Javier Bardem : body and space.

Abstract

Now an international star, Spanish actor Javier Bardem was discovered by director Bigas Luna in the early 1990s with a series of roles that framed his body as the perfect representation of the stereotypical Iberian macho. In Jamón, jamón (1992) Bardem’s character was defined by his visibly muscular body and associated with animal and ‘Spanish’ imagery from the beginning. He was portrayed as independent and, like an animal, in control of his surrounding (outdoors) space. In contrast, his male antagonist was associated with materialist imagery, often non-Spanish, globalising symbols of capitalism and represented within the (over)protective environment of parental spaces (the home, the family business). More recently, in his first Hollywood role as Cuban gay writer Reinaldo Arenas in Before Night Falls (Schnabel, 2000), Bardem’s body was redefined as both vulnerable (confined to claustrophobic prison cells, and later suffering from AIDS) and Latino. This paper discusses the use of Bardem’s malleable body as a locus where, domineering and vulnerable, European and Hispanic, male identities meet.