Exploring Childhood Trauma through Haunting in The Spirit of the Beehive and The Others Anonymous College

The long-lasting legacy of harsh Francoist policies is evidenced through Spanish cinema in various ways. Contemporary filmmakers draw from Spain’s tumultuous political past and shifting social history to create narratives centered around national trauma and memory, while integrating storytelling devices within broad genres that have the ability to appeal to a diverse transnational audience. Popular contemporary Spanish filmmakers such as Alejandro Amenábar demonstrate the adaptability of Spanish cinema through the distribution of financially and critically successful films that rely on transnationally recognizable actors and themes. However, Amenábar is clearly careful to pay homage to distinctly political Spanish films like The Spirit of the Beehive (1973, Erice) through a focus on the concept of haunting in The Others (Amenábar, 2001). In portraying a fractured family supported by an internationally recognized lead actor and pivotal child actor roles, Amenábar develops Spanish cinema within the commercially accessible “Hollywood system, building on the ideas of post-Francoist Spanish filmmakers in order to forge a voice within the transnational horror film genre.

This paper will follow a comparative analysis of similar themes...