Kapur Jyotsna - Neoliberalism and Global Cinema

Neoliberalism and Global Cinema

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9. Neoliberalism and Global Cinema

Capital, Culture, and Marxist Critique

Edited by Jyotsna Kapur and Keith B. Wagner

Neoliberalism and Global Cinema

Capital, Culture, and Marxist Critique

Edited by

Jyotsna Kapur and Keith B. Wagner

First published 2011

by Routledge

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Simultaneously published in the UK

by Routledge

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2011 Taylor & Francis

The right of Jyostna Kapur and Keith B. Wagner to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Neoliberalism and global cinema : capital, culture, and Marxist critique / edited by Jyotsna Kapur and Keith B. Wagner.

p. cm. (Routledge advances in film studies ; 9)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Motion picturesPolitical aspects. 2. Motion picturesSocial aspects. 3. Motion picturesEconomic aspects. 4. Motion pictures and globalization. 5. Culture in motion pictures. I. Kapur, Jyotsna. II. Wagner, Keith B., 1978PN1995.9.P6N48 2011

791.43'6581dc22

2010051415

ISBN13: 978-0-415-88905-6 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-203-81363-8 (ebk)

For:

My teachers, Chuck Kleinhans and Randhir Singh

Jyotsna Kapur

Katy Chieh Yin Lee and my family

Keith B. Wagner

Figures

Acknowledgments

Both editors have several people to thank for making this project possible.

For Jyotsna, they include: Walter Metz, Department Chair, Cinema and Photography, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale; Yoon Dol Youm for research assistance; Satish Bhatia, Fr. Lawrie Ferraro, Fr. Myron Periera, and Naren Panjwani, all colleagues at the Xaviers Institute of Communications, Mumbai, for hosting me for a semester; a Fulbright Fellowship that made it possible to be in India for a year; my family here and in IndiaNilim, Suhaila, Mike, Narinder, Satinder, Depinder, Ajinder, Ankur, Inderjeet, Satnam, Sumi, and Sanjamfor giving me the time to write; and Keith Wagner for initiating this project and then persisting that we get it done.

And Keith would like to thank: Jyotsna Kapur for agreeing to take on this project and for her incisive and enthusiastic collaboration; at the University of Rhode Island I am grateful to John Leo for his mentoring and generous intellectual support; equally, Dudley Andrew at Yale University for his compelling lectures on world cinema that turned me on to the field as an undergraduate and someone who still inspires me; at the University of Cambridge I am grateful to David Trotter, Susan Daruvala, and Lindiwe Dovey (now at SOAS) for allowing me to cultivate some of my ideas about neoliberalism while I was a former masters student; and, currently, Alex Callinicos who I would like to especially thank for challenging me to reconceptualize several of my arguments regarding the political economy of neoliberalism here in this book; in another capacity, Mark Betz for his critical support and encouragement of all things film related; I would also like to express gratitude to several colleagues, who in early stages of their careers have listened patiently to me on a number of occasionsJustin Orenstein, Kimberly McGee, Ying Xiao, Luke Vulpiani, and Eli Park Sorensen. And last but not least, my family back in ConnecticutDad, Mom, Grandma, Scott, Matt (via Prague), and Chris (via Brooklyn)for their tremendous belief in me.

Of course, this book would not have been possible without the serious engagement of the authors in this volume who gave generously of their time and labor in finalizing their contributions. Finally, we would like to thank Michael Watters at Integrated Book Technology and Erica Wetter and Diana Castaldini at Routledge for their steadfast effort and wonderful enthusiasm in seeing this project to completion.

Introduction

Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Subjectivities, Publics, and New Forms of Resistance

Jyotsna Kapur and Keith B. Wagner

In the wake of the credit crisis and the subsequent Wall Street bailout in 2008, when we started to plan this book, we were sometimes asked why we would embark on such an outmoded project. After all, even the most avid advocates of neoliberalism, such as Alan Greenspan, had acknowledged that mistakes had been made and that the seeds of the current crisis lay in the unprecedented deregulation of the last two and a half decades. In the desire for novelty that dominates the academic marketplace and the postmodern disdain for meta-narratives that still persists, it should be no surprise that Marxism or the critical analysis of capitalism would once again be declared fashionably out-of-date. Yet, if there is a moment when Marxism may be rigorously applied to understanding and seeing alternatives to our world, there could be no better time than ours. As neoliberalism has emerged as the hegemonic world order, the contradictions of capitalits tendency to disintegrate the world while it radically integrates ithave erupted globally in social tensions, peoples protests, and widening chasms. New technologies of communications have served as the glue and conduit of neoliberalism whereas the production of culture is, after war, the second most important sector in the neoliberal economy. Consequently, Marxist critique, whose prime subject has been capitalism and its human consequences, when applied to global cinema can offer key insights into the nature and contradictions of the neoliberal project. In other words, global cinema can, in the hands of Marxist criticism, become a lens into the political economy of neoliberalism and its far-reaching implications on culture. It brings cinema studies into the center of any inquiry into contemporary society while at the same time bringing the unique assets of cinema studies, its study of the economics, aesthetics, and politics of cinema culture, to bear upon such a study. This book hopes to help ground cinema studies in this much-needed inquiry into the neoliberal project and also in imagining its alternatives.