Spectacles of Death: Body Horror, Affect and Visual Culture in the Mexican Narco Wars

Article sample: 

This article offers a brief overview of the highly mediatized nature of the current phase of the Mexican narco wars, highlighting the existence of explicit videos released online by the cartels, which show executions and beheadings in gory detail. I argue that mutilated human bodies are first used as a discursive device that propagates criminal propaganda, and are then reappropriated by film and TV producers as a narrative tool, which raises ethical questions. The article compares and analyses the ways in which violated and mutilated bodies from this conflict are depicted in scenes from two Hollywood productions – the TV show Breaking Bad (created by Vince Gillian, 2008-2013) and Denis Villeneuve's Sicario (2015) – and in Mexican director Amat Escalante's Heli which won Best Director at Cannes in 2013. These three texts allow us to look at how distinct cultural industries – US quality television, the Hollywood conglomerate and the Mexican indie film industry – address the abuse of human bodies for propagandistic purposes. The article draws from the theoretical concept of affect (as framed in Aldana-Reyes' recent work on horror cinema, as well as Brinkema's The Forms of the Affects) and scholarship on leaked torture photographs (focusing on the Abu Ghraib scandal). This piece explores the aesthetic and ethical implications of representing real life violence on the screen, particularly when depicting cartel killings. It then explores the ways in which the shock value in narco videos communicates with the three texts abovementioned.

About Senses of Cinema:

Senses of Cinema is an online journal devoted to the serious and eclectic discussion of cinema. We believe cinema is an art that can take many forms, from the industrially-produced blockbuster to the hand-crafted experimental work; we also aim to encourage awareness of the histories of such diverse forms. As an Australian-based journal, we have a special commitment to the regular, wide-ranging analysis and critique of Australian cinema, past and present. Senses of Cinema is primarily concerned with ideas about particular films or bodies of work, but also with the regimes (ideological, economic and so forth) under which films are produced and viewed, and with the more abstract theoretical and philosophical issues raised by film study.