Dramatized Societies: Quality Television in Spain and Mexico

Abstract

Over the last decade Spain and Mexico have both produced an extraordinary wealth of television drama and are among the leaders in their respective continents. The new dramas have high production values (easily the equal of cinema), intricately plotted narratives, and compellingly ambivalent characters. They are thus clearly worthy of the close textual analysis they have not yet received. Drawing on both national practices of production and reception (based on archival research in Madrid and Mexico City) and international theories of textual analysis, this book offers the first study of contemporary quality TV drama in two countries where, unlike elsewhere, it is not yet recognized that television has displaced cinema as the creative medium that shapes the national narrative. As dramatized societies, Spain and Mexico are thus at once reflected and refracted by the new series on the small screen. Social issues treated include historical memory, youth, drugs, race, and gender.

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