Asesinas en series: violencia femenina en la televisión mexicana

Abstract

Women who kill or take control of a drug cartel have moved into the center of interest of television producers. With series such as Mujeres asesinas or La reina del sur, television tries to show that it has already overcome the melodramatic tradition that qualifies women either as self-sacrificing victims or as ‘devourers’. These series propose that the female gender not only suffers the aggression of men or seduces them with their ‘own weapons’ but also responds to them with the ‘same weapons’. What is at stake, in other words, is the violent woman. The present study analyzes this conception of woman as a gender that defends itself. If woman is no longer a moral being destined to redeem or lose herself through virtue but disputes with man the dominance of ‘this’ world, does this mean equality of the genders? Or will there be a difference between women’s and men’s violence? The question is whether the series proposes a specifically female violence. What does women’s violence mean, both for the genders and for violence itself?

Keywords

• serial killers
• gender and violence
• la reina del sur
• mujeres asesinas
• narco-violence