| Summary: | In this dissertation I study Ball Cancelled, Summer Indoors and La tajada, the three early screenplays by Argentine writer Manuel Puig, who wrote these before his first novel and dismissing “copies of old movies”. My thesis investigates and refutes this harsh self-judgment and tries to show—through theories of the “copy” —, that the three screenplays establish a dialogue with one another as well as with the “old Hollywood movies”, through a subtle critique, a transgressive distance and complacency towards the model they represent.
The first section examines Puig’s relationship to the conditions under which they were composed, and those films produced in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s, in particular those classified as melodramas and “women’s films” under the genre system of that time, as well as with movie reception and the theories elaborated around the audiences, especially the female spectator. The second section is dedicated to the analysis of the three screenplays, from their conception as films to be made under the “Hollywood system” to their impossibility to adherence to the models required by that system, since they reelaborate and alter them, sometimes subtly, and on occassions openly. These three screenplays permit a comprehensive understanding of Puig's narrative, which is why they should be integrated as autonomous texts in the complete works of Manuel Puig.
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