Punk aesthetics of Pedro Almodóvar’s Pepi, Luci, Bom: Self-reflexivity, subcultural formations and queer temporalities | Intellect Skip to content
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Volume 11, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 2040-6134
  • E-ISSN: 2040-6142

Abstract

Tracing the direct and indirect influences and cultural connections between earlier counter-cultures and avant-garde art has been a useful method to historicize the aesthetics that is created by subcultures. Drawing from this approach, this article seeks to contribute to the study of the aesthetics and counter-cultures via analysing a specific cinematic self-reflexivity that is born out of the interconnectedness of low-budget material conditions and the subcultural environments. The contention is that Pedro Almodóvar’s first feature film (1980), embodies such punk aesthetics and queer temporalities, through the temporary disruptions in narrative progression, the abundance of queer parody, the combination of camp, TV ads, musical performance and the non-diegetic insertions of comic book-style textuality. In this collage, the politics of realistic representation are thrown out of the picture via a deliberate coupling of artificiality and spontaneity. This article argues that the embeddedness of in Madrid’s subcultural movement, , demonstrates perfectly how subcultural experience gives way to an aesthetic coping mechanism that transforms low-budget restrictions into self-reflexivity. The disparate narrative vantage points in the film that rupture linearity and how the subcultural environment prompted disruptive entrances through which the film’s satire emerged are taken as critical-aesthetic offerings of queer temporalities that exude through the experiential knowledge of exclusion and oppression.

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2020-04-01
2024-04-29
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http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.1386/jepc_00011_1
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  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): la movida madrileña; Pedro Almodóvar; punk aesthetics; punk cinema; queer cinema; queer temporality; Spanish cinema; subcultures

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