MACMILLAN Globalization and Latin American Cinema: Toward a New Critical Paradigm (Palgrave Studies in Globalization, Culture and Society)

Studying the case of Latin American cinema, this book analyzes one of the most public - and most exportable- forms of postcolonial national culture to argue that millennial era globalization demands entirely new frameworks for thinking about the relationship between politics, culture, and economic policies. Concerns that globalization would bring the downfall of national culture were common in the 1990s as economies across the globe began implementing neoliberal, free market policies and abolishing state protections for culture industries. Simultaneously, new technologies and the increased mobility of people and information caused others to see globalization as an era of heightened connectivity and progressive contact. Twenty-five years later, we are now able to examine the actual impact of globalization on local and regional cultures, especially those of postcolonial societies. Tracing the full life-cycle of films and studying blockbusters like City of God, Motorcycle Diaries, and Children of Men this book argues that neoliberal globalization has created a highly ambivalent space for cultural expression, one willing to market against itself as long as the stories sell. The result is an innovative and ground-breaking text suited to scholars interested in globalization studies, Latin-American studies and film studies. Review “Sophia A. McClennen is an outstanding analyst of global cultural exchange. Her remarkable excavations of meaning, work, nation, and identity in Latin America film made me rethink my perspective on those subjects and a myriad of related themes. A must read.” (Toby Miller, University of California, USA) “An astute political and aesthetic thinker, Sophia A. McClennen draws on studies of globalization, Latin America, and film to offer an analytical paradigm for understanding how cultural products, and in particular film, both accommodate to millennial capitalism and at the same time provide a critique that enables affirmative ethical proposals that avert the obsolete projects ensuing from nationalist, postcolonial, and hybridity-oriented frameworks.” (George Yúdice, University of Miami, USA) “Sophia A. McClennen blazes a promising new path for the study of culture and politics in this age of neoliberalism.  She shows through an exploration of the contemporary Latin American film industry how the late twentieth-century categories for understanding culture, such as the local and the global or North and South, have been torn asunder by millennial globalization.  Refreshing and erudite, this work offers nothing short of a paradigm shift in our understanding of globalization and culture.” (William I. Robinson, University of California-Santa Barbara, USA) “A leading scholar in cultural and media studies, Sophia A. McClennen has written a bold and fundamental new work, which will be mandatory reference to all specialists in film. In Globalization and Latin American Cinema, McClennen revises our assumptions on both terms of her title, showing that the globalization of film is far from being the patrimony of dominant industries and that Latin American cinema no longer responds to the theorizations of national and third cinema that still dominate the field. This book is forward-looking and one of the first major accounts of how Latin American cinema actually operates in the neoliberal era.” (Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, Washington University, USA) From the Back Cover Studying the case of Latin American cinema, this book analyzes one of the most public - and most exportable- forms of postcolonial national culture to argue that millennial era globalization demands entirely new frameworks for thinking about the relationship between politics, culture, and economic policies. Concerns that globalization would bring the downfall of national culture were common in the 1990s as economies across the globe began implementing neoliberal, free market policies and abolishing state pr