Modernism’s other: Mass culture and women in Catalan postmodern musical theatre

Based on the detailed study of two Catalan musicals with North American influence, Flor de Nit ( Night Flower ) (1992) and Ànima ( Soul ) (2024), this article analyses the way in which the postmodern musical invites audiences to reconsider the relationship between women and mass culture established by modernism. Flor de Nit details the story of a Catalan cuplé singer in 1929–36 Barcelona; Ànima follows the journey of an American woman aspiring to work as an animator at Disney Studios during the 1930s. Both musicals make a characteristically postmodernist critique of modernism’s marginalization of women, homosexuals, mass spectacles and modern society due to its cisheteropatriarchal structure. Both also adopt the form of historiographic metafiction, which enables them to review the most tumultuous years in the history of contemporary Catalonia ( Flor de Nit ) and the foundational values of one of the most globally influential art forms of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries ( Ànima ). In addition, since they premiered in two considerably different moments in time (1992 and 2024), the comparison of these two musicals also helps illuminate changes in Catalan postmodernism, which developed from a reconstruction of the national historical memory to an acceptance of the global audio-visual culture led by the North American industry.