Interpretation on the fly

Radicalism and Robinson Crusoe

§1 ProductionThe subject matter here, first of all, material production.

Individuals producing in society—therefore socially determined production by individuals—is naturally the starting point. The single, isolated hunter and fisherman, with whom Smith and Ricardo begin, belongs to the unimaginative fancies of eighteenth-century Robinsonades, which certainly do not, as cultural historians believe, express simply a reaction to over-refinement and a return to a misconceived natural life. As little as Rousseau’s Contrat social, whereby naturally independent subjects are brought into association and relationship by contract, is based on such naturalism. This is illusion, the purely aesthetic illusion of small and great Robinsonades. It is, on the contrary, the anticipation of ‘bourgeois society,’ which, since the sixteenth century, has been preparing itself for, and, in the eighteenth has made giant strides towards, maturity. In this feely competitive society the individual appears as released from the natural ties, etc. which, in earlier epochs of history, made him an appendage of a distinct, limited human conglomerate….The production of the isolated individual outside society—a rare event which may perhaps occur where a civilized man, already possessing dynamic social powers within himself, is driven by chance into the wilderness—is as much as impossibility as the development of language without individuals living together. Grundrisse, §1\

The Producer

Each Popular Front group had at its head one person whose enthusiasm, organizational capacity, and patience with detail helped guide it over the factional stresses to victory in the 1944 elections….The head of the Hollywood Democratic Committee possessed all the leadership talents of his eastern counterparts, but differed in that he was a member of the Communist Party. A violinist, George Pepper develoed arthritis in his fingers and was obliged to quit his profession. He threw himself into political work…Under his very able direction, the HDC grew rapidly, and by mid-1943, it had become the major outpost of progressivism west of the Hudson River. All who knew and worked beside Pepper attest to his intelligence, discipline, and uncanny knack for bringing together people of diverse partisan viewpoints. (Inquisition in Hollywood 227)

Co-productionAs international co-productions designed to travel between cultures, these films often have recourse to an elusive form of self-reference. They designate the position of cinema within what in later decades would be called the world ‘system’ of commodity production. Importantly, these are not movies about movies, yet by undermining certain narrative cliches, they lead us to reflect on the status of cinema. In their conscious destabilisation of the local/global interface suggested by their plots, they mirror the commodity culture that shaped their very production, and thus gradually break down the borders and frames that have defined the asymmetrical relations of cultural and economic globalisation. (85)

Nationalism and Co-Production

The critical and commerical success of The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe and Viridiana (which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Fetival in 1961) allowed Buñuel to confirm the viability and marketability of his style in the international film market. Thus, the work phase that began with The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe can be characterized as Buñuel’s search for a springboard back into the international film scene and away from the constrictions of the national film market. …In his Mexican films Buñuel is concerned with issues that are relevant to Mexico and with the representation of those issues in Mexican cinema. The films that started with Robinson Crusoe and continued unti Simón del desierto…are deliberately absent from the Mexican context. Acevedo-Munoz 143-44