“That Mud of the Real”: Pablo Forcinito’s Saga of Evil

Abstract

In the last decade, Argentine horror narratives have insistently problematized historical memory and spectrality as a virtual agency of the violent past, leaving plots linked to demonology, esotericism, folk horror and their repertoires in the background. Within this more visible line, there is another series that emphasizes the bad synergy between territory and violence, and in this modality the thick line of the rural stands out in opposition to the ambiguous urban world. This turn implies the capitalization of a traditional figuration of Evil that recovers part of the repertoire of folk horror, a subgenre that deals with themes linked to paganism, occultism and rituals. In turn, these repertoires are connected to the demonization of economic processes typical of the neoliberal phase of capitalism, which are thought of by the imaginaries of global crisis. In the still unfinished Pablo Forcinitoʼs saga La misa de los suicidas (2022-2024), the rural and urban framework of the plot remarks the tensions between region and Evil from the periphery to the national level. This reading is based on Benjamin's approach that points out the cult trait of capitalism as a religious phenomenon parasitic on Christianity that does not atone for guilt but rather engenders it. The representation of a village healer who serves a demon, with his demands for pacts and sacrifices as debts, exposes the mechanisms with which Evil constitutes itself as the driving force and necessary counterweight to human activities.