Basqueing on the bayou: conflicting visions of authenticity in Julio Medem’s Vacas and Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild

Abstract

This article examines a similar use of bovine vision as an act of looking at a seemingly authentic Basque and bayou identity in, respectively, Julio Medem’s Vacas and Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild. Central to both these films is a similar dichotomy between masculinity and femininity as the feminine, particularly the mother figure, is simultaneously mythologized and threatened by a masculinity tied to essential identity. Both films also attempt to suture historical debates regarding racial purity (or lack thereof) and class struggle within their own self-mythologizations. Additionally, both films centralize those discussions around a binary between rural/natural and urban/social as means of addressing the dichotomy of myth versus historical authenticity. However, where Beasts asserts that a wild authenticity can be achieved by returning to a pre-social state, Vacas deconstructs any idea of a real Basque identity. What this article shows are the high stakes that come with representing and under-represented community to an outside audience and the consequences that result when one links that community to a primal, natural authenticity.