Dolores Tierney

The transnational fantasies of Guillermo del Toro

Following Robin Wood, Tanya Modleski, and other horror theorists, this chapter addresses the political function of horror and horrific tropes (including aspects of horror’s mise-en-scene) in Guillermo del Toros Cronos, El espinazo, and El laberinto del fauno. It takes into consideration the significant transnationality of the horror genre itself both in terms of its classical Hollywood origins that effectively absorbed a range of stylistic, cultural, and industrial practices of nations outside the United States, as well as what critics have argued is its potential as a genre for “travel[ing] . . . across different national cultures and contexts [and] also across media forms and fan culture.” This includes Cronos’s acknowledgment of Mexico’s own horror/fantasy film tradition, which is heavily hybridized, drawing in particular on the style, iconography, and even narratives of the 1930s Universal horror films Frankenstein (James Whale 1931), Dracula (Tod Browning 1931), and Mystery of the Wax Museum (Michael Curtiz 1933). The chapter positions del Toro as a part of this hybridized and transnational film history with institutional roots on both sides of the US/Mexico border. It contends that these films take advantage of a shared Hispanic imaginary and explore cultural, local, and political material specific to Mexico/Latin America and Spain.

New transnationalisms in contemporary Latin American cinemas

In the late 1990s and early 2000s Latin American films like Amores perros, Diarios de motocicleta, Y tu mama tambien and Cidade de Deus enjoyed an unprecedented level of critical and commercial success in global markets. Benefiting from external financial and/or creative input, these films were considered examples of transnational cinema. Through a textual analysis of six filmmakers (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Alfonso Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro, Fernando Meirelles, Walter Salles and Juan Jose Campanella), this book examines these and other transnational films including the subsequent wave of commercially successful ‘deterritorialized’ films by the same directors. It argues that although the films produced within the structures of the United States film industry may have been commercially successful, they are not necessarily apolitical nor totally divorced from key notions of national or continental identity. Bringing a new perspective to the films of Latin America’s transnational auteurs, New Transnationalisms in Contemporary Latin American Cinemas is a major contribution towards understanding how different genres function across different cultures.