Including Excess: Camp Aesthetics and the Creation of a Third Space in the Films of Teresa Suárez

• In Event: Cracks in the Screen: Theorizing a Third Space in Mexican Cinema

Abstract

If we are to understand the camp aesthetic as the striking of a pose to purposefully show what one pretends to be hiding, thus revealing the interstices, the spaces that are repressed but ultimately irrepressible, as one that has historically been utilized by the marginal in order to advocate for a third space in which their oft-contradictory identities can exist in the popular imaginary, then its deployment in film can be examined as a conscious socio-political strategy. I will analyze Teresa Suárez’s two film features Así del precipicio (2006) and ¿Qué le dijiste a Dios? (2013) through the lens of camp to theoretically address the inclusion of shocking images, graphic depictions of female sexuality, pleasure and aggression, excess and Almodovarian drug-addiction, in the former, and Bollywood-style musical numbers juxtaposed so as to reflect on gender and class injustice, as well as the urban rural divide—scored entirely from hits by the uber-famous queer icon Juan Gabriel—in the latter.Both films, albeit with very different tones, engage an aesthetics of over-consumption, firmly set within the lives of the ultra-rich in Mexico city. They critique the codified nature of their protagonists’ existence, revealing both the impossibility of living a stereoptype and the desire to rip off the máscaras mexicanas. These films, I will argue, embody camp contradiction, carving out representational spaces for gender dissidents, religious minorities, “queer” identities, peripheral people and class critics while still appealing to a pop audience, and, ironically reproducing a neoliberal production model of corporate sponsorship.

Author

• Ilana S Luna, Arizona State University