Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas

ISSN: 0890-5762 (Print) 1743-0666 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rrev20

Politics and Popularity: The Current Mexican

Cinema
Judith A. M. Costello
To cite this article: Judith A. M. Costello (2005) Politics and Popularity: The Current
Mexican Cinema, Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, 38:1, 31-38, DOI:
10.1080/08905760500112386
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08905760500112386

Published online: 24 May 2006.

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Politics and Popularity: The Current

Mexican Cinema
Judith A. M. Costello
Northern Arizona University

Judith Costello, originally from Boston, has lived and worked in Mexico on
several occasions since 1985. She currently resides in Flagstaff, Arizona,
where she teaches Spanish and Latin American Humanities, including film,
at Northern Arizona University.

The mass demonstration calling for improved public safety that took
place on Sunday June 27, 2004, in the zocalo, or central plaza, of Mexico
City, drew little media attention in the United States even as its
government was calling for increased security internationally. However,
in the same week, major U.S. periodicals ran features on the current state
of Mexican cinema and its increased visibility in the United States,
focusing as well on the particulars of its financial structure. Considering
this countrys meager coverage of the social, political, and economic
realities of Mexico, perhaps this budding interest in its cinema will lead to
a better understanding of Mexico in general.
Over the last five years Mexican cinema has seen a marked increase in
independent productions, which receive less state funding under Fox than
under previous administrations and therefore seem able to escape some
state censorship. The nature of Mexican censorship has itself changed
during those years, allowing far more on-screen nudity, sexuality, and
even some degree of social and political criticism. Graphic violence,
however, was always permissible. During this same period the North
American public and press have grown increasingly interested in Mexican
cinema. Besides treating more universal themes, these independent films
have improved distribution, better production values, Mexican rock/rap
Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas ISSN 0890-5762 print/ISSN 1743-0666 online # 2005 The Americas Society, Inc.
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/08905760500112386

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Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas

soundtracks, and hip young stars, all of which make them more attractive
to U.S. audiences. In fact, the films may be the single greatest influence
besides NAFTA on the way that that public perceives Mexico. Consider
the popularity in the United States of the shockingly violent Amores perros
(Loves A Bitch), and the scandalous sexuality of Y tu mama tambien!
(And Your Mother Too!), and the timeliness of El crimen del Padre Amaro
(The Crime of Padre Amaro).
Traditionally, the Mexican government has supported its film industry
with financial backing and state-run infrastructure such as studios. That
support has diminished under the administration of Vicente Fox. The
justification for the decreased funding is essentially a matter of the freemarket policies and NAFTA-esque reasoning of Foxs political party,
Partido de Accion Nacional or PAN. Many governments finance their film
industry under the rubric of the national arts and culture in an effort to
maintain a national cinema against the overwhelming strength and draw
of Hollywood movies.
The recent defection of many mainstream and commercially successful
Mexican filmmakers and actors to Hollywood is evidence of the effective
brain/talent drain brought about in part by the Mexican governments
reduction of funding. Recent examples of Mexican artists who work in
both Hollywood and Mexico City (known as the Federal District, Distrito
Federal, or D.F.) include directors Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (TwentyOne Grams) and Alfonso Cuaron (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of
Azkaban). Hot young actors Diego Luna (The Terminal) and Gael Garca
Bernal have followed Salma Hayek across the border. Of course, even in
the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema (roughly from the 1930s through the
1950s), actors, directors, and technicians went to Hollywood or enjoyed
trans-border careers. In the 1980s, the acclaimed director of Como agua
para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate), Alfonso Arau recommenced a
pattern begun in the 1930s. Todays migration is different, provoked as it
is by a political change rather than economic factors. During the long
tenure of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (or PRI, the ruling party
since the revolution until Foxs victory in 2000) the Mexican film
institute, IMCINE, subsidized, sponsored, supported, and censored
Mexican film. The shift to private funding has resulted in some clever
financing strategies engaging the support of other Latin American
producers, Spanish television, Mexican-European co-productions, Hollywood, and even private capital.
Lifting the Janus of IMCINE support has meant less censorship. While
the Virgen de Guadalupe remains an utterly untouchable icon in film,
criticism of the president, along with issues of political corruption, were
uncensored in such films as Todo el poder (All the Power) and La ley de
Herodes (Herods Law). The latter film might have been censored had it
not been featured at the Guadalajara French Film Festival. Explicit*
sometimes alternative* sexuality, male and female full-frontal nudity,
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33

urban economic desperation and alienation, rape, abuse, and corruption

in the Catholic Church, the mistreatment and disenfranchisement of the
poor and indigenous peoples, and even AIDS have all been treated in
recent films, shattering almost all of the industrys long-held taboos. It is
possible that the thematic freedom enjoyed by independent film has
influenced IMCINE to loosen its censorious grip, given the success of the
independents and their competitive edge among domestic competitors.
However, while less censorship is desirable and state sponsorship generally
threatens artistic autonomy and freedom, the dismantling of the entire
state-supported apparatus is ill-conceived and poorly timed.
Since around 1998 the relative commercial success of Mexican films has
increased domestically and abroad. In the same period, Mexican films
have won prizes at international film festivals and achieved widespread
critical acclaim, as exemplified by the 1999 film Amores perros. Mexican
cinema is now considered cool. Both Chicano and general audiences in
the United States have embraced this current wave of clever, sometimes
well-acted, glossy, well-lighted productions with their Mexican hip-hop
soundtracks and marketable, attractive stars. The popularity of these new
films have inspired U.S. critics and audiences to explore earlier Mexican
cinema, and to the surprise of the Hollywood-centric, they found a wealth
of cinematic gold in Mexicos film history. In recent years, several venues
across the U.S. have featured Mexican films in festivals or retrospectives.
So why would Vicente Fox and friends pull financial support now?
The size of the presidents budget is such that it would force IMCINE
to close, thus denying new directors access to the support that launched
Mexicos greatest talents. The proposal also calls for closing the
governments film school, long the breeding ground for both fabulous
directors and those who unquestioningly promoted the party line. The
plan would privatize Churubusco Studios in Mexico City, which has
produced wildly successful television programs and films. Previous
privatizations have led other studios in the country to close. Besides
budgetary considerations, there was a fire at the Cineteca, the central film
library, in the 1980s, during the tenure of President Lopez Portillos sister,
who served as head of the archive. The blaze destroyed several irreplaceable films, provoking a popular outcry against nepotism and corruption.
Funding seems cyclical, but if these examples are any indication, it may be
restored.
The $10 million in annual savings that Foxs budget promises, will be
reflected in the individual budgets of Mexican films, particularly those
made by young or first-time directors (Rosenberg, 2003). The PAN, in its
efforts to distinguish itself from the PRI, hopes to modernize the
Mexican economy by reducing state subsidies and opening the market.
The dictatorship of the political party and socioeconomic class that have
ruled Mexico since the 1910 revolution, has not changed with the election
of Fox. In place of wealthy, white men who fancy themselves socialists,

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Mexico is now under the party dictatorship of wealthy, white men who
fancy themselves akin to Republicans in the United States. Just as public
funding of the Mexican Film industry was reduced, the competition
became more difficult, as the forces of NAFTA, globalization, and freemarket capitalism grew stronger in Mexico; all of these forces threatened
to crush the cultural autonomy of Mexican cinema, which cannot
compete alone against the floodtide of Hollywood imports. In December
2002, Mexico passed, somewhat schizophrenically, a one-peso movieticket tax to be channeled to film production, much the way gasoline taxes
go to highway construction. By filing lawsuits to obstruct the collection of
80 percent of that tax, various U.S. distributors, studios, and the U.S.
Motion Picture Association (MPA) are, in effect, practicing the type of
intervention that has always handicapped the Mexican industry vs a vs
Hollywood. The MPA, and U.S. distributors in general, have traditionally
held that such taxes penalize distributors (Rosenberg, 2003). Their
concern is difficult to fathom, given that U.S. films manage to dominate
between 80 and 90 percent of Mexican screens.
Prior to the current resurgence in Mexican film, Mexican theaters that
showed home-grown films basically catered to the art-house audience.
While the box office continues to favor Hollywood blockbusters, Mexican
productions have enjoyed a popularity that exceeds their actual viewership. That is, while not everyone is buying tickets to Mexican films in
Mexico, everyone is talking about them. Mexican audiences are attending
domestic films and many more are renting them on video and DVD,
though not in the same numbers as they are lining up for Hollywood fare.
Middle-aged Mexicans, and those from the lower middle-class seem to see
the fewest films, especially Mexican ones, while younger, mostly male
Mexicans, from across the socio-economic spectrum, see many movies
annually, including several Mexican films. Older audiences, by contrast,
tend to be more culturally conservative and therefore shun the sexuality,
violence, and complexity of the New Mexican Cinema and of foreign
films.
On the other side of the Ro Bravo, the image of Mexican film has
changed dramatically since the mid-1990s, especially since 1999. Previously, Mexican movies were all perceived as shoot-em-up Nortenas, a
kind of film version of the cuentos
the pulp, graphic novels so popular
among Mexican males. It was only bad, non-subtitled Mexican movies
that would appear in the U.S. at drive-in theaters in border states. The cult
success of Mexican and Chicano films such as Cronos and El Mariachi
alerted more sophisticated moviegoers in the States to the existence of
subtitled Mexican genre work. A series of successful chick flicks,
beginning with the unprecedented box office and visibility of Como
agua para chocolate, began appearing on U.S. screens. These were of wildly
varying quality* from classic melodrama to feminist reframing of
melodrama, from romantic sex farces to genre parodies. Films such as
/

Politics and Popularity: The Current Mexican Cinema

Danzon, Novia que te vea (Bride to Be), Cilantro y perejil (Cilantro and
Parsley), Sexo, pudor y lagrimas (Sex, Shame and Tears), and Santitos
introduced non-Spanish-speaking, North American audiences to Mexican
film. Como Agua Para Chocolate played in the majority of U.S. markets
and through its sympathetic treatment of the character of Dr. John
Brown, made the U.S. appear to be well-received in Mexican history. The
other films mentioned were seen primarily by urban audiences that
already had an interest in foreign films. The Spanish
speaking population
in the United States remains divided: poor, recent immigrants who rent
videos of lucha libre (Mexican professional wrestling) versus the educated
and politicized, who see Mexican or Latin American films on university
campuses and in art cinemas.
The defining moment of the new age of Mexican Cinema came in 1999,
when the slick triptych Amores perros was released in the United
States and nominated for an Oscar. As in Mexico, audiences protested
the canine violence but did not look away. Ironically, few on either side of
the border complained about the violence in the human lives depicted.
Suddenly, Mexican film developed a hip, urban face, culturally relevant
and featuring MTV-style music and editing. When Y tu mama tambien
hit the multiplexes, U.S. audiences were ready, further enticed by the
NC-17 rating, which has been criticized by Mexican critics as both
puritanical and misogynist. Female full frontal nudity rarely requires
the special NC-17 rating. The frank sexuality portrayed is no more
explicit than that shown in European films that have received an R-rating.
While some U.S. critics have misunderstood the film as being little more
than a contemporary remake of macho fantasies, a number of serious
issues are addressed, including rural, indigenous poverty; the encroachment of commercial land development and economic dominance of the
tourist industry; class differences; and the disaffection of Mexicos youth.
These are depicted with real frankness and provide a novel twist on the
buddy/road movie. The films clever use of an omniscient voiceover,
coupled with stop-action sequences, has informed films outside of
Mexico.
Although the box-office success of these new Mexican films might be
attributed largely to their gore and graphic sexuality, there were other
factors to which North Americans could relate. They began to see Mexico
as a country not of bandidos and federales but of individuals.
The popularity of the Oscar-winning Hollywood Frida film, which
owes a huge debt to Mexican director Paul Leducs 1983 film Frida:
naturaleza viva, is due in part to Frida-mania and the attractions of Salma
Hayek, but it also reflects an increased interest in Mexico on film. While
Mexican movies, neither artistically nor thematically, do not have any
need to be validated by a U.S. audience, the Mexican film industry would
be well served by more commercial success in the United States. The
domestic success of films like Perfume de Violeta (Violet Perfume),
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Bienvenido (Welcome), and Nicotina (Nicotine) has yet to be achieved

across the border, but the movies themselves can only add to the
deepening of Mexicos cultural perception abroad.
Perhaps the next regime change in Mexico will change the way film
production there is managed before Latin Americas largest and oldest
cinematic tradition is subverted. For the new Mexican cinema does have
new things to say and in new ways, to both Mexican society and the world
community.
North Americas awakened interest in Mexican cinema may help to
save the industry from its own government. Journalists in the U.S. may
only now be discovering the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, but the
renaissance within Mexico began, ironically, in the 1990s, with the advent
of the multiplex in Mexico. The Cinemex chain, financed initially with
non-Mexican capital, could afford to feature an unprofitable Mexican
movie on one of its many screens, thus subsidizing a re-introduction of
Mexican cinema to Mexicans. Conversely, the same multi-screen operations hurt independent and foreign films in the United States, annihilating the competition in all but the largest urban markets. The arrival of
globalization in the form of the multiplex, however, saved the Mexican
industry by attracting the home video audience back to the movie houses,
and the profits were able to subsidize maintenance of less profitable
cinemas in poor neighborhoods, where illiteracy favors Mexican films
over subtitled foreign fare.
After the Golden Age, there was a marked decline in the industry, in
terms of number of productions, quality, and profits. In the 1970s there
was still a fair level of output, but most of the films were largely
forgettable. With the economic crisis of the 1980s, the number of Mexican
productions declined dramatically, while film schools increased in
number and quality, with the majority of graduates women. The end of
the 80s began to see the emergence of some excellent films, treating onceforbidden political subjects, such as the massacre at the 1968 Mexico City
Olympic games. Openly feminist and homosexual films began appearing.
By the 1990s, there was a slow but steady acceptance by the Mexican
public of the national cinema. Popular successes such as Like Water For
Chocolate, Danzon, Cilantro y perejil, Sexo, pudor y lagrimas, Solo con tu
pareja (Only with Your Partner), despite being largely romantic comedies,
received a much-needed vote of public confidence. El bulto (The Sack), La
mujer de Benjamn (Benjamins Woman), and Rito terminal (Terminal
Rite) won international prizes, attracting more Mexican movie-goers to
the theaters. Political dialogue became more overt in the late 1990s with
the appearance of Fibra optica (Optical Fiber), a thriller focusing on the
assassination of the popular presidential candidate Colosio.
The relation between the Mexican state and the national cinema has
always been complicated. There were changes in the 1980s under
President Salinas, whose principal concern was clearly ratification of the

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NAFTA treaty. For example, the unions were either infiltrated and
therefore undermined, or they simply disappeared. Private investment
in the film industry began under Salinas appointee Ignacio Durans
direction of IMCINE. Then, commercial successes in the United States
awakened foreign interest in this investment possibility. The U.S. Latino
population began to show its influence at the box office. In 1997 President
Zedillo apportioned $16 million to FOPROCINE, the funding commission devoted to Mexican cinema, for the production of quality cinema.
However, neo-liberal policies dismantled the requirement that 25 percent
of available projection time in Mexican theaters be dedicated to Mexican
films, under the guise of protecting Mexican cinema. In 2000, the
requirement was that one Mexican film appear on the schedule at all
times. One of the most profound social changes in Mexico since the 1980s
has been the expanding role of women. Between 1989 and 2004 female
directors produced 20 films. Womens increased participation in all
aspects of film production is an important factor in the resurgence of
Mexican cinema. And their stories, as told by Mexican-educated directors
such as Busi Cortes, Mara Sistach, Mara Novarro, and Guita Schyfter are
attracting the female audience. Films like Entre Pancho Villa y una mujer
desnuda (Between Pancho Villa and a Naked Woman), by directors Sabina
Berman and Isabelle Jordan, attack machismo and the cult of the war
hero. It rather efficiently deconstructs the myth of the economic benefits
yielded by the maquiladoras, or assembly plants on the U.S.-Mexican
border that employ great numbers of Mexican women but generate most
of their capital for U.S. owners.
A thematic emphasis on the economic crisis and social ills has
produced the current aesthetic of alienation. This aesthetic is in part
responsible for the return of the Mexican audience, which sees itself
represented on screen. Angel de Fuego (The Angel of Fire) El secreto de
Romela (The Secret of Romela), Amores perros, and even Y tu mama
tambien, among other films, have rewritten the role of repression, which
is now shown to affect every sector of society: rich and poor, male and
female. These films give a voice to the poorest and most marginalized,
those who, until recently, have remained completely outside the political
reality.
The antiquated myth of a unified national identity is challenged by
films like Novia que te vea, Bajo California, and Terminal Rite, in which
Jews, Chicanos, and indigenous people redefine the question of who is
Mexican.
Old narrative formulae are being questioned. The melodrama is
reinvented to present less idealized, less romantic perspectives. Even
Magic Realism, once considered the national narrative code, is satirized in
the charming farce, Santitos. The road movie has been appropriated by
new directors who present young men, stoned on Marijuana, on their way
to the beach, who experience a socio-cultural epiphany. Two guys, looking

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for sex, find their nation! The highway has become a metaphor for
adulthood and destiny in Por La Libre (Taking the Freeway) and Y tu
mama tambien.
The 2000 presidential election raised concerns over political corruption, which was reflected in the popularity of Todo el Poder and La Ley de
Herodes. It was the same political and police corruption that provoked the
summer 2004 demonstrations in Mexico City.
The inclusion of alternative voices via a cinema of the auteur has a long
tradition in the Mexican cinema, beginning with the work of Fernando de
Fuentes (Vamonos con Pancho Villa) in 1930 and continuing with Luis
Bunuel. However, Bunuel was 50 years old in 1950 when his Los Olvidados
(The Young and the Damned) was made. Todays generation of auteurs is
the youngest group of directors to be working in the Mexican cinema.
Forced by economic circumstances and influenced by new means of
production and distribution, these directors exercise some control over
every aspect of production and distribution.
Indicative of the revival of Mexican cinema is the fact that, during the
Golden Age of Mexican film, close to 150 films were made annually; while
in the 1980s there were approximately 100 films, 30 in the 1990s, between
10 and 15 in the early 2000s, and then roughly 30 in 2003.
The Mexican film industry is in peril, as always. The single greatest
threat to its existence has been and continues to be Hollywoods
hegemony. The neo-liberal Mexican government, fashioned on yanqui
policy, is contributing to the decline of its own national cinema. The
delightful irony may be that the growing gringo appetite for Mexican film
may be a decisive factor in its economic recovery.

Works Cited
Rosenberg, Tina. Just as Mexican Movies Become Chic Again, the Government Pulls
its Support. The New York Times , 11 December 2003: A42.
Scott, A.O. A Different Mexican Revolution. The New York Times , 27 June 2004: AR
8 & AR 32.