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Article Excerpt
From the moment we contemplate the title, Bésame macho, with its obvious word play on the classic bolero by Consuelo Velázquez entitled "Bésame mucho," we are able to make two logical assumptions about the play that received the Calderón de la Barca Prize in 2000. First, it is likely to be decidedly erotic--"Bésame"--although, as we shall observe, the passionate exuberance of the bolero's carpe diem theme (1) is replaced in the dramatic text with brooding pessimism. Second, the word macho, both a noun and an adjective, signals the opposition between male/female and masculine/feminine which will be dramatized in Víllora's work. Alberto Miralles cites the playas an example of alternative theater, explaining that its author refuses to tell us a story within the classical framework of a dramatized narrative (38). Perhaps the playwright alludes to this break with dramatic conventions when he dedicates the work to "a quien no pide nada" (13). What is certain, however, is Víllora's documented use of ambiguity (Amestoy 160; Miranda 12; Oliva 70), and in Bésame macho he sets in motion a convoluted and richly ambiguous dialogue through which Helena and Clara tell their story of isolation, brutality, and loneliness.
The questions these two enigmatic characters raise about the seemingly eternal, binary opposition between male and female, together with references to their sex, costume, make-up, and pretense, suggest that Helena and Clara may not be women. Both Adolfo Marsillach and Miralles have noted in passing the ambiguity of the characters' sex. Marsillach, in his prologue to the play, writes that the two characters "llevan nombre de mujer, aunque puede que no lo sean" (8). Similarly, in his review Miralles observes: "El obsesivo mundo creado por sus dos equívocos personajes--¿hombres, mujeres?--nos llega a producir angustia y nos sumerge en el misterio" (38). The present study will propose a reading of the play that deconstructs the dialogue between Helena and Clara in order to reconstruct their illusive and multifaceted identities. In the process of reconstruction, we will observe how the play subverts the binary opposition between male and female in favor of a transgendered identity. (2)
Armed only with the title and the dedication, we encounter the first lines of text, an epigraph taken from yet another bolero:
Te quise con alma de niño y tan grande fue mi cariño pero ¿qué se puede esperar si al fin eres mujer y no tienes alma para querer? Néstor Lombida Alma de mujer (15)
Whereas the play's title parodies Velázquez's well-known bolero in order to evoke the notion of sex (male) and of gender constructs (the masculine), the epigraph introduces the other side of the binary opposition--the female. In Lombida's arrangement of the bolero originally written by Armando Valdespí, the woman is portrayed as heartless ("no tienes alma para querer"), cruel ("tu cruel ausencia"), and treacherous ("nunca creí que pudieras haber ofendido este amor tan sagrado" and "quiero [...] cerrar la herida que en mi pecho abriste"). These characteristics along with her power and inconstancy link the representation of woman in the bolero to the classic femme fatale who has been described as "the dark half of the dualistic concept of the Eternal Feminine (the Mary/Eve, saint/witch or angel/monster dichotomy)" (Porter 263).
The image of the femme fatale made possible by the epigraph's citation of the bolero, "Alma de mujer," fittingly introduces both the play and the two characters, Helena and Clara. First, in a text completely devoid of stage directions, the epigraph evokes a mood of foreboding and danger by introducing woman as a heartless creature whose characteristics recall those of the femme fatale. This created aura of apprehension and impending erotic peril is consistent with Chris Straayer's explanation of the femme fatale in contemporary art as a "metonym that travels among a variety of genres, summoning film noirness for atmospheric of hermeneutic effect" (152.) Second, the intertextual allusion to the femme fatale introduces the notion that Helena's and Clara's identities may be suspect: the most striking characteristic of the femme fatale "is the fact that she never really is what she seems to be. She harbors a threat which is not entirely legible, predictable, or manageable" (Doane 1). In other words, woman as enigma challenges our understanding of woman and evokes the questions: What is woman? or Who is woman? In this way, the image of the femme fatale made possible by the epigraph both creates a mood of danger and deceit and foreshadows the play's theme of hidden identity, a secret to be unmasked, discovered, and understood.
With this forewarning, the reader confronts the play's only action: a conversation between Helena and Clara that begins in media res at an unnamed location with tables and chairs and where a drink could presumably be ordered although neither character requests one nor does a bartender appear. The opening speeches are as follows:
HELENA.--No, por favor, no insista. No vuelva a hacerme esa pregunta. Me incomoda innecesariamente y ya le he dicho que no tengo ninguna respuesta para eso, y desde luego no pienso preparar una sólo por darle gusto a usted. Cuando tenga una decisión tomada se lo diré, pero no antes, así que no se esfuerce en vano y, sobre todo, no me fuerce a mí.
CLARA.--No me gusta la gente con tantos secretos. (17)
Through its intertextual allusion, the epigraph has already alerted the reader to the prospect of deciphering secrets, including the question that Clara has apparently asked and which Helena does not wish to answer. Thirty-five pages later the implied question is identified--¿Por qué odia usted a los hombres? --even though it is only voiced indirectly:
CLARA.--No lo sé. No estoy segura. Todavía hay muchas cosas de usted que ignoro.
HELENA.--¿Por ejemplo?
CLARA.--Yo sé por qué los [los hombres] desprecio, pero aún no me ha dicho por...
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