Liminaridad y mímesis monstruosa en La lengua de las mariposas y Pa negre

Butterfly (José Luis Cuerda, 1999) and Black Bread (Agustí Villaronga, 2010) are two films centered on children coming of age and the impact, respectively, of the war and postwar on that liminal process. Liminality shows that in times of uncertainty, mimesis is important vis-à-vis incorporation into the new state. René Girard illuminated how desire was not a romantic construction in terms of subject-object, but was mediated by a third factor that could usually generate rivalry and conflict. I analyze the mimetic conflictive operations in these films, which flourish during coming-of-age experiences in times of social crisis. Butterfly shows a sudden-much as the coup-mediation though deposition that incorporates the child into the Francoist communitas. In the case of Black Bread, this incorporation is gradual and operates in terms of putrefaction instead of deposition. These depictions read Franco's Spain as a monster-maker, a pledging society that both creates and accepts the monster-child as a peer.