Silver sling-backs and Mexican melodrama: Salon Mexico and Danzon

Tierney, Dolores

doi:10.1093/screen/38.4.360

“…For instance, in Latin American film studies, in which the theoretical perspectives of the 1960s and 1970s considered genres as culturally derivative of the Hollywood industry and complicit with its bourgeois ideologies (Colina and Díaz Torres 1972: 16), genre and mainstream filmmaking are incompatible with the idea of a Latin American or Mexican auteur as an autonomous artist. Latin American film scholarship has shifted away from this mistrust towards studying popular genres, with important work on melodrama in the 1990s (López 1991;Tierney 1997) and more recently, the romantic comedy and its rise to hegemonic status in post-political-transition Mexico (Misha MacLaird 2013a: 10; Sánchez Prado 2014: 69). Despite these shifts, some otherwise compelling accounts of Y tu mamá también and Children of Men from within Latin American film studies, or Romance Languages sideline or completely ignore the films' genre borrowings, malign (in the case of Children of Men) their origins in 'the multinational capitalist entertainment machine' (Amago 2010: 219) and privilege instead the realist and selfconscious aspects which more comfortably fit within traditional notions of the auteur: long takes, hand-held cameras, (Middents and Fernández 2013;Acevedo-Muñoz 2004;Baer and Long 2004) and thematic comparisons with T. S. Elliot's The Waste Land (1922) (Amago 2010: 217-218).…”

Section: Crash's Criticism Of Racism Syriana's Criticism Of the Unite...mentioning

confidence: 99%

New Transnationalisms in Contemporary Latin American Cinemas

Tierney¹

2018

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This book would not have been possible without the help and support of many individuals and institutions. I would like to thank Sussex University for two terms and one part-time semester of leave, and in particular the chairs of Media, Film and Music, Sue Thornham and Tim Jordan, and also the subject heads in film, Thomas Austin and Frank Krutnik. I would also like to thank the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies (CLALS) at American University (Washington DC) where a Research Fellowship in Autumn 2016 helped me with writing the final chapters of the manuscript and also Jeffrey Middents for help in organising the Fellowship. Some of the research for this book has also been conducted as part of the research project: 'Transnational relations in Spanish-American digital cinema: the cases of Spain, Mexico and Argentina' (CSO2014-52750-P), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. I thank José Cerdán Los Arcos and Miguel Fernández-Rodríguez Labayen for incorporating me into the project. Additionally, initial research for this book, in Mexico City in 2005/2006, was helped by funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.I am eternally grateful to all those who have helped in some way by answering questions, providing information, materials and/or contacts, and friendship and positive energy which have helped in the book writing process: Misha MacLaird (in particular),

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“…For instance, in Latin American film studies, in which the theoretical perspectives of the 1960s and 1970s considered genres as culturally derivative of the Hollywood industry and complicit with its bourgeois ideologies (Colina and Díaz Torres 1972: 16), genre and mainstream filmmaking are incompatible with the idea of a Latin American or Mexican auteur as an autonomous artist. Latin American film scholarship has shifted away from this mistrust towards studying popular genres, with important work on melodrama in the 1990s (López 1991;Tierney 1997) and more recently, the romantic comedy and its rise to hegemonic status in post-political-transition Mexico (Misha MacLaird 2013a: 10; Sánchez Prado 2014: 69). Despite these shifts, some otherwise compelling accounts of Y tu mamá también and Children of Men from within Latin American film studies, or Romance Languages sideline or completely ignore the films' genre borrowings, malign (in the case of Children of Men) their origins in 'the multinational capitalist entertainment machine' (Amago 2010: 219) and privilege instead the realist and selfconscious aspects which more comfortably fit within traditional notions of the auteur: long takes, hand-held cameras, (Middents and Fernández 2013;Acevedo-Muñoz 2004;Baer and Long 2004) and thematic comparisons with T. S. Elliot's The Waste Land (1922) (Amago 2010: 217-218).…”

Section: Biutifulmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Gabriela Copertari's analysis of El hijo de la novia on the other hand -in a book that also talks about the New Argentine Cinema (76 89 03 Cristian Bernard and Flavio Nardini 2000) does not, admirably, differentiate between the ability of mainstream films (like El hijo de la novia, and also Nueve reinas) and new Argentine films to speak for or to the nation (2009: 1-3, 95). Despite historic shifts in film studies to recognise the resistive possibilities of mainstream filmmaking (particularly melodrama), in US (Brooks 1991;Elsaesser 1991;Gledhill 1987) and Latin American scholarship (López 1991(López , 1993Tierney 1997), many analyses of Argentine cinema persist in maintaining a cultural hierarchy that values art cinema as automatically national and critical of the status quo and devalues what are often only very loosely defined 'Hollywood' or 'mainstream aesthetics' as supporting that status quo and concomitantly dominant (imperialist) ideology. Representative of this idea of loosely defined Hollywood aesthetics supporting dominant ideology is Andermann's overriding suggestion about El hijo de la novia and Luna de Avellaneda: that they function to shore up the 'traditional role [of cinema] as a dream factory capable of releasing viewers albeit temporarily, from the constraints and frustrations of everyday experience ' (2011: 40).…”

Section: On the Roadmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Transnationalisms in Contemporary Latin American Cinemas

Tierney¹

2018

11

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In the late 1990s and early 2000s Latin American films Amores perros, Diarios de motocicleta, El hijo de la novia, Y tu mamá también, and Cidade de Deus enjoyed unprecedented critical and commercial success in global markets. Benefiting from external financial and/or creative input, these films were considered examples of transnational cinema. This book examines the six transnational directors (Iñárritu, Cuarón, del Toro, Meirelles, Salles and Campanella), who made these and the subsequent commercially successful and mostly ‘deterritorialized’ films (21 Grams, Babel, Biutiful, El espinazo del Diablo, El laberinto del fauno, Blindness, The Constant Gardener, Children of Men, On the Road, El secreto de sus ojos). Arguing against criticism in which these films’ commercial (Hollywood) and transnational features efface the authorial sensibilities of these directors and make them irrelevant to Latin American trends and politics, this book shows how they engage with national, continental and hemispheric politics and identity. Bringing a new perspective to the transnational films of Latin America’s transnational auteurs, including the recent Gravity, The Revenant, Birdman, and Crimson Peak, this book facilitates understanding how different genres function across cultures.

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