Abstract
Mothering has long constituted a topos of horror cinema whereby the fecund female subject is directly associated with monstrosity through her ability to carry a life within and the bodily changes that occur to her body. This chapter discusses the ways in which mothering and the maternal are problematised as part of an ongoing rhetoric of female subjectivity in the Southern Cone. It argues that the anxieties of machista ideology are projected onto the maternal body through providing a negative reading of fertility whereby the site of reproduction is the site of sin. The female protagonists in the films under study have defied mariana codes of female sexuality by engaging in sex outside wedlock or by rejecting the support of their male partners during pregnancy. Their pregnant bodies are portrayed as sites of lust that render the mariana figure morally corrupt.
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Notes
- 1.
As explained in Chap. 1, figures such as La Malinche and La Llorona have become emblematic of this type of anti-mariana identity. Both represent negative aspects of femininity, whereby women are regarded as traitors to their own sex. In both cases these women are driven by lascivious desires and/or jealousy in ways that propitiate the emergence of a dysfunctional sense of motherhood.
- 2.
These visceral pleasures are characterised by slightly repetitive scenarios that offer audiences a familiar setting for the action to develop. For instance, these films are always set in abandoned locations, onscreen sex is a passport to certain death, the killer is avenging personal wrongdoing, the killer will use a sharp implement to enact the killings and only one person (in most cases a girl) will survive by the end of the film.
- 3.
It can only be inferred that the great trickster to whom Ricardo refers is no other than the type of man who does not follow macho identity and is not capable of controlling women through an excess of patriarchal authority.
- 4.
Adrián Pérez Melgosa regards La Historia Oficial (Luis Puenzo 1985), El Hijo de la Novia (Juan José Campanella 2001), Apartment Zero (Martin Donovan 1988), La Ciénaga (Lucrecia Martel 2002) and Animalada (Sergio Bizzio 2001) as key films that study motherhood in contemporary Argentinian cinema. The list could also be extended with the inclusion of La Mujer sin Cabeza (Lucrecia Martel 2008) and Leonera (Pablo Trapero 2008).
- 5.
Josefina Leonor Brown (2008) explains that on the return to democracy in the 1980s (marked by the imposition of a new economic system and the establishment of new social networks) the country also embraced a neo-conservative discourse that promoted the return of women to more traditional roles. She had begun to elaborate this view in an earlier paper (2004) in which she claimed: ‘hablar de derechos (no)reproductivos supone poner en el centro de la escena cuestiones largamente silenciadas, tales como la anticoncepción y el aborto, así como otras formas de ejercicio de la sexualidad que exceden la heterosexualidad, poniendo en tela de juicio los roles de género estereotipados y largamente naturalizados’ [Talking about (non)reproductive rights supposes to place centre stage issues that have been largely silenced such as contraception and abortion, as well as other ways to exercise one’s sexuality that question stereotypical gender roles that are largely naturalised]. These ideas chime with those expressed by Lynn M. Morgan (2015), who declares that ‘conservative religious activists increasingly adopt the secular language of “rights” to advance their “pro-life” and “pro-family” policies. Rather than arguing for womens rights, abortion rights, and the right to choose, the conservatives argue for natural rights, parental rights, and fetal rights.’ At the time of writing the debate about reproductive rights in Argentina continues to be at the forefront for both conservatives and liberals, while abortion is still excluded from any legislative protection unless the wellbeing of the mother is at stake (and in such cases both the right-wing and Catholic press and conservative politicians continue to stigmatise and denigrate women who want to exercise their right to control their reproductivity).
- 6.
Technically speaking, this is perhaps one of the least effective narrative devices in the film, since it is almost impossible to differentiate between the lighting work before and after this moment due to the use of black-and-white film and the constant use of chiaroscuro in many other sequences.
- 7.
However, it would be possible to consider the dynamics restricting women’s reproductive rights in Argentina, especially abortion (as explained earlier), given which the film could also be read to function as a denouncement of conservative politics in the country. Despite such a potential reading, it could be insisted that the tacit monstrous nature of the female protagonists is really brought to the front of the narrative, as theorised in this chapter.
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Subero, G. (2016). Bloody Femininities: The Horrors of Marianismo and Maternity in Recent Latin American Cinema. In: Gender and Sexuality in Latin American Horror Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56495-5_4
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