The children-tigers against the necropower in Vuelven (López, 2017)

Abstract

In this article I will analyze how the traumatic grotesque and the astonishing grotesque function as rebellious devices in the Mexican film Vuelven (López, 2017), which is based on a syncretic imaginary, which combines the mainstream imaginary, with a properly Mexican one, full of Amerindian shamanic resonances. The grotesque functions here as an aesthetic-discursive framework, which uncovers the mechanisms and consequences of necropolitics, revealing a ruinous and spectral urban Mexico. The terrifying, the abject and the wonderful appear as ambivalent allies of the orphans, whose parents are victims of human trafficking, and who have to become warrior-tigers to confront a corrupt and violent socio-political reality governed by organized crime.

Keywords

• imaginario contrahegemónico, grotesco, abyecto, chamanismo, cine mexicano, narcocultura