‘The Kindness of Strangers’: Kinship and Intertextuality in Todo sobre mi madre and Una suerte pequeña

PRIDGEON, STEPHANIE; OSTROM, KATHERINE

doi:https://doi.org/10.3828/bchs.2020.5

Bulletin of Contemporary Hispanic Studies (2020), 2, (1), 69–84.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/bchs.2020.5
Language: English
Pages: 16

Abstract

In Pedro Almodóvar’s 1999 film Todo sobre mi madre and Claudia Piñeiro’s 2015 novel Una suerte pequeña, female Argentine protagonists encounter strangers who quote to them, ‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers’ from Tennessee Williams’s 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire. The line serves to offer new forms of kinship and solidarity to Almodóvar’s Manuela and Piñeiro’s Marilé/ Mary, two mothers whose lives are nearly destroyed by the tragic loss of their sons. In both cases, the reading, discussion and/or performance of Streetcar and other texts helps these women to heal from their loss and to create new families of their choosing, less constrained by accidents of birth. Almodóvar’s and Piñeiro’s uses of intertextuality thus serve to explore what it means to be a woman beyond the heteronormative limits of conventional motherhood.

En la película Todo sobre mi madre de Pedro Almodóvar (1999) y la novela Una suerte pequeña de Claudia Piñeiro (2015), la protagonista argentina encuentra a una desconocida o un desconocido que le cita un diálogo de la obra teatral A Streetcar Named Desire de Tennessee Williams (1947): ‘Siempre he confiado en la bondad de los desconocidos’ o, en otra traducción, ‘Siempre he dependido de la amabilidad de los extraños’. La frase sirve para ofrecerles nuevas formas de parentesco y solidaridad a Manuela (en Almodóvar) y Marilé/ Mary (en Piñeiro), dos madres cuyas vidas son casi destruidas por accidentes trágicos. En los dos casos, la interpretación de la literatura ayuda a estas mujeres a recuperarse de su pérdida y a crear nuevas familias de su propia elección, menos limitadas por accidentes de nacimiento. Almodóvar y Piñeiro se sirven de la intertextualidad para explorar qué significa ser mujer más allá de los límites heteronormativos de la maternidad convencional.

FormatArticle

£25.00

READ THIS ARTICLE

If you have private access to this content, please log in with your username and password here

Works cited

Almodóvar, Pedro, 2006 [1996] Almodóvar on Almodóvar, ed. Fréderic Strauss, trans. Yves Baignères (London: Faber). Google Scholar

Butler, Judith, 1999 [1990]. Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge). Google Scholar

Garlinger, Patrick Paul, 2004. ‘All About Agrado, or the Sincerity of Camp in Almodóvar’s Todo sobre mi madre’, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 5.1: 97–111. Google Scholar

Griesse, James M., 2013. ‘Economic Crisis and Identity in Neoliberal Argentina: Claudia Piñeiro’s Las viudas de los jueves’, The Latin Americanist 57.4: 57–71. Google Scholar

Holguín, Antonio, 1999. Pedro Almodóvar (Madrid: Cátedra). Google Scholar

Kinder, Marsha, 2004. ‘Reinventing the Motherland: Almodóvar’s Brain-Dead Trilogy’, Film Quarterly 58.2 (Winter): 9–25. Google Scholar

Kristeva, Julia, 1986. The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril Moi (New York: Columbia University Press). Google Scholar

Maddison, Stephen, 2000. ‘All About Women: Pedro Almodóvar and the Heterosocial Dynamic’, Textual Practice 14.2: 265–84. Google Scholar

Martin Márquez, Susan, 2004. ‘Pedro Almodóvar’s Maternal Transplants: From Matador to All About My Mother’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 81.4: 497–509. Google Scholar

Meruane, Lina, 2018 [2014]. Contra los hijos (Barcelona: Random House). Google Scholar

Munro, Alice, 1997. ‘The Children Stay’, The New Yorker, 22 December: 91–103. Google Scholar

Munro, Alice, 2004. Runaway (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart). Google Scholar

Negrin, Llewellyn, 2008. Appearance and Identity: Fashioning the Body in Postmodernity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Google Scholar

Park, Shelley M., 2013. Mothering Queerly, Queering Motherhood: Resisting Monomaternalism in Adoptive, Lesbian, Blended, and Polygamous Families (Albany: SUNY Press). Google Scholar

Piñeiro, Claudia, 2005a. Las viudas de los jueves (Buenos Aires: Clarín-Alfaguara). Google Scholar

Piñeiro, Claudia, 2005b. Tuya (Buenos Aires: Colihue). Google Scholar

Piñeiro, Claudia, 2007. Elena sabe (Buenos Aires: Clarín-Alfaguara). Google Scholar

Piñeiro, Claudia, 2015. Una suerte pequeña (Buenos Aires: Alfaguara). Google Scholar

Söderbäck, Fanny, 2010. ‘Motherhood: A Site of Repression or Liberation? Kristeva and Butler on the Maternal Body’, Studies in the Maternal 2:1: 1–15. Google Scholar

Williams, Tennessee, 1951. A Streetcar Named Desire (New York: New American Library). Google Scholar

Filmografía

All About Eve. 1950, dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz (20th Century Fox). Google Scholar

Julieta. 2016, dir. Pedro Almodóvar (El Deseo Producciones). Google Scholar

La piel que habito. 2011, dir. Pedro Almodóvar (Blue Haze, El Deseo, Canal+). Google Scholar

¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto? 1984, dir. Pedro Almodóvar (Tesauro, Kaktus). Google Scholar

Todo sobre mi madre. 1999, dir. Pedro Almodóvar (El Deseo Producciones). Google Scholar

If you have private access to this content, please log in with your username and password here

Details

Author details

PRIDGEON, STEPHANIE

OSTROM, KATHERINE

Bulletin of Contemporary Hispanic Studies