CHILDHOOD i NN te NS | CONTEMPORARY eo oS 4 > BY Meaep Ne ab: aM ELRYK DONALD MA WILSON AND SARAH WRIGHT t14 Children’s Toys, Argentine Nationhood and Blondness in Albertina Carri’s Barbie Gets Sad Too and Néstor F. and Martin C’s Easy Money Jordana Blejmar ‘chapter analyses two stop-motion short films - Barbie Gets Sad Too and ‘Money ~ that are ‘acted’ almost exclusively by toys, objects taken back from ld of childhood. Through that gesture the films explore the discourses onal identity and memory that are attached to both local and imported/ ional playthings in Argentina.! ‘The films were screened together in at the historic Buenos Aires cinema Cosmos, and both either suffered or threatened with censorship as a result of lawsuits brought by the Mattel y and representatives of the footballer Esteban Cambiasso, who was the on for the main character in Easy Money. ie Gets Sad Too, a short pornographic animation directed by Albertina 4, one of the most talented Argentine film directors of her generation, is ‘=xplicit, melodramatic, denunciatory and anti-sexist. It tells the story of a Sexually unsatisfied and aristocratic Barbie doll, the symbol of Western female ‘beauty, who leaves the sadistic and masochistic Ken and falls in love with her ‘maid, the Latin Barbie of the collection. Easy Money, a film virtually unknown ‘both in Argentina and abroad, is a tragicomic story about a naive toy boy, ‘Cuchu, ‘the little blond star, born in a shantytown during the 1978 World Cup, at a time when Argentina was still living under a cruel military dictatorship. Although Gucho is abandoned by his Gather and exploited by those around him, he harbours no feelings of resentment towards them. Instead, he spends his lonely life dreaming of playing football for the Argentine national team and hoping, in vain, that things will soon get better.226 Childhood and Nation in Contemporary World Cinema By using toys as texts and exploring the various narratives attached them, these films not only explore a politics of adulthood, but also reflect frequently forgotten aspect of childhood, namely children’s status as coz (whether directly or via adults), targets for marketing strategies and re the ideologies that are inscribed in industrialized goods. In a world in: shaped by the laws of global markets and capitalist values, it is im; reflect on what children’s inorganic playmates are teaching them about the ‘These films prove that toys are a privileged medium for understanding relation to mass and multimedia markets, examine the processes of identi between children and their toys (particularly their anthropomorphic o1 subsequently, show how adults draw on those objects of childhood to the social and racial constructs that are engrained into us from the mot we start playing with toys. Both films have achieved something of a ‘cult’ status in Argentina directors of Easy Money have reinforced the mystery around their kaaping thais oumames secret, ‘working cdandestinaly 2 Mastin ©. inan interview with the I-SAT channel, and by showing up to interviews masks, Given the relatively small circulation of their film and the fact are practically unknown in the mainstream film circuits, these p1 more like playful parodies of 1970s clandestine/guerrilla art than safety: against any real danger. ‘The directors have also explained that they hide their identities to avoid ‘stealing’ the limelight from the film. This is one of the tenets of Dogma 99, the European cinematic approach directors adopted when making Easy Money. The film was going to be eleven pieces centred on different football players, all ‘acted’ by toys, project was never completed. In addition to adapting European and Hollywood genres ( motion films, pornography, epic sport films, MTV videoclips), the of both films combine them with typically Latin American ones (soap costumbismo, etc.). Furthermore, both films also turn an Argentine and American gaze on genres normally thought to be inaccessible to from underdeveloped countries. Animation or stop-motion films large production teams and special effects, all of which imply significant Producers in Latin America are often reluctant to invest in them cannot compete with US productions, even though this situation is changing in Argentina, with the appearance of such films as Me Martian (Antin, 2002) and Underdog (Campanella, 2013).Children’s Toys, Argentine Nationhood and Blondness 227 The films addressed here are, strictly speaking, not animation films like the ones mentioned above, but rather stop-motion films made with toys. The directors have both mentioned Captain Scarlet and The Mysterons (Gerry and Sylvia Anderson) as an inspiration. This 1967 stop-motion film with toys was very popular during the 1980s in Argentina, when Carri, Néstor F. and Martin C. were growing up. Aware of the financial limitations that they were facing, instead of attempting to make high-quality productions, the directors chose to accentuate the ‘amateur’ nature of the films, producing deliberately untidy or unfinished aesthetics, evoking the experience of creating this type of film in countries such as Argentina. It is this experimental use of (cinematic) genres, together with the counter-hegemonic discourses on race, gender and childhood, which give both Easy Money and Barbie Gets Sad Too their subversive status. In this chapter I focus on this last aspect of the films. I argue, first, that both films playfully use the ‘blondness’ of their protagonists to tackle issues of race, xenophobia, class struggle and the dominant classes’ historical aspirations to ‘europeanize’ Argentina. Carri’s film, for example, brings to light the racist elements that underlie Barbie culture and the ways in which this famous doll has shaped girlhoods all over the world from the 1960s onwards, as well as the class struggles, gender violence and xenophobia that rule social relations of power in Argentina, a country that has one of the highest rates of Barbie consumption in the world and one of the least inclusive policies for immigrants and Indigenous people in Latin America, It is also worth remembering that Carri’ first film, called precisely The Blonds (2003), an internationally celebrated docu-fiction on the disappearance of her Montonero parents during the 1976-83 dictatorship, also connected the fair skin and hair of her parents, their ‘blondness’ (even though they were not really blond) to the way they were perceived as outsiders by the inhabitants of the working-class neighbourhood where they had gone to do militant work. A stop-motion sequence in The Blonds that reconstructed the abduction of the director's parents during dictatorship with Playmobile figures sparked controversy among critics and academics. Some argued that Carri use of toys to address disappearance trivialized and depoliticized the most violent period of Argentine history. Others defended the way Carri toyed with trauma by arguing that this episode redirected our gaze away from the experiences of the adult survivors and towards those of their heirs, offering a new, childlike perspective on the dictatorial period. In Easy Money, Cuchu's phenotype also determines his destiny. He is discriminated against by his father and his fellow players for being blond and28 Childhood and Nation in Contemporary World Cinema ‘too pretty’ to be a footballer in a country where most players have dark hait, Ironically, the same people who reject Cuchu for his blondness also fun of black people (for example, some Brazilian footballers) for being ‘too ‘The film also reveals the machista culture and the nationalist and nature of the business. ‘These prejudiced discourses surrounding the football in Argentina are particularly important for reflecting on the nationhood, not least because the sport plays a central role in the ‘patria’ (nation/people) and Argentinidad (Argentineanness), especially: dictatorship and the 1978 World Cup, when Argentina won the title. Fi choice of a toy child as the protagonist of a story of nationhood, lost identity in the context of the dictatorship reminds us of how the: figures of the ‘disappeared’ and stolen children of the so-called National Reorganization’ still dominate discussions and imaginaries of 1980s Argentina. The blondness of both Barbie and Cuchu triggers all prejudices, and is often opposed to the cabecita negra (little black head), used pejoratively in the 1940s by the middle and upper classes to workers loyal to Juan Domingo Perén and the inhabitants of the shant Overall, then, my argument is that subversive play and guerrilla toy films: it possible to discuss apparently unrepresentable, ‘sacred’ of taboo subj as sexual violence, xenophobia and forced disappearance, in ways that realist or documentary accounts cannot. Queered doll play in Barbie Gets Sad Too ‘There is still no consensus about who created the Barbie doll, which was. launched for the first time at the American Toy Fair in 1959. Ruth founder and former president of Mattel Inc., and Jack Ryan, an eccentric hired by Handler and her husband, both claim to be the original inventor uncertainty was just the first of many controversies that have surroun famous plastic doll. Right from her birth, Barbie was accused of reinforcing hegemonic of gender, race and national power among children. Originally designed fashion doll for adults, she is said to be the ‘perfect icon of the late construction of femininity, “The Blond’ par excellence and the embodiment of beauty from a Western/American point of view.’ She is pale skinned, slim, glamorous and hyper-feminine. She is always smilingChildren’ Toys, Argentine Nationhood and Blondness 229 never protests. She has no children and therefore has an ideal, and proportionally ‘unrealistic, body. Finally, Barbie is not only a consumer but is said to disseminate the idea that woman themselves are for sale, ‘dollifying’ and commodifying the female sex. Hoping to sell more dolls to the growing number of middle-class black and Hispanic girls in the United States, Mattel announced in the 1990s that Barbie would ‘go ethnic’ by launching black and Hispanic versions of the doll.* Years ‘before that, Mattel had already introduced a series of collections that attempted ‘to sell a progressive and multicultural image of Barbie. Yet, as several critics have ‘argued, these new dolls ended up reinforcing, rather than fighting, racial and ‘ethnic stereotypes. Mattel has always been reluctant to release information about Barbie's ‘origins, place of birth, family history or ethnicity. This silence has been taken ‘to imply that Mattel assume Barbie's looks to be the standard norm, needing no explanation, and the ethnic versions of the dolls to be simply deviations on that ‘norm.’ Moreover, as when the company introduced its Shani dolls in 1991 - a line of black Barbie-like dolls - it used the same moulds as they had for white Barbies and only dyed the colour of their skin, and made their noses broader or their hips slightly wider, implying a very reductionist idea of what race is, The idea that ‘ethnic features’ like skin colour or the size of their hips make the Shani dolls more authentically African American, argues Ann DuCill, reinforces racial stereotypes, encourages a superficial pluralism and is a ‘metaphor of the way multiculturalism has been used as a kind of quick fix by both liberal humanism and late capitalism’ Other ‘ethnic’ Barbies, such as those from the Dolls of the World series (1999), that are supposed to represent different nationalities and ethnic groups, do so from a patronizing tourist or colonialist gaze, which is fascinated by the exotic looks of the ‘other’ but reluctant to engage meaningfully with their culture.’ In these collections, Barbie ‘visits multiethnicity as she visits museums.* When Mattel produced three Native American Barbies between 1993 and 2000, they depicted them as mothers with babies, as opposed to the childless white Barbie. In doing so, it has been objected, they reinforced a folklorized and racist vision of Native American women as naturally inclined towards motherhood and so, by implication, delivering as promiscuous and economically unproductive? If Natives sell, concludes Erich Fox Tree, it is less because there is a niche market of Native American girls than because ‘children and adults apparently love both buying Indians and playing Indians.”230 Childhood and Nation in Contemporary World Cinema As all these studies have shown, Mattel understands race and hot commodities in late capitalism and has transmitted (post)col of race, class and gender." The key point is that the advertising Mattel uses to sell Native American, Black and Ethnic Barbies is one of; encounters between cultures, which erases the presence of vi race and gender struggles from colonial and postcolonial history. Mattel’s scripts and ideas of gender, race and ethnicity are rarely passively. Instead, they are contested and parodied both by children im by adults who use the dolls in artistic works where Barbie ‘offers a site identity and pleasure though resistance to the heteronormative ideas to represent? From being the vehicle of dominant ideologies, Barbie is in these works an instrument for challenging social and cultural practi and norms. Some examples of these subversive uses of Barbie are Drag parody Barbie's stereotyped representation of femininity, Dina photographs of unhappily married Barbie and queer Ken recreated models (In the Dollhouse, 2012), and Polish artist Zbigniew Libera’s (1995), a doll-sized version of an overweight woman that exposes that rules contemporary society, In 1989, the so-called Barbie Organization (BLO) switched the voice boxes of three hundred now transgendered) Barbies with those of the action figure GI Joe in a= to subvert gender stereotypes. With this action the BLO made the: gender, as Judith Butler has famously argued, is a performance, a si an act rather than something fixed in stone - or, in this case - in actions of the BLO could be thus seen as a paradigmatic example of the: Barbie is being queered in contemporary non-mainstream art and Albertina Carri’s Barbie Gets Sad Too forms part of this sul In her film, Carri has indeed queered Barbie both in the sense of the gender stereotypes that she represents and in the sense of finding and unorthodox uses for the doll. In particular, Carri’s film brings to the ‘tegimes of silence, corporate ideologies and omissions that lie at of Mattel’s discourses on gender and race and the company’s undi both girlhood and womanhood." The film is thus explicit not only sexually graphic, but also because it reveals what Mattel elides. Barbie Gets Sad Too addresses, for example, the racism that per Barbie culture and Argentine society. On the one hand, by presenting 2 class Caucasian couple, Barbie and Ken, with a mestizo servant, TeChildren’s Toys, Argentine Nationhood and Blondness 231 Hispanic doll introduced by Mattel in 1988), the film exhibits ‘a postcolonial dynamic that underlines the whole Barbie-Hispanic Barbie relationship’ in the United States." On the other hand, Teresa has dark hair, dark skin and a Paraguayan accent and she therefore represents the thousands of immigrants from surrounding countries who arrived in Buenos Aires during the 1990s in the hope of financial and political stability. Instead of finding a better future, as Karen Goldman rightly points out, they were largely unwelcome in the Argentine capital and ended up working as maids, manual labourers or other equally poorly paid jobs. Whereas ‘Mattel would never display Shani [the black Barbie] working in a factory, Carri chooses to display the Hispanic Barbie precisely where the toy company probably thinks she should be; that is, in the kitchen of an aristocratic house, serving the blond, European-like and ‘authentic’ Barbie.’ ‘The two socially opposed scenarios in which the story unfolds also illustrate the contrast between different social classes in Argentina. In Barbie's mansion, where Ken is almost always absent, spending time with his lover, there is wealth but there is also sadness and suffering. Conversely, Teresa lives with a butcher called Keno and a transvestite hairdresser called Trabie in the humble suburbs of the city. They do not have much money but, unlike Barbie, the three of them are happy and enjoy a sexually satisfying and loving relationship. ‘The miserable image of the blond and aristocratic Barbie in Carri’s film is in sharp contrast to the positive image that Mattel inscribed on the doll. ‘Barbie wasn't a doll, she was an aspiration} writes Sandra Petrignani in The Toy Catalogue.” If this is true for any girl, the idea that Barbie was a figure to aspire to was even more potent for Argentine girls, In Argentina, Blond Barbie represented not only wealth and beauty, but also the ability to cast off being Latin ‘American and take a step closer to a European ideal of success and femininity. It is not by chance that the majority of Argentina's divas and top models are blond. Many of them, bath old and young, are also plastic ‘beauties, whose many surgical operations have left them not so much with a doll-like face as with an air of monstrosity, Barbie's figure is also something many Argentine women, and especially porteftas (women from Buenos Aires), aspire to in a society with very high rates of bulimia and anorexia. It is estimated that, since the doll was first commercialized in the country in 1987, more than 1,180,000 Argentine girls have at least two Barbies each, making it the favourite doll of 70 per cent of girls between nine and ten years old.'® Given its obsession with Barbie and what she symbolizes, it is not surprising that Argentina was the first country in the world to have a thematic pink room232 Childhood and Nation in Contemporary World Cinema dedicated to Barbie in a hotel (the Hilton) and a store devoted exclusively to Barbie products, The shop has a section for girls to have their make-up done and a café where they can celebrate their birthdays, Tito Loizeau, founder of the Barbie Store, explained to BBC World that ‘Argentina’s obsession with the Barbie dol? is, precisely, aspirational: “Through Barbie Argentines access a first world that is far away from them? Gustavo Averbuj, director of the agency that had the idea of the Barbie room, suggested in the same piece that it is because ‘we Argentines come from the ships, we are poor immigrants’ children’ that many people in the country ‘still have that necessity of European approval!” In Barbie Gets Sad Too there are numerous references to Argentines’ obsession with blondness, the ‘European/American look, and what being blond represents in the collective imaginary of the nation. In one scene, in which Ken and his lover Arbie are having sex, he plays at being He-Man, a fictional character from a children’s cartoon known not only for being extremely strong but also for having long blond hair. In another scene, Barbie is watching an animated drawing of the blond talk show host Susana Giménez on television. In a parallel sequence, ‘Teresa is watching the same show in her house with Trabie and Keno. ‘Look at those legs. I envy her! And look at us} says Trabie, making explicit the desire to be like Giménez, to possess her body, and probably her hair too. Carri’s choice of actress and singer Juana Molina to voice the character of Arbie voice pays homage to her role in the popular 1990s comedy show Juana sus hermanas (Juana and her sisters). Molina played the character of Marcela Balsam, a made-up, dumb, blond diva who was, in turn, a parody of real Argentine divas like Susana Giménez, ‘I chose Juana because she used to play the character of Barbie in her show; Carri explained in an interview” Strictly speaking, Molina never played Barbie, but Balsam. Carri conflates the characters and in that confusion she demonstrates how, in the Argentine imaginary, Barbie, Balsam and Giménez have almost lost their individual attributes to represent general stereotypes (the ‘dumb blond’) and aspirations (wealth, beauty and fame). The three of them are indeed expressions of what in 1983 iconic singer Luca Prodan famously called la rubia tarada (the dumbass blond) in a song that was an instant hit and which remains one of the most popular songs in Argentine rock history. For Prodan, la rubia tarada represented the mercantilist, shallow and frivolous society of Buenos Aires, the caras conchetas, miradas berretas (posh faces, cheap looks). Her target was women who lived in wealthy neighbourhoods like Belgrano or Barrio Norte and who were ideologically and Politically opposed to la gente despierta (the people who are awake) who, asChildren’s Toys, Argentine Nationhood and Blondness 233 far as Prodan was concerned, represented ‘authentic’ Argentines. Esto si que es Argentina (this is real Argentina), concludes the song. As well as addressing the social and racial tensions in both Barbie culture and Argentina, Carri’ film denounces sexism and gender violence, and looks at how children often learn about such issues by playing with their dolls. These issues have become more visible in recent years in Argentina, particularly since the disappearance in 2002 ~ the year Barbie Gets Sad Too was released — of Marita Verén at the hands of a human trafficking mafia, a case that exposed a hidden weft of complicities between cafishios, politicians and the police force. More recently, the massive Ni una menos demonstration in 2015 organized by Carri’s wife, Marta Dillon, together with other female writers and journalists, further highlighted the alarming increase of gender violence in the country. In contrast to the reality of these victims, in Barbie's world men and women live together in harmony. Barbie ‘never has to confront sexism; argues Erica Rand. Nor does she displace men: “There is no suggestion that men must give up power in order for woman to gain power, no suggestion that the social structure needs to be changed.” Unlike those who argue that Barbie's entrepreneurial nature is a sign of Mattel’s feminism, Rand sees her ‘success’ as proof that patriarchy has room for exceptions that confirm the rule. ‘The presence of a strong patriarchal ideology in Mattel is also evident in the absence of queer dolls. When Dubbed Earring Magic Ken was launched in 1993, for example, People magazine wondered whether Ken had come out of the closet. Mattel quickly rebuffed the suggestion by stating that many heterosexual men wear earrings. In a humorous artistic intervention..the ‘zine.PRC Casualties have protested against the absence of non-normative dolls in Mattel’s collections by creating a Lesbian Barbie and an ‘SM Barbie, which comes with ‘leather restraints, paddles, and three tribal tattoos. All models complete with genitals: ‘They have also offered a ‘Battered Barbie - Burdened with small children. No marketable skills and no assets. Self-esteem sold separately’ ‘The magazine finally added that, unfortunately, the Native American Barbie is ‘no longer available since white Barbie has pushed her on the floor, stolen her belongings and killed her. In a similar playful spirit, Barbie Gets Sad Too protests against sexism in contemporary society, a ‘disease’ that Barbie culture has, at worst, helped to disseminate and, at best, failed to challenge, particularly among girls, Mattel’s concern about the traumatized effects of Ken's (absent) genitalia in children and the company’s presumptions that girls would not worry about the sight of a doll234 Childhood and Nation in Contemporary World Cinema without vagina, for example, is a clear sign of that sexism. In the film, Car= overturns Ken’s asexual appearance by giving him a huge penis and by includii it in several hyperrealist close-up shots. In addition, Carri highlights Argentis sexism, which is subtly evoked, for example, in the posters of naked women Keno has in his shop, a common feature of butchers and auto repair shops the country. ‘The film not only speaks out against a strong and historically patriarchal machista culture in Argentina, it also exposes its most dangerous consequet Indeed, if Barbie's worst dramas are ‘broken legs or broken tennis rackets, Barbie is always suffering. Her husband Ken, who spends his days and ni with his lover Arbie, constantly mistreats her. In addition, Ken physically psychologically abuses Arbie. When they are making love in his office, example, he screams at her: ‘Will you shut up, bitch, slut, bitch, can’t you Later, tyrannical Ken beats Arbie so badly that she abandons him in an act places her not in the role of the victimizer (that of ‘the other woman’), but in role of the (other) victim of the story. ‘The presence of a bisexual Ken(o), a transsexual Barbie and two lesbian in the film also exposes Mattel’s omissions. Just as with racial discourses, the gender and sexual terrain Carri brings to light what Mattel was hiding: only Ken’ genitalia but also non-normative ways of (making) love. In co: to conservative and traditionalist models of ‘happy families’ (that very appears in one title in Barbie's collection) or to the prototypical idea of a Caucasian couple (Barbie and Ken), Carri’ film celebrates a family/partné of four (Keno, Teresa, Trabie and Barbie, who joins them later), who live and! together paying no attention to bourgeois and conformist ideas of what a or a relationship needs to be. In this respect, Barbie Gets Sad Too inat Carri’s exploration of queer and non-normative models of families that will mark her entire oeuvre. In Geminis (2005), for example, the director addresses the incestuous of a brother and sister, and in both The Blonds and the television series 23 (2012, co-written with Dillon), Carri commends families made by friends adoptive relatives. Her own family is an example of a queer lineage: t with her wife, and artist Alejandro Ros (Dillon and Carri’s son's biol father), she was the first person in Argentina to register her son, Furio, as three parents, thanks to a change in the law introduced in 2015. Despite the director's open-minded motivations, one of the main of Barbie Gets Sad Too is that, although it intends to be an anti-establisChildren's Toys, Argentine Nationhood and Blondness 235 and anti-sexist film, it might, unwittingly, end up being the cinematographic materialization of many men’s fantasies about Barbie (or Barbie-like woman). The film, says journalist Pablo Plotkin, is the ‘incarnation of a sexual fantasy that goes around the head of many people’** Carri herself has confessed, in the same article, that she chose Barbie as the star of her film because she is intrinsically pornographic. Perhaps we are so submerged in our own prejudices that it is impossible to create a completely subversive play scene with Barbie. And yet, as Erica Rand insists, it still matters that artists and film-makers identify Mattel’s silences and dubious claims and subvert the company’s narratives in their artworks to expose not only her (queer) sexuality but also all the obsessions that this ostensibly innocent plastic doll represents for children. Among all the subversive Barbies created by artists and studied by scholars, Carri’s Barbie has the additional value of making us reflect on the way girls and artists from peripheral countries and cultures consume and contest narratives of race, childhood and gender that reinforce (post)colonial dynamics and discourses. Carri used the voice of a Spanish actor, Eusebio Subiela, to give Ken the accent that many US porn films have in Argentina when they are dubbed, a gesture that points to the impact of globalization in cultural products other than toys. Ultimately, her film calls for a critical consumption of the business of entertainment, for both children and adults, especially in countries like Argentina where the effects of neo-liberalism have been, and still are, devastating. The little blond crack, an Argentine passion and the dictatorship Like Barbie in Carri’s film, Cuchu, the child protagonist of Easy Money, is a blond, beautiful, and dreamy doll, too nice and noble for this cruel world. ‘The directors created him by using the head of Ken’ little brother, Tommy, and placing it on the body of one of the miniature football players that Coca-Cola distributed as part of an advertisement campaign related to the 1998 World Cup in France. ‘We saw Tommy and we didn’t think twice: he had the simplicity and beauty of Cuchu; explain the directors.” They also used a doll from the Cabbage Patch Kids collection to represent Cuchu as a baby. ‘The opening sequences of this animated film locate the story in the darkest episode of Argentine history: the 1976-83 dictatorship, a regime that resulted in more than thirty thousand disappeared people and around five hundred236 Childhood and Nation in Contemporary World Cinema children stolen from their families and illegally adopted, sometimes by the very murderers of their parents. To date, 119 of these children have been found by the human rights organization Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. The film starts with archival footage of the dictators Jorge Rafael Videla, Emilio Massera and Orlando Ramén Agosti at the opening ceremony of the 1978 Soccer World Cup. The competition was appropriated by the military to improve its image and to refute claims made by the international community, especially human rights organizations such as Amnesty, that the regime was responsible for running clandestine concentration camps in which political opponents were being tortured and disappeared, In Easy Money the voices of the dictators have been digitally altered, We hear Videla saying, ‘We need to win this cup, Emilio} to which Massera responds, ‘Argentines support us, Jorge? Next comes an official advertisement about the competition that was broadcast on television at the time and that stated, via a catchy song, that ‘25,000,000 Argentines will play in the World Cup. "These images are juxtaposed against others of military tanks and planes flying over Buenos Aires. The next sequences show images of one of the many shantytowns in the city, reminder of the harsh background to the fiesta de todos (everybody's Party), an expression that the military used when referring to the competition, and of the neo-liberal policies introduced by the dictatorship. In one of the modest houses in this shantytown, Cuchu’s father (‘played’ by a hunchback doll) is watching a football match. Behind him, on one of the flimsy walls of the house, there is an Argentine flag and a blue-and-white sticker that the military distributed at the time that stated: Somos derechos y humanos - a play on the term ‘Human Rights’ that translates into English as ‘We Argentines are honest and humane: Later in the film, in the house of Cuchu’s adoptive father, we also see a badge of Malvinas Argentinas, the other national cause that the dictatorship embraced to build collective consensus around the regime. Next to Cuchu’s father is his mother giving birth. His father, however, is more interested in the match than in the arrival of his son, At one point he screams at the woman, without taking his eyes away from the television: ‘Come on you woman, I want an Argentine son that plays football!’ Argentina then scores a Boal and Cuchu is finally born. ‘He is blond; exclaims his father when he finally sees him; ‘this son of mine is un golazo [a victory]: When the little blond baby- toy starts crying, however, he quickly changes his mood: ‘Dont cry, son, We're still winning. What are you? Dutch?!’ Holland, Argentina's opponents in the match, then score a goal and the father takes the baby and throws him throughChildren’s Toys, Argentine Nationhood and Blondness 237 the window, into the river. ‘Why did he have to be blond and a sissy?!’ laments the father, visibly disappointed. We then see Cuchu floating in the river while the commentator’s voice-over describes the celebratory spirit in the stadium: “This is the image that we want to give to the world, an Argentina that stands up and screams: Here we are!’ He is, of course, referring to the match, but the image of a body floating in the river reminds us of the real Argentina at the time, when victims were thrown from aircraft into the enormous watery cemetery of the River Plate, their bodies never to be found. ‘These opening sequences highlight Cuchu’s drama and bad luck: he was born with the wrong hair colour for this place. Those around him see blondness as a sign of delicacy and even femininity, a poor fit for the harsh life in the shantytown and, most importantly, for being a footballer. Like Carri’s parents in The Blonds, he is thus perceived as a foreigner in a neighbourhood where the majority of people are dark skinned and have dark hair. It matters little that, unlike the Carris, he is not an outsider, Later in the film, when people start seeing him and his blond hair as an opportunity to earn ‘easy money, he goes from being rejected to being exploited. Like Barbie Gets Sad Too, Easy Money is a denunciatory film that offers a humorous and playful take on serious issues: the manipulation of poor children in the business of football, the dictatorship’s use of entertainment to gain civil support, and the culture of machismo, racism and xenophobia in Argentina. Interestingly, most of the characters who exploit Cuchu are themselves marginal. They both despise and envy Cuchu's blond hair. As in Barbie culture, blondness symbolizes for them the aspiration to higher social and economic status and access to a more privileged life. But who are all these adults who want to keep Cuchu and make ‘easy money’ with him? While floating in the river, Cuchu is rescued by a Paraguayan man, one of the two human actors in the film. (The other is a boy filmed only from behind who plays the role of Cuchu when he starts training for the national team.) The Paraguayan man is listening to ‘music from my land; and fishing next to a doll dressed as a gaucho named, precisely, Gaucho Alvarez. When the Paraguayan sees the boy, he gets excited about what he can do with him: ‘He isa young blond boy. If you feed one of these boys for two years you can then send him to clean cars in the street and you know what? ... It’s easy money! I'm saved, Alvarez!’ Gaucho Alvarez, however, has other plans. He wants the boy for himself, and so he gets rid of the Paraguayan and takes Cuchu home, not to look after him (as Cuchu naively believes), but to set him to work.238 Childhood and Nation in Contemporary World Cinema Cuchu’ father, the Paraguayan and Alvarez are not the only ones who see it Cuchu's blondness more than just phenotype, When Moshe DT, an Orthodos Jewish coach, introduces him to the national football team, a miniature replica of the real Argentine player Ariel Ortega does not believe that Cuchu can play the sport because of his looks: ‘With this little Blondie we won't win anything; he complains. In the same dressing room, another player, Vern, sings a song that Proves how, if being blond is a sign of weakness in Argentine football culture, footballers and fans also use words such as ‘black’ or ‘gay’ as insults: “They're all black and they're all homos, Brazil’s in mourning’ (Son todos negros, son Putos, ya saben que Brasil esta de luto.) Later, even Cuchu makes a racist re1 about a Brazilian player when he explains to Verdn: ‘He is black but he’ a man. He likes playing football just like us? Thus, the film suggests that 's so deeply engrained in Argentine society that nobody can escape its c Indeed, in Easy Money the poor exploit the poorer, and the dark-skinned play make fun of those whose skin and hair are even darker, as if to remind us that the jungle of modern life only the strongest - and the blondest - survive, Cuchu is, indeed, a survivor. At one point in the film — the year is 1 indicated by the sticker supporting Rail Alfonsin’s presidential cam in Cuchu’s new home ~ an expensive car arrives in the shantytown. It is Russell, a footballers’ agent, and his partner, Barbie, both ‘played? by iconic doll couple. They have come to take Cuchu away and to become rich his expense. Alvarez imagines living the ‘good life’ with the money that Ken Prepared to pay for the boy: he dreams of sleeping with Barbie and of havi ‘free internet access. Ken Suggests closing the deal by Proposing a toast imported wine, But Alvarez is too clever to let Cuchu go, He takes the sets the house on fire and escapes with the boy to the big city. There C cleans cars while Alvarez spends his money on prostitutes until the neo-lil 1990s are ushered in with the arrival of President Carlos Menem. His infe Statement that ‘Argentina is already a first-world country’ is the headline in Clarin newspaper that Alvarez is reading, Menemis words expressed a cor illusion in Argentina at the time, when one Argentine peso was equivalent to US dollar and the middle classes used to travel to Europe and Miami. §; i vast amounts of money, they failed to realize that the cost of their lifestyle was: alarming increase in the external debt, which would eventually bring about economic and political meltdown of 2001, ‘Néstor F. and Martin C’s film addresses and contests different myths narratives linked to the idea of Argentinidad present in popular cultureChildren’s Toys, Argentine Nationhaad. and, Blandness. 2s the collective national imaginary: the idea that Argentina is more European (blonder) than other Latin American countries like Brazil or Paraguay, that we Argentines are derechos y humanos, or that we have the best sportsmen in the world. The film also demonstrates how football in Argentina is much more than just an innocent national passion. Football is an exploitative business that provided a cover-up for the mass murders of the 1976-83 dictatorship while also perpetuating discourses of racism and xenophobia. ‘The directors had already explored these issues in their previous film, Marcelo G., sélo un hombre (1999), based on the life of the footballer Marcelo ‘el mufteco’ Gallardo. ‘These images and discourses on nationhood are present not only in the newspapers or the chants sung in the stadium, but also in the stickers and toys that were circulated during the World Cup. Just as the Barbies in Carri’s film were used because they have certain race and gender narratives attached to them, the toys used in Easy Money point to the often hidden relationships between the material culture of childhood, politics and the market in Argentina. There are many references, for example, to the Gauchito del Mundial, an Argentine child cowboy that was used to represent the country as the 1978 World Cup mascot. Not only does this little toy appear on several occasions during the film and on stickers, it is also evoked in the character of Gaucho Alvarez, a human- size incarnation of the Gauchito. Cartoonist Manuel Garcia Ferre designed the Gaucho mascot at the request of the military Junta. Gauchito merchandising came in all sorts of forms and shapes as a sticker, a key ring, a toy and so on. The military made the careful decision to use a child as a symbol of ‘innocence’ a sort of response to those international human rights commissions that were visiting the country at the time to investigate the violations perpetrated by the Junta. In some of the versions of the Gauchito, he also carries a whip, perhaps a subtle threat to the international community if they kept sticking their noses into other people's business. Finally, like Barbie Gets Sad Too, Easy Money too brings to light images of womanhood silenced by the doll industry. One of the most hilarious sequences depicts Alvarez inviting a prostitute to his house only for him to discover that she is a transvestite. The directors used a Ken doll for this scene and called it ‘Trabiesa. (The word means naughty in Spanish, though here it is used with a ‘b instead of a ‘v:) Even the name is similar to Trabie, the transvestite in Carri’s film. Alvarez explains to Cuchu that she is his cousin, Roberta, who lives in the countryside. When Trabiesa/Roberta sees Gaucho Alvarez she exclaims: “Wow, your ethnic look is very cool!’ Both Roberta and Alvarez, this encounter240 Childhood and Nation in Contemporary World Cinema suggests, occupy marginal positions within society, places that are constructed and reinforced by certain trends in the doll and toy industry. ‘Towards the end of the film, Cuchu’s dream comes true and he ends up playi for the national team. Now triumphant and on top of the world, all his ‘fat and tutors ~ the hunchback, Gaucho Alvarez, even Ken and the Paraguayan reappear in the stadium to take advantage of the situation once again. In middle of a fight to keep the boy, the Paraguayan’s weapon goes off and is fatally wounded. Before he dies the boy forgives everyone and reassures that he is now happy because Argentina has finally won the World Cup. of the final images synthesizes the dramatic, critical and yet playful spirit the film: a single, brief shot of the shield of the Argentine Football Associat hanging on the wall, now stained with Cuchu’s (fake, tomato sauce-like) bl Subversive play and guerrilla toy films Both Barbie Gets Sad Too and Easy Money subvert the scripts, discourses imagesattached to certain toys and miniatures, exposing the economic or politi motives behind the toy industry's discourses of ethnicity and sexuality, its pluralism and multiculturalism, and its implicit support for heteronort conservative ideals of family, gender and race. Barbie Gets Sad Too, for example, exposes Mattel’s silences on the history of European colonial encounters that underpin racial categories Latin America. Anthropologist Peter Wade has argued in this vein that categories do not describe objective realities but are created to dominate work force more effectively. Certain groups are categorized by dominant of society as being ‘naturally’ inferior and therefore only good for m: work.” In contrast to Mattel’s preference for using the word ‘ethnic’ for merchandising, a term less loaded than ‘race, Wade notes the importance keeping both terms. Denying a specific role to racial identification is ‘to the particular history by which these identifications come to have the force do. Ultimately, these multimedia films highlight how children first learn gender, race and national issues through toys and the marketing narratives by the toy industry to sell their products. Both films turn to dolls to talk about human (rights) issues. The same made with live actors would probably have been more violent, more up: and more uncomfortable; in other words, more solemn and less playfulChildren’s Toys, Argentine Nationhood and Blondness 241 Profane. The use of dolls, these directors have found, has allowed them to break the barriers of what can be said and what can be shown in cinema, even when the topics they address are, in no way, childs Play. Furthermore, in contrast ‘© criticism of foreign toys and popular culture in the 1970s, such as the canonical 1972 essay ‘How to read Donald Duck’ by Argentine-Chilean writer Ideologies, but also towards local expressions of nationalism, sexism and racism in Argentina, In particular, both films focus on the symbolism that hair colour and skin colour have in social and power relations in a country in which being white, blond and blue-eyed is often perceived as entitling the bearer to a symbolic tie to both European and local bourgeoisies. In the 1940s, for example, blondness/ whiteness was opposed to what middle-class inhabitants of Buenos Aires termed cabecitas negras (‘negros, ‘grasas’ or ‘gronchos), meaning the dark-haired and dark-skinned members of the working classes, mainly Peronist supporters, who had migrated to the capital from the north of the country or from the neighbouring countries of Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru. It is worth remembering, however, that, during the 1970s, ‘blackness’ also. acquired positive attributes for left-wing militants in Argentina, some of whom used to Wear ‘Afro’ hairstyles as undercover, brown-haired guerrilleras — famously, Norma Arrostito — used to wear blond wigs to denote bourgeois superficiality and to undertake militant missions without being noticed. Hair colour in Argentina is much more than ‘he directors of Barbie Gets Sad Too and Easy Money draw on objects of childhood and insert them into adult film worlds in order to question race, gender and ethnicity, At the same time, they are implicitly exploring the universe of childhood. Rather than offer spectators representations or figurations of the shild, they use objects of play to reflect on the way racial, gender and ethnic Stripped of its innocence, constructing a knowledge of Argentine history and Politics, gender and racial stereotypes, that could only have been achieved through a dialogue between adulthood and childhood. It is this gaze ~ one eye242 Childhood and Nation in Contemporary World Cinema in the world of childhood and another in the adult world - that makes these films so effective in tackling issues of identity and nationhood. Notes Albertina Carri, Barbie también puede eStar triste (Barbie Gets Sad Too), stop motion, 22 minutes (2002; Buenos Aires: NQVAC), vimeo, Néstor B. and Martin Plata Segura (Easy Money), stop motion, 40 minutes (2001; Buenos Aires: Videofilms), DVD. Juan Antin, Mercano, el marciano (Mercano The Martian), animation, 87 minutes (2002; Buenos Aires: Universidad de Cine, 2005), DVD, Juan José Campanella, ‘Metegol (Underdogs), animation, 106 minutes (2013; Buenos Aires: Universal, 2014), DVD. Kim Toffoletti, Cyborgs and Barbie Dolls: Feminism, Popular Culture and the Posthuran Body (London and New York: 1.B. Tauris, 2007), 60. Ann DuCille, Skin Trade (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. 1996), 36. Brica Rand, Barbie's Queer Accessories (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1995), 84, DuCille, “Toy Theory, 38. Karen Goldman, ‘La Princesa Pléstica: Hegemonic and Oppositional Representations of Latinidad in Hispanic Barbie, in Gender, Race and Class in ‘Media: A Critical Reader, ed. Gail Dines and Jean M. Humez (Los Angeles, Lon New Delhi, Singapore, Washington, DC: SAGE, 2011), 375-82. Rand, Barbie's Queer Accessories, 69, Erich Fox Tree, ‘The Secret Sex Lives of Native American Barbies, from the Mysteries of Motherhood, to the Magic of Colonialism; in Dolls Studies. The Many Meanings of Girls’ Toys and Play, ed. Miriam Forman-Brunell and Jennifer Dawn Whitney (New York: Peter Lang, 2015), 242. 10. Ibid., 231. 11 On Mattel, see DuCille, “Toy Theory; 30. For ‘almost without words, see Fox Tree, ‘Secret Sex Lives, 253, 12. Toffoletti, Cyborgs and Barbie Dolls, 63. 13, Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York. London: Routledge, 2007). 14 Rand, Barbie's Queer Accessories, 156. 15 Goldman, ‘La Princesa Plastica, 25. 16 Rand, Barbie's Queer Accessories, 84, o * a No ardChildren’s Toys, Argentine Nationhood and Blondness 243 ‘Sandra Petrignani, Toy Catalogue (London: Boulevard Books, 1990), 11. 448 Josefina Licitra, ‘Barbie, mufteca pop, La Nacién revista, 24 September 2000, http://wwwlanacion.com.ar/213178-barbie-muneca-pop. ‘18 Macarena Gagliardi, ‘La obsesién argentina con Barbie, BBC Mundo, 8 October 2014, hhttp://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2014/10/140930_obsesion_arg_barbie_mg (accessed 22 January 2016). 20 Pablo Plotkin, ‘Barbie, la pornostar triste, Pagina/12, 1 March 2011, http://www, paginal2.com.ar/2001/01-03/01-03-11/pag37 htm (accessed 22 January 2016), 21 Rand, Barbie's Queer Accessories, 84. 22 Ibid., 158. 23. Ibid, 45. 24 Fox Tree, “The Secret Sex Lives, 237. 25 Plotkin, ‘Barbie, la pornostar triste. 26 Nalaia Scali, ‘jQué mufiecos!? Olé, 21 April 2000, http://old.ole.com.ar/ diario/2000/04/21/r-01601d.htm (accessed 22 January 2016). Peter Wade, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America (London: Pluto Press, 1997), 22. 28 Ibid., 20, 29 Alan Pauls, Historia del pelo (Barcelona: Anagrama, 2010).