsy Stereotypes: The Spanish Film Alma Gitana
- Submitting institution
-
Coventry University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 11595068
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
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10.18848/2327-7912/CGP/v11i02/43892
- Title of journal
- The International Journal of Literary Humanities
- Article number
- -
- First page
- 27
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 2
- ISSN
- 2327-7912
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- March
- Year of publication
- 2014
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- 26 - Modern Languages and Linguistics
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This interdisciplinary research considers the representation of gypsy stereotypes in Chus Gutiérrez’s 1995 film Alma Gitana. Up to this point, the film has been read by critics as a multiculturalist attempt at establishing tolerance to difference, since the main narrative strategy is a foregrounding of the gypsy at the meeting point of minority identity and hegemonic power. The objective of this research is to challenge this reading and to demonstrate that gypsy stereotypes are not contested but reinforced in the film. This is achieved through critical analysis using a framework built around Stuart Hall (1991) on identity and ethnicity.
The research finds that the gypsy identity depicted in Alma Gitana is, at heart, essentialist on the basis of a series of collective characteristics. The flamenco music and dance depicted serve to structure a specific, fixed identity and even though, as Stuart Hall asserts, this gives us "a good night’s rest", it denies the possibility of change or the inclusion of the gypsy in mainstream Spanish culture. The research concludes that the film depicts the gypsy identity as fixed and immutable and so serves, in particular, to keep the stereotype of the submissive gypsy woman unaltered.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -