Violence in Argentine Literature and Film (1989–2005) (review)

There is a sense in which the title of this collection of eleven essays, each by a different scholar working in the field of Latin American culture, is somewhat misleading. Although violence occurs in the action and informs the imagery of some of the texts analyzed, there are others in which it remains muted or indeed merely implied. What unites all these analyses, the ideological thread upon which the readings are strung, is the notion that the violence of Argentine life is the real subject here. Moreover, this violence is inflicted upon Argentina’s citizens not by the armed forces, the police, and the AAA (although their depredations do feature in certain contexts, of course); instead the implementation of the neo-liberal economic policies of the Washington Consensus by successive governments is itself characterized as an act of violence. Each of the analyses is concerned with the way in which the chosen texts reflect this violence of the world rather than of ‘literature and film.’

The period ‘1989–2005’ commences with the accession of Carlos Menem and concludes with the aftermath of the ‘crisis’ of the economic collapse of 2001. The analyses regard this period in isolation, both temporally and in other respects; both the texts considered and the analyses presented tend to ignore wider contexts: the profoundly patriarchal nature of Argentine culture, the long-term weakness of Argentina’s economy, the foreign debt crisis of the 1970s, the violent and anarchic collapse of Peronism, the ongoing quasi-feudal nature of rural Argentine life. Some of these factors are mentioned, but only in passing. This is characteristic of much writing on Argentine literature and film: Short essays must perforce adopt a narrow focus. These should be read in conjunction with full-length, single-author works such as Other Worlds: New Argentine Film (Aguilar, 2008)and Crisis and Capitalism in Contemporary Argentine Cinema (Page, 2009): the former in particular is at pains to consider the aesthetic strategies adopted by film-makers in their efforts to express the ‘new worlds’ that globalization is bringing into being in Argentina and elsewhere.

The collection comprises an introduction and three main sections: I. ‘The Legacy of the Military Years,’ II. ‘Paradise Lost’ (the effects of a widespread loss of faith in the legitimacy of the state), and III. ‘The Resignification of Social and Geographic Boundaries’ (the effects of globalization on both the myth and the reality of the nation); there is an extensive index.

The eleven chapters deal with four literary and thirteen film texts; they carry numerous references to secondary sources and the usual wide range of theoretical writings. It should be clear that detailed comment on this many items is not possible in a review of this length. However, the range of texts covered is wide and does deal with genres not always encountered at this level (Victoria Ruéltalo writes on three popular science fiction films). The general comments made earlier express an overview that is intended to give a broad guide to the character of these analyses; within individual essays, elaborations upon this broad character do, of course, occur.

The chapter authors and texts considered are:

1. I. Fernando Reati, Auschwitz (G. Nielsen); Myriam Osorio, El vuelo de la reina (T.E. Martinez); Elizabeth Montes Garcés, La muerte como efecto secundario (A.M. Shua); Ana Forcinito, Un muro de silencio (Stantic) and Los rubios (Carri).

2. II. Caroline Rocha, La furia (Stagnaro) and Cenizas del paraíso (Pine-yro); Gabriela Copertari, El cielito (Menis); Beatriz Urraca, El aura (Bielinski) and El custodio (Moreno).

3. III. Ignacio López-Vicuña, Bolivia (Caetano); Natalia Jackovis, Bolivia; Zulema Moret, Un dia de suerte (Gugliotta), Vagón fumador (Chen), Hoy y mañana (Chomski); Victoria Ruétalo, Cóndor Crux, la layenda (Buscarini, Glecer, Holcer), Moebius (Mosquera), La sonámbula (Spiner).

In short, this is a collection of essays covering a broad range of texts from a concentrated period in which Argentine life has undergone traumatic...