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much wider variety of film types than hitherto, including the classics. Spanish films are also making greater inroads into foreign markets, as indicated by Amenábar’s Tesis , which has been sold to thirty countries and Ventura Pons’s El porqué de las cosas , currently among the top three grossing films in France (Fotogramas 1997 : 169). In short, after decades of ideological and political manipulation
the most part to emphasise either the ‘political’ or the ‘cultural’ – and both terms are usually rather narrowly defined. cultural Politics Where the ‘politics’ of cultural politics is emphasised, research tends to focus on government and the military – most particularly the US government or military – or, even more narrowly, on certain American presidencies. Relatedly, such scholarship sometimes discusses ‘political’ and ‘ideological’ messages in relation to history, propaganda, and political manipulation, classification and censorship, and government agencies and
complicated by a history of political manipulation and exploitation of concepts of national and cultural identity. Even cinema itself eludes clear-cut definitions in this age of intertextuality and virtual reality. Film can no longer be regarded as a discrete practice, much less so in a national industry whose production is so dependent on television for much of its funding and exhibition. Despite these
’ (Zimmer 1974 : 42) 2 led Z to be read by many as little more than a good thriller. This is probably less true of L’Aveu , or even of Etat de siège : nonetheless the structures of French society are never the direct focus of these films’ critique, even if their image of political manipulation clearly has relevance wider than the specific anecdote they purport to analyse. Section spéciale has the remoteness which comes with history; by 1975 the shock of Le Chagrin et la pitié (1971) was past and revelations about
Videodrome , with its disturbance of clear cognitive categories, makes its consumers susceptible to political manipulation (Renn is being ‘programmed’ as an assassin by having a tape inserted into his body), in eXistenZ it is designed to enable collective hallucination. While Videodrome argues for a rending of the perceptual veil, eXistenZ recognises that the technology, as