Idealización feminista en cuatro roles de Ana Torrent desde niña a mujer [From Child to Woman: Female Idealization in Four roles of Ana Torrent]

Nancy Santoni Wysard, Spanish Department Languages and Literatures of Europe and the Americas

It is hard to accept that a six year old actress can represent feminism. But surrounding circumstances, life experiences, and history can shape an actress's execution of her role. In the case of Ana Torrent, she plays the roles of strong women in four Spanish movies. In El espíritu de la colmena (The Beehive's Spirit), Torrent is a six year old girl who deals with the patriarchal oppression which metaphorically represents a repressive government. In Cría cuervos (Raise ravens), Torrent is under the impression that she has killed her father, a character which represents Franco's dictatorship. By killing him, she inverts the Oedipal complex. In Tesis (Thesis), Torrent plays an intellectual specialized in cinematography who survives being a victim. Finally, in Yoyes, Torrent plays a character inspired by the first women member of ETA, a separatist organization of the Basque country. Even though three of these movies are directed by men, they still criticize patriarchal society through the characters that Torrent represents. By exploring how the patriarchal societies portrayed in these Spanish movies conform to Lacan and Freud's  patriarchal theories and by applying various feminist theories, I intend to  prove that Torrent makes the audience recognize patriarchal oppression and, therefore, represents a feminist standpoint in Spanish cinema.