September, the start of the university season and therefore hazing. Every year, at this time, the debate comes back to the forefront. Is it normal that in 2024 there will still be practices based on domination and harassment of newcomers? A few days ago, the Burgos City Council announced that it would control with drones the cases that had not been carried out. However, not all cities or universities have decided to eradicate them, and some consider that they are part of an atavistic custom, a tradition that they do not want to lose.
Hazing hides, in the form of games, much more difficult issues. There are signs of machismo and misogyny in them. They contribute to harassment and make the weakest fail in their first steps at university. Many have just left home for the first time and find themselves faced with a situation to which they do not know how to say no. Because to the hazing of each university must be added that of high schools, where this hierarchy between veterans and rookies is even more perceptible.
He talks about all this The applicant, the feature film directed by Juan Gautier and which clearly shows what is behind hazing. He knows what he is talking about, his father was the director of the Chaminade residence in Madrid, which banned these practices years ago. In fact, this film was shot in his facilities which, as if it were a countdown, a pressure cooker, shows the first 24 hours of hazing of two students. One, shy and timid; the other with charisma and courage. Different ways of dealing with all this.
By chance, during the filming of this film – which hits theaters on Friday 20th – sexist chants rang out from the Elías Ahuja high school. The misogyny of these centers that segregate according to gender and where purchasing power also offers more stripes was once again evident. Videos like those of Elías Ahuja were part of the film’s documentation process. “They are not hidden, they have been posted on YouTube for years,” he recalls. He hopes that, as happened then, this film will talk about this issue and create more sensitivity.
His intention with the film was to show what was beneath the hazing. “We wanted to start from them, to take advantage on a dramatic and narrative level of the universe that is created there to talk about these communities, which have their own rules and their own rituals. These are mechanisms that are reproduced in other workplaces, at school… and we wanted to talk about this system of relationships that, in the case of hazing, is authoritarian in command and submissive in obedience,” he explains.
We are talking about young people who have recently arrived, who are building their identity. Everything is linked, and rape culture also appears because misogyny appears
Juan Gautier
— Director
They wanted to delve “into what lies beneath,” into “machismo and masculinity.” “We’re talking about boys who have recently arrived, who are building their identity or finishing building their masculine identity. Everything is linked, and rape culture appears because misogyny also appears, homophobia appears, and because many other things appear that are historically in the tradition of all these rites,” he adds.
A youth cinema with a message
To do this, create a thriller that he places in the “cinema of youth”. “I really like youth films and I wanted them to contain ingredients of these films. Also, it was genre cinema and I tried to incorporate that into a naturalism. We didn’t want a hyperrealistic atmosphere. That’s when we thought about the soundtrack, the use of slow motion, the photography… We wanted the film to have a young side and undergroundbut a little more stylized. We had to put it in a shaker and we didn’t know how the mixture was going to come out,” says the director who believes that there is finally some “thriller psychological, genre, young cinema and realism.
This realism led them to opt for a more pessimistic ending. Although Juan Gautier likes “bright and positive films”, he thought that in this one it was difficult to bet on that side, even though they had also written other alternative endings in the first versions of the script. “When we knew we were going to tell the story in 24 hours, we believed that, even if the ending was difficult, it had to be that way. When I present the film, I always say that I can’t say that I hope you like it, because that’s not the right verb,” he says ironically.
The experience of hazing makes him believe that “what is normal is that it disappears little by little.” “I think that society is improving in these areas, although now all these things are a bit of a debate and we wonder if it is going backwards on issues like masculinity. As a teacher, I am not very clear about this. My feeling is always positive. I see students better on issues like equality or gender. It is true that now these things are in institutions, and that means they are part of the system, and it can happen that it suddenly seems countercultural to be in another place, but I think it is difficult for things that have already been won to be lost,” he reflects.
However, he also believes that there is something ritualistic about hazing that is very powerful and that makes it survive: “All of these tribal and performative things happen at an age where anything that happens to a young man in a town that he’s just arrived in is going to hurt him.” It’s going to leave a mark and it’s going to seem memorable. And that’s why hazing seems memorable to them and they remember it as something epic. Because they also have this epic of suffering, and that makes young people glorify it. That’s why a lot of people defend them, and when they do, I understand it, because it’s the memory of the passage to adulthood, but it’s immersed in this perverse system of relationships.
