Playing in public: Domestic politics and prosthetic memory in Paula Markovich’s El premio/The Prize (2011)

Abstract

Released in 2011, Paula Markovitch’s semi-autobiographical film revolves around the life of 7-year-old Cecilia and her tense negotiation of the ‘adult’ world of public militancy in 1970s Argentina. The film destabilizes the traditional boundaries between childhood and adulthood, exposing the profound politicization of the child’s domestic spaces as her parents’ political choices are thrust into every aspect of her daily life. This article argues that, by affording the child a greater sense of agency within these home spaces, the director of El premio/The Prize (2011) refuses to perpetuate the discourses of passive victimhood that are conventionally associated with the hijo/child in contemporary Argentina. Instead, Markovitch rethinks the domestic sphere as a site for political confrontation both between and within generations. By inhibiting the spectator’s potential to ‘prosthetically’ identify with the experience of the child victim, El premio surfaces as a paradigmatic example of a growing trend in contemporary Argentine film which seeks to expose, explore and impede society’s ongoing and pervasive gaze into the lives of the children of the disappeared.