Spanish visual culture Cinema, television, internet [Paperback]

This book is the first to explore three visual media in contemporary Spain: cinema, television and the internet. It also examines cultural products in each of these media in terms of three vital themes: emotion, location and nostalgia.

The first two chapters focus on emotion. They analyze the 'emotional imperative' in a recent Almod?var feature film and in Spanish television's top-rated period drama, and investigate the politics of affect in TV drama in the last decade. The next pair of chapters deal with location. They use cultural geography to re-read contradictory accounts of the movida (the post-Franco cultural boom) and examine an attempt to anchor a US-derived genre (the youth movie) in the urban landscape of Madrid. The fifth and sixth chapters introduce the theme of location into nostalgia. They treat the unique cases of a successful Spanish heritage movie and a contemporary Spanish thriller remade in Hollywood. The peunultimate chapter investigates electronic artists and the virtual universe, and the book ends with a look at the implications of Hispano-Mexican co-productions and the interconnectedness of economic and aesthetic cultural forms.

Introduction: Three media, three themes

1 The emotional imperative: Almod?var's Hable con ella (Talk to Her) and Televisi?n Espa?ola's Cu?ntame c?mo pas? ( Tell Me How It Happened )

2 Family plots: The politics of affect in television drama of the millennium

3 The movida relocated: press, chronicle, novel

4 Towards the Spanish youthmovie: Historias del Kronen

5 Spanish heritage, spanish cinema: The strange case of Juana la Loca

6 High anxiety: Amen?bar's Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes)/Crowe and Cruise's Vanilla Sky

7 Virtual Spain: Manuel Castells and Spanish web art

8 Transatlantic traffic in recent Hispano-Mexican films

Paul Julian Smith is Professor of Spanish at the University of Cambridge