TLRH | Gender and Resistance in Galician Noir Audiovisual Media

Tuesday, 22 February 2022, 4 – 5pm 'Of Monsters and Women: Gender
and Resistance in Galician Noir Audiovisual Media' a talk by Dr
Catherine Barbour (TCD Dept of Hispanic Studies) as part of the
School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies Research
Seminar Series in association with Trinity Long Room Hub. This
presentation contrasts strategies of resistance to gender-based
violence in two examples of Galician noir audiovisual media; the
women-centred grassroots feminist web series Monstras (2020)
directed by Eire García Cid and the TVG-Netflix commercial hit
series O sabor das margaridas (2018-2020) directed by Miguel Conde.
These divergent case studies muddy the binary of female victimhood
and male aggression whilst drawing attention to the hegemonic
sexual politics and socioeconomic systems which facilitate and
endorse violence against women and girls. Yet while Monstras is
first and foremost a socially conscious response to patriarchal
violence, the feminist attributes of O sabor das margaridas are
trumped by commercial concerns, shown for example through the
eroticisation of violence. Though Galician noir has made a
breakthrough on the international media circuit by foregrounding
women’s resistance to gender-based violence, this is manipulated in
the bid for viewer ratings. Fundamentally, it continues to be in
alternative media where some of the most revolutionary
conversations about women’s rights are taking place in the Galician
cultural sphere. Catherine Barbour is Assistant Professor in
Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Spanish Peninsular Studies at
Trinity College Dublin. She specialises in contemporary Iberian
(especially Galician) literary and cultural studies, with a focus
on representations of gender, migration and translingualism in
literature and visual culture by women. Her publications include
the monograph Contemporary Galician Women Writers, published by
Legenda in 2020. She is currently working on her second book
project on translingual feminisms in Iberian cultural production.
Learn more at: https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/