The rebellion of the revealed image: looking through “the camera obscura”

Abstract

Social identity is not necessarily determined by society, however, it is inevitably constructed by it and mediated by its discourse. Each society imposes a conception of the corporeal and the beautiful that, like the word, is subject to a social administration, where the private and the public are intertwined. Thus, the speech works as an instruction on acting, speaking and even thinking, allowing each member to assume the social role that others are able to recognize. These lines invite us to look through the protagonist of the film “The dark camera”, the feminine image that is defined by the establishment of a desired type of woman according to an ideal pattern socially constructed for acting, saying and being silent. However, she is encouraged to discover and explore the confines of the universe at the door of her house, by appropriating the word and re-creating an existence that saves her. Gertrudis moves away from the common place of victimization creating an approach that overcomes by reinforcing marginality with disobedience, imposing itself on invisibility and silence. She was able to question the mandates speaking from silence by expressing her rebellion against a culture of domination, installing the family photograph in the center of her home, in sight, symbolically in the public space.