ABSTRACT
In this chapter we will question the different ways of representing violence against women and bodies that are feminized, racialized, impoverished and geopolitically located in the South, specifically in Colombia and Mexico. To that end, we will focus on two recent films: La mujer del animal (2016), directed by Víctor Gaviria, and Backyard: El traspatio (2009), directed by Carlos Carrera and written by the Mexican feminist playwright Sabina Berman. The two movies analyzed in this chapter center on rape and bride kidnapping and stand out for their production akin to cinema verité, in which the anesthetization of violence plays an essential role in the narrative.
To carry out our endeavor, an interdisciplinary methodology in which feminist film theory intersects with critical discourse analysis will be used. Furthermore, we will apply a transfeminist and decolonial analysis of what we have called the “live regime” (Valencia and Sepúlveda), with several axes intersecting around the problem of violence against racialized women from “ex-colonial” countries, who are repositories of cumulative violences that have been naturalized through the coloniality of gender (Lugones 73).
