UCLA Center for the Study of Women

This presentation is part of a dissertation chapter that explores how representations of gendered violence in contemporary Spanish cinema are indicative of a larger shift towards viewing gendered violence as a human rights issue. In recent years, mainstream Spanish films, such as Te doy mis ojos (dir. Icíar Bollaín, 2003), Sólo mía (dir. Javier Balaquer, 2001), and Piedras (dir. Ramón Salazar, 2002), focus on the issue of domestic violence, referred to in Spain as terrorismo familiar, familiar terrorism, which emphasizes how domestic abuse is more than just a violent act, but a violent act whose goal is to intimidate its victim along ideological lines. While these films focus mainly on domestic violence within Spain, this shift towards thinking about gendered violence as a human rights violation is indicative of a larger attempt to promote gender equality within the Spanish and Latin American contexts and illustrates a decisive move away from North American and Northern European feminist thought and practice, which is either seen as the female counterpart of machismo or as a form of cultural imperialism that overlooks the cultural specificity of gender identity in the Ibero-American world.