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  • Aesthetics and Politics in the Mexican Film Industry by Misha MacLaird
  • Miriam Haddu (bio)
Aesthetics and Politics in the Mexican Film Industry
by Misha MacLaird . Palgrave Macmillan .
2013 . $77.02 hardcover; $72.00 e-book. 244 pages.

MacLaird’s monograph examines the recent so-called renaissance of Mexican cinema in the context of the past two decades. The book contributes to the burgeoning field of Mexican film studies, which has seen a rise in scholarly attention paid to contemporary cinematic productions emerging from the region. In recent years, academic work on both sides of the Atlantic has addressed the artistic and commercial success of Mexican films produced during the past two decades (Jorge Ayala Blanco, Carlos Monsiváis, Joanne Hershfield, David Maciel, Dolores Tierney, Andrea Noble, Isabel Arredondo, Jason Wood, Niamh Thornton, Deborah Shaw, Ignacio Sánchez Prado, and Armida de la Garza, to name but a few). MacLaird’s monograph contributes to this trend and fills a significant gap in the field. Aesthetics and Politics in the Mexican Film Industry provides a detailed analysis of the crucial aspects affecting the filmmaking process, examining the nuts and bolts of the industry and its practices. The study focuses specifically on the areas of funding, production, distribution, reception, legislation, and new multimedia platforms. MacLaird’s work takes as its premise the exploration of the socioeconomic factors within the confines of neoliberal policies. These, as MacLaird argues, have determined a fundamental change in the way films are made and viewed in Mexico. The analyses observe how such contextual frameworks of economic change have reshaped not only the production and reception of Mexican films at home and abroad but also how these are conceived and subsequently treated during preproduction.

Divided into two parts, each one focuses on the themes of politics and aesthetics, respectively. In her writing MacLaird clearly and concisely navigates the myriad and often complex avenues of bureaucratic policy making, institutional changes, and governmental schemes that have radically altered the process of making films in Mexico. These developments, in addition to shaping the films’ aesthetic appeal, are highlighted as constituting the result of an attempt to meet evolving spectatorship demands, which are marked by the hegemonies of Hollywood’s representational [End Page 148] paradigms. Furthermore, such developments have in turn carved out new strategies of reception. MacLaird examines how sections of an affluent and consumer-conscious Mexican youth, influenced by the discourses of MTV’s visual rhetoric, have been largely responsible for the change in spectatorship demographics of recent years. The deregulation of ticket prices, one of the constituents of the North American Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) economic presence, has seen a shift in audience levels tipped in favor of urban moviegoers over rural viewing praxis. Market fluctuations, alongside the economic impact on domestic productivity and reception, are paramount to the overall success or challenges the industry faces. Furthermore, MacLaird’s book explores the imperatives at the heart of implemented changes to the administrative infrastructures of established institutional bodies such as the Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía (Mexican Film Institute, or IMCINE) and its funding schemes FOPROCINE and FIDECINE. The creation and application of new funding programs seen in the program EFICINE 226, alongside the continued presence of partner institutions such as the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (CONACULTA), are also taken into account in the study. The modification of legislative measures aimed at promoting and supporting the industry and its productivity are examined in detail in MacLaird’s work.

Chapter 1 sets the historical and contextual basis for the examinations that ensue. Here the author discusses the close alignment between the state and the funding bodies that determine the investment potential of a filmic project and the tensions that can arise from this dynamic. The realization of the need for a more inclusive and engaging process within the industry, as well as the establishment of private companies such as Canana Films, has paved the way for the emergence of a strong independent cinema materialized through a combination of privately supported and alternatively sourced capital, as argued in chapter 5.

Situating her analyses within the framework of the cinema of the 1990s and 2000s, MacLaird’s...

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