Youth Culture in Spanish and Mexican Cinema and Television: Studies and Sources

ABSTRACT

This article gives an account of four studies of youth culture in the areas of recent fiction film and television in Spain and Mexico. It argues that, although the primary texts are different in medium, format and audience address, they coincide in their treatment of such themes as friends and family, and sex and violence. The article also suggests that much-criticized youth TV series in both countries deserve both close textual analysis and sympathetic reading of the social media that they have provoked and with which they have converged. These give evidence of an active and sophisticated audience response.

KEYWORDS:

• Mexican cinema
• Mexican television
• Spanish cinema
• Spanish television
• youth culture
• social media
• media convergence

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul Julian Smith

Paul Julian Smith is currently a Distinguished Professor in the Comparative Literature Program at the Graduate Center of City University of New York (CUNY). Formerly, he was a professor of Spanish at Cambridge University (19912010) and in 2008 he was elected a fellow of the British Academy. His interests are wide-ranging and interdisciplinary and he has published widely on Hispanic literatures, film, popular culture and visual culture, and more recently his research interests have focused on Spanish and Mexican youth cinema and television.