State, Filmmaking, and Sexuality During the Military Dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983)

DEBORA D´ANTONIO

Rethinking the "proceso". The argentinian dictatorship in perspective (1976-1983

Palgrave Macmillan

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2019; p. 123 - 146

This article weaves together studies that recover the experiences of specific state agencies with those that seek to integrate a gender perspective in the study of the State. Through the analysis of censorship mechanisms, I seek a historical explanation of why the military dictatorship in Argentina promoted --through selective financing-- films that portrayed a vision of gender and sexuality quite distant from official discourse, and which were classified by critics as sexual comedies. Keeping in mind that the cinema is an artistic, industrial, and commercial medium that greatly influences mass culture, I argue that the contradiction between public communications (the discourse of state officials, educational curricula, television and graphic advertising), and the message conveyed by sexual comedies is not due simply to either the regime?s double discourse, the weak relationship between the will of the state and material production, or an empty ideological discourse, but rather to the structural logic of the Nation-State during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship