Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore the ethical dimensions of Babel (2006), the third and final film of the Death trilogy, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will explore the ethical dimensions of Babel (2006), the third and final film of the Death trilogy, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. The interlinked nature of violence, represented through fragmented yet connected narratives, has been one of the major motifs in the trilogy, collapsing various social realities, each with its class aspirations, assumptions about gender, and racial prejudices, thus leading towards a critique of larger structural disparities. In Babel, the effects of a single accidental act of violence disperses through a globalized network, constituted by structures of power, which manifest themselves at the level of media representation, legal mechanisms, and racial/cultural assumptions. There is a to-and-fro movement between a nexus of power-structures and interpersonal relationships, and the ethical antidote offered is a kind of humanism, thus simultaneously collapsing assumptions about the Other and revealing the problems with legal/media/psychosocial constructions within a globally hierarchical order.