Heterotopic Enclosures: Mexican National Spaces in Luis Buñuel’s El ángel exterminador and Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo

Abstract

This article analyses the subversive depiction of Mexican ‘national spaces’, such as homes, churches, and cemeteries, in Luis Buñuel’s El ángel exterminador (1962) and Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo (1955). Although both of these artists have been studied in considerable depth, a detailed comparison of their works remains to be carried out, particularly with respect to their innovative approach to spatiality. Both Buñuel’s film and Rulfo’s novel feature key physical and conceptual spaces which enclose and imprison their characters and I seek to link this sense of entrapment to a critique of nationalist cultural hegemony. The analysis will be carried out by applying Foucault’s (1986) concept of the heterotopia along with Lefebvre’s (1991) idea of ‘national space’. This new research will contribute towards a deeper understanding of spatiality in mid-twentieth century Mexican Modernism and a greater awareness of the myriad links between these two experimental artists.

Resumen

Este artículo analiza la representación subversiva de los ‘espacios nacionales mexicanos’, como los hogares, las iglesias y los cementerios, en El ángel exterminador (1962) de Luis Buñuel y Pedro Páramo (1955) de Juan Rulfo. Aunque se han realizado muchos estudios sobre ambos artistas todavía falta una investigación comparativa sobre su uso innovador del espacio. La película de Buñuel y la novela de Rulfo contienen espacios físicos y conceptuales que envuelven y encarcelan a sus personajes. Propongo vincular este sentido de encerramiento con la crítica hacia la hegemonía cultural nacionalista. El análisis aplica el concepto de ‘heterotopía’ de Foucault (1986) y la idea de ‘espacio nacional’ de Lefebvre (1991). Esta nueva investigación amplía el conocimiento del espacio en el modernismo mexicano a mediados del siglo veinte y explora los vínculos entre ambos artistas experimentales.

Keywords:

• Mexico
• Buñuel
• Rulfo
• space
• national

Palabras Clave:

• México
• Buñuel
• Rulfo
• espacio
• nacional

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Bill Richardson for his comments and suggestions during the writing of this article. Special thanks also go to Victoria Bernal and Oscar Berrendo of (EGEDA) and Mercury Films S.A. for granting permission to reproduce images from El ángel exterminador.

Notes

¹ The assumption being made here is that symbolic expression and cultural production are both intrinsically bound up with questions of spatiality, whether we are dealing with literature, cinema, music, or the plastic arts. Richardson (2015, 2) suggests that ‘no account of our capacity to express ourselves symbolically can avoid addressing the multiple ways in which spatiality informs our relationships with others’.

² This process can be seen in the case of the Great Pyramid of Cholula (Tlachihualteptl) in Puebla. Symbolically, the Church physically and figuratively occupies a higher level, supplanting the social and ritual function of the former indigenous beliefs. The church in Cholula now houses the ‘Virgin of the Remedies’, a figure who replaced Chiconauhquiauhitl (Goddess of the Nine Rains) (McCafferty 1996).

³ Stott (2005, 9) makes reference to ‘the disparity between place and self that is continually used in comedy, stories in which people are geographically, linguistically, or, in some profound existential way, misplaced’ (my emphasis).

⁴ According to Foucault (1986, 25), ‘heterotopias of crisis are disappearing today and are being replaced by […] heterotopias of deviation: those in which individuals whose behaviour is deviant in relation to the required mean or norm are placed’. He suggests that prisons and cemeteries are prime examples of these liminal spaces.

⁵ This genre often extolled traditional ideas of nationhood and morality. Cuando los hijos se van (1941) directed by Juan Bustillo Oro is a notable example. Monsiváis (2013, 318) refers to it as ‘la auditoría del orden familiar’.

⁶ Buñuel was heavily influenced by the Surrealist movement, most notably in Un chien andalou (1929). In El ángel exterminador, the collective dream sequence and the episode with the severed hand are further evidence of the Spanish director’s debt to Surrealism.

⁷ See Ockelford (2005, 74–118) on the musical structure of the piano sonata.

⁸ The representational space of the theatre, that is, a single space which juxtaposes a variety of seemingly incompatible spaces and locations, can also be described as a heterotopia (Foucault 1986). The second ‘performance’ of the guests can be said to transform the space of the music room into a theatrical space.

⁹ Hereafter all references to Pedro Páramo will take the form: PP plus page number, and come from Rulfo (2010).

¹⁰ Eckert suggests that ‘the text [Pedro Páramo] gains clarity and religious meaning once Comala is understood as a Christian purgatory with an indeterminate geography, physicality, and time […]’ (2011, 73).

¹¹ See Lomnitz 2008, 439.

¹² This structure is mentioned in St. Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians: ‘May he [the God] of peace himself also sanctify you in all things so that your whole spirit and soul and body […]’. This passage is cited in Phelan (2011, 13) as part of an analysis of the contentious nature (which Rulfo’s text parodically references) of scholastic interpretations of this distinction.