Care Relationships Outside the Hegemonic Family Model in Veneno (Calvo and Ambrossi, 2020). Some insights from Judith Butler

Abstract

This article discusses the application of concepts from philosopher Judith Butler's queer theories of kinship and family relations to Veneno, a series broadcast on the ATRESPlayer Premium platform in 2020, created by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi. Through flashbacks, the series Veneno introduces us to the life of the well-known media personality Cristina Ortiz Rodríguez, known as La Veneno, who became one of the first openly trans people on Spanish television screens in the 1990s. The series also features another main character, Valeria, whose storyline parallels that of La Veneno and who lives approximately 15 years after the height of La Veneno's fame. Through the works Bodies that Matter: On the Material and Discursive Limits of "Sex" (1993) and «Is Kinship Always Already Heterosexual?» from her book Undoing Gender (2004), the article will address Butler's thinking on the question of queer family relations and new relations of care outside the hegemonic family model. In this case, these concepts will be applied to the plots of the main characters in the series Poison to establish whether Butler's ideas are valid and, if so, to what extent, how they are represented in the series and also how they have evolved over time. As a main conclusion, it can be stated that Butler's ideas are present, but with a certain complexity, which is what this article will investigate.