Mediated Eros: The Female Body, the Nation, and Desire in Carmen, la de Triana (Florián Rey, 1938)

Abstract

This article examines how Spanish musical cinema of the late 1930s functions as a symbolic mediator in the construction of national imaginaries and in the coding of the female body through a case study of Carmen, la de Triana (Florián Rey, 1938). The film is a Spanish -German co-production shot during the Spanish Civil War and produced at the Universum Film AG (UFA) studios. The character of Carmen, portrayed in the film by actress Imperio Argentina (1910 -2003), is configured as a narrative device that articulates desire, gender, and collective identity at a moment of intense cultural tension. Using a textual analysis methodology grounded in Jesús González Requena’s symbolic theory, which distinguishes among the semiotic, imaginary, and real registers, this study focuses on three key sequences in which female corporeality, embodied by Carmen, operates as a surface for the inscription of cultural discourses that simultaneously code femininity and the nation. This process unfolds within a tense relationship in which the eroticization of the female body coexists with its narrative disciplining. As this article demonstrates, through framing, lighting, sound, and narrative articulation (editing, ellipses, and interruptions), the film constructs a symbolic system in which desire and the female body function as a foundational narrative of an essentialist Spanish imaginary, structured around the tension between eros, sacrifice, and national belonging.