"Pure Comedy: The Racial Politics of Domestic Work in ¡Cómo está el servicio! (Ozores 1968)

This talk analyzes the intersections of race, gender, and comedy in ¡Cómo está el servicio! (Ozores 1968) to argue that the film brings to light anxieties about purity and womanhood associated with the rapid development of the final years of the dictatorship. The film's brief, yet poignant portrayals of Africans and Afro-descendants and the film's representations of marriage and miscegenation shed light upon the ways that national purity remains inextricably linked to a politics of the home and the preservation of white womanhood against perceived threats of outside contamination, explicitly articulated through race.

Bio: Michelle Murray is an Associate Professor of Spanish and European Studies at Vanderbilt University. Her research and teaching interests focus on contemporary Spanish literature, film, and culture. Her first book Home Away from Home Immigrant Narratives, Domesticity, and Coloniality in Contemporary Spanish Culture (UNC Press 2018) studies representations of immigrant women as domestic workers in contemporary Spain. She is currently working on a manuscript entitled Migrant Markets; this book explores migration, political economy, and trafficking in the Southern Mediterranean.