Constructing Ethical Attention in Lucía Puenzo’s Xxy

Abstract

Argentine filmmaker Lucía Puenzo’s movie XXY (2007) stands apart from a long line of other fictional and philosophical works concerned with intersexed characters. In contrast to works that use “the hermaphrodite” as a trope for an original unity of the sexes, decadence, or degeneration, the film focuses on the lived experience of a concrete intersexed adolescent raised as a girl.¹ By tracing five days in the life of 15-year-old Alex and her family on a sparsely populated Uruguayan island, Puenzo constructs a complex vision of an intersexed character portrayed not as a metaphor but as a material being in relation with others.² Throughout this process, the director propagates ideals that have been defended by intersex activists in Argentina and the United States. XXY disputes the need for genital surgeries at birth, objects to the naturalization of culturally contingent sexual binaries, and contends that intersexed individuals should be allowed to decide the destiny of their bodies for themselves.