Inviting Voyeurism, Invoking Estrangement: Performing Disability in Eduardo Casanova's Pieles

Abstract: Eduardo Casanova is a Spanish director and multimedia artist whose work is centered on exploring difference and individuals deemed by society as deviant. As a former child star exposed and scrutinized by the national gaze, particularly due to his queerness, his work shows a keen interest in the intrusive observation of people who are othered. In his provocative debut film Pieles (2017), Casanova explores the interconnected stories of several characters whose bodies are judged as abnormal due to their striking visible differences—such as physical disabilities, burn scars, or fatness. I argue that Pieles addresses questions of performance and spectatorship in relation to disability, considering the matter of the exhibition of disabled bodies for entertainment purposes. Pieles walks a tightrope between voyeurism and estrangement in the audience's relationship with the characters, moving away from prescriptive filmic representations of disability that elicit pity, superiority, or disgust. I contend that Pieles carefully balances the one-sided and voyeuristic intimacy of spectatorship while also eliciting an exercise in critical distancing and reflection, luring its audience to stare, but from a place of discomfort.