The presence of an absence: framing capital in Mercado de futuros (Mercedes Álvarez, 2011), La mano invisible (David Macián, 2016) and Cerca de tu casa (Eduard Cortés, 2016)

Balibrea, Mari Paz (2022) The presence of an absence: framing capital in Mercado de futuros (Mercedes Álvarez, 2011), La mano invisible (David Macián, 2016) and Cerca de tu casa (Eduard Cortés, 2016). Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas 19 (3), pp. 283-300. ISSN 2050-4837.

Abstract

While the extensive bibliography devoted to Spanish austerity cinema always mentions the global dimension of the 2008 financial crisis, it tends to centre on representations of a suffering population, Spanish politics or the legacy of the Transition to democracy. This article adds to this field by emphasizing a different aspect of this cinema’s critical intent in three case studies. Here Fredric Jameson’s concept of cognitive mapping is invoked to argue that Mercado de futuros (Mercedes Álvarez, 2011), La mano invisible (David Macián, 2016) and Cerca de tu casa (Eduard Cortés, 2016) are concerned with exposing capitalism’s responsibility for creating the crisis and proposing alternatives and critical responses to it. These three films synecdochally identify housing, labour relations and the Media as ideal battlegrounds on which to confront capital, while presenting affect as an asset open for all contenders to activate. All three films deny capital the status of an unappealable totality: Mercado alludes to a world beyond capitalism while Mano and Cerca adduce populist antagonisms to its long-standing hegemony. Through differing approaches, these texts reveal their vocation as cinematic critical pedagogies, producing political subjects onscreen in order to generate them in an array of offscreen contexts.

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