A Somatic Poetics of Crisis Cinema: The Gesture of Self-Harm in Three Spanish films. (2nd January 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Vidal, Belén
• Is Part Of: Hispanic research journal. Volume 20:Number 1(2019)
• Page Start: 42
• Page End: 57
• Publication Date: 2019-01-02
• Subjects: Spanish cinema -- financial crisis -- affect -- embodiment -- self-harming women; cine español -- crisis financiera -- afecto -- corporealidad -- mujeres que se auto-lesionan; Language and culture -- Spanish-speaking countries -- Periodicals; Language and culture -- Portuguese-speaking countries -- Periodicals; Spanish philology -- Periodicals; Portuguese philology -- Periodicals; Spain -- Civilization -- Periodicals; Portugal -- Civilization -- Periodicals; Latin America -- Civilization -- Periodicals; 909.097561
• DOI: 10.1080/14682737.2019.1584472
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1468-2737

Abstract

Abstract: This article looks at three fiction films released between 2012 and 2014 that, while not directly addressing the recessionary context, figure the female body as the visual site of crisis. La herida, Stockholm, and especially Magical Girl construe a vocabulary of embodied gestures. One in particular recurs time and again: a woman wilfully wounding her body. In films otherwise fraught with narrative gaps and ambiguities, gashes and wounds stubbornly remain visible evidence in search of a cause. Furthering ongoing critical conversation about cinema in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash, this paper connects performative gestures with states of diminished agency and the stagnation of the narrative of social change underpinning the Spanish cinema of the democracy. I look in particular at the acting styles on display in these films, and the ways that they bring to the fore the alienation that estranges subjects from their bodies. Eschewing allegorical readings of the wounded female body as a symptom of the national body in crisis, a somatic poetics is deployed to capture the de-nationalized filmic construction of affective states that speak of broken social links contaminated by the dynamics of neo-liberal debt.