Mi sitio SPIP

The desiring gaze and the enjoyment of madness: a psychoanalytic reading of feminine horror

2026-07-21T14:24:58Z

Abstract

This article presents a psychoanalytic analysis of the film Pearl (2022), exploring the relationship between gaze, desire, and madness in the construction of the subject. It employs Lacan's optical schema and key concepts such as superego, jouissance, mirror-I, and idealization to interpret Pearl's interactions with parental figures, objects of desire, and fantastical projections on the screen. The film is examined not only as a narrative but also as an aesthetic construction, considering how visual composition, framing, and lighting reinforce subjective fragmentation and the tension between desire and repression. This approach offers a reading that bridges psychoanalytic theory and cinematic analysis, providing new perspectives on the representation of madness and subjectivity in contemporary cinema.

- Volumen 16 | Nº 2 | July 2026

The Narrative of Dissensus: Approaches to Viejo calavera (2017) by Kiro Russo Based on a Reading of Jacques Rancière

2026-07-21T14:24:18Z

Abstract

This essay offers a philosophical reading of the Bolivian film Viejo calavera (2017), directed by Kiro Russo, drawing on the conceptual framework of Jacques Rancière. It argues that the film is inscribed within the aesthetic regime of the image insofar as it articulates a form of aesthetic and political thought manifested through narrative dissensus, the construction of rarefied spaces, and the non-representative redistribution of the sonic field. To support this thesis, the analysis examines the narrative structure through the notions of deviation and curves, as well as the formal mechanisms that generate perplexity and silence. The study shows that Viejo calavera participates in a form of cinematic modernity in which politics does not operate as a message, but as a sensible interruption of the representative regime.

Keywords: Viejo calavera | Jacques Rancière | aesthetics | aesthetic regime | politics

- Volumen 16 | Nº 2 | July 2026

The search of meaning and cinema

2026-07-21T14:24:12Z

Abstract

This work begins with an analysis of the human being as a seeker of meaning. Thus, the question of meaning is a questioning that is presented as a recurrent existential dilemma that marks life with the question: why or for what purpose do I do what I do? The existential meaning as a justification of the acts and purpose of life, will be contrasted with the cinema as an incipient searcher of meaning that can help the present subject in the answer to this question. Thus, the individual is defended as a searcher of meaning and the cinema, as a representative of art, is proposed as a means to elucidate and answer this question. In this last part we will use the film Close (2022) by director Lukas Dhont, to analyze the search for meaning in his argument and to deepen our proposal.

Keywords: meaning | cinema | existence | life

- Volumen 16 | Nº 2 | July 2026

Fractured Mirrors in an Overloaded World

2026-07-21T14:24:00Z

Abstract

This Expo Facto research critically examines how the aesthetic and narrative variables specific to postmodern cinema are used to represent the climate change crisis, a hyper-complex, global-scale phenomenon. Based on a theoretical framework that integrates postmodern film theory with ecocriticism and environmental mediation studies, a corpus of films produced since the late 20th century is analyzed. The analysis identifies the operation of key variables such as pastiche, self-referentiality, non-linear and fragmented narrative, the aesthetics of the dystopian sublime, and the indeterminacy of the subject versus collective agency. It is argued that these strategies, while effectively capturing the decentralization, uncertainty, and information overload of the Anthropocene era, can also lead to political paralysis or an aesthetization of disaster, distancing the viewer from concrete action. The article concludes that postmodern climate cinema oscillates between being a symptom of modernity's inability to narrate totality and a powerful tool for visualizing new relational ecological ontologies, challenging traditional heroic and anthropocentric narratives.

- Volumen 16 | Nº 2 | July 2026

When revenge is justified. Regarding Kill Bill: Hegel, the life-or-death struggle for recognition of the other, and Foucault's power relations

2026-07-21T14:23:55Z

Abstract

This article interprets the film Kill Bill as a journey of struggle for recognition in which anger and revenge, far from being destructive passions, become forces aimed at recovering violated dignity. Against the view that equates anger and revenge with irrationality and loss of control, it defends their potential restorative function when they arise from an unjustified grievance and are guided by reason and conscience. The article draws on Hegel and his "struggle to the death for the recognition of the other," as well as his dialectic between master and slave, to explain how Beatrix Kiddo, reduced to slavery, seeks to recover her autonomy by confronting Bill, the master who molded her identity and reduced her to an object. To further explore this idea, the article engages with Foucault and Pasolini, whose reflections on power relations illuminate Beatrix's process of desubjectification, as well as the possibility of reversing it. Finally, it will be concluded that Beatrix's revenge, although tragic and irreconcilable, represents a reappropriation of herself and an act of freedom that brings forth her self-awareness.

Keywords: Revenge | recognition | power | subjectivation | self-awareness

- Volumen 16 | Nº 2 | July 2026

Bodies Turned into Weapons: An Ethical and Psychoanalytic Reading

2026-07-21T14:23:50Z

Abstract

This article analyzes the film Weapons (Zach Cregger, 2025) from a dual perspective: ethics and psychoanalysis. The work, centered on the disappearance of a group of schoolchildren and the control rituals carried out by a witch over the community, provides a privileged framework to reflect on the instrumentalization of the body and the transmission of collective trauma. From an ethical standpoint, the film problematizes the community's response, which, instead of fostering solidarity, resorts to blame, exclusion, and the sacrifice of the Other. The narrative ambiguity of Weapons reinforces the need to question the boundaries between victim and perpetrator, as well as individual and collective responsibility. From a psychoanalytic perspective, the film revisits Freudian the uncanny: the familiar turned disturbing, where bodies become instruments of another's will and rituals represent the return of the repressed. It is concluded that the true horror of the work does not lie in the supernatural, but in the fragility of human bonds in the face of violence and fear.

Keywords: weapon | community | body | responsibility | terror

- Volumen 16 | Nº 2 | July 2026

Pictures of reality in three Argentine underground fictions

2026-07-21T14:23:45Z

Abstract

The argentine underground cinema of the 70's uniquely combine the avant-garde techniques and politics in a radically experimental style, yet with obvious references of the country's political context .Distrustful of documentary ways when it came to their reflections on reality, these filmmakers produced fiction films, which nevertheless ended up including documentary footage in their films. In this paper, we aim to explore the implications of using testimonial images in fiction films, and understand how this footage is articulated within the political discourse of the underground filmmakers. We will study the cases of … (Puntos suspensivos) (Dot…Dot…Dot…) (Cozarinsky, 1971), La pieza de Franz (Franz's Piece) (Fischerman, 1973), and La civilización está haciendo masa y no deja oír (Civilization is making mass noise and doesn't let us hear) (Julio Ludueña, 1974).

Keywords: Reality and pictures | Underground cinema | Allegories and metaphors

- Volumen 16 | Nº 2 | July 2026

Confined Childhoods: Allegory and Subjectivation in Samira Makhmalbaf's The Apple

2026-07-21T14:23:39Z

Abstract

Samira Makhmalbaf's The Apple (1998) is a docudrama that addresses the true story of twin sisters, Massoumeh and Zahra Naderi, who leave their home for the first time at age 12, after spending their lives confined by their parents' choice. Although their motor and communicative abilities are impaired, this does not stop them from venturing into the outside world, with the help of a social worker, other children, and the women of the neighborhood. We propose to analyze the film as an allegory of the sociopolitical condition of Iran after the 1979 uprising. The Naderi family operates as a micro-representation of power structures: the father personifies the State and the mother the Islamic clergy. Both infantilize and disable "the people" (the girls), under a rhetoric of protection and care, depriving them of basic development.

The apple and the mirror will serve as visual and narrative symbols, fostering the search for freedom of two girls maturing within the context of structural violence in a young republic. As a theoretical framework, we will examine George Herbert Mead's social psychology on the formation of the "self," Ann Kaplan's ethical proposals regarding the act of "witnessing," and Nirmala Erevelles' transnational and gender-based disability studies. Thus, while the State and the clergy (the parents) restrict identity, it is social interaction and the ethical perspective of the community that allow the twins to emancipate themselves and achieve subjectivity.

- Volumen 16 | Nº 2 | July 2026

We are the same human beings, but they were unlucky: The Ableist Gaze and the Rejection of Japanese Homogeneity in Kazuo Hara's Sayonara CP

2026-07-21T14:23:35Z

Abstract

This article analyzes Kazuo Hara's documentary Sayonara CP (1972), examining the tension between its activist potential and the ethical problems of its gaze. The central hypothesis argues that the film, while standing as a direct challenge to the myth of postwar Japanese homogeneity, does so from an ableist perspective. Through textual analysis and the application of theoretical frameworks such as documentary performativity (Bruzzi) and dialogism (Bakhtin/Stam), it demonstrates how the film generates a clash of perspectives that, on the one hand, gives visibility and agency to the Aoi shiba no kai collective, but on the other hand, reproduces power dynamics inherent to ableism. The study explores key sequences (from public confrontation to the intrusion into the protagonists' domestic sphere) to argue that Hara's lens, while collaborative, instrumentalizes bodies with disability. It concludes that the film's value lies precisely in making these contradictions productive, acting as a fundamental document that expands the Japanese identity horizon while critically questioning the limits of cinematic representation.

Keywords: Documentary Films | Disability | Cultural Identity | Motion Pictures-Japan

- Volumen 16 | Nº 2 | July 2026

Cinema, Body, and Power. The Subaltern Subject in Prayers for the Stolen

2026-07-21T14:23:29Z

Abstract

This article analyzes the film Prayers for the Stolen (2021), directed by Tatiana Huezo, through the lens of the subaltern subject. Drawing on theoretical frameworks from subaltern studies, Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony, James C. Scott's notion of everyday resistance, Judith Butler's performativity of gender, and Michel Foucault's biopower, the article explores how the film portrays resistant bodies, silent acts of survival, and power technologies imposed on female bodies within a context of structural violence. The study argues that cinema, beyond being a mere social mirror, serves as a critical space that enriches theoretical reflections on subalternity. Ultimately, it proposes that cinematic art, as both a sensitive and political device, holds the power to give voice to those historically silenced.

Keywords: resistance | biopolitics | gender performativity | structural violence | cinematic representation

- Volumen 16 | Nº 2 | July 2026