Page 72 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

media. Whereas Marie-Soledad Rodríguez has argued that Torrentes initial appearance on a stage
as an actor clues the audience that Torrente should be perceived as parody, and further, thus defused
of racist undertones,18 Muertos de risa also begins with the protagonists, two comedians, moving
onto a television stage, but its insistence on the place of media staging in the culture avoids the same
distancing effect. Instead, it invites a serious examination of the role of the media in the formation of
historical consciousness. Moreover, television history, itself still in its infancy, is advanced by the film.
(Tellingly, de la Iglesia in fact had to recreate a famous episode of the television show Directísimo for
his film because the original copy of the show had disappeared.)
Acknowledging the role of media is not new to de la Iglesia. Since Acción muíante, he has drawn
inspiration from popular media. In Día de la bestia, the protagonist, a Jesuit priest, teams up with the
counter-culture manager of a heavy metal record store to save civilisation by short-circuiting the birth
of the Antichrist. They coerce the host of a television talk show on the occult to enlist in their cause,
too. Muertos de risa continues the critique of the contemporary media through black humour begun in
Día de la bestia. Whereas Día de la bestia was apocalyptically set to go off on Noche Buena, Christmas
Eve, Muertos de risa takes as its zero hour Noche Vieja, New Years Eve. In all, most Spanish critics
welcomed Muertos de risa as the return of de la Iglesia to better timing, to his characteristic 'peculiar
universes that provided in parallel an indirectly allegorical reading of the current situation'1'' alter the
debacle of Perdita Durango.
Through close analysis I intend to show how Muertos de risa assumes an anti-intellectual popular
stance of dismissible bad taste and public spectacle to expose what Kinder, with regard to other
Spanish films, has termed a distinctly Spanish 'mode of representation of violence'.2" Recently,
Malcolm Compitello has taken issue with Kinder's reading of Día de la bestia as merely 'a kind of an
allegory of the excesses of Socialism' to argue that it plots a condemnation of a widet sort', namely that
it 'contributes to an understanding of how politics is merely one part of the dynamic interplay of forces
through which urbanised capital forms consciousness'.21 I will argue with Compitello that in the way
that Muertos de risa represents Spanish television history it likewise confronts the commodification of
culture in Spain, as did de la Iglesias previous work.

THE CRITIQUE OF COMMODIFICATION WITHIN SPANISH CULTURAL HISTORY

Muertos de risa depicts Nino and Bruno's success above all as a commercial one. Clips from actual
black-and-white 1970s television commercials for frozen popsicles, 'Flag Golosina' in the sequence
'La apuesta' ('The bet'), set the scene and introduced a paradigm for the subsequent sequence 'Y
llegó el éxito' ('And success arrived'). The epitome of Nino and Bruno's whirlwind success is a
fictitious ad for children's cupcakes, 'Pastelitos Nino y Bruno', done in contemporary Teletubbies
style. On a hill full of sunflowers little girls in white dresses surround Nino and Bruno in tuxedos
as they sign autographs. The representation critiques the pernicious exploitation of children
through the commodification of the media star in that the camera swings around to show the
backs of Nino and Bruno crawling with insects. The final image, in which their dark backs fill the
frame, draws additional shock value since the commercial's dialogue is describing the cupcakes'
filling, and hence implies that the children are being enticed into eating a disgusting product.

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