Transatlantic Film Studies in the Age of Neoliberalism: Towards a Postnational Cinema?

This essay argues that specialists in Transatlantic Film Studies need to contextualize their research agendas within the growing intensification of globalizing forces, above all, transnational capitalism. Within this historical context, the customary intellectual praise for aesthetic and cultural hybridity, alterity, self-dislocation and cosmopolitan deterritorialization is, at least, partially misguided. Due to the financial specificities of the film industry and its pervasive social preeminence, Transatlantic Film Studies have been a favorable academic venue to negatively evaluate the constrains, narrowness and reductive essentialism of the nation-state, as well of national communities and traditions. One should not overstate this argumentative gesture for three reasons. First, transatlantic artistic collaborations are never symmetrical and tend to be mediated by strong socio-economic and geopolitical inequalities. Second, the filmic interconnection between Spain and Latin American does not take place vis-a-vis, but under the commercial rules set by the US audiovisual mega-industry. Finally, it is a (partial) mistake to eulogize cultural miscegenation, migrancy and rhizomatic self-proliferation when many emancipatory, anti-imperialist movements have traditionally found and still find traction in autochthonous practices and habits. This is why the idea of a national cinema and specially of a national-popular cinema still deserves a careful, more dialectical attention.