The Performance as an Ephemeral and Queer Trace in Pedro Almodóvar's Film Bad Education (2004)

Abstract

This work analyzes the iconic scene from Bad Education (2004), directed by Pedro Almodóvar, where Gael García Bernal plays Zahara in a drag number imitating Sara Montiel. From the perspective of performance studies, we examine how Almodóvar highlights the artificiality and vindication of queerness, dialoguing with the notion of "queer ephemeral trace" by José Muñoz (2019). The analysis focuses on the challenges that the film poses to binary gender representations, as well as stereotypes and aesthetic norms, using concepts of performance, gesture and phenomenology. The constructions of identity are explored through the figure of Sara Montiel, considering sensuality in the Spanish-speaking cultural context, the American film industry and the post-dictatorial period in Latin America and Spain. In conclusion, the different analyzes proposed reveal as results the complex layers of meaning intertwined in the gender representation behind the cross-dressing exercises housed in the film. On the other hand, how the construction of queer identities responds to the dynamics of a gaze constructed mainly for a patriarchal public. And finally, how the director combines both readings with the memory of aggression and repression occurred during the Franco-dictatorial regime.