'El beso de la mujer araña'

Manuel Puig

Spider Woman

In last week's column on 'Politics and Identity in Modern Latin American fiction', I reviewed 'La casa de los espiritos' by Isabelle Allende and explained how post Boom contemporary authors continued to break with traditional narrative forms, in the same way that the Boom authors who preceded them did so. I also highlighted that unlike Boom authors, many post-Boom writers preferred to set their novels against a backdrop and within the context of contemporary society. They also began using popularised political writing, which made political narratives much more accessible to the masses.

This week, I will review Manuel Puig's 'El beso de la mujer araña', which was published in Spanish and English ( 'The kiss of the spider woman' ) in 1976. It has previously been described by critics as a classic show-piece to demonstrate the 'new novel'. The novel clearly demonstrates the advantages of new genres over the old-style traditional realism. Two prisoners, Luis Molina and Valentín Arregui, share a cell in a Buenos Aires Prison. Molina, an effeminate and openly homosexual window-dresser, is in jail for "corruption of a minor," while Valentín is a political prisoner who is part of a revolutionary group trying to overthrow the government. Molina recounts various films he has seen to Valentin in order for them both to forget their situation.

The author uses intertextuality (telling a story within a story) to introduce the political theme of authority and power which is intrinsic to the novel. Molina's way of telling film narratives are authoritarian and repressive as they force their own point of view upon the reader. Conversely, the novel itself as a whole frees the reader to form his or her own interpretation.

The novel's form is unusual in that there is no traditional narrative voice, one of the primary features of fiction. It is written in large part as dialogue, without any indication of who is speaking, except for a dash (-) to show a change of speaker. The novel is mainly written as a stream of consciousness and what is not written in this way or as a dialogue is written as government documentation. The conversations that the characters engage in, when not focused on the moment at hand are focused on films that Molina has seen, which act as a form of escape from their environment. There is therefore a main plot with five subplots. These subplots are films presented as mini stories which comprise much of the novel. The author includes a long series of footnotes on the psychoanalytic theory of homosexuality. These act largely as a mini representation of Puig's political intention in bringing about a more objective view of homosexuality.

Valentin, the Marxist protagonist, has risked his life and willingly endured torture for a political cause and his example helps transform his cell-mate into a citizen and as someone who will eventually re-enter society. Molina's love of aesthetics and cultural life teaches Valentin that escapism can have a powerfully Utopian purpose in life and that escapism has the potential to be just as subversive and meaningful as political activity. In the middle of the novel the reader discovers that Molina is actually a spy that is sent to Valentin's jail to befriend him and try to extract information about his organization. Molina gets provisions from the outside for his cooperation with the officials which he shares with Valentin.

It is through his acts of kindness to Valentin that the two fall into a romance and briefly become lovers. The emotional and sexual union of the two men signifies in a very real way Puig's belief that in order to be effective, politics should relate to real life and not be purely theoretical. The notion spider woman being trapped in her own web seems to symbolise that we are all trapped in our own realities. 'The kiss' signifies liberation from this trap in that we can freely dwell in reality and fantasies providing a bridge between the two and ultimately provide meaning.

The film narratives told by Molina are as follows. The first story is based on a movie that Molina recounts and opens the novel with. It is based on a film called The Cat People (1942). During the narration the reader finds out that Valentin sympathizes with the heroine because of his long lost love, Marta, which is what initially begins to draw the two men closer together, which eventually culminates in a physical union. At first, there was a really rigid conflict between the two in terms of personal emotions, relationships and desires. Not to mention the political ideology and activism, which are brought together by the sexual union between the two men. The clear inference is that theory and activism must go hand in hand in order to bring about real and lasting change.

The kiss of the SW

SW Film

Molina & Valentin

The second story that is recounted by Molina is based on a Nazi propaganda film. Unlike the first subplot, it is unclear whether or not this is an actual movie. It is believed to be a composite of multiple Nazi films and an American film called "Paris Underground". Molina tells a long story of an old Nazi film, a French woman falls in love with a noble Aryan officer and then dies in his arms after being shot by the French resistance. The film is a clear piece of Nazi propaganda, but Molina's inability to see past its superficial charms is a symptom of his alienation from society, or at least his choice to disengage from the world that has rejected him.

The third film is about a young revolutionary with a penchant for racing cars. He meets a attractive older woman and they get to know each other. The young man's father gets kidnapped by some guerrillas and the he goes to try and save him, with the aid of the older woman.

The father ends up dying in a shootout with some police and the young man ends up staying with the guerrillas. One important note to make here is that the way the father dies is very similar to Molina's own ending in which he dies in a shootout between cops and Valentin's comrades.

The fourth film is a horror story concerning a rich man who marries a woman and brings her to his island. On the island she finds out that a witch doctor has the ability to turn people into zombies. As it progresses we find out that her husband's original wife was seduced by the witch doctor and turned into a zombie. He ends up telling his ex wife he loves her, but is ultimately killed by the witch doctor. In the end the main character sails away from the island.

The fifth film recounts a love story in which a newspaper man falls in love with the wife of a Mafia boss. Love struck, he stops his newspaper from running a potentially damaging story about the woman. They run away together, but can find no work. She prostitutes herself when he becomes too ill. Valentin is forced to finish the story despite Molina recounting it. In the end the man dies and the woman ends up sailing away. The way that Valentin chooses to have the story end is very similar to what happens in his stream of consciousness narrative in the end during the torture scene back in prison.

Interestingly enough, unlike most internal presentations, it doesn't really matter how the "movies within movies" end; the significant plot line is what happens to and between the prisoners themselves. Puig himself said "The book is very much about the Argentina of 1973. There was ideological repression and social repression. I wanted to put those things together. The rightist government was suspicious of any leftist ideology and the leftists were puritanical in the sexual area. The repression was expressed in different ways. What I mainly wanted to talk about was the possibility of people changing."

The 1985 film version of 'El beso de la mujer araña' is an even clearer example of post-Boom popular fiction during a time where the issues it presented were very sensitive to the public, giving it a high degree of popularity at the time it was screened. Directed by Argentine-born Brazilian director Hector Babenco and adapted by Leon Schrader from the celebrated novel of the same title by Manuel Puig, embodies themes of human dignity and compassion surviving in a society where it denies it (Kipp, 2008). The movie was made during a time where gay liberation was at its height, considering that the film was made in the pre-Aids era when gay, feminist and radical politics intersected. The political context of the film also sat at a time where there were forced disappearances and political arrests and imprisonment for acts of communist revolutions mainly in South America. Confirmation to its popularity in the public and the industry of movie-making were its garnered awards.

In the latter part of both the book and the film, it becomes clear that Valentine is being poisoned by the warden and Molina was tasked to extract information from him. He has been promised freedom if he provides them with information on Valentine's communist activities. The twist is that Molina has fallen in love with Valentine and refuses to poison him or extract anymore information. It no longer matters if he gets out of prison or not as he seeks to find meaning in life through Valentine. However, Molina is freed by the police in the hope that he will lead them to Valentine's revolutionary group. Molina decided to make a telephone call to Valentine's group on the outside and to meet them. The police intercept this call and follow Molina, which results in his death from the shootout which ensues. Meanwhile in prison, Valentine, back from a torture session lying in the infirmary escapes in the most dramatic way with the woman he loves through the stream of consciousness. He escapes the pain and loneliness in the only way that is now possible for him, which is through death.

'El Beso de la mujer araña' then is an excellent example of post-Boom fiction, since it breaks with traditional narrative styles and experiments with new ways of telling a story. IT employs some of the techniques used by Boom, such as magical realism, or in this case, the stream of consciousness and the recounting of stories within the story. However, the novel and the film have a very explicit political message within contemporary society, made accessible and popular for the masses by the 'new narrative' styles.