White Elephant: urban space, ruins and violence

Abstract

We will consider White Elephant (Elefante blanco, 2012), by Pablo Trapero, by analyzing the urban space that it represents/creates. This investigation will be modulates by the idea of the ruin, a specter of both failure and resistance, which integrates a realm of ideas related to a complex universe such as the slum – among them, violence as a constituent of everyday life. This movement occurs through the experience of characters foreigner to that world, who enter it, plunging into a learning path that, like everything in the movie, has the double face of destruction and construction. We will also develop a quick exploration of space in Trapero’s other films and of the slums in Argentine cinema.