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

Abstract

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.