Word: miguelin
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...Sugar Ray Robinson-type with flashy clothes and cars and goodness knows how many mill in the bank, was out there doing a fancy two-step with this bull about the size of a Volkswagen, when all of a sudden another guy climbed into the ring. His name was Miguelin; he was a rank contender, but he thought he ought to be champ. So what did Miguelin do? He strolled up to El Cordobés' bull, put one hand on its shoulder, another on its rear end, and spun it right around in a circle. Then he kissed...
...that he knew bullfights were fixed, just like prizefights, Willie figured he was onto a good thing. The next week he was in the stands when Miguelin tackled a big bull with an unpronounceable name-and he laid some fan at ringside 5½ to 7½ that unpronounceable would take a dive. Willie collected when a fan ran out, pulled the bull's tail, and the beast just stood there looking silly. Miguelin polished the bull off as fast as he could and headed for the exit, ducking shrapnel from the stands...
...modern bullfighting for him serves as one example of a malaise which he observes in present-day society. The thrust of his film is directed not against bullfighting per se, as evidenced by his highly sympathetic portrayal of an idealistic old matador, but against the kind of professionalism which Miguelin represents...
...Miguelin, as any aficionado knows, is a gimmicky bullfighter. His moves in the ring all attempt to place the bull in a situation where Miguelin can execute one of his two favorite tricks, that of patting the bull on the head and that of executing passes at close range while seated on the ring barrier. This kind of stereotyped strategy may please a sensation-seeking crowd, but it is not the art that bullfighting can be. The old-style matador, by contrast, constantly innovated to suit the particular bull he was fighting...
Rosi, in other words, is attacking the Horatio Alger type of matador like Miguelin. Such a matador enters the ring for the first time late in adolescence and proceeds to tailor his style to the crowd. He has not grown up on a bull farm and he has little knowledge of the animal he must fight. Thus when the first wound comes, there is only the threat of the poorhouse to sustain him in the ordeal of his comeback...