Gothic cinema, in much the same way as many other gothic narratives, provided from its inception a cinematic form that was intended to portray subversive and destabilising subjects in a given society. Such subversive stories, usually embodied in the figure of the monster, presented a deviant Other whose behaviour and actions were regarded as the epitome of moral and social ills and corruption in society. The figure of the monster in gothic cinema, as well as in the entire horror genre, has the ultimate function of confronting the notion of normality (embodied by the patriarchal and heteronormative system), the figure of the Other (the monster) and the relationship between the two. As Noel Carroll argues, the monster âas a figure of repressed psychic materialâ (1990: 174) has to be understood beyond the paradigm of the return of the repressed. The monster, therefore, operates as an entity that re-enacts the suppression of moral codes while at the same time lifting moral repression on the part of the viewer. In this light, monstrosity can be seen as a process of transformation whereby a human being, in most cases a protagonist of the gothic horror narrative, accepts the dyadic relationship between the good and evil that coexist within the self. This being comes to incarnate a monstrous host, a type of anti-subject that exists within, and projects this onto the audience of such narratives. As Harry M. Benshoff asserts, âmonsters can often be understood as racial, ethnic, and/or political/ideological Others, while more frequently they are constructed primarily as sexual Others (women, bisexuals, and homosexuals)â (1997: 4). More importantly, these monsters usually embody and reflect the existing anxieties in a specific society in relation to social, political and/or religious affairs, while they are also strongly linked to the politics of gender and sexuality that prevails at a specific historical moment. Arguably, gothic monsters, unlike other more traditional monsters, tend to be constructed as monstrous by their murderous actions rather than by their physical appearance. The gothic monstersâ appeal resides in their physical attractiveness and the fact that they may use their appearance as an intrinsic element in the process of seduction of their victims. As a result, the inclusion of the monster figure within these narratives evidences a tension between libidinous desire and (a)morality whereby the monster becomes a synonym for a type of deviant, and yet alluring, sexuality.
In Mexico, gothic narratives have been present almost from the very inception of the cinematic industry. For instance, before what could be regarded as the âMexican Golden Age of Horrorâ (broadly between the late 1940s and the late 1960s, and to which most of the films analysed in this chapter belong), RamĂłn PeĂłn had already made, by 1933, one of the earliest film versions of La Llorona, while within a few months Juan Bustillo Oroâs Dos monjes (1934) was also released in the country. The same year would also see the release of Fernando de Fuentesâs El Fantasma del Convento (1934) and, in 1935, another Bustillo Oro feature called El Misterio del Rostro PĂĄlido. As already suggested, although some of these films date as far back as the early 1930s, it is undeniable that the most prolific decades in the production of gothic horror films in Mexico were the 1950s and 1960s. By this point, a proper horror industry had really emerged in the country and production companies such as Tele Talia Films, Producciones Bueno, Producciones Delta and Diana Films all dedicated a great part of their production to making horror movies.
Many of these films either borrowed or extrapolated well-known gothic stories/storylines and (re)adapted them to the Mexican context. This process of (re)adaptation is what will be known as the âtropicalisationâ of the gothic narrative and will give birth to the âtropical gothicâ. This process of tropicalisation refers to a mechanism whereby the appropriation and recycling of narrative elements (or in the case of the cinema, elements of mise-en-scĂšne) are undertaken with the express intention of making visible a sense of Latin Americanness (or in this case a strong sense of Mexicanness) within gothic narratives in ways that clearly demarcate a difference between these national productions and similar narratives found and produced elsewhere. Thus the Mexican tropical gothic1 takes as its point of departure the centrality of the vampire figure (and narrative) and his constant transformations and transgressions. This is achieved by means of a slight modification in the presence of a Count Dracula who migrates to Mexico and becomes âMexicanisedâ despite still looking highly European, or through a radical transformation of the vampire figure, including his powers and the way he materialises himself. Most of these productions are characterised by making the Otherness of the monster character a pivotal element of the narrative. However, despite the Otherness of the characters, the narrative stresses cultural and folk elements that attest to the national specificity of the text. In the words of Gabriel Eljaiek, these narratives are characterised by
temas, personajes y aproximaciones narrativas y visuales [âŠ] acto de reciclar como âtropicalizaciĂłnâ por el interĂ©s explĂcito de los directores de exotizar sus filmes, de posicionarse crĂticamente frente a lo extraño pero tambiĂ©n frente a lo autĂłctono, dando como resultado un equilibrio entre el homenaje al precursor, la crĂtica del gĂ©nero y la crĂtica a lo propio. (2012: 164)
[themes, characters and narrative and visual approximations [âŠ] it is the act of recycling as âtropicalisationâ for the explicit interest of directors in exoticising their own films, and to critically position themselves against that which is strange and also that which is autochthonous, so as to offer an equilibrium between a heraldic homage, a criticism of the genre and a criticism of authorship]
In the context of Mexican gothic cinema, there is a clear divide between the Otherâwho clearly tries to challenge and destabilise the status quo of the patriarchal orderâand the native Mexican, whose ancestral and indigenous background will in most cases help him or her to emerge victorious from the evil monsterâs grasp.
Traditional gothic narratives (especially those found in literature in the works of writers like Justo Sierra, Vicente Riva Palacio, JosĂ© JoaquĂn Pesado and more recently Carlos Fuentes) tend to focus on the failed attempt of the monster-Other to destabilise the correct functioning of society by corrupting the values and decent morals of the protagonists. Gender roles tend to be quite prescriptive in terms of the way in which masculinity, femininity or queerness is played out by the different characters in such narratives. Thus this chapter has a threefold function. First, it will offer a brief account of a selected body of gothic films made from the 1930s to the 1960s to highlight those themes and tropes that made these Mexican films different from other gothic narratives elsewhere and demonstrate the tropicalisation of the gothic narratives. Secondly, it will look at the way in which the gothic villain not only comes to represent the battle against an Other that threatens to destabilise society, but also narrates stories of Mexican identity that put in evidence the struggle between Mexicoâs aboriginal ancestry and its post-colonial past. Finally, this chapter will undertake a study of the role of the antiheroine female figure within gothic narratives and will demonstrate that such characters and the socio-cultural roles embedded in their actions challenge, to a greater extent, traditional gothic narratives in which female protagonists adhere to mariana identity. This is achieved by offering female characters who present a different gender-based sexual and social behaviour; one that may not necessarily correspond to that perpetuated by traditional gothic films. The Mexican gothic filmography under analysis, as could be argued about gothic narratives from other countries in Latin America, is not merely constituted by remakes or copies of the original narratives that were created in Europe or Hollywood. Instead, it constitutes a body of films characterised by the recycling, revaluation and recontextualisationâin short, the tropicalisation as previously explainedâof traditional themes, characters and tropes.
This chapter will deal with those films in which the storyline can be clearly regarded as a âpurerâ gothic narrative, without the use or amalgamation of other genres or tropes that would create more hybrid films. Thus it will avoid exploitation cinema and, more specifically, Mexploitation films as part of the analysis.2 Instead, the films considered are those that enjoyed a prominent position within the countryâs film industry and were not regarded as products of subcultural or marginal forms of filmic culture. Historically, Mexican horror cinema flourished under the auspices of directors such as Chano Urueta, Juan Bustillo Oro and Fernando Mendez, among others, whose combined work made it possible that by the mid-1950s the horror genre in Mexico had become more popular than melodramas and the Cine ranchero.3 Several film studios also turned to horror cinema in order to quench the thirst for horror movies that had spread across the country. As previously suggested, many of these films took as their point of departure well-known gothic horror narratives such as Dracula, Frankestein, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, among others, but with a Mexican twist or flavour incorporated into the story. From the simple translocation of the story to Mexican lands to the incorporation of certain aspects of Mexican folklore and tradition, these films became embedded in the national imaginary as tales of horror and terror that reflected contemporary Mexico.
By narrowing the parameters of the body of analysis, it is expected that it will be easier to understand how female sexuality and female gender relations are depicted and manifested in a number of gothic horror movies up to the late 1960s. Although rather traditional in the way they address issues of female gender politics and sexuality in the country and, by extension, in many parts of the continent, these movies also show an radical shift in attitude towards women, as well as some female queer subjects, in terms of their gendered relations and expressions of their sexuality. Thus in many such films the role of women and other subaltern individuals is both revisited and contested. Horror cinema becomes an ideal medium to channel existing and imagined anxieties about the way women conduct their relationships and they way they experience, embody or use their femininity.
As previously suggested, the monster figure in many films operates as a metaphor for the sexual anxieties of an imagined audience, who see the monster as the anti-normative embodiment of issues of gender and sexuality as they circulate in the popular imaginary. As Barbara Creed has famously argued,
the identity of the monster, male and female, is inseparable from questions of sex, gender, power and politics. In order to better understand the dark side of our culture and the reasons why the symbolic order creates monsters, consciously or otherwise, we need to ask questions about the monsterâs origin, nature and function. (1993a: viii)
The horror monster or the villain, especially when compared and contrasted with the hero or heroine of horror fiction, allows audiences to explore societyâs darkest taboos and fears and to channel peopleâs repressed fantasies. It could be argued that the horror narrative provides the perfect medium to break free from the constraints of society and tackle those issues that are not addressed by other popular texts for fear of alienating or shocking audiences. Thus the main purpose of this chapter will be to offer an analysis of the anti-normative female gothicâthe villainess and the female monsterâand to establish whether the Mexican female gothic figure continues the tradition of other classical female gothics elsewhere, or whether it departs from this tradition and provides new readings on issues of Mexican femininity and femaleness.
Malinchism, Marianism and the Female Gothic
In the Mexican social imaginary the two images of femaleness (and female identity) that circulate widely among the population and shape the way women are constructed both socially and culturally are those of La Malinche and the Virgen de Guadalupe (a regional incarnation of the Virgin Mary). It could be argued that both figures operate as the opposite poles of a national, female, gendered consciousness. However, the Lady of Guadalupe, as she is known by most Mexicans, has been recognised by some theorists and writers, such as Octavio Paz, as a symbol of passivity that operates as an illustration of the feminine condition. Following on the predicates of the Virgin, mariana identity rests on the foundation that women must embody attributes such as âvirginity, piety, helpfulness, forgiveness, goodness, and devoted and selfless motherhoodâ (Lozano-DĂaz 2002: 90). Marianismo should not be regarded as the antithesis of machismo, but instead as an intrinsic element of a female gendered identity that, in the words of Evelyn Stevens, focuses on âthe cult of the feminine spiritual superiority, which teaches that women are semidivine, morally superior to and spiritually stronger than menâ (1973: 90).
Nonetheless, out of these two images of femaleness, La Malinche is the more controversial figure, because she has operated in the popular imaginary as a traitor to the Mexican nation due to her role as both the lover of conquistador HernĂĄn CortĂ©s and her alleged involvement in the eventual conquest of Technotitlan. La Malincheâs role in history is twofold: on the one hand, her decision to betray her own people can be seen as the product of resentment at being or becoming a slave (she sees in the conquistadors the possibility of freedom and some form of social climbing); on the other, her actions are justified in the context of âunrequitedâ love towards her conquistador lover. Ignacio Ramirez (2000) also asserts that La Malinche is guilty of a double treason in the eyes of both her own people and also herself, because she does not respect the role that a patriarchal society had assigned to women. By the nineteenth century and during the process of national consolidation, the body of La Malinche became a political body, a body of pleasure and a body of reproductive capacity. The image of La Malinche was to become a libidinal entity that constitutes a space of contention, because she was regarded as both the mother of all Mexicans and the whore who sold her own people in order to give herself to her Spanish lover. As Jitka CrhovĂĄ and Alfredo EscandĂłn explain, La Malinche âeerily evoke[s] her own life: a woman not fully belonging to a specific group, the otherness kept setting her apart [âŠ] CortĂ©s and Malinche are symbols of an unresolved secret conflictâ (2011: 1â2). This unresolved conflict is carried forward in the national formation of gendered identity in which mestizaje is regarded as the direct product of the illicit relationship between the aboriginal woman and the Mexican conqueror (the former being regarded as the victim of the latter). In the popular imaginary this conflict is reflected by a desire both to recover (and embrace) the values and traditions of Mexicoâs aboriginal past and, at the same time, to assume the values and traditions of the foreign Other (Spanish or American) as an ideal form of identity.
La Llorona
The aforementioned conflict is best exemplified in the film versions of La Llorona, in which the retelling of the well-known Latin American legend has clear resonances with La Malincheâs story. The first film of this legend was directed by RamĂłn PeĂłn in 1933 and, although the film lacks the rhythm and pace of other contemporary horror films, it shows a preoccupation with Mexicoâs historical past within the actual horror narrative. It intertwines three different stories that span the whole of the post-conquest history of Mexico. The first two are played by the same main actors and are set in the 1930s and the time of the Inquisition, respectively. While in the first story Ana Maria de Acuna (Virginia ZurĂ) is portrayed as the perfect and abnegated wife of the well-renowned surgeon Dr. Ricardo de Acuna (RamĂłn Pereda), in the second she is presented as the gullible lover of an important commander of the viceroy of Mexico who falls blindly in love with a man who betrays her honour. On discovering her loverâs betrayal, Doña InĂ©s stabs her 4-year old son to death and then proceeds to take her own life, while her spirit curses the de Acuna family and pledges revenge on all future generations. This action will then, within the narrative, give birth to the legend that will drive the main story. The curse will continue to haunt the family up to the present time, when it seems imminent that on the 4th birthday of the coupleâs son, the curse will be fulfilled and the son will die in unforeseen circumstances. The flashback sequence to the first story and the subsequent flashback sequence to La Malincheâs story will be presented as cautionary tales to warn Dr. de Acuna of the fatality that may besiege his family. As part of the retelling of the origin of the curse, towards the end of the film the narrative takes the audience back to the time of the conquest and narrates the story of La Malinche/Doña MarĂa (MarĂa Luisa Zea) and how she was betrayed by her conqueror lover Don Fernando de Moncada (Paco MartĂnez) due to her ethnic origin. Once again, the wounded mother takes her life and that of her son in an act of defiance towards the man who has made her abject as both a woman and a mother.
RenĂ© Cardonaâs (1960) version of the film follows nearly the same storyline, but jettisons the Malinche storyline altogether. Nevertheless, the similarities between the legend of La Llorona and the story of La Malinche are strik...