Gargi Bhattacharyya (2002) highlights a growing academic interest in the intersection between sex and space, discussing the role of ‘territory and individual navigation in the performance of identity, perhaps most of all in the identities of sexuality’ (2002: 149). This growing interest has focused on, amongst other things, the roles we play and actions we undertake in the domestic sphere of the home.
Housing has traditionally been designed – and therefore designated and defined - primarily for heterosexual nuclear families (Bell, 1991: 325), positioning normative heterosexual sexual relations and identities as ‘homely’ while marginalizing those that do not conform to these norms. Although gay men constitute one of the groups that have been rendered ‘improper’ for the home (Gordon-Murray, 2007: 197), recent research has questioned the idea of the home being an oppressive site of normative heterosexual domesticity. Furthermore, current changes in the legal systems in a number of countries has meant that same-sex partners are able to get married and form a legally-recognized family.
The concept of family has also been contested as of late, due to its heteronormative constraints, and there exists a scarcity of information regarding same-sex families, and same-sex parenting in particular (see, for example, Pichardo Galán, 2011).
In the following analysis of several contemporary Spanish films, I propose a discussion of the intersection between sexuality, the home, and same-sex families / parenting, in view of the current social, cultural, legal, and political changes that have occurred at an international level in the last ten years. This paper will discuss notions of social space, sexual identity, and the family concept, and discuss the evolution of the representation of same-sex relationships in film, primarily, contemporary Spanish cinema, but also American film.
About the presenterAdrián Gras-Velázquez
Visiting Assistant Professor in Spanish at Swarthmore College (US). He completed his PhD in Hispanic Film Studies at Durham University (UK) in 2013. Prior to that he received his BA (Hons) in Media Studies at the University of the West of Scotland (formerly known as Paisley University; UK), and completed his MA in Film and Television Scriptwriting at the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona (Spain).