Realism and national identity in 'Y Tu Mamá También': an audience perspective

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dc.contributor.authorde la Garza, Armida
dc.contributor.editorNagib, Lúcia
dc.contributor.editorMello, Cecília
dc.date.accessioned2016-08-05T09:14:21Z
dc.date.available2016-08-05T09:14:21Z
dc.date.issued2009-03
dc.date.updated2014-05-19T15:45:46Z
dc.description.abstractWhen referring to cinema and its emancipatory potential, realism, like Plato’s pharmakon, has signified both illness and cure, poison and medicine. On the one hand, realism is regarded as the main feature of so-called classical cinema, inherently conservative and thoroughly ideological, its main raison d’être being to reify and make a particular version of the status quo believable and to pass it out as ‘reality’ (Burch, 1990; MacCabe, 1974). On the other, realism has also been interpreted as a quest for truth and social justice, as in the positivist ethos that informs documentary (Zavattini, 1953). Even in the latter sense, however, the extent to which realism has served colonizing ends when used to investigate the ‘truth’ of the Other has also been noted, rendering the form profoundly suspicious (Chow, 2007, p. 150). For realism has been a Western form of representation, one that can be traced back to the invention of perspective in painting and that peaked with the secular worldview brought about by the Enlightenment. And like realism, the nation state too is a product of the Enlightenment, nationalism being, as it were, a secular replacement for the religious - that is enchanted or fantastic - worldview. In this way, realism, cinema and nation are inextricably linked, and equally strained under the current decline of the Enlightenment paradigm. This chapter looks at Y tu Mamá También by Alfonso Cuarón (2001), a highly successful road movie with documentary features, to explore the ways in which realism, cinema and nation interact with each other in the present conditions of ‘globalization’ as experienced in Mexico. The chapter compares and contrasts various interpretations of the role of realism in this film put forward by critics and scholars and other discourses about it circulating in the media with actual ways of audience engagement with it.en
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.description.versionAccepted Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationde La Garza, A. (2009) 'Realism and national identity in 'Y Tu Mamá También': an audience perspective', in: Nagib, L. and Mello, C. (eds.) Realism in the audio-visual media. London and New York : Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 108-118en
dc.identifier.endpage118en
dc.identifier.isbn978-1137306739
dc.identifier.startpage108en
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/2966
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherPalgrave Macmillanen
dc.relation.ispartofRealism in the Audio-Visual Media
dc.relation.urihttp://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/10.1057/9780230246973
dc.rights© 2009, Armida de la Garza. Reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan. This extract is taken from the author's original manuscript and has not been edited. The definitive, published, version of record is available here: http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/10.1057/9780230246973en
dc.subjectRealismen
dc.subjectMexicoen
dc.subjectAudience receptionen
dc.subjectAlfonso Cuarónen
dc.subjectNational identityen
dc.titleRealism and national identity in 'Y Tu Mamá También': an audience perspectiveen
dc.typeBook chapteren
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