Baladas para el fin del amor romántico: análisis multimodal de cien canciones de plancha

This article explores the role of the Latin American romantic ballad of the 70s and 80s in the transition from romantic love to other forms of romantic relationships. It is based on the idea that the multimodal analysis of romantic songs can shed light on the gradual transformation of emotional life throughout the 20th century. A milestone of this transformation was the appearance at the end of the century of a guilty or shameful taste concerning romantic ballads that became evident in labels such as “ironing (plancha) music,” “brega music,” or “nana music,” which can be read as a symptom of transformations in the emotional orders that depend on changes in capital flows. The text initially addresses the characteristics of romantic love and its relationship with Bolero as a vehicle for sentimental education. Subsequently, a multimodal analysis of one hundred songs is presented, where most of the songs questioned the assumptions of the romantic love ideal. It is concluded that the construction of a “guilty taste” around this repertoire can be interpreted as a conservative reaction to what was seen as a threat to the functionality of the heteropatriarchal family for capitalism.