Remembering the Future, Unraveling the Mystery – The Science Fiction Film in Post-Dictatorship Argentina

• In Event: Hibridez, interdiscursividad y géneros cinematográficos

Abstract

Science Fiction has often been described as a genre of the future. However, what if we could think of it as deeply engaged with the past? This paper investigates the connections between science fiction's conventions and its impulse to do what 'policiales' have often been credited for: unraveling a mystery lodged in the past. Argentinean Sci-Fi's epistemophilic desire is rooted in a need to decode a fraught past laden with what for decades escaped human understanding: senseless persecution, torture and murder. The genre's concern with rationality provides an ideal form through which to rework the traumatic authoritarian events so prominent in Argentinean history. By recognizing the ties between these two genres, we open up the possibility of understanding science fiction as concerned with the cautionary warnings of the future but also providing an avenue to come to terms with the effects of a nefarious past. Through a critical look at several contemporary mainstream films released in Argentina in the 1990s and 2000s, contextualized within narratives in newspapers and historical accounts, we are able to see Argentinean science fiction as deeply concerned with memory and the past. Films such as Moebius (Gustavo Mosquera, 1996), and La Sonámbula (Fernando Spiner, 1998), will serve as examples. By unraveling the current and future state of affairs, these films' provide an investigation of the dystopian status quo as the search for an understanding and memorializing of the past, while offering a political statement of warning so this devastation never happens again.

Author

• Jennifer Alpert, UC Berkeley