Introduction

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. ¹ In the desire for novelty that dominates the academic marketplace and the postmodern disdain for metanarratives 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it should be no surprise that Marxism or the critical analysis of capitalism would once again be declared fashionably out-of-date.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 capital—its tendency to disintegrate the world while it radically integrates it—have erupted globally in social tensions, people’s 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.