Ruins of the democratic promise: dystopian cityscapes in films of “el desencanto democrático”

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines two cinematic scenes of dystopia from the period of Spain’s so-called democratic disenchantment in Abre los ojos (Amenábar 1997) and El día de la bestia (De la Iglesia 1995). As the euphoric scene for the movida madrileña, in the 1980s Spain’s capital was largely depicted as a symbol of transition and progress, a center for the cultural production of the country’s post-dictatorship cultural effervescence. However, this article turns to interrogate a far more pessimistic vision of Spain’s capital in the 1990s, as De la Iglesia and Amenábar’s films reveal a darker, more dystopian view of the city’s streets. Released only two years apart, both films set their most crucial exterior sequences in the same two locations: Madrid’s Gran Vía and the postmodern business development at the north end of the Paseo de la Castellana. Both films present these areas as desolate and degraded cityscapes in a way that evokes the iconography of ruins, setting an alienating scene of loss and foreclosure. Through a theoretical engagement with ruins, I argue that these urban scenes of collapse and catastrophe suggest the non-arrival of the democratic promise brought by Spain’s Transition and prefigure a ruin of the future.