Paper short abstract:

This paper explores modes of representation of the LGBTIQ child/adolescent in four post-2000 Argentine films. It argues that the emerging ‘figures of the anti-Child’ allow for forms of mobility that resist existing frames for childhood sexualities onscreen: deviance and heteronormative futurity.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the modes of representation and politics of visibility of the LGBTIQ child/adolescent in the New Argentine Cinema. The figure of the socially marginalised, criminalised and institutionalised child/adolescent is a recurrent one in Argentine cinema since the late 1950s, and it is within this frame that the first instances of non-normative child/teenage sexualities appear on the Argentine screen. It is thus argued that in post-2000 Argentine films the depiction of queer childhoods moves beyond the previous frame of institutionalised 'deviance' imposed on them, by opening up the scope of representation to a much wider range of social classes and settings, including the rural/urban and inter-class interactions. Through an analysis of four films (Glue [Dos Santos, 2006], XXY [Puenzo, 2007], El último verano de la Boyita [Solomonoff, 2009], Miss Tacuarembó [Sastre, 2010]), I suggest that these cinematically reframed childhood sexualities can be read as rhetorical sites where 'figures of the anti-Child' emerge. By being capable of actualising certain lines of flight, these 'sinthomosexual' figures of the child allow for new connections between bodies and spaces that render possible different forms of mobility that resist familial-teleological narratives by 'making them flee' from heteronormative futurity. The analysis focuses on practices of visibility and spatialization, such as the regime of the open secret as inextricably linked to the rural/urban divide, and the different types of outing, including the repressive and violent outing that confirms the closet, as well as other, 'queer-child' outings that allow for positive movement and new connections and alliances