Trauma, Male Fantasies, and Cultural Capital in the Films of Pablo Larraín

This paper explores the visualization and intersection of trauma, male fantasies, and cultural capital in the first four feature-length films of Chilean director Pablo Larrain: Fuga (2006), Tony Manero (2008), Post Mortem (2010), and No (2012). Larrain’s first feature sketches out these themes in individual and familial terms; the subsequent three, forming what Larrain has called an ‘unintentional trilogy’ of the Pinochet dictatorship, visualize them in a more collective, historical, and political register. Categorizing these films as examples of ‘posttraumatic cinema,’ I demonstrate how Larrain images the fantasy scenarios that structure Chile’s ‘true horror’: namely, the weaponization of male fantasies and of cultural capital – the combination of which induced indelible traumas during the dictatorship. The attendant institutionalization of injustice, impunity, and neoliberalism – which, as Larrain shows, was conserved during the country’s transition to democracy – has limited the possibilities of workin...