Fairy tales in faraway places

The sequence to be analysed in this essay is from Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film Marie Antoinette . It is an unconventional historical drama based on the life of Queen Marie Antoinette in the years leading up to the French Revolution. The clip takes place at the beginning of the film from timestamp 09:28-11:20 [1] when a young Marie Antoinette is crossing the border into France. She is transformed from being an Austrian archduchess into the Dauphine of France through a ritualistic ceremony in a tent. Marie, played by the young actress Kirsten Dunst, was to be married to Prince Louis in Versailles and it was custom that the bride would retain “nothing belonging to a foreign court”. [2]  She is curtly separated from her pet dog and her cloths so that she can emerge from the other side, dressed in the style of the French court. This clip highlights the politicisation of the female body through the use of editing techniques and costume as well as the breakdown and recreation of Marie’s ne...

  Introduction: Timeframe: Death of Franco= transition to democracy. Nation attempts to eradicate the memory of the Spanish Civil War through the introduction of ‘el pacto del olvido’ and the Amnesty law in 1977 which guaranteed impunity to war crimes committed by both sides during the civil war.   Context of the chosen sources: El Silencio de Otros directed by Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar (2018). Documentary film - the victims of Franco’s regime attempt to find justice in the courts of Argentina for the crimes that were committed against them in the Spanish Civil War. Chosen specifically for its focus on memory to stop Spain from forgetting in the 21 st century.   Luna de Lobos by Julio Llamazares (1985), focuses on a small group of marquis trying to survive in the Cantabrian mountains during and after the Spanish Civil War. Chosen specifically for its focus on nature and silence as the soldiers were either killed or forced into exile. Points: The...

  Don Segundo Sombra by Ricardo Guiraldes was published in 1926 and focuses on the life of the gauchos who had all but disappeared from the Argentine Pampas at the time of his writing. The novel portrays a nostalgic look at a rural past that no longer existed whereby Don Segundo is the last and most complete representation of the gaucho, a vanished class. He is highly idealized in terms of his strong physical appearance, his love of freedom as well as his nomadic and stoic qualities. He teaches Fabio, his young protegee and narrator of the novel, what it is to be a gaucho, including how to master men, hold his liquor and break horses. During the ‘Golden Age’ in Argentina (roughly 1875-1913), [1] the pampas were fenced into huge estancieras (landed estates), giving way to a more intensive use of the land. Purebred animals replaced the free ranging herds that wandered across the land, turning the gaucho into a stationary farmhand, otherwise known as a peon . [2] Guiraldes explores...