Resumo

DAVALOS OROZCO, Federico. From the cultural industries to the political economy of the film industry. Rev. panam. comun. [online]. 2022, vol.4, n.1, pp.131-154.  Epub 27-Jun-2022. ISSN 2683-2208.  https://doi.org/10.21555/rpc.v4i1.2558.

It proposes a reflection on the concept of culture in the field of social sciences, which allows us to understand the relevance that cultural industries have in the production and reproduction of the symbolic systems of contemporary societies. The concept of culture allows us to understand the pre-eminence that the daily production of mass media has in the formation and socialization of individuals in contemporary societies.

It is the socio-historical conditioning factors and the economic and industrial nature of cultural industries that allow both the means of social communication to be fruitfully related to each other and to other forms of mass entertainment, and to establish the specificities of each one. All of them are characterized by the industrial and standardized production of messages; they are cultural industries.

Following some clues provided by Albert Breton, Augustin Girard, Armand Matellart and Enrique Bustamante, we will try to understand how cultural industries work and how they are organized; and what are the various modes of production of cultural goods.

We will explain the organization and functioning of cultural industries and their various facets: socio-political, cultural and economic. From the last facet, we will approach the study of the three sectors of the film industry -production, distribution and exhibition-, the specific way in which cinematography is organized. In the end, all these elements will allow us to propose a model for the study of production, distribution and exhibition systems in the Mexican film industry.

Palavras-chave : Cultural industries; film industry; Mexican cinema; Culture; political economy; communication; cultural process.