SILENCES AND METAPHORS: ANALOGIES IN THE USE OF AMBIGUITY IN AMPARO DÁVILA’S «THE GUEST» AND (POST)MODERN HORROR FILM

Abstract

The text studies the short story of the Mexican Amparo Davila «The Guest» (1959) in the light of a certain type of postmodern horror, where what is left unsaid, what is suggested, is more important than what is stated explicitly. The mechanism brings to mind Cortazar’s fantastic poetics and is present in several current films, praised by serious critics, such as The Babadook (2014), It Follows (2014) and The Witch (2015): all these forms privilege what Campra calls silences of the text. This seemingly gratuitous reluctance to name reality fosters, paradoxically, the widening of the interpretive arc, allowing –even demanding– metaphorical readings of the story and its characters. «The Guest», in particular, suggests a feminist (or, at least, feminine) interpretation. How one arrives at this reading and to what extent procedures in theory innovative in the areas of the fantastic and horror, contribute to it constitutes one of the main objectives of the work.