Abject Births and the Monstrous-Feminine in Álex de la Iglesia’s Witching and Bitching and 30 Coins

• Autores: Irene Baena Cuder
• Localización: Comparative cinema, ISSN-e 2604-9821, Vol. 13, Núm. 25, 2025, págs. 129-146
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • It is common to find maternal elements at the core of many recent Spanish horror narratives. These maternal discourses have been explored from a variety of approaches, from an excessive wish for motherhood to biological, failed and even monstrous motherhoods. This article focuses on the latter, analysing how the genre conventions of pregnancy horror or gynaehorror can be applied in the study of the construction of the monstrous-feminine within the Spanish context. To this end, this research compares Álex de la Iglesia’s Witching and Bitching (Las brujas de Zugarramurdi, 2013), and the episode “Cobwebs” (“Telarañas”) from 30 Coins (30 monedas, 2020) and examines the director’s treatment of birth scenes and symbolic intra-uterine locations in his construction of female characters as monsters.

    This research is framed in the international research project New Narratives, Screens and Social Realities in Spanish Cinema between 2011-2022 (PID2023-148752NB-100), funded by Spain’s Ministry of Science and Innovation.