Abstract

For a long time, it has been said that the dominant belief system in our society should dictate both the life and the legacy of others’ existences—even after death. The prevailing heteronormative system, which permeates religion, politics, education, culture, and art, has been gradually fragmenting in the face of resistance led by marginalized populations. These groups fight to assert their significance by breaking away from centuries-old norms, often finding in filmic art a powerful educational ally in the deconstruction of castrating ideals of existence and indigestible imaginaries. In light of this context, the present article aims to discuss the Mexican series El secreto del río, available on Netflix, exploring issues related to gender identity and sexual orientation that intersect various social spheres—including religious austerity—and which deeply affect the life of Manuel, who dies in order to be reborn as Sicarú. The methodology employed is an audiovisual analysis of the series, focusing on its imagery, soundscapes, and narrative structure as a whole, along with a bibliographic approach grounded mainly in Rogério de Almeida’s (2024) concept of ‘pedagogical pressure,’ which examines what a film ‘forces’ us to learn, and in the educational foundations of cinema. As preliminary considerations, it is understood that gender performance is a social construct that, as depicted in the series, faces one of its greatest challenges in the fundamentalist interpretations embedded within Judeo-Christian religious traditions, which tend to rigidly assign each individual’s role from birth onward.