Preferred and negotiated memories of cinema going in Monterrey, Mexico 1930-1960s

Preferred and negotiated memories of foreign and national filmsexhibited

in a Mexican Northern town during the 1930s-1960s

José Carlos LozanoTexas A&M International University, USA

Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico

Daniel Biltereyst,Ghent University, Belgium

Philippe MeersUniversity of Antwerp, Belgium

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Paper presented in the Audience Section of theIAMCR 2013 Conference in Dublin, Ireland, June

2013

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Abstract

Empirical research on the readings of television programs and of films has tended to focus on the contemporary exposure of different types of audiences to different types of contents and genres. The study of memories and recollections coming from past consumption of media contents, however, has not been as frequent and as comprehensive in audience research, despite its potential value to gather long-term evidence of the accumulated readings andmeanings attached by audiences to specific types of contents or media experiences. By analyzing the recollection and memories of 28 Monterrey respondents 65-years-old or older about foreign and national films seen when they were kids or youngsters, the paper evaluates their degree of acceptance, negotiation or rejection notof single movies but of types of films according to their origin (American, European or Mexican) or genre. Unable to remember titles or whole plots of specific movies, respondents were able totalk passionately and comprehensively about whole sets of films orabout movies starred by their favorite foreign or national actors or actresses and share clear and direct perceptions and opinions about them despite the long time that had passed. Most comments about either American or Mexican films showed naïve or sophisticated acceptance of the films and stars, and only a few expressed some degrees of negotiation and critical distancing. Thepaper concludes with a discussion of the methodological implications of studying readings of films seen in the past and stress the need to contextualize those with the wider context of cinema-going and the social and cultural mediations of audience members.

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Through historical reception analysis and various types of

ethnographic research, a growing number of researchers in

different parts of the world have gone beyond the traditional

analysis of movies as texts, typical of film studies, to include

the cultural and social meanings people attach to films and the

place cinema-going has played in the everyday lives of spectators

according to their age, gender, SES and cultural and ethnic origin

(cf. Allen, 1979, Kuhn, 2002, Maltby and Stokes, 1999, Meers,

Biltereyst and Van de Vijver, 2010, Richards, 2003 and Taylor,

1989). This novel approach to the study of films that takes into

account the context of their reception by concrete viewers in

specific periods of time and in particular cultural and

geographical regions, has received the name of new cinema history1

(Maltby, Biltereyst and Meers 2011).

This coincidence of new cinema history with media and cultural

studies’ older emphasis on the analysis of television consumption

and rituals by different viewers in different cultural settings

(Ang, 1985; Fiske, 2003; Hall, 1980/2001; Martin Barbero, 1987;

1 This approach also pays attention to structural aspects of the exhibition and programming of films, allowing for a more holistic understanding of the supply and consumption of films in different countries and regions.

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Morley, 1992) has tended, in a similar vein, to focus on the

integration of cinema in the daily lives of audiences, leaving

aside for the most part the ideological readings of movies by

filmgoers in relation to their social and cultural positions and

mediations. With some exceptions, most new cinema history studies

about the reception of films have concentrated mostly on

reconstructing the social routines and selected memories of movies

and actors and the social and familial context surrounding the

experience of going to the movies, without focusing explicitly on

the readings of films and whether these readings were hegemonic,

negotiated or oppositional. There are several reasons for this,

some resulting from the original departure of new cinema history

from the ´text-centred´ tradition of film studies, and some

similar to the theoretical discussions within cultural studies on

the relevance and shortcomings of the encoding-decoding model for

analysing audiences´ readings of texts.

First, the lack of emphasis on analysing readings of films in

the empirical research on film audiences done from a new cinema

history perspective stems from the needed change of focus from the

film text to its circulation and consumption and the analysis of

cinemas as a “site of social and cultural exchange” (Maltby, 2011,

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p. 3). Worried about the unwarranted assumptions of spectators

following uniformly the prescriptions of the text, new cinema

history scholars have argued that the circulation, exhibition and

consumption of films structures different patterns of cinema going

in different types of audiences, and that for individual viewers,

the cumulative experience of going to the cinema and the social

context of their attendance (with whom, when and how), rather than

specific movies, are the most important factors in their

experience with films.

The second reason for not paying enough attention to

ideological readings of films in new cinema history studies,

apparently, is similar to what happened in television reception

studies in the 1980s and 1990s: The critical shortcomings of Hall

´s encoding-decoding model discussed by many media and cultural

studies scholars. Schroder (2000) has questioned the lack of

references in the model for, for example, “conservative” readings

of alternative meanings encoded in media texts. He has also

pointed out the difficulty in identifying the “preferred reading”

in fictional texts: “Do the signifying mechanisms of a soap opera,

or a feature film, or a music video, promote ‘one privileged

meaning’?” (p. 241). In a similar vein, Cohen (2002) argues that

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the model “is easier to apply when the ideological position of the

text is uncontested and unambiguous.” However, when the media text

is ideological ambiguous, “it is difficult to articulate what

should be considered a dominant or resistant position” (p. 258).

For Barker (2006) the encoding-decoding approach “perforce

privileges readings that stand away from a ´text´ (whether the

preference is for ´resistant´ or negotiated´ readings), because

distanced readings are seen as more active” (p. 135). As an

alternative to this model, Barker proposes to use the concept of

“viewing strategy,” which take as a point of departure the idea

that viewing is a ´motivated´ activity that is performed not only

at the cognitive (or rational) level, but also at the sensuous,

aesthetic, emotional and imaginative levels (p. 134). Empirical

research by new cinema history scholars like Allen (1990, 2006),

Biltereyst, Meers and Van de Vijver (2011), Kuhn (2002) and Maltby

(2006), has shown that people reacts more in emotional terms than

in rational terms to films and to cinema going.

It is our contention that, without losing sight of the social

and cultural context of the actual consumption of films by

different people in different settings, new cinema history should

not leave out the analysis of how actual movies were interpreted

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by flesh and bones actual viewers and what kind of meanings they

attached to the dozens of films they saw during their life

according to origin, genre and actors. To accomplish this, it may

be necessary to move from the traditional focus of film studies on

the particular film text, and even from the traditional focus of

media cultural studies following the encoding-decoding model on

the analysis of particular television texts. Instead, we should

favour an analysis of readings of cumulative flows of movies

according to their geographical origin, genre and actors starring

in them following somewhat the example of cultivation analysis in

the case of television. Despite the reticence cultural and

critical scholars may have of engaging a theoretical approach

identified with the mainstream positivist American tradition,

empirical findings of movie audiences make clear that every film

seen by a particular viewer has to compete for space “with all the

hundreds of thousands of other films someone may have seen in a

lifetime, in most cases without the possibility of memories being

confirmed or refreshed by subsequent viewing” (Allen, 2012, p.

55). The possibility of taking into consideration the study of the

readings of dozens of movies instead of particular texts has

already being put forward by one of the pioneers of the encoding-

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decoding approach to the study of the interpretation of specific

texts: David Morley (2006). Referring to the increasing viewing

practices of audience members, frequently not consuming whole

texts on television because the remote control allows them to

construct personal fragmented schedules, he argued:

…we may need to abandon the presumption that in their work on

cultivation theory, George Gerbner and his colleagues were

misguided in focusing on overall patterns of program “flow”

and recurring imagery, rather tan on individual program texts.

To that extent it may now prove useful to go back to forms of

analysis that concern themselves with the accumulative meaning

of a variety of “bits” of programming, rather than with the

analysis of single texts” (p. 110).

While viewers do still watch “whole texts” at the cinema, the

constant flow and addition of new films in the consumption

patterns of most individuals make it difficult for a single text

to generate any lasting and special relation. The increasing

consumption of films in the other screens (television, DVD and

blue ray players, smartphones and tablets) may create the same

kind of fragmented consumption characteristic of television

`programs. But even in the 1920s and 1930s, when television was

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not yet available nor any of the modern digital technologies,

respondents have made it crystal clear to new cinema history

scholars that they remember only specific fragments of different

movies (Kuhn, 1999; Maltby, 2011; Richards, 2003), and that as

part of their daily life and social routines they would go to the

cinema frequently, consuming in their lifetimes hundreds or

thousands of films (Allen, 2011). Concluding from the latter that

the consumption of that amount of films and the incapacity of

audiences to remember whole plots or narratives means the texts

left no impression whatsoever in the viewers is unwarranted. In

fact, the testimonies collected by new cinema history researchers

in their interviews with respondents, show the myriad of meanings

attached to actors, genres and specific types of movies (Hollywood

movies, European movies, Mexican movies, and so on). In her

seminal study of cinema going in Britain in the 1930s, Kuhn (2002)

reports, for example, that when selecting films to go and see in

the movie theatres, her respondents remembered “being guided most

of the time by their favourite stars” (p. 535). In a similar

tenor, Richards (2003) acknowledged that films watched during the

1930-1960 in Bridgend, South Wales, “were not ignored entirely.

The majority of respondents, whilst not recalling specific films,

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could remember the typical content of the programmes featured at

the three cinemas” (p. 350).

A good example of how to identify relevant readings and uses

of film texts by audience members is Jackie Stacey´s findings on

how female viewers of the 1940s and 1950s used images of female

stars as a cultural resource in the production of themselves as

both subject and object in the cultural ideals of femininity and

as strategies of resistance to the dominant British definitions of

femininity (in Jancovich and Faire, 2003). Another example is

provided by the empirical work with elderly Roman respondents by

Treveri-Gennari, O’Rawe and Hipkins (2011), who show how some of

the informants were critical of Italian Neorrealism (without being

able to mention specific films from that school) for showing their

own poverty on the screen and were acutely aware of film critics’

positions in favour of it and against their preferred American

films (p. 547). For most respondents, the influx of American

cinema in the post war period (US movies were banned from 1938 to

1946 by the fascist Italian regime) was associated with opening

for them the windows of “a completely different world…to which

many Italian viewers aspire” (p. 549). In both cases, the

references about Neorrealism and comments about US films were not

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about specific titles but about the aggregate, confirming the need

to explore holistic readings on genres and types of films.

What is needed, then, is to ask the right questions when

searching for “readings”, looking at the accumulative readings by

a single person of a great number and succession of films

according to their origin, genre and content and not of his or her

readings of a single film (although there may be one-of-a-kind

movie titles that may merit specific studies). When looking at

these cumulative readings of movie flows, we should take into

account the need to look not only at rational reactions and

interpretations of film texts, but also to the more common and

profound emotional reactions viewers experience and cherish when

consuming motion pictures. As Barker (2006) has argued, “audience

responses are always emotionally charged understandings and

educated emotions….there is no way of separating out the cognitive

and the emotional responses, regarding them as separately shaped

and driven” (p. 126). Allen (1990), in the same vein, has argued

that what viewers have “made” of films has involved “the

mobilization of a number of sets of abilities and competences,

ranging from the perceptual to the cognitive, and from the

affective to the cultural” (p. 354). Morley (2006) himself, when

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vehemently defending the contemporary pertinence of the encoding-

decoding model, accepts as one of its limitations its focus on the

cognitive and rational dimensions of media consumption over the

emotional and affective ones.

This is precisely the objective of the present paper and, as

we will see when reviewing the testimonies of Monterrey

respondents about their memories of Hollywood, Mexican and

European films, there seems to be strong evidence of lasting

interpretations, valorisations and attached meanings among the

viewers. It is our contention that while text/audience relations

should never again displace the consideration of all the other

contextual, situational and structural factors surrounding cinema

going or the consumption of films in many other settings and

media, they still warrant the attention and careful analysis of

new cinema history scholars. Leaving out from empirical enquiries

of the reception of films the “tensions between power and

pleasure, fandom and disengagement, and … the creation of meanings

and meaninglessness” (Barker, 2006, p. 128) would weaken attempts

to provide holistic explanations of the multiplicity of complex

relationships established between viewers and cinema going.

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With that purpose in mind, this paper reports and discusses

findings of a study on the readings, perception, attitudes and

emotions about both Hollywood and Mexican films of 28 local

cinemagoers between 64 and 95 years old in the city of Monterrey,

Mexico. The study centres its attention particularly on the

recollections of Mexican and foreign films in this group of

respondents from the 1930’s to the 1960’s, when they were

children, youngsters or young adults. Aware of their cumulative

exposure to dozens of US and national movies during that period,

the study focuses on the analysis of lasting impressions,

interpretations and meanings viewers experienced or relate to the

movies seen in those years. When talking about his concept of

“viewing experience,” Barker (2006) asks the question: “When for

all practical purposes does the experience end?” And he adds: “All

experiences continue to resonate in one way or another through the

life-time of a person” (p. 135). In asking respondents in the

present about their “readings” and emotional attachment to films

seen by them many years ago, we are in a very empirical way

embracing Barker’s assertion. These accounts may not be faithful

to the actual readings and interpretations done by the informants

in the precise period under study, but it is our assumption that

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these contemporary reflections about the past are as valid and as

useful to explore decodings, meanings, emotions and relations of

Monterrey audiences with films, as the ones they developed during

their childhood or youth. When all is said and done, we are not

attempting to reconstruct an objective viewing experience of the

respondents (something that is not really possible), but to get

some insight about the cumulative relationship established by them

with an unquantifiable number of films during a long period of

time.

Looking at the type of readings evident in the memories and

recollections of movies seen by our informants 50 to 70 years ago

is clearly a difficult task. The time lapsed from their actual

exposure to the movies and the time when they were interviewed may

cloud and distort their original perception and appropriation of

them. However, this fact may conversely be seen as working as a

filter able to show the lost-lasting reading, and hence

ideological impact, of the remembered films or genres. Following

scholars like Cohen (2002), Hacker, Coste and Kamm (1991), Palmer

and Hafen (1999) and Schroder (2000) who had proposed different

ways to develop more precise and complex operational categories to

assess audiences’ readings of media texts, we decided to use in

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our analysis Palmer and Hafens’ (1999) four different reading

categories: Naïve acceptance, sophisticated acceptance, naïve

rejection and sophisticated rejection (deconstruction). By using

these terms, we attempted to distinguish the degree of

reflexivity, awareness and critical thinking of respondents when

providing their specific recollection and readings of particular

films, genres or actors (see Table 4).

Table 4. Types of readings of films, genres or actors of the 1930s-1960s by Monterrey informants (following Palmer and Hafen, 1999)

Type of reading DescriptionNaïve acceptance Comments praising films, genres or actors

without providing context, complex arguments or critical backing. Discussion of charactersor films does not acknowledge any difference between the viewer’s actual life and that presented in the movie

Sophisticated acceptance

Comments praising films, genres or actors mentioning context and/or using complex arguments or critical backing. Discussion of characters or events may make direct or implied comparison with the viewer’s life

Sophisticated rejection

Comments analysing or criticizing films, genres or actors providing complex arguments or critical backing. Discussion of charactersor events may make direct or implied comparison with the viewer’s life

Deconstruction The viewer is conscious of the film as a manufactured product. Comments analysing or criticizing films, genres or actors mention the fact that films are created by studios, directors or writers with their own ideological or economic agendas

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These categories are not watertight and are not clearly

separated either. The differences between them are messy and

complex, and it is important to avoid assuming otherwise. However,

they seem more specific and useful in a detailed analysis of

actual decodings of a large amount of films than the more general

category of “oppositional” readings that embrace all grades of

questioning and rejection or deconstruction of the text’s meanings

without differentiating degrees in the viewers positions.

Method

This study was based on 28 focused interviews done with

Monterrey respondents older than 64 years2. The 16 female and 12

male informants (see Table 1) were selected and found in

retirement homes or within the social circle of acquaintances of

the interviewers. As it is the case in most qualitative research,

statistical representativeness was never the objective of the

2 The following graduate students collaborated in the study as interviewers: Marcela Garza, Oscar Miranda, Beatriz Inzunza, Brenda Muñoz, Miguel Sánchez, Elsa Flores and Frida Godínez (Tecnologico de Monterrey), Karla Carrillo (Universidad Metropolitana de Monterrey) and Gabriela Nallely Hernández Villanueva (Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León).

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study. Rather, we sought as much variation as possible in terms of

class, sex and ideological points of view in order to grasp a wide

variety of possible routines, ideas and motives concerning cinema

going. The level of film consumption also varied widely within our

group of respondents, from avid moviegoers to respondents that

hardly ever visited a movie theatre. Most of the informants were

born in Monterrey and grew up in the city. However, some of them

grew up in other parts of the country (although mostly in the

region nearby), and some of their recollections refer to their

cinema going experiences in other Mexican cities in the Northeast

of the country.

TABLE 1 GOES ABOUT HERE

The individual interviews were conducted in 2010 and 2011 in

the context of the respondents’ home environment. The interviews

were semi-structured, whereby the interviewers used a thematic

questionnaire to keep the interviews focused, leaving a large

degree of space for the respondents’ own stories and spontaneous

memories. This was crucial, because many respondents were highly

motivated to talk about cinema and had very vivid memories, often

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referring to specific moments they remembered. An attempt was made

by the interviewers to cover first their childhood memories, then

their youth memories and finally their memories as adults,

repeating in some instances the same questions. Interviewers

explained to the respondents at the beginning of the interview the

need to first provide recollections of one period of time and then

the following one, and in several instances during the

conversation, they phrased the questions including references to

the period they were inquiring about (i.e. “Please tell me the

names of the cinema houses you used to go most frequently when you

were a child/young/adult”). Of course, despite this strategy,

informants still moved freely from one epoch in their lives to the

others, but at least the provision allowed for some focus on each

period. The length of the interviews differed depending on the

storytelling capacities of our respondents, with an average length

of around one hour per interview.

The interviews were transcribed ad verbatim and analysed,

using the software programme Hyper Research. For the analysis, we

organised their memories, perceptions and readings according to a

selection of themes, such as choice of movie theatre, frequency,

companionship, information about specific films, actors and

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cinema-going motives3 (Table 2). Due to the relative homogeneity of

the group in age, and consistent similarities between them in

their memories and discourse about their cinema going, the number

of interviews seemed adequate to explore the range of diverse

lived experiences of films and cinema by this age group of

Monterrey, Mexico.

TABLE 2 GOES ABOUT HERE

Confirming that the peak of movie going within people’s life

cycle usually happen before the age of 25, the larger parts of our

respondents´ memories and reflections focused on the period

between 1935 and 1965. Although this is a very broad time span,

including the heydays of movie going as well as the decline of

audience attendance, many respondents talked about it as if it was

one homogeneous period. While respondents considered the latter as

developments within the same film culture, they strongly

distinguished them from the next phase in cinema history. In the

3 This project was based on and used the same research design of the Belgian (Flemish) project, “The Enlightened City” coordinatedby Daniel Biltereyst in Ghent University and Philippe Meers in theUniversity of Antwerp) to enable an overarching comparison betweenthe two contrasting cases (see Biltereyst, Meers and Van de Vijver, 2011).

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respondents’ minds, the introduction of the multiscreen/multiplex

cinema resulted in a totally new film culture.

The use of oral history methods in investigating the social

experience of going to the movies in an historical perspective is

not without problems and remains a much-debated methodological

issue. When doing and analysing these 28 focused interviews, we

tried not to lose sight of the fact that memories are highly

selective, subjective and distorted by time, which poses problems

for interpretation. Memory is indeed not a passive depository of

facts, but an active process of creating meanings. The selective

workings of personal and collective memories include strategies of

repetition, fragmentation, narration (the will to tell the ‘good

story’), the use of anecdotes, and the tactics of forgetting,

creating or overstressing particular events. The latter refers to

memories that are prioritized and conserved better than others,

because they were of particular importance to respondents,

deferring other memories to the background. When interviewing

informants older than 64 years, asking them to talk about their

experience in going to the movies when they were kids or

adolescents, the fragmentation, distortions and over-stressing may

have even been more selective and subjective. Our purpose, thus,

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was not to attempt an objective reconstruction of the past based

on the subjective memories of our respondents, but to look at the

meanings they attached to them, the subjective and personal

recreation of their readings from the context and their

relationship to the present. Memories about the past are what Kuhn

calls “lived time” (2004, p. 106), a time lived collectively as

much as individually, a time somewhat incongruent with the linear

temporality of historical time. When interpreting and discussing

the memories about cinema going by the Monterrey respondents in

the decades of 1930 through 1970, we tried not to forget this.

Findings

The city

Monterrey, Mexico provides an interesting setting for the

study of film exhibition and cinema going in a different cultural

and linguistic context due to its industrial importance in Mexico

and its strong historical connections to the United States.

Founded in 1595 by Spanish Conquistadores, Monterrey was until the

19th Century a very small and isolated village in the northern

territories, until the war between Mexico and the United States in

1846-1848 ended with the establishment of the Rio Grande as the

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new frontier between the two countries. This change in the

location of the border provided Monterrey with numerous

opportunities for commerce with the United States (Cerutti, Ortega

& Palacios, 2000). Some years later, during the U.S. Secession War

(1860-1865), Monterrey would experience a burst of economic growth

when it became the hub where Confederate cotton was traded for

European and Mexican goods and provisions (Saragoza, 2008) making

the local economy thrive and local fortunes to develop.

Thanks to the arrival of the railroad to Monterrey in the

early 1890s, Monterrey changed into a fully industrialized city.

Several industries were opened (steel foundries and breweries,

among the most important) and its population went from just 7,000

inhabitants in 1803 to 60,000 people at the end of the 1890s, due

to the rapid industrialization of the town (Kumar Acharya, 2011).

In 1903, Monterrey became the Pittsburgh of Latin America with the

opening of Fundidora Monterrey (Monterrey’s foundry), the first

integrated steel plant in Latin America, a factory that would

provide thousands of jobs in the city and would be one of the

pillars of the economy until the early 1980s.

Precisely at the end of that decade of the 1890s, when

thousand of migrants were arriving to Monterrey attracted by the

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job openings in the new factories, the new novelty of vistas

(views) arrived to Monterrey. Up to that moment, the city had had

only one formal theatre called El Progreso, built in 1857 and devoted

to presenting dramas, comedies, “zarzuela” (sort of vaudeville)

and music concerts, opera presentations by Mexican and sometimes

Italian and English companies, and, of course all sort of

amusement acts by magicians, comics, and the exhibition of still

and semi mobile “vistas” (views).

In October 1898, a cinematographic company visited the city

for several weeks exhibiting “moving views” (Saldaña, 1988). In

that same year, a local entrepreneur, Lázaro Lozano, brought to

the city a Lumière camera and established one of the first cinema

exhibitions in the historical downtown (Vizcaya, 1971, p. 124).

From 1898 through 1915 and following the example of other cities

in Mexico and the world, movies were exhibited in all sorts of

places, like parks, streets, vaudeville tents, or the existing

theatre houses in the city, along different entertainment acts

like zarzuela, songs, and plays (Saldaña, 1988).

During the first decades of the 20th Century Monterrey

continued to grow and to consolidate as the industrial capital of

Mexico. More factories were created as spin offs of the main

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ventures like the brewery and the foundry: a large glass factory

to make the bottles for the beer, a packing factory for the

production of card boxes for the distribution of beer and soft

drinks. Also, local industrialist diversified and went into the

cement production business, textiles, banks and cleaning products.

The population of Monterrey, by 1920 reached 88,000 people.

Despite the disruption of the Mexican revolution (1910-1916) and

the significant fall of the national demand for goods and services

consequence of it, Monterrey was not as badly affected as other

parts of the country due to its urban and industrial condition and

for not being at the moment a strong political player in the

country (Cerutti, Ortega and Palacios, 2000, p. 9). By the mid-

1920s, Monterrey’s economy had fully recovered and was growing.

The city continued to expand, with a citizenry composed of a

commercial elite, a growing middle class of managers and white-

collar employees and thousand of industrial workers.

By 1940 the population had grown to an impressive 186,000.

Many migrants from other parts of the Northeast and the rest of

Mexico came to work to Monterrey during that period. According to

Kumar (2011), by 1940 26% of the population were migrants, and by

1950 that percentage had risen to 30%. In a city with much less

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cultural infrastructure and artistic and intellectual tradition

than Mexico City and other towns in the country like Guadalajara,

going to the movies was a cheap and accessible leisure

alternative. Cinema going became, for the inhabitants of the city,

including our sample of 65 to 97 year-old men and women, the most

common entertainment means.

Cinema houses and film exhibition from the 1930s to the 1960s

From only 5 cinema venues in 1922 and 8 in 1932, the number of

screens in the city grew to 25 by 1942, following the expansion of

the city centre (Figure 1).

TABLE 1 GOES ABOUT HERE

Ten years later, the number went down to 20 and by 1962, with

the end of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema and the popularization

of other means of entertainment for the middle classes (Rosas

Mantecón, 2000) to 14. To cater to the entertainment needs of the

thousand of workers in the city, unable to pay the, for them,

higher prices of the regular cinema venues, modest and rustic

cinemas called “terrazas” (terraces) proliferated in the blue-

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collar quarters. By the late 1950s there were at least 46 of these

cinemas with wood benches instead of individual seats and without

roof, exhibiting second or three run movies after dark and

charging very low admission fees.

From the late 1910s to the late 1930s, Monterrey cinemas

offered local viewers mostly US movies, due to Hollywood’s control

of the distribution companies in Mexico and the lack of national

policies in favour of film production in the country (Lozano et

al., 2012). With the break of World War II in the late 1930s,

however, production in Hollywood decreased and the US government,

worried about the possibility of Mexico and other Latin American

countries aligning with the Axis forces, offered technical and

financial help to the Mexican film industry in an attempt to use

the movies, all over the region, as a vehicle to support the

allies in the war (Peredo, 2009). This historical conjuncture

coincided with the presidency of a left-of-center politician,

Lázaro Cárdenas, who had adopted some important measures to

promote national cinema just some years before (Fein, 1996; Vidal,

2011). These two facts, together, led to the Golden Age of Mexican

cinema (1937-early 1950s), with Mexican productions rising

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dramatically and audiences all over the country, and in most Latin

American cities, enthusiastically filling the cinemas to capacity

to see the latest “comedias rancheras” and urban melodramas coming

from the Mexican studios. In 1937, 38 feature films were

produced. By 1943, the Mexican film industry was firmly

established as such, producing 83 movies and exporting many of

them to the rest of Latin America; by 1950, national productions

have reached their historical peak with a record 123 films (Noble,

2006, p. 510; Vidal, 2011, p. 51). Monterrey screens, following

this national and regional trend, included prominently in their

programming, during this period, dozens of national films and, for

the first time, local audiences had the possibility of choosing

between US or Mexican movies.

By the mid-1950s, however, attendance to the cinema venues

started to decline—the same as in the rest of the country and many

other parts of the world—, a phenomenon that would accentuate

during the 1960s due to the arrival of new privatized forms of

entertainment like television and, in the Mexican case, a decrease

in the quality of national films (Fein, 1996).

Naïve acceptance

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Many of the comments about specific movies and actors recalled

by our respondents reflected uncritical readings of them.

Expressions of admiration and praise without any hint of critical

distancing were abundant. The only enduring memories in them were

highly positive, reflecting a historical emotional bond with the

films and actors of that period that was related to an idealized

context where movies and daily life were simpler and happier.

María del Roble (1937), for example, explained that there was

no need for parents or the Church to make specific recommendations

about which movies to see and which ones to avoid because the

majority of films were great and nice, adding that male actors

were virile and their acting wonderful. For María de Jesús (1938),

likewise, going to the movies was a very positive and healthy

distraction. Nelly (1940), on her part, pointed out that parents

were not worried about what their children would see if they went

to the cinema because in that period of time (1930s-1960s), movies

were very innocent and innocuous.

A large amount of references towards actors fell also in this

naïve acceptance category. Respondents made reference with

veneration and affection to many Hollywood and Mexican actors and

actresses, and criticism or emotional detachments from them were

29

rare. Elena (1928), talking about Mexican films of the Golden

Age, indicated that:

I enjoyed a lot the movies starred by the brothers Soler, Fernando, Andrés and Domingo. Their films were lovely and theyhad [positive] messages…[they were] very nice stories that related to our interests… I liked Arturo de Cordova’s films very much. His pictures were not just to sell tickets but werefull of meaning and positive messages. The acting was very special; the plots had an impression on you. If there was a new movie with any of them, you wanted to see it because you knew beforehand it was going to be great.

Nelly (1940), in a similar tone, praised two of her favourite

movies of all time, THE SOUND OF MUSIC and MY FAIR LADY, for being

very close to her way of seeing life, commending them for their

plots, their actors and the positive message of personal

improvement. In her detailed recollection of the plots and in her

comments about both movies, there was not a single critical

observation present or any qualification whatsoever. Most

informants, thus, seemed to have only cherished memories of actors

and films, either U.S. or Mexican, reflecting perhaps an idealized

view of their childhood and youth.

Cultural Studies scholars have emphasized the mediating

importance factors like the cultural context and cultural

mediations exert on the specific readings done by audience

members. One of the basic references, of course, is the celebrated

30

Nationwide Audience study done by Morley (1980), which showed the

influence of racial, occupational and socio-demographic variables

in the production of differentiated readings of television news.

Later, and from a different theoretical framework, Liebes and Katz

(1990) were able to detect the importance ethnic and national

characteristics of viewers had in their readings of a television

series, making them produce very contrasting interpretations of

the television series. Cultural, ethnic and national origin have

also been considered factors influencing media preferences of

audience members, making them prefer, when available, local and

regional media contents over foreign contents because of a

phenomenon called cultural proximity (Straubhaar, 2003).

Monterrey’s informants exhibited an ambivalent attitude

towards Hollywood productions and national films from the 1930s-

1960s. On the one hand they conveyed very positive comments about

most Mexican movies and actors of their childhood and youth; on

the other, they also praised Hollywood movies and remembered U.S.

celebrities in affective ways. As shown in Table 2, the vast

majority of Mexican titles remembered by the respondents were from

the 1940s, during the height of the so-called Mexican Golden Age

in Film productions. After that, Mexican movies all but disappear

31

from the preferences of the Monterrey respondents. While comments

about Mexican pictures and stars were abundant in the transcripts,

Hollywood productions were never out of the preferences and

experiences of this sample of viewers. In contrast with the 15

titles of Mexican movies mentioned explicitly by the respondents,

they were able to mention 42 titles of Hollywood productions

spread more or less evenly in each decade. Among the most

mentioned US movies were, of course, big event titles like GONE

WITH THE WIND (1939), THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956), SPARTACUS

(1960), KING KONG (1933), AND BEN-HUR (1959).

TABLE 2 GOES ABOUT HERE

Middle and lower class informants were clearly partial in

favour of Mexican movies when they were kids or adolescents. They

mentioned mostly Mexican actors and titles as their favourites.

Many female informants said they really loved the Mexican

melodramas of the epoch. Elena (1929) spoke about the lasting

impression the movie CUANDO LOS HIJOS SE VAN (1941, Dir: Juan

Bustillo Oro) left on her. After giving a highly detailed account

of the plot, she explained that what affected her the most was the

32

way in which both parents, at the end of their lives, were

exploited by their siblings, who would visit them just to ask them

for money or to take their possessions away despite their terrible

economic situation. “That had a lasting impression on me. If I

were to watch that movie again, I am sure I would cry again…its

impact was so great on me…feeling the sorrow of the parents when

they end up alone, without the help of any of their children

despite having given to them all they had.”

Another female informant, Nancy (1941), also talked about a

Mexican melodrama of the epoch as leaving on her a lasting

impression: “NOSOTROS LOS POBRES” (We, the poor), a movie starred

by the male idol Pedro Infante and premiered in 1948. Showing the

same emotional connection with urban situations and familial

problems as the other female respondents, Nancy remembered

uneasily that in the movie a small kid dies and other loses his

eye violently. “Till today, I am unable to watch that movie

again.”

Middle and upper class informants, although sympathetic to

Mexican movies from the Golden Age, reported having viewed and

enjoyed Hollywood movies at the same time, and admiring stars like

33

Clark Gable, Rock Hudson, Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, Doris Day,

Greta Garbo, Audrey Hepburn, James Dean, and some others. As in

the case of British and Flemish informants (Kuhn, 2022;

Biltereyst, Meers and van de Vijver, 2011), Monterrey respondents

rarely remembered any movies in particular, but were very lucid

about their favourite Hollywood stars.

In another example of how widespread and popular Hollywood

movies were around the world despite cultural and geographical

differences of the audiences receiving them, Monterrey

respondents, the same as British and Flemish respondents,

mentioned repeatedly big event movies like GONE WITH THE WIND, BEN-HUR

and KING KONG. Readings of these movies could be considered of the

“naïve acceptance” category. Mariana (1944), for example,

explained that she loved BEN-HUR since the first time she saw it,

pointing out that it was one of her favourite movies of all times.

She added that she did not get tired of watching it every year,

when programmed in Mexican television during Holy Week. There were

just some few but very timid comments about the manufacture of

these big event movies’ manufacture, like the one by NELLY (1941)

about the first version of KING KONG:

KING KONG gave me the most horrendous shock in my life [she laughs]. At the end of the movie I went home extremely scared,

34

I had nightmares with it I don’t know how many nights afterwards. For me, it was something as…Oh my God! And later there were new versions done and they still made an impressionon me, but when you are older you realize it’s fiction, you identify the tricks….but the first time…What a horrible thing,Oh my God! For me, King Kong gave me the biggest trauma of my childhood!

Not all working class informants liked Mexican movies better

than American ones. In the case of the older ones who started

going to the cinema as kids before the beginning of the Golden

Age, preference for Hollywood movies was even higher than for

Mexican films. Eustolio (1924), from a rural background, said that

he loved to go and watch U.S. films (apparently Westerns), the

reason being that the characters “would get up in their horses and

go and shoot their pistols.”

Sophisticated acceptance

There were also some comments that could be classified as

“sophisticated acceptance,” in which informants provided arguments

for praising or admiring the movies they remembered. That was the

case of one of the female informants, who was aware of the formal

techniques and resources of movie productions to get viewers

engaged:

BLANCA (1942): Films [of that era] provided positive messages,either via the character or via the musical theme. For

35

example, there was a movie with Tom Donahue, I think his name was, about Rome [actually she refers to Troy Donahue, in the movie ROME ADVENTURE, 1962]. Oh! I love that movie, particularly when he is following the woman he likes. She is walking and they meet at Trevi’s fountain. That is the message, I mean, a lot depends on the sensitivity of every person, that’s for sure, like when a theatre play or a book grabs your attention because of the protagonist or the antagonist, depending on your state of mind or your spiritual state. In my case, thank God, I was always attracted to the good guys.

In general, however, positive comments about either Mexican or

US films would not provide any context, complex arguments or

critical backing. In the present perception of those old movies,

most of the Monterrey respondents seem to hold an idealized image

of their content and their significance.

Sophisticated rejection

In some instances, the comments of some respondents about the

content of the movies, their exhibition or the historical context

of their production suggested a more critical stance and a more

complex relationship either towards the films or towards the

Mexican government attempt of not showing some of them because of

their content. Interestingly enough, most critical comments

referred not to the historical period we asked the respondents to

focus on, but on the most recent period of the 1970s and 1980s

36

where many socially-oriented Mexican films were produced

denouncing or exposing political, social or religious problems or

abuses.

José (1942), for example, commented on the obstacles the

Mexican government put for the exhibition of some very critical

national productions in the 1970s and early 1980s like CASCABEL

(1977), LA CASTA DIVINA (1977) and EL MIL USOS (1981) because of

their criticism of politicians and corruption and their portrayal

of pressing social problems. However, he was cognizant movies are

not able to solve social problems, only to make you aware of them:

“I don’t think films are useful for solving social problems; maybe

they help people realize what the problems are but then it is your

own responsibility to look for solutions.” Andrés (1943) also

praised much more recent national movies critical of the

government or with references to social problems like ROJO

AMANECER (RED DAWN, 1990), and PRESUNTO CULPABLE (PRESSUMED

GUILTY, 2008) and insisted these types of films should be produced

and exhibited more in order “to activate the mind of the people.”

Some informants, like Antonieta (1930), maintained she had

always had a reflective attitude towards cinema, deciding to see a

particular movie not because it was the most popular at the moment

37

but only after finding out and researching it to determine if it

was worth it: “I am not a film addict; The movie really needs to

be good for me to go an see it.”

Religion was an important mediating factor for some of the

respondents’ readings of controversial films, although they showed

significant independence from the Church’s position on movies

depicting problematic stories around priests or the Vatican.

Several respondents mentioned in particular the relatively recent

Mexican film “The Crime of Father Amaro” (2002), starred by Gael

García Bernal. Nelly (1940) made reference to the scandal around

that film explaining she had not seen it because it was against

her beliefs. However, she pointed out her disagreement with the

Catholic Church’s strategy in Mexico of asking its followers to

avoid seeing it:

I did not see the movie; I was just not interested in seeing it [but] I think that to prohibit something is to give it morepromotion, that's my personal point of view. [To prohibit a movie] is to invite people to go an see it for themselves if what is said about it is true or not...In our case, because wewere raised in a moral and righteous way, we were not tempted to go and see that movie, not even my children, despite themselves being part of a newer generation, thank God.

Thelma (1934), in contrast to Nelly, referred that despite the

Church’s prohibition she decided to see the movie and added that

she liked the acting and the production in general. Showing her

38

capacity of doing alternative and negotiated readings of movies

not in tune with her religious beliefs, she explained that she did

not agree with comments heard on television about people becoming

disappointed with the Catholic Church after seeing the film:

I told myself: This was a true story that happens in another century, in 1825, when a very young Spaniard priest, just ordained and inexperienced, arrives to a parish where the priest in charge of training him is not very upright, giving him the impression that everything is acceptable. He gets involved with a young girl and gets her pregnant. She wanted him to leave the Church and marry her, but he wouldn’t do it and he looks for somebody who can perform an abortion on her, taking her to a witch who did it all wrong making her to bleed. The old priest knows everything the young priest did, but he cannot do anything due to a brain embolism that makes him lose his ability to talk while the neophyte cleric continues offering mass.

A similar capacity for a sophisticated reading was shown by

José (1942) who, in reference to the scandal generated by the

movie, argued that people who think what movies depict is the

truth, are wrong.

Despite loving the glamorous stories and lives depicted in

films, many respondents were aware that what happened on the

screen had nothing to do with their own lives, rejecting the idea

that the films seen in their childhood or youth had exerted any

influence on their attitudes, way of dressing or customs. Asked if

her favourite actors and actresses had influenced in any

39

particular way her life or her choices of how to dress, Elena

(1932) replied: “One realized immediately that what was depicted

on the screen had no relation whatsoever with our own life.”

Eduardo (1939) gave a similar response: “No [about being

influenced by the movies], I always took good care of being and

dressing on my own style, not being anyone else.” Some, however,

seemed to attribute movies a negative influence on society, like

Beatriz (1942), who pointed at the open sexuality of contemporary

movies as the reason for the increase in single mothers in society

or Alfredo (1933) who accused low-quality films of teaching local

thieves how to steal and behave badly.

Very few informants mentioned European movies. The film market

in Mexico had been dominated by Hollywood and by local productions

since 1917, and European films were not that common, although by

1962 they represented 13% of total screenings. Confirming the

arguments of scholars critical of the encoding decoding model for

not taking into account possible “conservative” readings of

“alternative” media contents (Schroder, 2000; Cohen, 2002),

several Monterrey respondents said they would never go and see

European movies in the 1930s-1960s because they were immoral and

pornographic. The more liberal character of European films

40

clashed with the rigid morality of the epoch, and the presence of

nudity and strong topics in the pictures forced their exhibition

in the working class cinema houses and their perception as

“pornography.” Some of the informants, especially women, made

reference to this perception when asked about the movies they

liked to watch:

NELLY (1941): Definitely, only American. European ones…I don’tknow why they are so crude, so very...open minded…too…I don’t like that…nudity and such go against my principles.THELMA (1935): Only American ones! Mexican movies started to become sort of ugly and we stopped watching them, and about European pictures, we would watch them depending where they were playing. If they were programed in cinemas showing only pornography, we could not go there!

Without specialized cinemas on art or auter films, and very

scarce highbrow cultural tradition and infrastructure in the city,

most informants were unable to mention alternative non-commercial

films, directors or actors, in contrast with informants in

Guadalajara (Torres de San Martin, 2006). Only two of the

respondents, the oldest in the sample, mentioned some of the

classic European movies of the 1930s and 1940s: THE BLUE ANGEL

(1930) and THE BICYCLE THIEF (1948).

ENRIQUE (1922): There were some Italian movies at that time

that were very good. There was one about a man whose bicycle

is stolen; “The Bicycle Thief” was called. Italian films like

41

that one were a guarantee. They were interesting and very well

done.

For Monterrey viewers of the time, Hollywood cinema seemed to

be the only foreign film influence providing a window on the world

and offering images and examples of modernity to the inhabitants

of a city characterized by rapid industrialization, persistent

social inequalities and a strong provincial background.

Deconstruction

Being aware of films as manufactured products, created by

studios, directors or writers and being familiar with the

conventions of genres was considered in this study as a higher

level of critical decoding of movies, as “deconstruction.”

Surprisingly, there were more than few comments in this line among

Monterrey senior respondents, although in some instances they were

somewhat simplistic.

Blanca (1942), for example, mentioned PYSCHO (1960), by Alfred

Hitchcock, as an example of a film genre, the thriller, going

beyond murder and violence and achieving in-depth, human emotions.

Andrés (1943), after acknowledging his passion as a child for

Marvel comics like Captain America and The Avengers, expressed his

42

surprise for the adaptation to the screen of the X MEN: “I don’t

understand how they dared to adapt to the screen the X MEN, a

fictional story very hard to translate to the screen, but of

course, today’s visual effects make anything possible.”

Elena (1928) pointed out that, as a child, going to the movies

was a way of having fun in an innocuous way:

It was clear to us that movies were just entertainment. Of course, like in books, newspapers or other media, there may always be some problematic references in movies, but nothing to be really worried about or to make you close your eyes to avoid exposure. If you see films from the perspective that they are fictional and not real, they will not affect you in any way.

Antonia (1930) took a similar position, explaining that when

going as an adult to the cinema, she was more mature and better

equipped to avoid any bad influence from the content of the films:

[As an adult] you have a clearly developed personality and if you see scenes that do not fill your expectations or do not please you, you have the discernment to avoid feeling affectedor disturbed. It plays in your advantage to go to the cinema as an adult, because nothing you see will exert any influence on you. Maybe if the movie is about romance it will elicit memories, experiences, but it will not be able to do any harm to you.

The ability to distance herself from the alluring atmosphere

surrounding Hollywood films was evident in Nelly (1940), who made

fun of a cousin of her that would send letters to American stars

in the 1940s-1950s and would received in response autographed

43

photos of them without realizing they were sent by PR teams and

not by the celebrities themselves. She added that she never sent

similar letters because she always suspected it was a scam. In

relation to the glamour of Mexican film stars, Beatriz (1942)

mentioned an anecdote that helped her contrast the charm and

appeal of the biggest of all Mexican celebrities of the 1940s,

Pedro Infante, in real life:

One day we [she and a friend] went to mass and we were told Pedro Infante was visiting Monterrey so we decided to go and see his presentation at the Rex Cinema. But the little scoundrel of Pedro Infante, who was supposed to be at the cinema at 10 a.m., did not arrive until 3:00 p.m.! My parents and my friend’s parents were worried about us, fearing something bad had happened to us. But no, we were just waitingfor him to arrive to the cinema. And then [when he finally showed up], I was greatly disappointed. I had always thought he was dark-skinned but, instead, he was fair-skinned, and I had always thought he was tall, and he was short. He ceased tobe my idol at that moment; he was not as I had imagined him tobe at all.

Reflections and criticisms of movie genres, however, were not

that frequent among the respondents. Among the few comments

related to that was one by Enrique (1921), who was very critical

of the melodrama genre, predominant in the most successful Mexican

movies of the 1940s and 1950s. He remembered the time when his

mother and her sister begged him to take them to the cinema to see

CUANDO LOS HIJOS SE VAN (WHEN THE CHILDREN LEAVE HOME) a movie

44

premiered in 1941. He took them to one of the “big cinemas” in

Madero Avenue and sat in the middle of both sisters. He referred

that both sniffed during the whole picture making him anxious and

uneasy. After the movie, he took them home, none of them saying a

word during the drive. When arriving, his mother got quickly out

of the car, entered into the house and went directly into her

bedroom. After parking the car, Enrique went to see her and found

her crying. She told him: “Here I can cry all I want and nobody

will be annoyed, nobody will tell me to shut up.” He concluded:

“Mexican movies were such a drag.”

Another comment, related to the same film genre, suggests an

ability in some informants to identify repetitive patterns and

formulas in Mexican movies. Asked about the argument of a movie

she mentioned as one of her favourites (ALLÁ EN EL RANCHO GRANDE,

1936), Elena (1928) described it as:

[It was about] the same old story…very common in Mexican movies: He was the owner of a very big ranch and he was very rich. He had a lot of workers doing everything he needed. And,as expected in this kind of movie, he is attracted to a young girl who works for him and he starts paying attention to her. The actor was Tito Guizar. He was not a good singer, but [backthen] we liked a lot how he sang. Afterwards…he falls in love with the girl, but then, as conventional in this type of stories, another man is also interested in the girl and a triodevelops.

45

Interestingly enough, and in consonance with what Martín-

Barbero (1987) mentions about the pleasure derived from Latin

American telenovelas by female viewers for knowing the rules of the

genre and anticipating what is going to happen next, Elena

remarked that the movie—so clearly depicted by her as following

the same old, repetitive structure of the melodrama—was an

“excellent” one and definitely one of her favourites.

Discussion

Taking as point of departure both the cultural studies

approach to media and the so-called “New Cinema History”

perspective, the present paper offers findings that may contribute

to increase the available empirical evidence about some usually

understudied aspects of media reception.

First, by focusing on films seen in movie theaters, instead of

television contents watched at home (the most typical media

messages analyzed in the cultural studies tradition), this study

offers findings that may be useful to qualify and contrast what

cultural studies scholars have found about readings of television

programs. The degree of attention sustained in theaters and the

particular rituals involved in going to the movies may account for

46

important differences in the kinds of readings and perceptions

developed by audience members.

Second, by analyzing readings of films seen decades ago

instead of current media products, this paper explores whether

decodings of texts consumed in the past remain current and

relevant for viewers. This type of readings has not been studied

frequently, and we do need more information about lasting

interpretations and perceptions of media texts in the long term

and not only in the short term.

Thirdly, focusing on readings about dozens or hundreds of

movies instead of single texts, offers the possibility of putting

into context the complex ways in which audience members do

internalize and appropriate the recurrent meanings offered by

films. The typical media experience of any audience member is to

see hundreds or thousands of movies (and television programs)

during their lifetime and research should also pay attention to

these accumulative readings of media texts.

Finally, by collecting data about the lasting readings of old

films done in Monterrey, Mexico, this study offers empirical

evidence on the historical reception of films by non-American or

European audiences in a setting where the historical, cultural and

47

linguistic contexts are significantly different from the usual

locations studied in the available literature.

The findings discussed in this paper confirm the usefulness of

moving away from the traditional focus of film studies on a

particular text and centring attention on the readings of

cumulative flows of movies. Our findings show that respondents

seem to have developed general and coherent readings of large

amounts of films, attaching particular meanings and emotions to

whole blocks of them. Unable to remember titles or whole plots of

specific movies, respondents were able to talk passionately and

comprehensively about whole sets of films or about movies starred

by their favorite foreign or national actors or actresses and

share clear and direct perceptions and opinions about them despite

the long time that had passed.

In this sense, our findings show clearly that the incapacity

of audiences to remember whole plots, narratives or titles of

movies seen in the past did not mean they had left no enduring

impressions on them. In consonance with studies done in other

countries by new cinema history researchers that show the myriad

of meanings respondents attach to actors, genres and specific

types of movies, our findings evidence Monterrey viewers had vivid

48

and passionate interpretations, opinions and feelings towards

different types of films and genres seen 50-70 years ago. As

Barker (2006) argues, film readings—in this case even of movies

seen a long time ago—were full of not only rational but also

deeply emotional reactions, confirming the impossibility of

separating out the cognitive and the emotional responses.

The responses of our respondents evidence also the difficulty

of attempting to classify in separate categories their readings of

films. In a single answer, it was possible to identify comments

showing both naïve acceptance and sophisticated rejection or

sophisticated acceptance and deconstruction. Palmer and Hafen’s

(2001) model, based on Hacker et al.’s proposal, seems still crude

and limited. While having one “naïve” and one “sophisticated”

category to classify comments reflecting either acceptance or

rejection seems a clear improvement over the encoding decoding

model and its use of single categories for each option, they don’t

seem complex enough to help us understand the degree of

assimilation or of critical distancing from the ideological

contents and proposals embedded in movies similar in genre, origin

or manufacture. The way Monterrey respondents talked about Mexican

movies, their enthusiasm and their mostly positive opinions, could

49

be seen as an important confirmation of the cultural proximity

thesis that states that when available, local media contents are

preferred over foreign ones. They also show the relevance of

social mediations like language, culture and religion mentioned by

cultural scholars like Martin Barbero in the decoding of films.

The strong identification of respondents with Mexican stars and

with the typical genres of the melodrama and the comedia ranchera,

show that cultural factors have indeed a decisive influence in the

way audiences read media texts.

Similar positive and enthusiastic comments about Hollywood

films of the period, however, qualify the influence of those

social mediations in the case of movies. Despite significant

cultural and linguistic differences between US motion pictures and

the Monterrey respondents, the latter were for the most part

enthusiastic and favourable towards the former. For them,

Hollywood films were mostly innocent and wonderful, and big event

US movies were among the all time favourites of the respondents.

This enjoyment of Hollywood movies by Monterrey viewers, however,

may reflect a more general pattern common in most parts of the

world, where US films, in contrast with US television programs and

many other US cultural products, have achieved a “universal”

50

cultural proximity making audiences to feel identified and close

to the genres, plots and stars of American films.

A great deal of the relationship of Monterrey elders with

cinema, however, was not about their ideological readings of

particular films or the values ascribed by them to characters or

plots, but about the in-depth insertion of cinema going in their

daily life and the opportunities of social and familial

interaction around it. Regardless of the movie(s) being shown,

recollections about the cinema in the period of 1930-1960 by our

respondents were more about with whom they used to go, the

attractiveness of some movie houses because of their architectural

elements and features and what they would eat or do when viewing

the show or during the intermissions. In this sense, these elder

inhabitants of Monterrey seemed to relate a good deal with the

kind of treasured memories and cinema going rituals characteristic

of respondents in studies done in Europe and the United States.

These memories, also, may validate cultural studies emphasis on

social routines and media habits and its consideration of these

sociocultural factors as equally or more important than the actual

readings of media texts (Morley, 1990).

51

Having said that, however, this study makes it clear that new

cinema history should not leave out the analysis of how actual

movies seen in the past were interpreted by flesh and bones actual

viewers and what kind of meanings they continue to attach to the

dozens or hundreds of films they saw during different periods of

time according to the movies’ origin, genre and actors.

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Table 1. Age and gender of informants Gender 65-69 70-74 75-79 80-84 85-89 95-99 TotalFemale 4 4 2 3 3 16 Male 2 1 4 4 1 12Total 6 4 3 7 7 1 28Half the informants were children or youngsters during the 1930s; the other half during the 1940s and 1950s.

Table 2. Movies seen by informants during childhood or youth by origin and number of mentions

Years Mexican % US % Total

1930s 4 27 12 29 16

1940s 10 67 9 21 19

1950s 1 6 14 33 15

1960s 0 0 7 17 7

15 100 42 100 57

Mexican movies with the highest number of mentions: Nosotros los pobres(1948), Alla en el Rancho Grande (1937), Cuando los hijos se van (1941).US movies with the highest number of mentions: Gone with the wind (1939), The ten commandments (1956), Spartacus (1960), King Kong (1933),Ben Hur (1959), An affair to remember (1957), Rebel without a cause (1955).

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