Galdós in 2012: Rick Santorum channeling his inner Doña Perfecta

What I really love about teaching at a smallish university is having the freedom to design classes the way I see fit.  I can experiment.  It’s the same level of autonomy that a typical college radio DJ enjoys… play some Screamadelica-era Primal Scream, Delroy Wilson, the Undertones, the Beach Boys, Sonic Youth, Django Reinhardt, Sandy Denny, los Mirlos, Giorgio Moroder, Rita Lee, A Tribe Called Quest, Girls Against Boys, Michel Polnareff, a track from a Sarah Records compilation and wrap up the set with a poetry reading by Richard Brautigan or something off John Coltrane’s Stellar Regions…At UW-Green Bay I don’t have to worry about straying into a colleague’s territory and risk incurring the wrath of the specialist in colonial theatre, Catalan vanguard poets or Puerto Rican code-switchers…

I did some college radio at Virginia Tech (WUVT) and later in Madagascar (above) with Radio Antsiva - 97.6 FM Antananarivo in 1997.

My “college radio” course is called Spanish 465 – Special Topics:

This variable content course will allow students to analyze seminal aspects pertaining to the language, history and cultures of Spain, Latin America and the Spanish-speaking communities in the United States.

This is the third time I have taught the course…the first two times I stayed within my interdisciplinary research comfort zone of representations of political violence in Latin American literature, film, music and visual art…this time around, however, I decided to offer my students a survey of Spanish history through the study of canonical works of literature, historical fiction best-sellers, commercial blockbusters and/or critically-acclaimed films and one of the most popular television series on TVE.

So over Thanksgiving break I began to conceptualize my new Spanish 465 course: La historia moderna de España a través del cine, la televisión y la literatura.

The last few weeks we’ve discussed the theme of las apariencias engañan in Lazarillo and analyzed its most recent filmic adaption; debated the praise of folly in Cervantes’ “El licenciado Vidriera”; evaluated the critical view of Spain’s Golden Age as portrayed in the Viggo Mortensen-starring film “Alatriste”; recited the Romantic poetry of Espronceda, Bécquer and Rosalía de Castro on Valentine’s Day; howled at the stereotypical Spanish attitudes ridiculed in Larra’s “Vuelva usted mañana”; took sides in the forum of debate provided by Galdós’ thesis-driven Realist novel Doña Perfecta and finally, imagined the dangers of harvesting percebes after reading Pardo Bazán’s “El pañuelo.”    

Galician percebes...a delicacy, it may cost 100 euros for a plate.

On deck for next week, we’ll read Unamuno, Teresa Claramunt, Lorca and watch bits of the Oscar-nominated “El abuelo” (an adaptation of a Galdós novel featuring the ubiquitous Fernando Fernán Gómez…“Is he, like, in every Spanish movie?” “Yes. And he was born in Peru.”)

Following Spring Break, we’ve got La sombra del viento (more than 10 million copies sold! The Spanish Da Vinci Code!); episodes of Cuéntame cómo pasó (but first I’ll have my students watch the pilot of “Wonder Years”…most of them haven’t heard of it…for them, Fred Savage is the MOLE in Austin Powers…); short stories by Rosa Montero; José Ángel Mañas’ Historias del Kronen and the last few classes each student will be assigned a short story from either the Inmenso Estrecho collections (Benavides, Pérez Zúñiga, Chirinos, Méndez Guédez, Iwasaki, Roncagliolo et al) or something from one of the “Nocilla” writers (Fernández Mallo, Cebrián or Chiappe).

We’ll see how it goes…

The challenge, of course, is trying to make some of the more classic readings relevant to twentysomethings.  As much as I’ve tried to keep “on task” and steer the conversation towards more Northrop Frye-friendly topics, this hasn't always happened.

With Cervantes, we spent some time talking about military recruiting (“Join the Army! See the World!”…and I couldn’t resist playing a short clip from Goldie Hawn’s “Private Benjamin”…).  

“He praised the soldier’s life, and gave him a vivid picture of the beauty of the city of Naples, the delights of Palermo, the prosperity of Milan, the banquets in Lombardy, and the splendid food in the inns. […]  He praised to the skies the soldier’s free life and the easy ways of Italy; but said nothing to him about the cold of sentry duty, the danger of attacks, the horror of battles, the hunger of sieges, the destruction of mines, and other things of this kind, which some consider to be extra burdens of a soldier’s life, when in fact they are the main part of it.”  (Cervantes’ “The Glass Graduate”- Exemplary Stories, p. 122 Penguin Classics)

I chose an abridged version of Galdós’ Doña Perfecta which emphasized the conflict between two opposing worldviews in late 19th century Spain: religious fanaticism versus the burgeoning secular philosophies (religion vs science, faith vs reason, tradition vs modernization etc.).  This being an election year in the US, I expected some of my students to relate the contrasting opinions in the novel with the national political debates playing out all over the media.

And then came Rick Santorum’s ill-advised comments about “Obama’s phony theology” …

Oh Ricky, Ricky, Ricky…really?  But thanks…you gave us tons to talk about!!

Let’s check out some of Santorum’s words, starting off with the basic idea that Obama holds “secular values that are antithetical to the basic principles of our country.”

Here are some other gems:

“I love it when the left and when the president say, ‘Don’t try to impose your values on us, you folks who hold your Bibles in your hand and cling to your guns.’ They have values too. Our values are based on religion, based on life. Their values are based on a religion of self.”

…[the left is] “taking faith and crushing it.”

…[Obama is] “systematically trying to crush the traditional Judeo-Christian values of America.”

…[…Obama’s agenda is] "not about you. It's not about your quality of life. It's not about your jobs. It's about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology."

“the president has reached a new low in this country’s history of oppressing religious freedom that we have never seen before.”

“He [Obama] is now forcing people to do things that he believes that they have the right, that they should do. The Catholic church has a theology that says this is wrong, and he’s saying no I’ve got a different, I’ve got a different — you may want to call it a theology, you may want to call it secular values, whatever you want to call it, it’s a different moral values. And the president of the United States is exercising his values and trumping the values of the church.”

(Apparently, Santorum does not accuse Obama of being anti-religion…something worse…“a radical environmentalist” –that’s exactly what I gathered after viewing the ‘full’ clip courtesy of The Right Scoop…give me a break, please…).

And out of the mouth of Doña Perfecta as she excoriates Pepe Rey (her secularist nephew):

"You have insulted us, you great atheist! But we forgive you. I am well aware that my daughter and myself are two rustics who are incapable of soaring to the regions of mathematics where you dwell, but for all that it is possible that you may one day get down on your knees to us and beg us to teach you the Christian doctrine."

“Why do you pronounce the name of God when you do not believe in him?”

“God, in whom you do not believe, sees what you do not see—the intention. […] You are a mathematician.  You see what is before your eyes, and nothing more; brute matter and nothing more.  You see the effect, and not the cause.  He who does not believe in God does not see causes.  God is the supreme intention of the world.  He who does not know this must necessarily judge things, as you judge them—foolishly.  In the tempest, for instance, he sees only destruction; in the conflagration, ruin; in the drought, famine; in the earthquake, desolation; and yet, arrogant young man, in all those apparent calamities we are to seek the good intention—yes, señor, the intention, always good, of Him who can do nothing evil.”

"As I said, I will not reproach you for entertaining those ideas. And, besides, I have not the right to do so. If I should undertake to argue with you, you, with your wonderful talents, would confute me a thousand times over. No, I will not attempt anything of that kind. What I say is that these poor and humble inhabitants of Orbajosa are pious and good Christians, although they know nothing about German philosophy, and that, therefore, you ought not publicly to manifest your contempt for their beliefs."

(from Galdós' Doña Perfecta, translated by Mary J. Serrano)

Ok, maybe it's a stretch...but in my humble opinion, Rick Santorum has that siglo XIX, religious zealout discourse down pat!

This post is dedicated to Dr. Ayo and Dr. Coffey for helping to keep Galdós relevant.

The following album cover is dedicated to former Senator Rick Santorum.

All for now, I'm off to "indoctrinate" students...