Zombies as Temporal Critique: Sudor frío (2010) and Generations of Youth in Postdictatorship Argentina

Abstract:Set in present-day Buenos Aires, the film Sudor frío (2010, dir. Adrián García Bogliano) features two former agents of the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional who continue to imprison zombified abductees from the Dirty War of the 1970s and 1980s in their decrepit house of horrors, where they also capture and torture newer generations of Argentine youth who are disconnected from the historical violence of the dictatorship and are supposedly disenchanted with politics in general. Stunted in their normative development as young citizens toward traditional benchmarks like employment, home ownership, and procreation, their suspension in time can be read as zombiesque, allowing for the blurring of differences between generations. The distinct ways in which they have become frozen in time hold the potential to engender a kind of temporal critique that calls into question not only the national progress that has been made since the return to democracy, but also the prescriptive timeline that defines individual progress according to the logic of the neoliberal economy left intact since the last dictatorship.