Borges' "Homosexual Panic": Christensen's Film Version of "La instrusa"

Abstract

In this paper, I compare Borges' story “La intrusa” with Christensen's 1981 film version to note the way in which a homoerotic element in Borges' fictional world has been perceived and translated from subtle suggestivity in the written text to a more explicit visual depiction. I will then analyze Borges' subsequent horrified reaction to the more direct rendering. In the story and the film, the Nilsen brothers make use of a communal woman for the purpose of connecting physically and emotionally with each other. Christensen's reading of Borges' text shows that the erotic desire of the two men is plainly not directed towards a female, but rather towards each other, with the female as the intermediary focal point at/in which the two men may coincide. The film seems to imply that Borges has substituted an intervening female body between the men as a way to permit the men to connect physically without transgressing hetero-patriarchal prohibitions. The question in this story of fraternal love that has crossed the homosocial-homosexual continuum to the homosexual side has been an issue since the story first appeared. For that reason, Borges' intensely negative reaction to Christensen's film is all the more fascinating for what it suggests about the Argentine writer. As Balderston, Altamiranda and Silvestri have noted, Borges was so disturbed by the depiction of the Nilsen brothers as homosexual, that he penned an article in which he broke with his long-standing opposition to government censorship of media by suddenly advocating it in the case of this particular film. As I will show, I believe that Christensen's adaptation hits the target when it visually portrays a subtext that simultaneously attracted and repulsed Borges and his reaction is a clear case of “homosexual panic.”