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Abstract
Le parfait crime (1995) by Jean Baudrillard and Crimen ferpecto (2004) by the Basque director Alex de la Iglesia are two works that not only have in common almost identical titles. They both reflect on how in consumer societies, an imperfect real world is substituted for an illusory hyperreality in which the distinction between subject and object has disappeared. While Baudrillard explains how the denial of a transcendent reality in contemporary society is “a perfect crime” that destroys the real, Alex de la Iglesia uses black humor and a mix of genres (mainly grotesque comedy and thriller) to show the way in which fashion and the obsession with a perfect body create a homogenizing and false world that excludes anybody who does not fit in the beauty canons or does not follow the dictates of mass media. In my essay I propose a reading of de la Iglesia´s Crimen ferpecto in the light of Baudrillard's theories on consumer objects, mass media, fashion, hyperreality, simulation, and desire.
Bio Note
María Asunción Gómez is Professor of Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages at Florida International University. She holds a Ph.D. in Spanish from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (1995), a M.A. in Comparative Literature from West Virginia University, and a B.A. in Philology and Humanities from the University of Salamanca (Spain).
Her research interests cover a broad range of topics in modern Hispanic literatures, popular culture, gender and film studies, as well as translation studies. The focus of her publications is the representation of gender and the body, motherhood, gender violence, myth and feminism, gender identity and performance, and issues related to film spectatorship.
Recommended Citation
GOMEZ, MARIA A.
(2023)
"La radical imperfección del mundo: El crimen perfecto de Jean Baudrillard y el Crimen ferpecto de Alex de la Iglesia,"
The Coastal Review: An Online Peer-reviewed Journal: Vol. 13:
Iss.
1, Article 1.
DOI: 10.20429/cr.2023.130101
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/thecoastalreview/vol13/iss1/1
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