Framing the invisible hands. Work, cinema and crisis in La mano invisible (Macián 2016)

ABSTRACT

The second half of the 20th century witnessed the gradual decline of the working class as a collective political actor. Spanish film La mano invisible (David) turns workers into actual actors, representing ‘the wonderful spectacle of work’ in front of an invisible audience. Using a dual social and formal analysis, this article addresses how this film unveils two other invisibilities: that of the workers in the era of post-democracy; and that of neoliberalism as a ‘natural order’ constraining thought and action. This paper shows La mano invisible as a highly political film for it challenges the dominant formal, production and ideological norms. Produced as a cooperative and distributed mainly through festivals and independent cinemas, I argue that the film is an extraordinary example of the interface between culture and society. La mano invisible reveals and questions the invisible relations of power and violence that pertain the world of work in capitalist societies through the film’s politics of form, production and distribution. By the radical coherence of all these politics, La mano invisible amplifies the resonance of its message, asking the audience: who said work had to be like this?

KEYWORDS:

• European cinema
• crisis
• work
• labour
• post-democracy
• precariousness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [AH/N004299/1].

Notes on contributors

Carmina Gustrãn Loscos

Carmina Gustrãn Loscos is an arts manager, lecturer and researcher. She specializes in the intersection of culture with politics and history, with a particular focus on contemporary cinema. She completed her PhD with Honours at the Universidad de Zaragoza (Spain) and the Université de Nantes (France). She is the author of the book Darkness. Cinematic representations of Franco Dictatorship: Spain 1975-2000 (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2019 -forthcoming). She has also published on cultural representations of the working class, cultural policies and contemporary Spanish history and culture.