The Story
Examines how recent Mexican and Spanish films act as untroubling distractions from everyday routines.Popular culture in the 1990s, especially cinema, can be considered a showcase for the accumulated hopes and fears of the twentieth century. From the promise of material goods to the profusion of despair, from devastating tragedy to exaggerated rapture, a dizzying array of images assaults the eye. Drawing on recent films from Mexico and Spain, Bored to Distraction navigates this visual terrain, from melodrama to horror, looking for what, if anything, might be excessive enough to rouse us from our comfortable everyday routines.A very smart, theoretically informed, and provocative discussion of film in the context of a timely analysis of consumeroriented cultures. Debra A. Castillo, author of Easy Women: Sex and Gender in Modern Mexican FictionVery well written and quite readerfriendly. Schaefers theoretical framework is at the cutting edge of the field, and helps identify the place of the traditional cultural paradigm of leisure in the current production of middle class boredom and its economic and ideological ramifications. Jaume MartOlivella, coauthor of The New Catalan Short Story: An Anthology
Description
Examines how recent Mexican and Spanish films act as untroubling distractions from everyday routines.Popular culture in the 1990s, especially cinema, can be considered a showcase for the accumulated hopes and fears of the twentieth century. From the promise of material goods to the profusion of despair, from devastating tragedy to exaggerated rapture, a dizzying array of images assaults the eye. Drawing on recent films from Mexico and Spain, Bored to Distraction navigates this visual terrain, from melodrama to horror, looking for what, if anything, might be excessive enough to rouse us from our comfortable everyday routines.A very smart, theoretically informed, and provocative discussion of film in the context of a timely analysis of consumeroriented cultures. Debra A. Castillo, author of Easy Women: Sex and Gender in Modern Mexican FictionVery well written and quite readerfriendly. Schaefers theoretical framework is at the cutting edge of the field, and helps identify the place of the traditional cultural paradigm of leisure in the current production of middle class boredom and its economic and ideological ramifications. Jaume MartOlivella, coauthor of The New Catalan Short Story: An Anthology
