'Evita': the globalization of a national myth.(Argentina Under Menem)

Have you seen Evita (Parker, 1996a)? Not Eva, not Eva Duarte, not Eva

Peron, but a version of her historical/mythical character in the diminutive;

not just a foreshortening but a downsizing, right from the beginning, to

situate

spectators comfortably, to help them take a close look at a tamed Eva, an Eva

made familiar. This is not the Evita addressed by her descamisados, who used

the diminutive as a term of endearment, to evoke a shared past of

deprivation -- their empathy a product of her refusal to forget her origins.(1)

This is a

different Evita -- another Evita myth that acquaints the audience with a story

of a woman who makes her way up to a position of great power not because

she is so special (after all, we know many women like her, with her aspirations

and her ability to manipulate) but because she was lucky enough to live her

life in a wealthy banana republic, one of those places where golden tanks,

macho boots, corrupt bureaucrats, and a mysteriously emotional religiosity

(based on Catholicism's connections with primitive superstitions) ensure that

the people are adoring masses or persecuted victims. A Hollywood-made

Evita myth requires no more than these elements to convey a clear image of

the engines of history at work in places like Argentina at any given time.

In this Evita, Evita's controversial role in history is presented in a

dramatically undisturbing way, and it becomes moving because her public,

political

figure is thoroughly personalized and thus banalized. Evita is a melodramatic

remythologization, conforming to the narrative conventions of melodrama

identified by Peter Brooks (1980). It tells a tale of a self-made woman who,

like many women of her time and place, beds her way up and is sensitive

enough to exert grand-scale token charity among her people but not sensible

enough to restrain herself from indulging in Diors, furs, and jewelry. Finally,

she must face the limits of power as she faces the limits of her body; she must

renounce the vice presidency, and she must die -- like a woman and, more

specifically, like the femme fatale of film noir (see Kaplan, 1980; Doane,

1991). The story begins with a glamorous, fascinating woman's death, but

the tale continues: She was loved, then and now. Look at those interminable

lines of dark faces in sorrow, that tango musical lament and danced mourning:

They must love her.

But this recent, US$60 million remythologizing of Evita could not be

successful without its entangled attempt at also remythologizing Argentina's

national history. For that purpose, it is sufficient to present a few glimpses

of a virtually mute Peron, some dazzling flashes of mobilized military

equipment, street violence and corpses now and then, the masses and a balcony.

After all, Evita is about Evita, isn't it? Why bother complicating her myth

with the nation's history? Familiar snippets are enough to trigger all the

appropriate stereotypes, situating the viewer comfortably in the mythical

terrain of that kind of nation's history. And, if you don't get it, a

Che/narrator

will provide the necessary anti-Peronist gossip so that we don't fall prey to

Evita's intricate charms as so many of those down there did. This Che, too,

is subjected to a careful remythologization. He is not the revolutionary

conscience one might expect but the voice of "reason," a sensible Che

haunting Evita, warning her and us against any romanticization of Evita's

life. What makes his point of view privileged and authoritative is that he

speaks from all possible class positions, as a participant and observer of

Evita's most eventful interventions in Argentine history. His tone is both

accusatory and disdainful, and he brings into question Evita's modus

operandi both from a moral point of view and from the perspective of an

experienced skeptic who can foresee, from the beginning, her destruction.

This Evita, then, is this ubiquitous Che's interpretation of Evita, as myth,

and of her role in the making of history, and he is reporting to a transnational

audience from a pseudo-liberal, "universally" bourgeois perspective that

amounts to an anti-Peronist perspective. His rationalist anti-Peronism is not,

however, the self-interested anti-Peronism of the oligarchy responding in

confabulatory choruses to Evita's attacks on its property and values. This

waiter/journalist/student/factory worker/bartender/ valet/peasant and

occasionally tuxedoed Che is a transclass cultural translator whose ideology and

interests can only be pinned down in his gender-specificity and heterosexual

appetites. No matter how much we learn about Evita's promiscuous sexual

adventures, her eroticism is displaced in the form of desire for power.(2) Peron

is a fatherly figure or a teammate in a passionate pursuit of power, and the

only erotically invested romance seems to be in the realm of Evita's dream,

in which she dances a frantic, tangoesque waltz with an attractively defiant

Che, who manages, like no one else, to put her in her womanly place. In his

arms Evita is sincere. But this is a dream, a fantasy, a delirious moment

entered simultaneously by Evita and Che when they meet in a state of lost

consciousness (she collapses in a church, he faints after being beaten up in a

student demonstration). And it seems as though this moment was what Evita

had longed for all along: true romance.

THE MADONNIFICATION OF EVITA

The casting of Madonna as Evita and the presence of tangoesque dance

scenes throughout the film contribute to producing a version of Evita's

history that engages with a personal politics suitable for globalization.

Madonna the superstar shapes the ways in which Evita's image and story

reach the film audience. There are obvious reasons for this: Madonna is a

star-commodity, a contemporary cultural product that is aggressively

circulated in the entertainment market (see Bordo, 1993; McClary, 1991). In

addition, and unlike traditional film stars, Madonna offers a surface of high

visibility on which it is possible to project a variety of personalities and

styles.

Film stars usually cultivate a strong presence that pervades all the characters

they represent on screen. In contrast, Madonna is called a "superstar" because

of her lack of depth. Her flatness is precisely what allows her image to shine

brightly as an icon (see Tetzlaff, 1993). Rather than inhabiting or playing

different characters, she appropriates them. Her ability to put on whatever

suits her at the moment imbues her with an aura of power signaled by success

and manipulation. This chameleon-like, superficial versatility, combined

with the power accrued by the management of her fame, creates a tense

connection between Madonna and Evita. Madonna as an all surface/screen

superstar projects an unspecific image of Evita, invading Evita's own strong

personality, historical depth, and cultural characteristics with a spectacular

blurring of boundaries. She dissipates Evita's national and historical

specificities as she renders visible a transcultural Evita in terms of

universal woman-ness.

Once Evita is Madonnified as a female superstar, Madonna and Evita seem …