The Motif of Prison in Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig and Reality by Sergio Bizzio

Abstract

This article analyzes Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman (1976) and Sergio Bizzio’s Reality (2009), linking both works through the motif of prison. Both Argentinian novels allow us to address different aspects of imprisonment, as Puig’s work is based on a real prison and the dictatorship, while in Bizzio’s world the starting point is a reality show and a terrorist attack. The role of fiction and reality (moreover, the blurring of the boundaries between the two) has a strongly marked presence in both novels: in Puig’s work fiction (the narrative of the films) provides a refuge for the prisoners, while in Bizzio’s the fictional reality of the reality show is the prison itself, from which it is impossible to escape. The analysis is going to focus on the different narrative solutions representing confinement used by the two authors (taking into consideration the role of the cinema in the narrative), and also highlight the difference between the objective of confinement in Kiss of the Spider Woman and in Reality (to exclude or exhibit the prisoners/characters).