Multiplatform Media in Mexico is the first book to treat the interconnected fields of cinema, television, and transmedia in Mexico over the last decade and the new audiovisual trends to which they have given birth. The book combines industrial analysis of a major audiovisual field at a time of growth and change with close readings of significant texts on all screens: big and small; theatrical, broadcast, and digital. It is also based on local reporting on the ground, as in the chapter documenting media response to the 2017 earthquake. For the first time, the book also draws throughout on star studies, tracing the distinct profiles of actors who migrate from one medium to another. I return to star studies in the second half of this Introduction.

In extended and more theoretical chapters at the end of each of its three parts, Multiplatform Media in Mexico also addresses three broad questions relevant beyond Mexico: what does it mean for a newly tolerant society to have a self-proclaimed genre of post-homophobic film comedy? Do changes in TV distribution (such as new streaming platforms) lead to changes in content (new types of series)? And how do established cinematic genres such as the essay film and network narrative translate to newly formed internet fiction forms? In a further attempt to structure and integrate the diverse material, each chapter (except for Chap. 9) treats two texts or phenomena, comparing and contrasting them. While media convergence is acknowledged in the abstract, it is less acknowledged in the concrete. One rare precedent devoted to film reception in a Mexican context is Juan Carlos Domínguez Domingo’s Las nuevas dimensiones del espectador (2017), which situates the new cinema spectator within a variety of contexts, from media market preferences to “cultural rights.”

Mexican film studies in English tend to focus on accounts of a small number of contemporary internationally distributed features and auteurs or on consecrated historical periods such as the Golden Age of the 1940s (one notable exception is Sánchez Prado [2014], who addresses commercial cinema in a period just before my own). In Mexico itself, where film studies is mainly historical and TV studies mainly quantitative, there is little tradition of close textual analysis. This book attempts to shift and expand the focus of research in that, beyond auteur cinema and television statistics, it addresses a wide range of media and texts from the last decade and offers close analysis of specific texts. Although it does examine some international critical favorites, such as the genre of ground-breaking documentary features which play the festival circuit, it mainly pays close attention to what the great mass of Mexicans themselves prefer to watch, from mainstream film comedy to popular daily TV drama and web series. This book treats very recent material, which is often well known to modern Mexican audiences but unfamiliar to foreign scholars and has yet to receive academic attention. Multiplatform Media in Mexico thus aims to satisfy the interests of not only specialists but also non-Spanish-speaking readers interested in Latin America’s second biggest economy and most dynamic media market. To this end the book combines industrial and textual analysis throughout.

Part I of Multiplatform Media in Mexico addresses cinema. The opening chapter on film explores the industrial context: two festivals (the first, San Sebastián, a “bridge” between Spain and Latin America; the second, Guadalajara, the main industry event in Mexico, just as Morelia is the main art cinema forum [Smith 2014, 30–7; D’Lugo 2018]); and two of Mexico’s public film institutions located in Mexico City (the Cineteca Nacional, or National Film Institute, and the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica or CCC, one of the two official film schools). By focusing on production, distribution, and exhibition, this reportage sets the scene for the more textual chapters that follow. This chapter includes a review of a representative fiction feature directed by a graduate of the CCC and produced by and starring Harold Torres, a respected actor who is further treated in Chap. 7.

Chapter 3 (“Sex Docs”) contrasts two documentaries by first-time female filmmakers, widely shown at international festivals, which focus on the unexplored topic of sex and aging: Bellas de noche (“Beauties of the Night,” María José Cuevas, 2016) and Plaza de la Soledad (“Solitude Square,” Maya Goded, 2016). Additionally, it offers an archive-based star studies account of the vedettes of the first film, showgirls of the 1970s such as Lyn May and Wanda Seux who boasted surprisingly durable careers.

The third, most extended chapter on cinema treats a recent trend in Mexican mainstream film, comedies in which it is not the homosexual but the homophobe who is the butt of the joke. The films here are Macho (Antonio Serrano, 2016) and Hazlo como hombre (“Do It Like an Hombre [sic],” Nicolás López, 2017). This chapter interweaves this sexual theme with that of urban space, arguing that the city is inextricable from new gender identities. The stars examined here are Miguel Rodarte and Mauricio Ochmann, previously and incongruously known for their unrepentantly macho and heterosexual romantic roles, respectively.

Part II shifts to TV fiction. The first chapter on television charts the emergence in Mexico of a genre that is well established elsewhere, the “WIP” or women-in-prison drama. As a control, it contrasts the Mexican series Capadocia (HBO Latin America, 2008–12, available for streaming in the USA from Amazon Prime ) with a Spanish version of the same theme, Vis a vis (“Locked Up,” Antena 3, 2015-present, also streaming on Amazon), which was shown free to air on Mexico’s national network Azteca . The performers studied here are Mexicans Dolores Heredia and Ana de la Reguera , who play the prison director and main inmate respectively (de la Reguera also takes a campy cameo as herself in comedy Macho ). The high-profile producer of the Mexican series, Epigmenio Ibarra, is himself a media figure with far-reaching influence in Mexico.

The second TV chapter is on anthology dramas (called in Mexico “unitarios” or “one-offs”), a genre which is often overshadowed by the better known genre of telenovela. It analyzes two daily series broadcast in the early evening which are massively popular with Mexican youth audiences and much despised by critics: La rosa de Guadalupe (“The Rose of the Virgin of Guadalupe,” Televisa , 2008–) and Como dice el dicho (“As the Saying Goes,” Televisa , 2011–). Arguing that they serve a pedagogic function in working through urgent social issues for their young viewers, the chapter also traces how the series have, over some 1000 episodes, functioned as a school for novice actors who are a focus for fans on social media.

The final, longest chapter on TV, “New Platforms, New Contents,” is devoted to Run, Coyote, Run (Fox Latin America, 2017), the first series made by the Fox network in Mexico, a comedy that treats the potentially traumatic topic of people smuggling and the border wall. It argues that the novel format of the series, which is quite distinct from the coarse free-to-air sitcoms and sketch shows commonly aired by Televisa, is inextricable from its new distribution on pay-TV and by app. The stars studied are Luis Gerardo Méndez (a versatile actor who is the protagonist of Netflix’s first series in Mexico) and Harold Torres of Run, Coyote, Run (who was previously known as a featured player in Leftist and indie filmmaking).

Part III is devoted to multiplatform media. The first chapter is based once more on on-site reportage. It treats two examples of media crossover, focusing in each on two texts. In the first half of the chapter, we see how film and TV production is crafted to coincide with the Mexican calendar and its unique Day of the Dead festivities. The texts examined are horror feature Espectro (“Demon Inside,” Alfonso Pineda Ulloa, 2013) and (more incongruously) No se aceptan devoluciones (“Instructions Not Included,” Eugenio Derbez, 2013), a film comedy inseparable from its director-star’s ubiquitous work on television.

In the second half of the chapter, live theater shows recreate TV successes in provincial Mérida, Yucatán, and metropolitan Mexico City. The shows are, respectively, musical talent contest Parodiando (“Taking Off,” or “Impersonating,” Televisa , 2015–) and telenovela Mi corazón es tuyo (“My Heart Is Yours,” Televisa , 2014–15), itself a Mexican remake of a Spanish TV series. Adaptations from small screen to stage thus span diverse genres. The stars examined here are veteran Angélica María, a favorite icon for drag queens, and Polo Morín, a telenovela juvenile with a controversial past. Both serve as images of and for teenagers in very different decades.

The second multiplatform media chapter is called “Earthquake Media.” This chapter is also based on reportage, beginning as it does with an account of television coverage minutes after the massive earthquake on September 20, 2017, and continuing with a survey of media on the anniversary of the disaster one year later. The chapter tracks how film institutions, TV programming, and social media tackled the aftermath of the tragedy. It focuses especially on the charity drive set up by transnational superstar actors Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, whose press profiles are studied at the end of the chapter, and also mentions the role of the presenters of Televisa’s long-running morning show Hoy (“Today,” Televisa, 1998–), which is so integrated into the daily lives of Mexican viewers. Normally devoted to celebrity gossip and trivial banter, in these special circumstances, the performers either left the studio to participate in rescue work or chaired unaccustomed and uncomfortable discussions with visiting seismologists or trauma specialists.

The final chapter on multiplatform media (and of the book) is on the genre known as network narrative. It deals with feature film Vive por mi (“Live for Me,” Chema de la Peña, 2016; released in Mexico in 2017) and, at greater length, web series Sincronía (“Synchrony,” Blim, 2017). A genre well establishe...