*CFP* "FEMALE ARCHETYPES AND THE STAR SYSTEM IN THE HISTORY OF SPANISH CINEMA", ISSUE 32, L'ATALANTE: REVISTA DE ESTUDIOS CINEMATOGRÁFICOS

Archetypes in cinema, as Edgar Morin (1972) noted, are linked to the faces of the stars who, from the earliest days, portrayed prototypical characters that were repeated with the implicit strategy of creating loyalty processes with audiences. In the case of actresses, the different female figurations (from the innocent virgin to the femme fatale) evolved over the years in such a way that neither the bad girls proved to be so evil nor the good girls so angelic. During the first half of the 20th century (and despite the initial dominance of the powerful and influential film industries of France, Italy and Germany) it was the Hollywood star system that became the primary focus in terms of the archetypical production of female characters related with stardom. 

Later on, Molly Haskel (1973) and Marjorie Rossen (1973) launched a critical feminist reading of the archetypes that were conjured up by actresses in Hollywood’s Golden Age. Since then, in fact, stars and their various typologies have been examined from various viewpoints, including feminism, psychoanalysis (Gledhill, 1991), the spheres addressed by gender studies (Studlar, 1996) and the ideas of reception theory (Hansen, 1986; Stacey, 1994; Mayne, 1993). The idea that in contemporary cinema, stars need to exhibit different identities, embodying an “elastic self” (King: 2003), as if they needed to destroy (or play at destroying) some of the fixed principles of the archetypal notion that was invented by classic cinema all enables us to observe the history of stardom in cinema as a process of figurative mutations that is always related to the evolution of ideologies.

This succinct methodological arc that links the stars of cinema with specific archetypes is not so easy to chart if we look at studies on Spanish cinema. A monographic work from the early 1990s co-ordinated by Vicente Sánchez Biosca and Vicente Benet (1994) for the magazine Archivos de la Filmoteca was, perhaps, the first comprehensive academic attempt to carry out an academic reflection, in Spain, on the figure of the film star, though neither the subject of archetypes nor the specific context of Spanish cinema were the central themes of this monographic piece. Thus a rich seam of research can be found at the crossover point where the repeated typologies constituting the fictions of Spanish film meet the stars that portrayed them, and which can help to broaden our knowledge of this particular film industry. In this respect, the current proliferation of works relating to feminist film theory that aim to carry out a critical review of the role women have held in the shaping of cinematographic imaginaries encourages us place our focus of study on female archetypes. Admittedly, in this respect, recent research (based on gender studies) has proposed the idea of cataloguing the way women have been portrayed in Spanish cinema (Labanyi,  2000; Feenstra , 2011 and Rincón Díez, 2014), though the concept of the star has not played a particularly important role in these studies.

Most academics agree that the Spanish film industry was influenced by the model of Hollywood stardom from its earliest days (though in the first few decades there were no large production companies in Spain capable of creating a star system like the one in the USA) and also that production companies such as Cifesa and Suevia attempted to market themselves in a similar manner (Benet: 2017). Marta García Carrión (2017) makes the extremely telling point that the popularity some actresses (such as Raquel Meller) enjoyed in the 1920s revealed a culture of stardom among Spanish cinema audiences that came to permeate the magazines and newspapers of that time. Raquel Meller provided Spaniards with the archetype of the modern woman, and portrayed characters that were rich in psychological nuance. Likewise (and now within a more established film industry), in the time of Franco, actresses such as Conchita Montenegro, Amparo Rivelles and Sara Montiel emerged who embodied various female archetypes during the course of their national and international careers, and who succeeded in portraying characters that transgressed (more or less explicitly) against the archetype of the passive, domestic, servile woman that was promoted by the Fascist regime. Following the death of the dictator, female archetypes took another reinvigorating turn as filmmakers such as Almodóvar, Trueba, and Bigas Luna explored the affirmations of the world of women though a new crop of actresses, some of whom (including Carmen Maura and Penélope Cruz, representatives of two different generations) gained considerable international recognition. In a more modern context, the emergence of a generation of female directors who are aiming to present, using their own voices, a more subtle view of the female figurations of the earlier cinema has given rise to a new form of actress politics that upholds, either consciously or unconsciously, the paradigms of the elastic self championed by Barry King.

In this issue of L’Atalante we aim to critically reorganise the materials that have appeared in the academic sphere regarding Spanish female stars and the repeated archetypes to which they have devoted their careers, and to subject this brief tradition to new, unprecedented research.

Priority will be given to the following fields:

• The critical history of the methodologies used for analysing Spanish actresses
• Theoretical reflections on Star Studies as applied to the Spanish film industry
• The connection between the female archetypes of Spanish cinema and those of other film industries that might have inspired the former throughout the various periods (Hollywood, Italian neorealism, nouvelle vague, etc.)
• Female archetypes as identities that represent national values
• Feminist readings of female archetypes
• Actresses as the torchbearers of new models of femaleness for women audiences
• Reflections on the eroticism of Spanish actresses
• New models of femaleness in the 21st century
• The link between film genres and female archetypes
• The iconographic tradition and female archetypes
• Comparisons between female cinema models through the various periods of the history of Spanish cinema
• The ways in which Spanish women stars have been portrayed in magazines and newspapers

We are looking for texts that focus on innovative research subjects using rigorous, clearly-presented methodology. Priority will be given to texts that make reference to the tradition of Star Studies, Gender Studies and Feminist Film Theory, even though (and providing the socio-historical context is always included) works will be accepted that are based on other methodologies (symbolic hermeneutics, cultural studies, philological approaches, etc). Likewise, positive consideration will also be given to texts that do not merely describe, itemise and summarise specific details of the plots, but also rigorously apply a specific analytical methodology and, in turn, yield tangible, innovative results.

Below are a few aspects to keep in mind:

• Submissions must be original and must conform to the submission guidelines of the journal and to the standards and scientific rigour expected of an academic publication 
• Submissions will be evaluated for the originality of the topic explored, especially if it relates to an issue not previously addressed in the publication. Submissions dealing with topics previously addressed in the journal may be rejected. The content of the issues published to date can be consulted on the journal's website.
• All submissions will undergo an external peer review process that will respect the anonymity of both authors and reviewers (double blind peer review) in an effort to prevent any possibility of bias. In the event of a very high number of submissions, the Editorial Board will make a prior selection of the articles to be peer reviewed, choosing the articles deemed the most appropriate for the issue. Failure to observe the submission guidelines and/or standards of originality and academic rigour will result in rejection of the submission by the Editorial Board without external review.
• Authors of accepted submissions will be contacted within six months.
• Articles (which should be between 5,000 and 7,000 words including all sections) must be submitted via the website of the journal as .rtf, .odt or .docx files, using the template provided for this purpose. Files containing the author's statement (.pdf) and any images (.psd, .png, .jpg, .tiff) must be uploaded to the website as complementary files. A detailed version of the submission guidelines can be found at the following link. Any articles that fail to meet these requirements will be rejected automatically. 
• The selected articles will be published in a bilingual edition (Spanish and English).
• If the original manuscript is in Spanish, the authors of the texts accepted for publication must pay the costs that result from the translation to English or revision - in the case of providing, along with the original, a translated version - of their article. In all cases, and in order to guarantee the quality of the translations and the unity of linguistic criteria, the text must be translated or reviewed by the translator recommended by the journal. His work will be paid in advance and via Paypal by the authors.
• If the original manuscript is in English*, the authors of the texts accepted for publication must provide a professional translation to Spanish. [*L'Atalante may also suggest a revision by the translator recommended by the journal for Non-English speaking authors.]
• L'Atalante does not offer any compensation for published articles. For more information: info@revistaatalante.com

The period open for article proposals for the “Notebook” section goes from November 1st to December 10th 2020. The issue will be published in July 2021 and there are no article processing costs charged to authors.