In his film Hable con Ella (2002) Pedro Almodóvar features the character of Benigno, a nurse who is in permanent charge of Alicia, a young patient in a persistent vegetative state. Benigno talks continuously to Alicia. Almodóvar wants the... more
In his film Hable con Ella (2002) Pedro Almodóvar features the character of Benigno, a nurse who is in permanent charge of Alicia, a young patient in a persistent vegetative state. Benigno talks continuously to Alicia. Almodóvar wants the audience to be torn between diagnosing insanity and rationality; and obtains his result in equipping Benigno with good arguments supporting his behaviour. I try to show that Benigno’s “talking to her” is not less reasonable than the doctors’ treating Alicia, since both acts can be found to be grounded in the same kind of Pascalian wager concerning the possibility of Alicia’s awakening. Benigno also loves Alicia, and rapes her. Again, Almodóvar supply the audience with conflicting moral arguments, and tempts it to arrive at this frightening conclusion: Benigno may be not guilty. In fact, as an individual whose higher-brain is apparently dead, Alicia has lost forever her capacity to be conscious. If such capacity is constitutive of being a person, then Alicia properly is an ex-person – just as any dead body is. Since ex-persons cannot be harmed or wronged, it seems we cannot say that Benigno either harms or wrongs Alicia. May be we cannot even say that he rapes her, since the concept of rape may not apply to non-persons. But do all our moral feelings align with these conclusions? Indeed rival rational arguments seem to contrast them too. Almodóvar tries to render acceptable the idea of both moral condemnation and innocence of Benigno, and the film actually is a rational, open ethical discussion where opposite arguments collapse.
En este Trabajo de Fin de Grado nos queremos centrar en el cambio de vida que desean muchas de las mujeres en sus películas. Casi todas ellas necesitan buscar formas para poder cambiar, evolucionar o escapar de la vida que llevan, o que... more
En este Trabajo de Fin de Grado nos queremos centrar en el cambio de vida que desean muchas de las mujeres en sus películas. Casi todas ellas necesitan buscar formas para poder cambiar, evolucionar o escapar de la vida que llevan, o que se buscan a sí mismas en situaciones de descontento. Estos sentimientos de opresión son aquellos que le sirven para que estas mujeres puedan mejorar sus situaciones. De hecho, en la mayoría de sus films, las mujeres son las principales protagonistas, adquiriendo los hombres un rol secundario. Ahora bien, la mayor parte de las protagonistas femeninas, viven pendiente de algún personaje masculino y suelen vivir oprimidas por ellos, directa o indirectamente
