Can Mothers Talk Politics? Bonds between Obstetric Violence, Biopower and Historical Memory in Parallel Mothers (2021)

Abstract

Parallel Mothers (2021) entails a novelty both for his filmography and for the audiovisual treatment of Spanish historical memory, unprecedented in its representation of the mass graves in which the rebel side buried the civilians shot during the Civil War. However, popular and professional reception has criticised the apparent disconnection between this plot and the main story: two women who are new mothers with very different ideas and contexts on/of pregnancy. To apply queer theory to our analysis of the film, this paper will cover the ideas about biopolitics, sexuality and pharmacopornographic capitalism formulated by Michel Foucault and Paul B. Preciado. Specifically, the main object of study will be a series of notable analogies between the two aforementioned plot lines, which point to an interrelation of gender and (post)memory issues. In the time period of the development of a Law of Historical Memory, the director would have managed to merge two purposes: vindicating the restorative essence of the said law and the denaturalisation of some elements of the cisheterosexual norm. Thus, I will try to show that Almodóvar keeps on including narrative and aesthetic motifs that make his audience reflect on their beliefs, with Parallel Mothers placing special emphasis on motifs such as obstetric violence, the current weight of the still unjudged Civil War crimes, or the profound part of the power structures when building our lives.