Abstract:
The central theme of this thesis revolves around the question of how the medium-specific aspects of film and literature determine the representation of the sicario as perpetrator in the documentary film EL Sicario: Room 164 and the autobiography El Sicario. Autobiography of a Mexican Assassin. To answer the research question, an approach towards the account of the perpetrator is explored. The theoretical framework backing this approach derives from the scholarly field of Perpetrator Studies. The concepts of intermediality and medium specificity are approached from Literary Studies and provide the other theoretical framework essential for the analysis of the autobiography and the film. In the analysis is argued that the medium-specific aspects of each medium affect the representation of the sicario as perpetrator. Enhanced by the medium-specific aspects, the representation of the sicario as perpetrator in the documentary film is the closest to the way the account of the perpetrator is approached from Perpetrator Studies.
