2024/1 - #Open

Browsing 2024/1 - #Open by Author "Horvat, Anamarija"

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  • Article
    “I say! Neither a Whore nor a Saint”: Transgender memory, Spanish popular television, and media histories in Veneno
    Horvat, Anamarija (2024) , S. 157-179
    In March 2020, the series Veneno was released on the streaming platform Atresplayer Premium, immediately becoming one of the biggest media sensations in Spain. The series centres on the life of the television star Cristina ‘La Veneno’ Ortiz Rodríguez, who shot to fame during the 1990s. Herself a transgender woman, Veneno was frequently an object of both public fascination and mockery, with her life as a sex-worker and gender-identity often relayed in the media through sensationalistic and dehumanising terms. By focusing on a figure who was an object of public fascination, but whose experiences of discrimination were often trivialised, the series Veneno not only humanises its central protagonist, but also acts as a commentary on the broader history of transgender representation in Spanish media and as a re-evaluation of la Veneno’s own legacy as a prominent media representative of the trans community. In turn, this focus on both mediated and hidden histories of transgender experience reflects a broader turn in the Spanish televisual and cinematic landscape, which has shown a marked focus on excavating and recreating local LGBTQI histories, as is evident from recent television series such as Bob Pop’s Maricón perdido (TNT, 2021), Miguel de Arco’s Las noches de Tefía (Atresplayer Premium, 2023) and Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo’s Vestidas de azul (Atresplayer Premium, 2023), as well as in Pedro Almodóvar’s Madres paralelas (2021). In the case of Veneno, the recreation of transgender history also intervenes into current political discourses on transgender rights, with even Spain’s then-vice president Pablo Iglesias recommending the series to his followers on Twitter during a period of intense public debate surrounding the so-called ‘Ley Trans’ or ‘Trans Law’, which came into force in 2023. Drawing on this, this article will examine the ways in which the series intervenes into contemporary discourses surrounding trans rights, as well as how it comments on broader questions of transgender memory and the history of transgender media visibility within the Spanish context.