Monstrous Masculinities: Characters' Reactions to Abjection Point to Conflicted Truths in Historical Memory and Gender in Insensibles (2012)

Abstract

Abstract: Critics read the children with congenital insensitivity in Juan Carlos Medina's Insensibles (2012) as an allegory for Spaniards born into democracy. Just as the film's children cannot feel physical pain, later generations cannot comprehend the trauma of living through the civil war and/or ensuing dictatorship. This article expands this interpretation to note how the postmemory thriller's use of traditional gender markers and abjection offers further insight into the film's disputed ending. Feminine-presenting characters react to abjection (confrontations of the non-self) in ways that exemplify Matt Hills's pleasures of horror and reflect how Spain perpetually grapples with its fascist legacy. These characters react to abject's pain and violence with simultaneous attraction and repulsion, much like Spain's morbid fascination with reexamining its past. In contrast, masculine-presenting characters' disengagement speaks to politically conservative efforts to stymie historical memory campaigns. Protagonist David's "feminization" appears to support these efforts to recover memory. However, the final scene erases all affiliations between gender, abjection, and memory in a timeless, spaceless void, containing David's symbolic confrontation of the past to the hypothetical.