It was the British sociologist Anthony Giddens who said that humans seem culturally drugged compelled to act from the stimulus of internalized values that regulate their activity. Precisely, entertainment derived from television consumption involves from the less educated to the more. That’s a reason to forgive us when we fall sometimes rendered, some more aware than others, at the feet of that that in the distant 1947 that theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno defined as a cultural industry.
The self-employed, promoted thanks to the ongoing economic restructuring in Cuba, made fashionable practically on every block the business of buying and selling discs (movies, series, cartoons, music, etc.). A “trade” that is taxed at alternative audiovisual consumption, especially in those stands that “adorn” the urban landscape is promoted what some consider the “cream” or “ultimate” of foreign cinema.
The democratization of new technologies has undoubtedly facilitated the reproduction process. It’s no secret that piracy in all its magnitude makes the consumption on the island, with the consequent imposition of a standard of value, questionable, and it usually doesn’t know the aesthetic and even the contents of a work.
The so called combos swarm unpunished. Compressed at the expense of product attribute, most of the proposals not just seduce the viewer through an admirable narrative game. Industry suppresses any intention requiring intellectual smell. Simply the product prescribes every reaction.
The business has also diminished the possibility of visiting other cultural spaces of interaction, relegated to the holding and comfort that represents eg DVD player in 2009, according to a survey, 48 percent of the Cuban population had one available.
And of course it questions the role of our television, as a tool to counterbalance this effect. What productions does the national TV system have to deal with competition, many may be wondering? Best let us not get into that forest. Especially when consumption trends are governed by the centrality of the media, especially in the small screen, which about 70 percent of Cubans watch.
To this is added the institutional inertia, since prices and audiovisual upgrades under their responsibility are far overshadow by those private deals. Our productions are followed perhaps for being a rarity.
It is then about putting on the market that voice, creating spaces, shake structures that allow contend in a fair fight with “visual anthologies” in vogue. Precisely the Group of Digital Productions at the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) introduced these days the DVDs of renowned films made in Cuba, and together with the visual of the legendary Elpidio Valdés, created by Juan Padrón or El Hombre de Maisinicu by Manuel Pérez-to speak for themselves in the history of the institution par excellence of cinema here provide data that enrich and show the work of the filmmakers.
Although inadequate, expensive, like almost everything and it might be a way to socialize cinema that once gave us prestige in the world and several generations have overlooked. One way not to reduce entertainment to the most basic. Our film industry has made memorable productions-some go beyond time-that combine culture and fun from and leave room for thought. You will d well to surrender to these ones, confident.
For: Susadny González
Pictures: Internet
