Notes on the Future (and Past) of Spanish and Latin-American Media Studies

Abstract

This article offers some reflections on the development of Spanish and Latin-American media studies, especially in English-speaking countries, over the last twenty years focusing on the research of its author. It takes the following fields as its main foci of discussion: journalism, film form, theory, industry, television, institution, internet, Spain/Mexico, crisis, affect and Hispanism. The article ends by suggesting that the future of the discipline lies between the humanities and social sciences in a more sophisticated discussion of fiction content and media form than has hitherto been possible within Hispanism.

Key words:

• journalism
• film form
• theory
• industry
• television
• internet
• Spain/Mexico
• crisis
• affect
• Hispanism

Notes

1 Paul Julian Smith, Desire Unlimited: The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar, 3^rd ed. (New York/London: Verso, 2014) and Mexican Screen Fiction: Between Cinema and Television (Cambridge/Malden: Polity, 2014).

2 Paul Julian Smith, Laws of Desire: Questions of Homosexuality in Spanish Writing and Film 1960–90 (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1992).

3 Television Aesthetics and Style, ed. Jason Jacobs & Steven Peacock (New York/London: Bloomsbury, 2013).

4 Linda Williams, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the Frenzy of the Visible (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1989).

5 Paul Julian Smith, The Moderns: Time, Space, and Subjectivity in Contemporary Spanish Culture (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2000).

6 Paul Julian Smith, Contemporary Spanish Culture: TV, Fashion, Art, and Film (Cambridge/Malden: Polity, 2003).

7 Paul Julian Smith, ‘Amores perros’: Modern Classic (London: British Film Institute/Univ. of California Press, 2003).

8 IMCINE, Anuario estadístico de cine mexicano (México D.F.: IMCINE, 2013).

9 Smith, Mexican Screen Fiction, 227–55.

10 Raymond Williams, Television and Cultural Form (London: Fontana, 1974); John Ellis, Seeing Things: Television in the Age of Uncertainty (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000).

11 Manuel Palacio, Historia de la televisión en España (Barcelona: Gedisa, 2001); Guillermo Orozco Gómez, Televisión, audiencias, y educación (Buenos Aires: Norma, 2001).

12 Charo Lacalle, El discurso televisivo sobre la inmigración (Barcelona: Omega, 2008).

13 Paul Julian Smith, ‘Ficciones de la crisis: literatura, cine, televisión’, plenary read at the conference of the Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas, Buenos Aires, 2013.

14 Paul Julian Smith, Spanish Visual Culture: Cinema, Television, Internet (Manchester: Manchester U. P., 2006).

15 Martha C. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2003).

16 Smith, Mexican Screen Fiction, 89–119.

17 Pierre Bourdieu, The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, trans. Susan Emanuel (Cambridge: Polity, 1996), 137.