This is the presentation on Mexican romantic comedy presented at the Congress of LASA 2010. Thank Juana Suárez, Juan Poblete and Claudia Ferman both the invitation and for sharing la mesa.
In his brilliant and evocative book Cold Intimacies, Israeli sociologist Eva Illouz states that "the achievement of capitalism went hand in hand with the creation of a specialized intensely emotional culture, and when we focus in this dimension of capitalism could be in a position to dis-cover other order in the social organization of capitalism "(my translation). This insight brings to the table a central idea for studies on Mexican cinema, to the extent that the current configuration of its aesthetic maintains an intimate connection to the cultural development of neoliberalism in Mexico. However, the study of what Illouz called "emotional capitalism" is still a blind spot in film studies about Mexico, mainly due to ideological and theoretical inclinations of academic and journalistic practices, where they still use film around two issues: the representation of popular or subaltern subjectivities (the indigenous, the popular urban youth class) or the continuation of this notion of Mexicans who, in my opinion, was no longer relevant as a topic in the mid-nineties. In what follows, and based on a longer work I am doing on the subject will present a series of articles about the genre's most influential current commercial Mexican cinema, the romantic comedy, and how it emerged and consolidated into the heart of the consumption practices of film audiences in Mexico of neoliberalism. Although the brevity of this presentation I will leave aside several details, the central argument I will try to make is that the heyday of the romantic comedy is symptomatic of the profound changes brought neoliberalism in the field of culture, levels of production, aesthetics, public building, etc.
The romantic comedy boom in Mexican cinema can be traced in terms of three specific factors. First, as studied by authors such as Celestino Deleyto, the eighties were a golden age of Hollywood romantic comedy, because on the one hand, the success of films of John Hughes and Rob Reiner, on the other the intellectual cache granted by the work of Woody Allen. By 1989, Allen had turned to romantic comedy in a privileged language of so-called independent film, while the commercial success of When Harry Met Sally Reiner gave international audiences new forms of articulation of emotion in the context of As David Shumway calls the "marriage crisis." The first romantic comedy consideration of neoliberalism in Mexico, only with your partner (1990) by Alfonso Cuarón emerge in these terms. The film is a comedy of errors centered on Thomas Thomas, a womanizer who faces the specter of AIDS after an ex-lover changes the results of blood test to scare him. Cuaron's film has a number of features that herald the changes mean that the romantic comedy in subsequent years. The first and most important film lies in its subject. The cinema of the seventies and eighties generally focused on two types of subjects: urban popular class post-Bunuel and his counterpart in the rural classes in the work of authors such as Luis Alcoriza or Alfonso Arau, and the old middle class professional their emotional melodramas in the work of Jaime Humberto Hermosillo and Arturo Ripstein true. Instead, Thomas Thomas not only belongs to the middle class, but is a publicist, that is, someone dedicated an emerging profession of neoliberalism in Mexico, part of a creative class, as I will show other films then becomes the social ideal of the new middle classes. In fact, the entire narrative Only with your partner is completely mediated by the advertising world. The title comes from a Mexican government's campaign to raise awareness about AIDS, while Thomas is working on another campaign for an jalapeño company whose characters are a conqueror and a fighter. Although I have no time for detailed analysis of your partner just like to highlight the fact that damages the characters are fundamentally mediated by advertising and media throughout the film, showing a literal example of "emotional capital" described by Ilouz: an interaction between a middle-class urban Mexico which affective experiences are redefined from capitalist social space created by neoliberalism and a pop-cultural film begins to piece speeches to articulate the forms of subjectivity created by this new economic setting.
In 1991, only with your partner was still an exceptional film, a cinematic tradition not exceeded at all affiliations to social melodrama and film (Like Water, Red Dawn). The consolidation of the aesthetic of the romantic comedy as a privileged social discourse still required other possible conditions that would result in the displacement of movie audiences of the popular urban class, consumer of commercial cinema theatrical show of figures such as Luis de Alba, La India Maria or the stars of Televisa, to an urban middle class would begin to monopolize the film exhibition spaces in the country. The second phenomenon lies then the rapid privatization of the structures of film exhibition. By 1990, COTSA, structure display state, began a series of massive closures of theaters. In 1994, the U.S. chain Cinemark opened the first of several Cineplex, and, towards the end of the decade, the exhibition throughout the country was controlled by Cinemark and two private channels, and Organization Cinemex Ramírez. These strings had a profound impact on the formation of film audiences due to the exponential increase in the cost of inputs. From 10 to 15 pesos Mexicans go to the movies cost the state, a Cinemark or Cinemex ticket cost 40 pesos, equivalent to 125% of the daily minimum wage in Mexico. In this way, the film returned to Mexico as a privileged form cultural practice of the middle classes, something unprecedented in U.S. history. To the extent that popular urban classes were excluded from the film, the emerging commercial Mexican cinema used the exponential growth of screens and began to appeal to these new audiences. Not surprisingly, the first commercially successful film in the wake of the Multicinemas was a romantic comedy, Cilantro and parsley (1995), Rafael Montero, characterized not only by being the first co-production and Televicine Imcine, the two titans Mexican film production, but for their aesthetic standards of the middle class.
The third factor of consideration is the transformation in media consumption of the middle class brought about by the explosion of subscriptions to cable television. By the mid-nineties, the successful market entry of channels like Sony Entertainment Television and Warner Channel The media divided audiences in terms of class, providing the alternative to primetime soap opera: the situation comedies or sitcoms American television. iconic series as Mad About You , Dawson's Creek Friends and started to become joint spaces affectivities alternative media. In part, success of these series is due precisely to reflect the nation's new middle class professional class division of the soap (rich and poor) or the approach of traditional film in the popular urban classes have been ignored. The effect of this new media space was the symbolic opening of a gap between the urban middle classes and the inherited emotional speeches productions as the telenovela or the cinema of the golden age. Thus, a significant number of emerging private producers, as Zeta Films, Alameda and other forms of economic viability found by appealing to these new affections, the emotional return of the sitcom languages \u200b\u200band re-articulated to film production. Of here it comes, for example, film by Fernando Sariñana, who uses the production values \u200b\u200band visual aesthetic of American television in the construction of films that revolve around love stories starring the professional middle class (such as Love hurts ( 2002)) or sentimental education stories of middle class youth to be connected to the means of capitalist production they belong to their parents as bad on tape Girls (2007), where the protagonist, a rebellious girl daughter of a politician Right attends a school of good manners that, despite their initial resistance, it teaches you to be a proper citizen of the upper middle class.
The change in media consumption brought about by the cable television allows the transformation of cultural goods films from emerging multimedia promotional strategies tied to the rapid rise of the MTV Latin America. The foundational case is Sex, shame and tears (1998) by Antonio Serrano, whose commercial success is unprecedented in that time, largely due to the high turnover of the theme song from the movie, played by Aleks Syntek on MTV. THE cable television, in these terms, has a dual role in the development of romantic comedy in Mexico, neoliberal movies in general. On the one hand, allows entry to Mexico of languages \u200b\u200band aesthetic media that transcend those promoted historically by the duopoly formed by Televisa and TV Azteca. However, by conditioning access to these speeches to pay a monthly payment that exceeds the economic potential of large segments of the population, this opening reduces the potential audience for a specific sector that paradoxically becomes the vehicle for commercial viability new Mexican cinema to bind to the new production to consumption spaces built by private exhibitors. Moreover, the music, entertainment programs for television networks and other similar programs allow exclusive access to these audiences in ways that renew the strategies for the promotion and consumption of Mexican cinema to break the constraints inherited from both the marginalization of socially oriented Mexican cinema of the seventies and eighties as the commercial cinema popular urban look Televicine virtually monopolized by 1995. It is, in short, a radical reconfiguration parallel the affection of a class that begins to emerge as the privileged subject of a series of cultural productions after decades of invisibility in the melodramatic speech, along with the rise of new forms of consumption bundles these affections, forming what, following Ilouz, might call a new emotional economy of capitalism. It is no coincidence that the rise of cinema complexes and cable TV has been accompanied by the proliferation of shopping centers in urban areas and the success of two chains of legal sale of music records and movies, and Tower Records Mixup made remarkable success considering the parallel market piracy. However, this fact we find a clear example of the impact of this new emotional capitalism. While the middle classes produce an affective capitalism builds new structures of economic privilege, the urban popular classes, banished from his role as representational center of Mexican cinema and excluded industries culture of neoliberalism, find their place of articulation in informal economies as piracy.
In the last couple of minutes I have left, it seems important to list some critical issues that emerge from the study of this new form of capitalism Emotional
1. In terms of film studies in Mexico, I think that there is a significant gap in reading about film texts vis-à-vis the production and consumption policies. Recent criticism has tended to favor production of the "film social ", which are favored because of its political message despite its limited presence in consumption in Mexico, the film of" art "(Reygadas, Escalante, etc.) examined in their potential conceptual or internationalized Inarritu film, Cuarón and company. However, film studios rarely focus on those films strictly domestic consumption, and significant presence in the cinema as a practice. In other words, it is possible to give full account of the film industry in Mexico without a careful discussion of those productions that made national audience will see. In the holiday season 2006-2007, for example, bad girls got a ticket 7 million dollars, well above the Hollywood productions with which he competed, The Bourne Ultimatum, Evan Almighty, both with less than 6 million in revenue. The frequent production of films that get respectable results at the box office despite having no international cartel speaks of a cultural industry yet to be studied.
2. In terms of studying the cultures of neoliberalism in Mexico, the issue of the cultural sphere of the urban middle class is essential to understand the accommodations in the social and affection brought by an economic model based on the deepening social inequalities. Just for instance, calls attention the huge amount of advertisers and members of the creative class star, just from your partner, a significant amount of commercial films, appearing in Amores perros, in sex assault and tears, at Ladies Night at Tired of kissing frogs in Living kills and many other commercial run movies. This speaks to a way of conceiving the middle class based on the idealization of the forms of production generated by the economy of neoliberalism and NAFTA. The emergence of film stars like Ana Serradilla , Martha Higareda and Susana Zabaleta, all players on a number importante de roles de esta clase creativa, es sintomática de nuevas economías de género y de idealización afectiva presentes en esta cultura que podría llamarse postmelodramática. Sin dar cuenta plena de estas nuevas formas de imaginar las subjetividades de la élite creativa perdemos un elemento importante de la comprensión de las desigualdades simbólicas del proceso neoliberal.
3. Finalmente, la comedia romántica es un espacio privilegiado de articulación de la afectividad en el capitalismo avanzado. La virtual ausencia del género en la crítica cinematográfica, al grado de que autores Alberto Fuguet have claimed as their absence in the region (thanks to claudia by reference), speaks of a blind spot in the study of Latin American cinema, due to the strong presence of these productions in countries like Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia. Moreover, the persistent focus on the melodrama as a privileged mode of subjective joint Latin American film studies leaves the region out of a conversation importnate the processing of emotions in global capitalism, something that certainly is present to throughout Latin American cultural industries. As we have learned Celestino Deleyto and David Shumway in the field of romantic comedy Bret Mills in the sitcom, and Eva Ilouz, Niklas Luhmann and Eloy Fernandez Porta in the conceptualization of emotions, there is still much to be said about these reconfigurations of the paradigms of emotion in American and global culture. It seems to me that the study of Mexican romantic comedy is a cornerstone of Mexican neoliberalism theorizing come.
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