Punctures and Molecular Politics: Topographies of the Body in Iván Zulueta’s Arrebato (1979)

Abstract This article examines Iván Zulueta’s topographical representations of heroin consumption in Arrebato (1979), a cult-classic of Spanish cinema and pivotal work of the Movida madrileña. In the film, the injection of heroin is coupled with an external, visual effect on characters’ bodies—represented through colour, make-up, clothing and characters’ physiological responses—establishing a bidirectional flow between their subjective, molecular experience with drugs and their outward, physical appearances. By visualizing the effects of an illicit drug, Zulueta creates a superficial, or epidermic, lexicon for otherwise invisible corporeal experiences induced by drug use. Furthermore, by materially breaching the body with a syringe, injecting themselves with drugs and molecularly altering their subjectivities and identities at whim, the characters in Arrebato question the epistemological barrier between interiority and exteriority and challenge and evade fixed delineations of the body and of identity as defined by social legislation of the time. As such, the punctured and porous bodies in Arrebato, like those in similar works by maldito artists of the Movida, can be read, topographically, as an affront to social order and established systems of (bio)power in post-Franco Spain.