Dead ringers: A Contemporary Narrative about twinning, sterility and incest

Abstract

Starting from the idea of mythical texture-this persistent and flexible plot able to intertwine with other narrative yarns or fabrics-, this article proposes a reflection on the way the ideal of a perfect twinning, common to Indo-European tradition, has been updated in contemporary narratives. Having as a guideline of this reflection David Cronenberg's feature film Dead Ringers (1989)-featuring gynecologist twins as main characters-the symbolic discourse of the plot that interweaves twinning, sterility and incest is analyzed. Ultimately it is about disentangling, in the tangle of its meshes, the coherence of a symbolic discourse about twinning, in its limits and utopia.