ABSTRACT
Horror cinema has traditionally been regarded as a genre that reaffirms heteronormative gender constructs whereby women are, more often than not, depicted as passive recipients of the frustrations, anxieties and violent actions of their male counterparts. By the same token, queer subjects have been traditionally utilised as cyphers that encapsulate a number of social and sexual anxieties that guarantee the perpetuation of a heteronormative system that regards any deviation from traditional gender roles as an act of horror, which in itself suggests that Harry M. Benshoff is right when he argues that “homosexuality is a monstrous condition” (1997: 1). Valentin Javier Diment’s La memoria del muerto (2011) subverts this assumed heteronormative rhetoric by turning on its head the horror film formula whereby such films depict “the visceral and graphic punishment of immoral characters for various transgressions, including sexual activity” (Welsh 2010: 762) and, instead, sees violence utilised as an instrument to punish the sexual and gender paradigms—and the behaviours usually associated with them—that are regarded as normative in the cultural constructs of many Latin American societies. As a result, the gender-based violence and the horror experienced by the heterosexual characters in the film become nothing more than a means to reclaim a space of visibility and acceptance of queer culture and same-sex desire in the realm of Latin American sexual cultures.
