The Queer Gothic Regime of Narciso Ibáñez Serrador's La residencia (1969)

Citation

Davies A (2020) The Queer Gothic Regime of Narciso Ibáñez Serrador's La residencia (1969). In: Lema-Hincapié A & Domènech C (eds.) Indiscreet Fantasies: Iberian Queer Cinema. Bucknell University Press.

Abstract
First paragraph: Gothic texts have a long and strong association with queer. As William Hughes and Andrew Smith observe: "Gothic has, in a sense, always been queer. The genre, until comparatively recently, has been characteristically perceived in criticism as being poised astride the uneasy cultural boundary that separates the acceptable and familiar from the troubling and different." They go on to note that "Gothic historically appears to lack the commitment to absolute definitions of identity and substance that arguably characterise... mainstream literatures." Paulina Palmer, for her part, claims that "the spectre and phantom, key signifiers of the uncanny, carry connotations of 'excess' since their appearance exceeds the material, and this is another concept that connects the uncanny with 'queer'." Harry Benshoff, writing on queer as a theoretical concept in horror, argues: "Queen can be a narrative moment, or a performance or a stance which negates the oppressive binarisms of the dominant hegemony... both within culture at large, and within texts of horror and fantasy. It is somewhat analogous to the moment of hesitation that demarcates Todorov's Fantastic, or Freud's theorization of the Uncanny: queerness disrupts narrative equilibrium and sets in motion a questioning of the status quo, and in many cases within fantastic literature, the nature of reality itself."

Keywords
La residencia; Narciso Ibáñez Serrador; Gothic cinema; queer cinema; Spanish film

People

Professor Ann Davies

Emeritus Professor, Spanish