BABEL

UNA LECTURA ANTIIMPERIALISTA

Abstract

It can be stated that Babel’s thesis (2006) – one of the last works of Mexican movie producer Alejandro González Iñárritu – is that the lack of communication among men is a persisting fact despite globalization and communication networks. The director shows that the current civilization can be represented as Babel’s Tower, a chaotic place; that is because of human proud that constructs imperial relationships on fragile power bases. Babel shows us how much all current stories touch each other in weak points as the earth rotates. We can also see this virtual space of encounters, where it is possible to recognize the others and get to know their pains, see that they are totally nullified by the so many clauses that block one another, what makes decoding difficult. This article focus on the space where languages are confounded out of hand, what forms a zone of linguistic chaos in which three stories are articulated in the movie that, on its turn, is a space reduced to pure virtuality by hyper communication systems. We also study the novelty of the movie’s narrative structure, which works through hyper communication codes. Iñárritu makes the Earth rotates together with a series of existences. They happen both by random or crossing glances in the virtual spaces, all inserted in a moment of present that we consume as spectators of fairy tales’ fragments that transmit a schizophrenic news chain.