Masculinidad, raza y clase en Boquitas pintadas de Manuel Puig

Abstract

Manuel Puig, Argentinian author best known for Kiss of the Spider Woman, wrote Heartbreak tango in 1969: a novel that questions masculine and feminine roles, degrades official discourse, and problematizes mass media utopias of being (man or woman) where happiness is based on love, success and product consumption. This essay will study the novel’s principal male characters to show how their different masculinities reflect on divergent cultural models of nation, race and class, with one representing an established, eurocentric but outdated masculinity, and another as a symbol of an emerging criollo (native born) man, a cabecita negra (working class man) who seeks to replace hegemonic masculinity; also, how the novel elaborates different masculinities based on popular culture models (where alterity is produced in terms of gender, race and class), and show how the amalgamation of tangos, newscasts, letters and newspaper reports legitimates recycled popular media stereotypes and teaches characters how to be men and women.