Pan’s Labyrinth is a 2006 dark fantasy chef-d’oeuvre film by Guillermo del Toro with the events unfolding in Spain in 1944 during the early Francoist period, almost half a decade after the Spanish Civil War. One of the film’s storylines highlights post-war reality in Spain, specifically focusing on the resistance mounted by the Anti-Francoist guerilla, popularly known as maquis against the new regime.
In the film, Captain Vidal, one of the protagonists, represents the new Phalangist regime seeking to silence the maquis and create a new masculine identity founded on fascism. Importantly, the film is set in the Spanish post-war era, which underscores the concept of winners and losers. During the Spanish War, the Republicans lost to the Phalangist government, and this concept is used to highlight the creation of a new form of masculinity. This paper discusses the alienation of the Republican ideal of manhood through the emergence of a fascist masculine personality in Pan’s Labyrinth.
The Portrayal of Fascist Masculine Personality
The creation of a new fascist masculinity idea is normative in its nature by deliberately silencing the Republicans together with their ideals including that of manhood. The masculinity depiction of winners and losers in the film is clear with soldiers from the government side (the victors) adorning clean new uniforms with well-shaven faces projecting confident body language as a show of pride. They are armed with different forms of arms riding horses as a show of power. On the other side, the defeated Republican soldiers are dressed in tattered uniforms, and after being injured in combat, they escape to the mountains where they become invisible shadows of their former gallantry.
Captain Vidal entrenches the idea of alienating the Republican soldiers by showing little regard for them. He says in Spanish, “they think we are all the same but they are wrong. There is a big difference: that the war ended and we won and if for us all to find out we have to kill those sons of bitches, well, we’ll kill them and that’s it” (Pan’s Labyrinth). In other words, Captain Vidal insinuates that the Republicans are alienated and their ideals no longer have any meaning in Spanish society. This assertion paves the way for the understanding of how the Republican ideal of manhood is systematically replaced by a fascist one in the film.
The opposition between the two opposing ideals of masculinity could be understood by focusing on the characters that personify them. On the one hand, all the male characters representing the Phalangist side are Spanish, fascist, wealthy, and white coming from elite institutions, such as the army or the R.C. Church. On the other hand, the characters representing the Republican side are feeble persons with disabilities and mainly drawn from the international brigade. Fascism and its values, at the time, were only being expressed as an antithesis of the “other”. In other words, this ideal focused on discrediting the other side as the only viable way of expressing its values of morality, sexuality, and all other societal paragons. The othering of the Republican concept of masculinity could only be understood through the actions of Captain Vidal and his unbridled dislike for the defeated soldiers.
Captain Vidal is inherently braggadocios and the fact that he is a proud military soldier, who has just won an important war, compounds this attribute. In the eyes of the public, winning a war made the involved soldiers warriors, and as Wicks writes, “The warrior, foremost among male archetypes…has been the epitome of masculinity in many societies” (29). As such, soldiers were expected to show courage, heroism, stoicism, and discipline, and Captain Vidal is a perfect example of such a soldier as he embodies all these attributes.
Right from the beginning of the film, he stands out as a narcissistic proud man that does not care about anything associated with women in the process of forming the new fascist masculinity identity. Wicks writes that such a man was taught to “deny all that is feminine and soft in himself” (29). Therefore, even though his wife, Ofelia’s mother, is heavily pregnant, she is forced to travel to the mountains so that he can witness the birth of his son, without caring about the welfare of the mother. Even when his wife is about to die from pregnancy-related complications, the Captain strictly instructs the doctor to save his son with total disregard of the mother’s wellbeing. Under the new masculine identity, women are simply baby-bearing machines and Ofelia’s mother has completed this task, and thus she becomes irrelevant.
Vidal, as a fascist military man, is fond of showing off his authority, which he expects to be respected. Consequently, the other male characters exist only to prop him and portray his authority. He runs his unit with unparalleled militarism guided by fascist masculinity values of physicality, military belligerence, and uttermost nationalism. Any cases of insubordination are faced with aggressiveness to subdue any voice of opposition. For instance, when Dr. Ferreiro goes against Vidal’s instructions and helps a prisoner to die, the captain reproaches the doctor openly.
However, Ferreiro is not convinced of the fascist ideals shaping masculinity and thus he looks straight into the Captain’s eyes and retorts, “obey just for the sake of it, without questioning, that’s something that only men like you do, captain” (Pan’s Labyrinth). When the doctor says, “men like you” he is referring to the fascist concept of masculinity that expects people to obey without questioning even if the orders infringe on the very basic human rights. However, under the premise of fascist masculinity, dissenting people like the doctor have no place and because he has chosen a different path to be another kind of a man, he has to die. As mentioned earlier, silencing all the dissenting voices is one of the strategies used to promote the fascist masculinity ideology.
Additionally, the maquis and all other victims of Captain Vidal exist for the sole purpose of showing how brutal, heartless, and aggressive a fascist male can become. For instance, Vidal kills an innocent father together with his son for hunting hares as a way of providing for their family. He is also a sadist who enjoys torturing his prisoners for the sake of it. Overall, Vidal is depicted as evil – a real monster, which is the film’s underlying effort to silence anti-fascist voices. He even knows the picture that he projects and at one point, he tells Mercedes, the housekeeper, that he (Captain) knows that he comes out as a monster. Captain Vidal embodies all the attributes of a fascist, which when taken in the context of what was happening in Spain at the time including the promotion of patriarchal leadership and redefinition of feminism to relegate women to household chores, projects the image of a fascist masculine identity.
Similarly, the idea of dying honorably for soldiers was deeply entrenched in fascism and it comes out clearly in the movie. In the film, the Captain does not retreat, as he believes he would rather die a hero than being branded a loser or a weakling. Therefore, he has to act brave even in the face of imminent danger as part of the fascist male identity. This aspect emerges clearly when during a fierce shooting he yells to one of his men, “Come on, Serrano, have no fear, for this is the only decent way to die!” (Pan’s Labyrinth). Under this new masculine identity hinged on fascism, it would be considered an honorable death to die by the bullet. The Captain projects the same ideologies when dealing with his perceived enemies, even when unarmed. He shoots the harmless doctor from the back and mercilessly butchers a father and his son because such is the only decent way to die.
Conclusion
In the film, Pan’s Labyrinth, the idea of fascist masculine identity arises and thrives by antagonizing the conventional ways of life. Specifically, Guillermo del Toro uses Captain Vidal to promote this ideology by embodying all attributes associated with fascism. He is abrasive, belligerent, proud, and a chauvinist who does not shy from portraying his authority and demanding total obedience from his juniors. He disrespects women, which is a fascist ideology because they are seen as childbearing machines and housekeepers. He believes in dying a hero even if it means dying by the bullet. As such, the movie, through Captain Vidal, creates and promotes a new fascist male identity by silencing and antagonizing mainstream ideologies and promoting unorthodox behaviors as embodied by this character.
Works Cited
Pan’s Labyrinth. Directed by Guillermo del Toro, performance by Sergi Lopez, Estudios Picasso, 2006.
Wicks, Stephen. Warriors and Wildmen: Men, Masculinity, and Gender. Praeger, 1996.