Structures of empathy: transgender rights, personhood, and melodrama in Una Mujer Fantástica

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes how the 2017 Chilean film, Una Mujer Fantástica, unravels the fraught relationship between the state’s institutions and the trans subject in Chile. It illuminates how Marina’s (the protagonist played by Daniela Vega) path to self-determination and her basic human rights are consistently negated by the institutional actors upholding categories of legal personhood in Chile. I argue that the film develops a mode of ethical empathy which encompasses elements of realism, melodrama, and magical realism to structure the viewer’s understanding of trans rights and the violation of those rights in Chile in a manner that avoids voyeurism. This mode of ethical empathy transforms the viewer into a witness of the structural, physical, and emotional violence perpetuated against Marina, as she struggles to mourn her recently deceased partner, Orlando. Ethical empathy demands that this act of viewer-witnessing take place in several moments throughout the film when Marina encounters institutional actors, such as the police, detectives specializing in sexual violence, and doctors. Lastly, elements of melodrama and magical realism continue structuring ethical empathy toward the end of the film in order to illuminate how rage and catharsis are central to Marina’s enunciation of personhood outside of official systems of categorization.