Dragging Ghosts: How Tigers Are Not Afraid Brought Social Issues to Mexican Horror
Researcher and writer Jumko Ogata-Aguilar explores how Issa López's Tigers Are Not Afraid brought social issues into Mexican horror.
Jordan Peele defines the social thriller as “thriller/horror movies where the ultimate villain is society”. His 2017 directorial debut, Get Out, became an instant classic due to its exploration of racism in present U.S. society. When I first saw it, what surprised me the most was the versatility within the film; easily flowing from comedy, to drama, to gory horror. All of this occurs in a secluded country home where the protagonist is particularly threatened, because nobody outside of the community is there to bear witness to the atrocities committed against Black bodies throughout the movie. This solitude is emphasized by the fact that the protagonist is the only child of a single mother who was murdered in a hit and run when he was very young. A large part of the horror within the film surfaces because the protagonist is emotionally and literally alone, in the house with the Armitage family, in the “sunken place” within his mind, and within society as a Black man who is considered always as a possible threat to others. Get Out is certainly not the first film to contain social commentary and critique - but, for someone of my generation (millennial) who was not as familiar with films made in this style in the past, Get Out showed me how horror ultimately proves that what scares the most isn’t an imaginary monster or ghost, but the terrifying reality that awaits so many of us as people of colour in the modern world.
As a Black Mexican, I began to wonder if there weren’t similar themes and commentaries in other films of the genre, particularly in my home country’s production. I was aware that I wouldn’t find anything like Get Out, due to the obvious differences in culture, context and language, but I was eager to hear anything Mexican writers and directors had to tell me through their horror. The first film I examined was one that I had heard about my whole life; Carlos Enrique Taboada’s Hasta el viento tiene miedo (Even the Wind is Afraid, 1968). The film follows about seven teenage schoolgirls who are forced by their harsh headmistress to remain on school grounds during the holidays due to their unruly behaviour. Only the headmistress and one teacher remain with the students in order to continue their classes and maintain discipline. One of the girls starts having nightmares and sleepwalks, and we learn that a former student who committed suicide on campus is trying to execute her vengeance from beyond the grave towards the headmistress who harmed her in life. The girls are catty towards one another, and I found one particular sequence very compelling, due to its odd perspective. Kitty, the apparent leader of the group, invites one of her classmates to dance with the rest so she won’t snitch on them for being up after hours. The girl (Josefina) begins to dance timidly - but, as the other girls cheer her on, she dances more confidently. Kitty sees this and dares Josefina to strip. Josefina nervously backs away and the other girls rip her clothes off until Claudia (the one who has nightmares) intervenes. Kitty sulkily throws the clothes back to Josefina, telling the others to watch and learn. What follows is a sequence about five minutes in length that is solely Kitty stripping and dancing in front of her friends. She reveals provocative lingerie underneath her dress and the dancing ends when she sees the ghost of the dead student in the window looking at her from outside. When I finished the film, I continued to think about this sequence, because it didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the story. It didn’t do anything to advance the plot and only served as a way to show the audience that Kitty is a hip and sexy modern girl, unlike her “prudish” classmates. Perhaps it was a nod towards the decades’ sexual revolution that dared show women’s sexuality more openly. However, it was written and filmed through a male gaze; coming off more as an excuse for nudity than an actual recognition of a woman’s exploration of her eroticism. For the most part, men had access to mainstream budgets and distribution and could decide if they wanted to tell stories about women, and what those stories would be. Even when they do show us the systemic oppression and violence women are subjected to, they are still telling those stories through a male point of view.
On the other hand, Taboada’s film also makes use of a popular female archetype in the media: The Bitch. The headmistress of the girls’ school is a cold, career-focused woman, incapable of empathy with her students, to the point that she drives one of the girls to suicide. The other of the students refer to her as “vieja” (old woman) and “bruja” (witch), and it seems that the headmistress’s only purpose is to make everybody around her miserable. Trouble at this school began with a single woman’s cruelty and ended with her ultimate demise. Therefore, we can see that one of Mexican society’s greatest fears during the late Sixties was of the single, childless woman, completely focused on her career instead of the possibility of raising a family. Her distant demeanour, rigid rules and lack of caring manners literally made those around her kill themselves, and brought tragedy to the spaces she inhabited and controlled.
Even though Taboada’s films were very popular towards the end of the twentieth century, horror became increasingly less popular as the 2000s rolled in. The Mexican film industry abandoned the genre in favour of dramedy, romantic-comedy and drama projects. All ten of Mexico’s nationally produced highest-grossing films of all time were comedies or romantic-comedies; Mexico’s greatest hit Instructions Not Included (2013) reported earnings of 600.37 million Mexican pesos (about 26,463,900 USD). In comparison, one of the country’s most successful contemporary horror films, KM 31: Kilometre 31 (2006) only made 16.2 million, even though it broke records on first release.
This brings us to the latest Mexican horror movie to receive critical acclaim in the last couple of years: Issa López’ Tigers Are Not Afraid (2017), lauded by Stephen King and with Guillermo del Toro calling it “innovative, compassionate and mesmerizing”. This story follows a young girl named Estrella (Paola Lara), whose mother disappears, presumably due to drug-trafficking related violence. Estrella has three wishes, and she uses the first to ask for her mother to come back. Her wish comes true in the most terrifying way, and Estrella runs away from her mother’s ghost, now chasing her and warning her of the imminent danger she faces.
The film was shown at several international film festivals (Toronto After Dark, Imagine Film Festival, FrightFest London and Glasgow, amongst others) before being released in movie theatres in Mexico. However, despite the positive reviews it received internationally, it was barely acknowledged in the country it was filmed in. Shining a light on the children that drug-trafficking and gang related violence leaves orphaned, I like that this film offers a voice to a part of the Mexican population whose stories are rarely told. The true horrors of the movie aren’t ghosts and monsters, but rather the realities Estrella and the other children face every day. The three wishes she is granted become a coping mechanism for the trauma she faces; a way to explain the unexplainable and give her some comfort over the lack of control she has over her circumstances. The film is a fresh take in Mexican cinema, because the majority of the projects that receive wide distribution in theatres are usually stories about rich White people. If people of colour are featured at all, they are the butt of racist and classist jokes, and even Netflix’s Mexican productions have been heavily criticized due to their lack of representation. Tigers Are Not Afraid was written and directed by Issa López, who is better known for her comedies Efectos secundarios (Secondary Effects, 2006) and Casi divas (2008). When asked why she made a film on this subject she said:
You never see their stories in the media. There’s an abundance of stories about the cartels and the drug lords and it’s even been romanticized. But one thing you don’t see is the cost of that, and especially with children… so… I felt that was an absolute necessity. And then the other thing is my deep love for genre cinema. Until then I had been able to express that love, so it was a perfect vehicle and I couldn’t stop myself.
This is the unfortunate reality for Mexico in most mainstream media, produced nationally and internationally. Shows like La Reina Del Sur (2011-2019), and its revival The Queen Of The South (2016), El Señor De Los Cielos (The Lord Of The Skies, 2013-), Dueños Del Paraíso (Owners Of Paradise, 2015-) and Netflix’s Narcos: México (2018-) are glamorous portrayals of the lives of infamous drug lords, where they glorify the violence and ruthlessness of these men and women. They emphasize the luxurious lives these people lead, and money is the ultimate goal, no matter the cost. Lopez’s movie, as she says, is a window into the ugly realities of drug trafficking and its human costs. There is a sequence in Tigers that highlights this abandonment. El Shine (Juan Ramón López), one of the boys who is on his own, steals a mobile phone from a drug dealer. The phone is full of graphic violence, of the beatings and murders the gang carries out. When Estrella asks El Shine why he keeps the phone, worried for what might happen to them if they are caught, he shows her a photo of a woman with a bloody nose, and he says that it’s the only thing he has left of his mother. It’s a heart-wrenching image, to imagine this young boy keeping a photo of his beaten mother because it’s the only way he can still see her.
While films like Taboada’s showcase the independent, childless woman as society’s biggest menace, López amplifies the scope of terror in the quotidian — coming home one day to find one’s mother is gone, without a trace. This is just the starting point that allows her to explore how drug trafficking permeates and damages society, men who kidnap and torture those around them (particularly women), orphaned children who are left on their own, and deep-seated political corruption.
While one of Tiger’s most important narratives is Estrella’s search for her mother, its greatest strength is the way it talks about social inequality and violence through the eyes of the children. And perhaps this is where there is still space for growth for new horror filmmakers. Very few filmmakers of colour are granted mainstream budgets and distribution within Mexico. If not for directors like Issa López, we would only have films and TV shows that speak about the realities of a very limited group of filmmakers. If only a small part of the Mexican population has access to tell these stories, the national horror cinema output will understandably be a reflection of those small realities. Rather than demanding they produce stories with greater diversity, we should demand that men and particularly women of colour; of Black and Indigenous origin, should have access to the writers’ rooms, castings, to directing – along the entire value chain, and down to distribution. In my search for more and different horror I came across Luis Quijano’s Caminante, Caminante: La Leyenda del Huay Chivo (2019), a seemingly terrifying short that uses folklore to guide its storytelling, however, it is not available to purchase or for streaming. And beyond Quijano’s work, who knows how many terrifying and mesmerizing films we are missing out on. Hopefully, we will see and hear these stories soon.
Jumko Ogata-Aguilar is an AfroJapanese Chicana currently pursuing her undergraduate degree in the Latin American Studies program at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Her research focuses on race, identity, migration and the preservation of collective memory in the Mexican Caribbean, where people of African and Asian origin interacted and overlapped creating a complex and diverse cultural landscape. She has been published by Afroféminas, Universidad Veracruzana, Urban Ivy Co. and the British Council of Mexico.
Twitter and Instagram: @latinamericanah
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