The perfect spectatorship: Culture and criticism in Mexico’s La dictadura perfecta/The Perfect Dictatorship (2014) and Ingobernable/Ungovernable (2017)

Abstract

La dictadura perfecta/The Perfect Dictatorship (Estrada, 2014) calls attention to the current state of funding, social criticism and censorship in Mexican cinema, and to the state of the cultural and electoral Mexican Left. To explore present and future distribution and production tendencies, I look at how Netflix might provide an alternative venue for Mexican filmmakers and how its Ingobernable/Ungovernable (2017) caters to a global audience, while simultaneously incorporating a timid social criticism that activates identity sensibilities in a Mexican audience. I argue that Estrada’s film(s) – along with the social and cultural impact of leftist movements on a collective Mexican memory – jointly paved the aesthetic and ideological road to making this incorporation palatable.