When Victim Meets Voyeur: An Aesthetic of Confrontation in Hispanic Social Issue Cinema

Abstract

Social issue cinema, or cine social in the Hispanic context, seeks to address current social and political issues by presenting the spectatorship with an account of reality that will be recognizable as 'authentic' or 'truthful'. Subsequently, when dealing with social issue cinema, cinematic technique is often taken for granted as a facile 'realism'. This essay, however, examines how social issue cinema employs alternative, even avant-garde techniques to inform spectators of social trauma. Specifically, the following pages explore those moments when direct eye contact is made between actor and spectator, or more precisely, when victim meets voyeur, in two socially-conscious Hispanic films: Los olvidados (Luis Buñuel, 1950) and El Bola (Achero Mañas, 2000). Unlike the standard shot/reverse shot technique in which an eye-line match is used to establish perspective within the closed world of the film, this direct eye contact between viewer and victim constitutes a contradictory moment in film spectatorship and is considered by some to be a taboo in 'classic' film style because of the way in which it subverts the 'realist' illusion. However, as part of a concerted effort to deny scopophilic viewing practices and heighten social consciousness, this (anti)technique has a particular place within social issue cinema because it breaks down the boundary between spectator and victim. The present study examines, first, how vision is foregrounded in Los olvidados in order to connect with (or condemn) viewers, through a fusion of avant-garde technique and socially-conscious filmmaking. The second part of the essay shows how this technique functions in a slightly different way in the context of El Bola, so as to illustrate how this so-called cinematic intrusion can be seen as part of a current trend toward functional hybridization in Spain's social issue cinema.