"Revolución" Weekend playing this weekend online for free at MUBI
To read about the film and the event
Showing posts with label Mexico. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mexico. Show all posts
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Friday, June 11, 2010
Democracy Now: Mexican Teenager Shot Dead on Mexican Soil by US Border Agent
Mexican Teenager Shot Dead on Mexican Soil by US Border Agent
Democracy Now
US authorities have said fifteen-year-old Sergio Adrian Hernandez Güereca was part of a group of boys throwing rocks at Border Patrol agents who were trying to detain two people at the border crossing. But a cell-phone video obtained by the Spanish language network Univision shows otherwise. The grainy footage shows the Border Patrol agent detaining one man at gunpoint. While he has the man on the ground, he points his gun toward a second person on the Mexican side of the border. The video shows that person running away as the agent fires several shots. The video then shows a body next to a column under the bridge. We speak to Fernando Garcia, the director of the Border Network for Human Rights.
To Read/Listen/Watch
Democracy Now
US authorities have said fifteen-year-old Sergio Adrian Hernandez Güereca was part of a group of boys throwing rocks at Border Patrol agents who were trying to detain two people at the border crossing. But a cell-phone video obtained by the Spanish language network Univision shows otherwise. The grainy footage shows the Border Patrol agent detaining one man at gunpoint. While he has the man on the ground, he points his gun toward a second person on the Mexican side of the border. The video shows that person running away as the agent fires several shots. The video then shows a body next to a column under the bridge. We speak to Fernando Garcia, the director of the Border Network for Human Rights.
To Read/Listen/Watch
Friday, April 30, 2010
BBC News: US military joins Gulf of Mexico oil spill effort
US military joins Gulf of Mexico oil spill effort
BBC News
The US military has joined efforts to stop an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico as fears rise about its scale.
Five times as much oil as previously thought could be leaking from the well beneath where a rig exploded and sank last week, the US Coast Guard says.
Rear Admiral Mary Landry said 5,000 barrels a day were thought to be gushing into the sea off Louisiana.
The Department of Homeland Security has designated the spill as one of "national significance".
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who is to go to Louisiana to oversee operations, told reporters in Washington that this designation would allow resources to be ordered in from other areas of the US.
At the same briefing, a coastguard official said the oil slick was expected to wash ashore on the Gulf Coast on Friday.
And Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Interior David Hayes said the US government had ordered inspections of all deep-water oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico to see if anti-spill regulations were being followed.
To Read the Rest of the Report and Access Video
BBC News
The US military has joined efforts to stop an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico as fears rise about its scale.
Five times as much oil as previously thought could be leaking from the well beneath where a rig exploded and sank last week, the US Coast Guard says.
Rear Admiral Mary Landry said 5,000 barrels a day were thought to be gushing into the sea off Louisiana.
The Department of Homeland Security has designated the spill as one of "national significance".
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who is to go to Louisiana to oversee operations, told reporters in Washington that this designation would allow resources to be ordered in from other areas of the US.
At the same briefing, a coastguard official said the oil slick was expected to wash ashore on the Gulf Coast on Friday.
And Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Interior David Hayes said the US government had ordered inspections of all deep-water oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico to see if anti-spill regulations were being followed.
To Read the Rest of the Report and Access Video
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Charles Bowden: The War Next Door -- Adam Smith's invisible hand meets magical realism on the border
The War Next Door: Adam Smith's invisible hand meets magical realism on the border
by Charles Bowden
High Country News
...
The Mexican border functions as a drum that both the left and the right like to thump. For the left, it means imperialism. They decry the death of migrants, the newly built wall and the tens of thousands of armed agents patrolling the line. The right sees the border as the only thing separating us from the disintegration of our national security. They decry migrants (illegal invaders), violence spilling over the border and, in certain zany moments, see Islamic terrorists crossing the desert and leaving a litter of prayer rugs.
The migration of the Mexican poor is the largest human movement across a border on the planet. It was triggered by the destruction of peasant agriculture at the hands of the North American Free Trade Agreement, by the corruption of the Mexican state, by the growing violence in Mexico, and exacerbated by the millions of Mexicans working illegally in the U.S. who send money home to finance their families' trips north. It should be seen as a natural shift of a species. We need ecologists on the border; the politicians have become pointless.
The drug industry is the second-largest source of foreign currency in Mexico, just behind oil. It earns somewhere between $30 billion and $50 billion a year -- no one really knows, including the people in the industry. It also creates enormous numbers of jobs in the U.S.: We spend billions a year on narcs, maintain the world's largest prison industry, which is absolutely dependent on the intake of drug felons, and we have about 20,000 agents on the border who feed off drug importation. The rehab industry is also a source of a large number of jobs since many well-heeled defendants pick mandatory treatment over prison. Many county and local police departments now get fat off of RICO suits based on drug offenses.
The official line of the U.S. government, one most recently voiced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is that drug consumers in the United States are responsible for drug murders in Mexico. Only someone who is drugged could believe this claim. The sole source of the enormous amount of money in the drug business and the accompanying violence is the U.S. prohibition of drug use by its citizens. Since President Richard Nixon proclaimed the War on Drugs 40 years ago, there have been two notable accomplishments: Drugs are cheaper than ever, and they are of much higher quality. But then, NAFTA was promoted by presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton as something that would buoy up the Mexican economy and reduce or end illegal immigration -- two claims that now are clearly refuted by facts.
The left seeks open borders or No More Deaths, the latter a protest of the 500 or so migrant deaths per year -- a rather low fatality rate, considering that at least a half-million Mexicans move illegally across the border each year. But the left seldom if ever mentions the slaughter in Mexico during the last three years that has left 17,000 citizens dead, a killing of Mexicans by Mexicans. The right constantly speaks of fortifying the border, as if this could stop a human tide lashed northward by misery. And, of course, the right promotes draconian drug laws even though the failure of such laws is increasingly apparent.
On the border, Adam Smith meets magical realism. Here the market tenets of supply and demand, the basic engine of both the migration and the drug industry, are supposed to be overturned magically by a police state. Consider one simple number: The border is 1,900 miles long. If two people slipped through each mile in a 24-hour period, that would amount to 3,800 people a day. That adds up to 1,387,000 people a year. Or consider this: One bridge from Juarez to El Paso handles 600,000 semi-trucks a year. One semi with a freight load of 24 tons could probably tote enough heroin to satisfy the U.S. market for a year. Add to the mix the inevitable corruption of the police agencies: A few months ago, a Border Patrol agent in southern Arizona was busted for running dope in his official car for 500 bucks a load.
Few discussions about the border come from facts. Most discussions of the border come from fears. We seem to prefer slogans and fantasies: free trade, "just say no," gigantic walls.
To Read the Entire Essay
More resources:
Also in High Country News: Julian Cardona's photodocumentary "Failed State"
by Charles Bowden
High Country News
...
The Mexican border functions as a drum that both the left and the right like to thump. For the left, it means imperialism. They decry the death of migrants, the newly built wall and the tens of thousands of armed agents patrolling the line. The right sees the border as the only thing separating us from the disintegration of our national security. They decry migrants (illegal invaders), violence spilling over the border and, in certain zany moments, see Islamic terrorists crossing the desert and leaving a litter of prayer rugs.
The migration of the Mexican poor is the largest human movement across a border on the planet. It was triggered by the destruction of peasant agriculture at the hands of the North American Free Trade Agreement, by the corruption of the Mexican state, by the growing violence in Mexico, and exacerbated by the millions of Mexicans working illegally in the U.S. who send money home to finance their families' trips north. It should be seen as a natural shift of a species. We need ecologists on the border; the politicians have become pointless.
The drug industry is the second-largest source of foreign currency in Mexico, just behind oil. It earns somewhere between $30 billion and $50 billion a year -- no one really knows, including the people in the industry. It also creates enormous numbers of jobs in the U.S.: We spend billions a year on narcs, maintain the world's largest prison industry, which is absolutely dependent on the intake of drug felons, and we have about 20,000 agents on the border who feed off drug importation. The rehab industry is also a source of a large number of jobs since many well-heeled defendants pick mandatory treatment over prison. Many county and local police departments now get fat off of RICO suits based on drug offenses.
The official line of the U.S. government, one most recently voiced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is that drug consumers in the United States are responsible for drug murders in Mexico. Only someone who is drugged could believe this claim. The sole source of the enormous amount of money in the drug business and the accompanying violence is the U.S. prohibition of drug use by its citizens. Since President Richard Nixon proclaimed the War on Drugs 40 years ago, there have been two notable accomplishments: Drugs are cheaper than ever, and they are of much higher quality. But then, NAFTA was promoted by presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton as something that would buoy up the Mexican economy and reduce or end illegal immigration -- two claims that now are clearly refuted by facts.
The left seeks open borders or No More Deaths, the latter a protest of the 500 or so migrant deaths per year -- a rather low fatality rate, considering that at least a half-million Mexicans move illegally across the border each year. But the left seldom if ever mentions the slaughter in Mexico during the last three years that has left 17,000 citizens dead, a killing of Mexicans by Mexicans. The right constantly speaks of fortifying the border, as if this could stop a human tide lashed northward by misery. And, of course, the right promotes draconian drug laws even though the failure of such laws is increasingly apparent.
On the border, Adam Smith meets magical realism. Here the market tenets of supply and demand, the basic engine of both the migration and the drug industry, are supposed to be overturned magically by a police state. Consider one simple number: The border is 1,900 miles long. If two people slipped through each mile in a 24-hour period, that would amount to 3,800 people a day. That adds up to 1,387,000 people a year. Or consider this: One bridge from Juarez to El Paso handles 600,000 semi-trucks a year. One semi with a freight load of 24 tons could probably tote enough heroin to satisfy the U.S. market for a year. Add to the mix the inevitable corruption of the police agencies: A few months ago, a Border Patrol agent in southern Arizona was busted for running dope in his official car for 500 bucks a load.
Few discussions about the border come from facts. Most discussions of the border come from fears. We seem to prefer slogans and fantasies: free trade, "just say no," gigantic walls.
To Read the Entire Essay
More resources:
Also in High Country News: Julian Cardona's photodocumentary "Failed State"
Democracy Now: Charles Bowden on “The War Next Door”
Charles Bowden on “The War Next Door”
Democracy Now
In the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez, a US consular employee and her husband were shot dead on Saturday while driving in their SUV. In a separate incident nearby, the husband of a Mexican employee at the US consulate was shot dead. The shootings are believed to be the first deadly attacks on US officials and their families by Mexico’s powerful drug organizations. We go to the US-Mexico border to speak with reporter Charles Bowden. “There is no serious War on Drugs,” Bowden writes. “Rather, there is violence, nourished by the money to be made from drugs. And there are U.S. industries whose primary lifeblood comes from fighting a war on drugs.”
Guest:
Charles Bowden, reporter who has extensively covered the drug violence in Mexico. He is author of the forthcoming book, Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields. His latest article for High Country News is called The War Next Door.
To Watch/Listen/Read
Democracy Now
In the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez, a US consular employee and her husband were shot dead on Saturday while driving in their SUV. In a separate incident nearby, the husband of a Mexican employee at the US consulate was shot dead. The shootings are believed to be the first deadly attacks on US officials and their families by Mexico’s powerful drug organizations. We go to the US-Mexico border to speak with reporter Charles Bowden. “There is no serious War on Drugs,” Bowden writes. “Rather, there is violence, nourished by the money to be made from drugs. And there are U.S. industries whose primary lifeblood comes from fighting a war on drugs.”
Guest:
Charles Bowden, reporter who has extensively covered the drug violence in Mexico. He is author of the forthcoming book, Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields. His latest article for High Country News is called The War Next Door.
To Watch/Listen/Read
Monday, January 18, 2010
Intelligence Squared USA: Is America To Blame For Mexico's Drug War?
Is America To Blame For Mexico's Drug War?
Intelligence Squared USA (NPR)
In Mexico, thousands of people have died in drug-related violence in the past three years as the government has ramped up its war on drug cartels. But is the United States to blame for Mexico's drug woes?
Some argue that the United States bears responsibility because of its market for illegal drugs, along with the flow of guns south of the border. Others blame Mexico's government, saying it permitted a culture of corruption to flourish and resisted U.S. help for decades.
A panel of experts recently faced off on the topic in an Oxford-style debate. Part of the Intelligence Squared U.S. series, the debate featured three experts arguing for the motion "America Is To Blame For Mexico's Drug War" and three arguing against.
...
The moderator for the Dec. 1 debate was John Donvan, correspondent for ABC News' Nightline. Those debating were:
FOR THE MOTION
Andres Martinez directs the New America Foundation's Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program. He was the editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times from 2004 to 2007 and presided over the newspaper's op-ed page and Sunday opinion section. Martinez previously served as assistant editorial page editor at The New York Times and was a member of its editorial board. He was a 2004 Pulitzer Prize finalist and is the author of 24/7: Living It Up and Doubling Down in the New Las Vegas (1999). He is a native of Mexico.
Jeffrey A. Miron is senior lecturer and director of undergraduate studies in the economics department at Harvard University. Miron holds a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has published more than 25 articles in peer-reviewed journals and 50 op-eds in The Boston Globe, nytimes.com, CNN.com and other outlets. Miron's commentary on economic policy has appeared on CNN, PBS and Fox television, BBC radio and other media around the world.
Fareed Zakaria is editor of Newsweek International, overseeing all of Newsweek's editions abroad. He writes a column for Newsweek, which also appears in The Washington Post. Additionally, he hosts Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, which airs worldwide. From 1992 to 2000, he was managing editor of Foreign Affairs, a journal of international politics and economics. He is the author of several books, including The Post-American World (2008).
AGAINST THE MOTION
Jorge Castaneda was foreign minister of Mexico from 2000 to 2003. He taught at Mexico's National Autonomous University from 1978 to 2004; at Princeton University; and at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1997, he was appointed Global Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Latin American Studies at New York University. He is the author of several books, including Ex Mex: From Migrants to Immigrants (2008).
Chris W. Cox is the executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, the lobbying arm of the National Rifle Association of America. Cox oversees seven ILA divisions, including federal affairs. Prior to joining the NRA, he served as a legislative aide for a member of Congress, managing judiciary issues, including criminal justice reforms and firearms-related matters.
Asa Hutchinson was elected three times to Congress and was confirmed by the Senate both as administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration and as the nation's first undersecretary for the Department of Homeland Security after the Sept. 11 attacks. Hutchinson was also appointed by President Ronald Reagan as the nation's youngest U.S. attorney at the age of 31. He now practices law in Arkansas and is CEO of Hutchinson Group, a homeland security consulting firm.
To Listen to the Debate
Intelligence Squared USA (NPR)
In Mexico, thousands of people have died in drug-related violence in the past three years as the government has ramped up its war on drug cartels. But is the United States to blame for Mexico's drug woes?
Some argue that the United States bears responsibility because of its market for illegal drugs, along with the flow of guns south of the border. Others blame Mexico's government, saying it permitted a culture of corruption to flourish and resisted U.S. help for decades.
A panel of experts recently faced off on the topic in an Oxford-style debate. Part of the Intelligence Squared U.S. series, the debate featured three experts arguing for the motion "America Is To Blame For Mexico's Drug War" and three arguing against.
...
The moderator for the Dec. 1 debate was John Donvan, correspondent for ABC News' Nightline. Those debating were:
FOR THE MOTION
Andres Martinez directs the New America Foundation's Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program. He was the editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times from 2004 to 2007 and presided over the newspaper's op-ed page and Sunday opinion section. Martinez previously served as assistant editorial page editor at The New York Times and was a member of its editorial board. He was a 2004 Pulitzer Prize finalist and is the author of 24/7: Living It Up and Doubling Down in the New Las Vegas (1999). He is a native of Mexico.
Jeffrey A. Miron is senior lecturer and director of undergraduate studies in the economics department at Harvard University. Miron holds a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has published more than 25 articles in peer-reviewed journals and 50 op-eds in The Boston Globe, nytimes.com, CNN.com and other outlets. Miron's commentary on economic policy has appeared on CNN, PBS and Fox television, BBC radio and other media around the world.
Fareed Zakaria is editor of Newsweek International, overseeing all of Newsweek's editions abroad. He writes a column for Newsweek, which also appears in The Washington Post. Additionally, he hosts Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, which airs worldwide. From 1992 to 2000, he was managing editor of Foreign Affairs, a journal of international politics and economics. He is the author of several books, including The Post-American World (2008).
AGAINST THE MOTION
Jorge Castaneda was foreign minister of Mexico from 2000 to 2003. He taught at Mexico's National Autonomous University from 1978 to 2004; at Princeton University; and at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1997, he was appointed Global Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Latin American Studies at New York University. He is the author of several books, including Ex Mex: From Migrants to Immigrants (2008).
Chris W. Cox is the executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, the lobbying arm of the National Rifle Association of America. Cox oversees seven ILA divisions, including federal affairs. Prior to joining the NRA, he served as a legislative aide for a member of Congress, managing judiciary issues, including criminal justice reforms and firearms-related matters.
Asa Hutchinson was elected three times to Congress and was confirmed by the Senate both as administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration and as the nation's first undersecretary for the Department of Homeland Security after the Sept. 11 attacks. Hutchinson was also appointed by President Ronald Reagan as the nation's youngest U.S. attorney at the age of 31. He now practices law in Arkansas and is CEO of Hutchinson Group, a homeland security consulting firm.
To Listen to the Debate
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Caetlin Benson-Allott: Sex versus the small screen -- home video censorship and Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también
Sex versus the small screen: home video censorship and Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también
by Caetlin Benson-Allott
Jump Cut
Seventeen years ago, video critic Charles Tashiro warned that “you can wait for it on video, but ‘it,’ like Godot, will never arrive,” and today his aesthetic lament carries political implications as well (16). Video-tapes and -discs have changed our experience of motion picture exhibition significantly over the past thirty-odd years, due in part to the unprecedented proliferation of adaptation techniques like letterboxing, Pan & Scan editing, and color correction. However, some movies also lose footage during their transfer to video, particularly sexually and politically charged footage. In these cases, you see less of the movie on video than the full theatrical release. Motion pictures do go through many editing processes over the course of their production and distribution, of course, but these just-for-video elisions cut their movies’ narratives, tenor, and arguments, often without acknowledging the loss.[1] [open endnotes in new window] Furthermore, these video excisions almost exclusively affect international productions. The result is that this video editing effectively determines who gets to see which international releases and what parts of them, given that most U.S. viewers noe choose to or must “wait for it on video” (Klinger 4). This media-specific censorship suggests that video faces different moral standards than the cinema, standards that are enforced by the MPAA’s self-interested nationalist application of its rating system. However, it would be inaccurate to characterize either the MPAA or its member studios as specifically xenophobic. Rather they self-censor in order to appease video rental and sell-through outlets' conservative economic clout.
Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también is only one of the many victims of the U.S. video industry’s commercial adversity to foreignness and sexuality. However, the changes made for U.S. video distribution of Cuarón’s film are not only egregious but also exemplary, because they highlight the political ramifications of the MPAA and U.S. studios’ new economic dependence on video distribution. Specifically, MGM cut five minutes from Y tu’s film version in order to produce an R-rated video acceptable to the major video outlets’ standards for family friendly commercial viability. Although the studio also distributed an unrated “special edition” of Cuarón’s movie as it appeared in theaters, the R-rated standard edition the director put together at MGM’s behest led Cuarón to lament,
“I castrated my movie” (Hirschberg 15).
As I will show, Cuarón had to cede to MGM’s demand for a family-friendly video version of Y tu in order to secure any U.S. distribution for his film. However, this more marketable Y tu is missing more than a few penises and pelvic thrusts. Cuarón also had to cut the sexual mestizaje that completes his film’s narrative arc and political allegory.[2] This climax, the homosexual union of the movie’s teenage male protagonists, carries both dramatic and political significance in the film because Cuarón uses Mexico’s national tradition of allegorical filmmaking to condemn the neoliberal turn in Mexican politics.[3] Losing the culmination of the boys’ sexual narrative garbles Cuarón’s critique of government corruption and economic exploitation in Mexico. In this way, the editing sanitizes the film for some of the same multinational corporations that benefit most from recent trade liberalizations in Mexico, of which NAFTA is one (notorious) example.[4]
Y tu’s U.S. video distribution thus made it the subject of the same transnational neoliberal forces that it seeks to critique. For that reason, in this article I will employ both textual analysis and industry history to demonstrate how the giant video retailers have rendered video an even more fiscally—as so politically—conservative format than film. The first section of the essay details what gets censored from the R-rated Y tu, while the second section explores how those losses undermines the film’s larger political critique. My conclusion then situates Y tu mamá también within the recent upheaval in U.S. film and video distribution that made these changes seem fiscally necessary to its distributors. In this manner, I hope to communicate the political significance of Hollywood’s economic dependence on video distribution.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
by Caetlin Benson-Allott
Jump Cut
Seventeen years ago, video critic Charles Tashiro warned that “you can wait for it on video, but ‘it,’ like Godot, will never arrive,” and today his aesthetic lament carries political implications as well (16). Video-tapes and -discs have changed our experience of motion picture exhibition significantly over the past thirty-odd years, due in part to the unprecedented proliferation of adaptation techniques like letterboxing, Pan & Scan editing, and color correction. However, some movies also lose footage during their transfer to video, particularly sexually and politically charged footage. In these cases, you see less of the movie on video than the full theatrical release. Motion pictures do go through many editing processes over the course of their production and distribution, of course, but these just-for-video elisions cut their movies’ narratives, tenor, and arguments, often without acknowledging the loss.[1] [open endnotes in new window] Furthermore, these video excisions almost exclusively affect international productions. The result is that this video editing effectively determines who gets to see which international releases and what parts of them, given that most U.S. viewers noe choose to or must “wait for it on video” (Klinger 4). This media-specific censorship suggests that video faces different moral standards than the cinema, standards that are enforced by the MPAA’s self-interested nationalist application of its rating system. However, it would be inaccurate to characterize either the MPAA or its member studios as specifically xenophobic. Rather they self-censor in order to appease video rental and sell-through outlets' conservative economic clout.
Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también is only one of the many victims of the U.S. video industry’s commercial adversity to foreignness and sexuality. However, the changes made for U.S. video distribution of Cuarón’s film are not only egregious but also exemplary, because they highlight the political ramifications of the MPAA and U.S. studios’ new economic dependence on video distribution. Specifically, MGM cut five minutes from Y tu’s film version in order to produce an R-rated video acceptable to the major video outlets’ standards for family friendly commercial viability. Although the studio also distributed an unrated “special edition” of Cuarón’s movie as it appeared in theaters, the R-rated standard edition the director put together at MGM’s behest led Cuarón to lament,
“I castrated my movie” (Hirschberg 15).
As I will show, Cuarón had to cede to MGM’s demand for a family-friendly video version of Y tu in order to secure any U.S. distribution for his film. However, this more marketable Y tu is missing more than a few penises and pelvic thrusts. Cuarón also had to cut the sexual mestizaje that completes his film’s narrative arc and political allegory.[2] This climax, the homosexual union of the movie’s teenage male protagonists, carries both dramatic and political significance in the film because Cuarón uses Mexico’s national tradition of allegorical filmmaking to condemn the neoliberal turn in Mexican politics.[3] Losing the culmination of the boys’ sexual narrative garbles Cuarón’s critique of government corruption and economic exploitation in Mexico. In this way, the editing sanitizes the film for some of the same multinational corporations that benefit most from recent trade liberalizations in Mexico, of which NAFTA is one (notorious) example.[4]
Y tu’s U.S. video distribution thus made it the subject of the same transnational neoliberal forces that it seeks to critique. For that reason, in this article I will employ both textual analysis and industry history to demonstrate how the giant video retailers have rendered video an even more fiscally—as so politically—conservative format than film. The first section of the essay details what gets censored from the R-rated Y tu, while the second section explores how those losses undermines the film’s larger political critique. My conclusion then situates Y tu mamá también within the recent upheaval in U.S. film and video distribution that made these changes seem fiscally necessary to its distributors. In this manner, I hope to communicate the political significance of Hollywood’s economic dependence on video distribution.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
Saturday, November 07, 2009
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