Aesthetics and Politics in the Mexican Film Industry

M. MacLaird

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137008060
• eBook ISBN: 9781137319340
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Arte general

Evaluating a broad selection of Mexican films produced from the early 1990s to the present, this study examines how production methods, audience demographics, and aesthetic approaches have changed throughout the past two decades and how these changes relate to the country's transitions to a democratic political system and a free-market economy.

Part I

The Politics of Transition

Chapter 1

Industry and Policy: Privatizing a National Cinema

In his 1994 Modernización y política cultural, CONACULTA director Rafael Tovar y de Teresa elaborates the Mexican government’s plan to reform national cultural policy during the process of liberalizing its trade policy.

Mexico has begun to employ a policy for modernizing its political, economic, and social structures . . . that avoids both the acritical acceptance of change for the sake of change and its rejection in the name of a supposed identity whose permanence could only be maintained in isolation. (13)

In this treatise on cultural production, following the cultural agenda of Carlos Salinas’s 1989 Plan Nacional de Desarrollo (National Development Plan), Tovar y de Teresa’s rhetoric couches the strategies for modernizing Mexico’s cultural identity in language of moderation, promising neither to forge blindly ahead nor to let a stubborn adherence to tradition impede the nation from keeping pace with the rest of the world. Framing the move toward political, economic, and social modernization as a cautious and moderate decision offers a unifying—if ambivalent—platform to appeal to a broad constituency, while also naturalizing these policy changes as inevitable within the temporal currents of globalization. By leveraging a fear of “isolation” to critique traditionalist notions of mexicanidad, Tovar y de Teresa condemns at once antiquated representations of national identity and the economic models prevalent throughout Latin America in the latter half of the twentieth century, before the shift toward neoliberalism.

The doublespeak that coheres economic policy and cultural identity is emblematic of the public debates in Mexico throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as the administrations of Miguel de la Madrid and Carlos Salinas (who served as budget secretary under de la Madrid) prepared to enter into NAFTA. Opening up trade with the United States brought concerns of a new wave of cultural imperialism that would lead to the erasure of Mexican cultural traditions, an issue tied historically to the authoritarian reign of Porfirio Díaz (Meyer 1995, 31) and later the presidency of Miguel Alemán. There was also the more imminent fear that large multinational corporations would steamroll the small and medium business sector. CONACULTA proposed to remedy both situations at once: its foundational logic argued that Mexico’s uniqueness made its cultural products exportable, which would be an asset to the national economy under free trade. At the same time, channeling this economic growth through an institution allowed the state to maintain a level of control over both the arts and media production. In reality, however, the terms of NAFTA limited the state’s ability to intervene in cultural production. This chapter’s retracing of Mexican film legislation over the past several decades throws into relief the state’s struggle to negotiate changes in the industry that would conform to its new trade policy and still foster national production, a conundrum arising from the legal contradictions between national and supranational policies.

Audiovisual media in general, and cinema in particular, were central to NAFTA negotiations for both Canada and Mexico. Whereas Canada made sure that cultural goods and services were exempt from free-trade policy, the audiovisual industries in Mexico were in fact the main obstacle for such an agreement. The United States has seen Hollywood cinema as its most effective cultural ambassador since the first half of the twentieth century and its foreign markets make up roughly half of its revenue (Falicov 2008, 264). Of these markets, Mexico has the fifth-largest movie-going audience in the world and NAFTA allowed Hollywood’s major studios greater access to that audience. From Mexico’s perspective, NAFTA was an opportunity for its audiovisual industries to expand into the US Latino market with both film and television content (although only the latter has been done with much success) (Casas 2006, 75).

Mexico’s preparations for NAFTA focused primarily on deregulation and privatization initiatives; two examples of action in this direction included selling off large film-industry assets and revising its film legislation in 1992 to reduce screen quotas and deregulate ticket prices. The most significant change overall was the privatization of exhibition and distribution, which changed the demographic of the Mexican spectator and subsequently—though with almost no delay—the content of its cinema. After new production strategies and the changes in the exhibition system together generated a spurt of success for Mexican cinema, the state put forth several new initiatives to stimulate production, with varying reactions from its trade partners and from its own film industry.

While CONACULTA’s injection of entrepreneurialism into cultural endeavors bolstered film production in the early 1990s, the number of films produced in Mexico plummeted to an all-time low of nine features by the middle of the decade. And yet by the late 1990s, a number of films premiered with record success in the box office and critical praise abroad, suggesting that Mexico was experiencing a cinematic renaissance, regarding the quality of its cinema and also its wide audience reach. However, the success of those films must be considered within the context of the industry’s infrastructural and policy changes, as well as in the political and economic changes occurring nationally. The international attention to Mexican cinema between 1998 and 2002 coincides with the political transition of 2000—the downfall of the PRI after 71 years—and the aesthetic and thematic novelty of films from this period worked in tandem with the political slogans in favor of regime change. Furthermore, the box-office hits like Sexo, pudor y lágrimas, Todo el poder, and Amores perros were produced primarily or entirely by private production companies using production models and publicity strategies that were relatively new to Mexico, and were circulated in the new multiplex exhibition system. The correlation between these films’ box-office revenues and the change in the movie-going demographic following the changes to the exhibition system are more orchestrated than even many filmmakers and industry members are aware.

The end of Vicente Fox’s term witnessed a more than 120 percent increase in the number of feature films produced, compared to the previous term. These few years brought more international attention to the productions of several Mexican directors filming outside of Mexico (e.g., Alfonso Cuarón’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban [2004] and Children of Men [2006], Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy [2004] and El laberinto del fauno [2006], and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 21 Grams [2003] and Babel [2006]), such as when Cuarón, del Toro, González Iñárritu, and production designer Eugenio Caballero competed in the 2007 Academy Awards.¹ The achievements of these filmmakers abroad and of several emerging filmmakers working in Mexico but presenting their films in international festivals helped to improve the image of Mexican cinema in the eyes of its national audiences, its cultural institutions, and the private business sector. In 2007, a new film law went into effect to offer tax credits to private investors putting money into film production, creating yet another surge in production. By the end of the Calderón term, the number of films in production and asking for the tax credit surpassed the limit allowed by law, with 42 projects applying and only 32 approved (Altamirano 2012). Mexican cinema’s production trajectory shows an increase of 711 percent, from a low point in 1997 to 2011, when 73 features were produced (IMCINE 2012b, 14).

Film Policy from NAFTA to EFICINE

The Mexican state’s relationship to the film industry has been one of constant flux between support and neglect depending on the priorities of each six-year administration and the extent to which cinema was considered an advantageous medium for promoting political agendas. One of the state’s earliest legislative interventions into the industry occurred in 1919 with Venustiano Carranza’s policies on censorship, followed by subsequent interventions in the same area through the 1930s and 1940s. During World War II and the postwar recovery, the drop in production in the United States and Europe, as well as in Argentina, allowed Mexican cinema to dominate the Latin American markets. Mexico’s film industry received support from the US State Department, and in exchange the content of its cinema provided anti-Axis propaganda; during this same time, Argentina was sanctioned for its declared neutrality (Peredo Castro 2004, 75–129; Lay Arellano 2005, 41). In 1942, the Banco de México, with the Alemán administration’s approval, established a lending reserve for filmmakers known as the Banco Nacional Cinematográfico (National Film Reserve, BNC), which became a national institution in 1947 (Saavedra Luna 2007a, 17). Taking advantage of this climate, the private sector established several major studios and the distributor Películas Nacionales (PEL-NAL) between 1944 and 1947. At this time, a chamber to oversee industry activity and arbitrate conflict, the Cámara Nacional de la Industria Cinematográfica (National Chamber for the Film Industry, CANACINE), was also established.² In 1949, the state passed its first film law, which was reformed in 1952. The new reform specified that the state’s role was to be “an arbiter that could establish the harmony between the different film sectors and defend national heritage” (Lay Arellano 2005, 62). In 1961, the government nationalized the exhibition chains Compañía Operadora de Teatros S. A. (COTSA) and Cadena de Oro, consisting of a total of 329 cinemas (Lay Arellano 2005, 67).

The 1970s offer the most exaggerated examples of the state’s fluctuating participation in the film industry, thanks to President Luis Echeverría’s efforts to win back the support of the intellectual middle class following his role, as secretary of state, in the violent repression of the student movements during the previous decade. The appeasement involved extensive support to film production, including a major financial investment in reforming the BNC, the opening of the Cineteca Nacional and the film school Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (Center for Film Training, CCC), and the creation of three state-run production companies (Lay Arellano 2005, 51). This support helped launch the careers of some Mexico’s most important auteurs to date (considered Mexico’s original New Wave), including Arturo Ripstein, Jorge Fons, and Jaime Humberto Hermosillo; however, it also spurred an ideological rift between those filmmakers willing to work within the state apparatus and those who saw accepting subvention as complicity with the government’s repressive politics, particularly regarding freedom of expression. Nonetheless, the former group exploited the support and was able to create films of significant political and social critique from within. Gustavo Montiel Pagés points out that “the struggle between independent and official cinema was . . . fought on cultural terrain, in the field of expression, not in the realm of the industrial,” suggesting that filmmakers use the content of their films to push the limits of the possible given their particular means (2010, 56). Despite the categorical division between filmmakers, these two sectors that sought to create high-quality and creative cinema still shared a common enemy, “the old private sector,” whose massification of low-budget commercial cinema was seen as the demise of the Golden Age (Montiel Pagés 2010, 56). President José López Portillo virtually reversed the efforts of his predecessor with a combination of deliberate strategies (such as initiating the dissolution of the BNC, which allowed the private sector to spring back into its industry dominance) and accidents stemming from acute negligence (under the leadership of López Portillo’s sister, Margarita, the archives of the Cineteca Nacional burned down). During de la Madrid’s presidency, IMCINE was established as the new government agency to oversee the production and promotion of national cinema.

Having served under de la Madrid, when his own presidency began Salinas was already immersed in the debates around NAFTA’s potential impact on cultural traditions and industries. His Program for Cultural Development sought to decentralize responsibility and create more self-organization in a postquake Mexico, and at the same time spur entrepreneurship in cultural production (Miller and Yudice 2002, 131). He established CONACULTA in December 1988 as the institutional backbone of this plan, operating as part of the Secretaría de Educación Pública (Secretariat of Public Education, SEP). In 1989, IMCINE, which had operated as part of the Secretaría de Gobernación (Secretariat of Governance, SEGOB), transitioned into CONACULTA. The new goals of IMCINE under the direction of Ignacio Durán Loera (1989–94) were largely responsible for the next incarnation of a “New Wave” in the early 1990s, including Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate, Alfonso Arau, 1992), as well as a number of films by first-time filmmakers and women directors (de la Mora 2006, 140). The success abroad of several of these films is due largely to the superficial optimism with which they represent Mexican cultural history, making it easily consumable. Following global trends of food–fantasy cinema,³ Como agua para chocolate offered up a romanticized gastronomic version of the Mexican Revolution. Two years later, the EZLN’s demand for land rights and social equality in the name of Emiliano Zapata and the state’s violent response to these demands created a stark contrast between cinema’s nostalgic exportable images of revolution and the very real conflicts taking place. Other films, such as Sólo con tu pareja (Love in the Time of Hysteria, Alfonso Cuarón, 1992) and Cilantro y perejil (Recipes to Stay Together, Rafael Montero, 1995) use the romantic-comedy genre to playfully present the impact of NAFTA on Mexico’s middle class as a central concern, yet managing to reconcile a coexistence of US business culture with family-centered traditions and values.

In addition to establishing CONACULTA, Salinas made a number of gestures to win the approval of artists and public intellectuals by underscoring an interest in national culture and presenting a persona of progressivism, such as public appearances with celebrities and authorizing the exhibition of previously censored films (Saavedra Luna 2007a, 29). Much like in the Echeverría period, the administration’s attention to the arts was successful in as much as it fostered the production of a large number of high-quality films that, as opposed to that being produced by the private sector, would allow cinema to reenter the realm of cultural patrimony. While the critique of intellectuals and artists working in the service of the state is not new to Mexico, the contradictions of the periods of Echeverría and Salinas can be seen as antecedents to the ambivalence of the contemporary filmmaker toward state support: one can deny neither the caliber of the cinema nor the extreme abuse of power and prevalence of corruption during both presidencies.

Immediately following IMCINE’s transition from SEGOB to SEP, Durán oversaw the organization’s restructuring, which involved consolidating, liquidating, and redefining the federal film agencies under IMCINE’s institutional umbrella (de la Mora 2006, 137–42; Saavedra Luna 2007a, 77–90). This included the dissolving of state producers Corporación Nacional Cinematográfica de Trabajadores y Estado Dos (National Film Corporation of Workers and State II, CONACITE) II and Corporación Nacional Cinematográfica (National Film Corporation, CONACINE), as well as selling Estudios América, theater chain COTSA, and television station Imevisión. At the same time, resources of the Centro de Producción de Cortometraje (Short-Film Production Center) were relocated within the CCC film school. The institutional objectives of CONACULTA included diversifying cultural production by literally decentralizing funding resources and responsibilities to other cultural agencies, such as state and municipal-level film commissions.

Durán’s vision for IMCINE followed the agenda of geographically decentralizing production, while also reducing the federal agency’s level of participation. He felt strongly that the institution’s role was to facilitate the initial development of projects and to promote finished projects as national culture, but not to have creative control or financial responsibility for the productions. At this time, IMCINE began to operate solely as coproducer, supplementing financing for projects whose funding was managed by the film’s primary producers.⁴ At the same time, as an institution it assumed tasks of former agencies, including distribution, programming, and cultural promotion with the goal of drawing national and international audiences back to Mexican cinema with high-quality productions. With a great increase in visibility and awards at international festivals and through overseas distribution, IMCINE was indeed successful at shifting the foreign market from being primarily Spanish speakers (such as in Spanish-language cinemas in the United States, which were rapidly disappearing), and instead presenting Mexican cinema as having the sophistication and aesthetic value needed to reach the art-house/foreign-film niche (de la Mora 2006, 139–41).

Durán was also responsible for promoting the deregulation of ticket prices and screen quotas, which followed with the Salinas administration’s legislative strategies toward opening up Mexico to foreign investment. Salinas’s 1992 Ley Federal de Cinematografía (Federal Film Law, LFC) was the first film legislation passed since the 1952 reform, was drafted with little or no input from the production sector, and was expedited through the legislative channels and approved by congress in less than 20 minutes (Lay Arellano 2005, 69; Saavedra Luna 2007a, 66). Its primary focus is exhibition, both deregulating ticket prices and decreasing the 30 percent scr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction   Una poca fatal: An Era of Fatality, Tragic Endings, and New Beginnings
• Part I   The Politics of Transition
• Part II   The Aesthetics of Transition
• List of Acronyms
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index