"How will I explain why we live behind a wall?" La Zona (2007) as suburban gothic narrative

Autores

  • Bernice M Murphy Trinity College Dublin

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2012n62p241

Resumo

 

This paper argues that Rodrigo Pla’s film La Zona (2007), set ina privileged, self-governing gated community in Mexico City,replicates many of the North American variety of the SuburbanGothic’s most characteristic preoccupations, albeit in a LatinAmerican setting, and with reference to specifically regionaleconomic and political anxieties. The paper also discusses theways in which the Suburban Gothic so often serves as a meansof expressing specifically middle-class anxieties about therelationship between the privileged and the disenfranchised, inthis instance, specifically Mexican anxieties about the libertiesafforded to the wealthy and the ramifications of police corruptionand political cronyism.

Biografia do Autor

Bernice M Murphy, Trinity College Dublin

Bernice M. Murphy is an Assistant Professor and Lecturer inPopular Literature at the School of English, Trinity College Dublin,Ireland. She has edited the collection Shirley Jackson: Essays on theLiterary Legacy (McFarland, 2005) co-edited It Came From the 1950s:Popular Culture, Popular Anxieties (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011,)and written the monograph The Suburban Gothic in American PopularCulture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). She is co-founder and co-editorof the online Irish Journal of Horror and Gothic Studies and hasalso published essays on Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, JonathanCarroll, Back to the Future and Suburban-set Zombie movies. She iscurrently finishing a book about the relationship between horror andthe wilderness/rural landscape in American popular culture.

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Publicado

2012-11-06

Edição

Seção

The Gothic in New Landscapes