Backyard El Traspatio Essay

The ambiguity of Heroes and Villains in Backyard: El Traspatio

Each year, thousands of women disappear or are killed as a result of sexual violence. In the crime fiction Backyard: El Traspatio, director Carlos Carrera initially depicts femicide in Ciudad Juarez as a consequence of isolated gang violence, but gradually presents the crisis as a byproduct of transnational economic collusion, governmental inadequacy, and masculine aggression. Throughout the film, Carrera embeds jarring scenes of abuse in a narrative of amorphous crime to help the viewer experience a diluted version of the trauma. Instead of presenting facts describing the effects of violence in Ciudad Juarez, Carrera chooses to fictionalize the role of detective Blanca Bravo and

different historical and cinematic "villains" in the form of a murder mystery. At the most basic level, murder mysteries are thrillers centered around the protagonist's search and eventual confrontation with a nefarious fugitive. While this criminal is often linked to economic or political power, the hero traditionally captures the villain. Whether the offender is imprisoned or murdered, the hero's efforts are celebrated and the film concludes with a sense of satisfaction. Although detective Blanca Bravo is clearly the protagonist investigating crime, Carrera does not present a single "villain," but instead conveys the universality of corruption through the inclusion of many fraudulent characters. This ambiguity of malice contributes to a dissatisfying ending, emphasizing the urgency of the femicide crisis in Ciudad Juarez. In the film, Backyard: El Traspatio, Carrera presents and purposefully deviates from the archetypal murder mystery genre to expose the trauma of sexual violence and dissect its causes.
In order to introduce the historical "villains" of sexual violence, Carrera initially presents the audience with an archetypal murder mystery villain, El Sultan.

After detective Blanca Bravo discovers a trend in the mutilation of female bodies, she concludes these killings are the act of an isolated murderer. Carrera deliberately establishes the depravity of El Sultan in the scene where he is captured at gunpoint by Bravo. This scene is filled with footsteps, heavy breathing, and intense downbeats, foreshadowing a confrontation. When Detective Bravo enters El Sultan's house, he is partially clothed, sexually assaulting a young woman, and slurring vulgarities in broken Spanish. The mise-en-scène of this scene justifies El Sultan's pedophilic accusations and hints at the foreign root of sexual violence. This scene is cross-cut edited to further emphasize El Sultan's sexist remarks on Bravo's attractiveness and to signify the confrontation between criminal and detective. Through this exchange, it becomes clear that El Sultan is proud of his sexual misconduct and doubts Bravo's authority due to her gender. In this scene, Carrera portrays an indisputably corrupt predator in order to provide a gateway to understanding the modes of greater villainization throughout the film. By presenting the audience with an archetypal criminal, Carrera can use the audience's perception of the rapist to introduce and further justify more unlikely contributors to sexual

violence.
Through the trial of El Sultan, the audience discovers the governmental involvement and economic corruption allowing for the cover up of gender violence. By following the sexual misconduct of El Sultan with shady government dealings, Carrera asks the viewer to directly compare the economic consequences of the neoliberal agenda with the abuse of young women. While the CEOs and heads of state do not directly engage in femicide, Carrera's villainization of these men demonstrate their passive acceptance of this practice for profit. In the scene where the governor of Chihuahua meets the Chinese and American CEOs of maquiladora companies, Carrera presents these men in luxurious suits in a dimly lit room served by waiters. The lack of light serves as a symbol of the businessmen's shady dealings. Their costumes, contrasted with those of the ragged populace, represent their power. The exchange between these powerful men is primarily in English to audibly represent the subservience of the Mexican culture and the presence of a foreign villain, like in the case of El Sultan. Throughout this exchange, the Mexican governor is visibly anxious, pleading for foreign investment, while the smiling American businessman laughs at the idea of "wasting American taxpayer money." This conversation is broken as Mr. Numasaki, the Chinese CEO remarks, "Mexican workers' wage is $1.05 an hour, while a Chinese woman's wage is 90 cents per hour." Mr. Numasaki continues to list the wages of female workers in Bangladesh and Thailand, but between each statistic, Carrera cuts to scenes from El Sultan's trial, where criminals falsely discuss their payment received from El Sultan after killing women. The scene concludes with El Sultan yelling as he is imprisoned. In this scene, Carrera stiches scenes from El Sultan's trial with the transnational economic business meeting to portray the reality and causes of the violence. By threatening the movement of labor and placing numerical value on the wages of an individual, Carrera presents the international corporations' and state government's obvious disregard for the sexual violence crisis. Instead of asking for the capital required to provide the necessary law enforcement, the Mexican governor pleads for more capital to rebuild the economy and workforce to avoid the outsourcing of labor to Southeast Asia. Through this scene, Carrera villainizes those in political power for their greed and insistence to remain in power at the expense of others, as well as rebuking the neoliberal agenda for forcing officials to overlook the femicide crisis. Carrera continuously cuts to El Sultan's trial to juxtapose the economic collusion of government officials and transnational corporate heads. Through this choice of editing, Carrera deviates from the downfall of the criminal trope by comparing the fates of these two villains. While the sexual criminals are rightfully imprisoned, the corrupt government and economic officials, who orchestrate the abuse by allowing sexual misconduct to fester without proper intervention, are not penalized, but instead rewarded with power and money.