The Spaces Between Grassroots Documentary ... - Ezra Winton

that build around them are the essence of the contribution to Mouffe’s democracy. At the
same time, these spaces between confront the massive artifices of neoliberal capitalism
that – like giant megaplexes connected to massive marketing campaigns for blockbuster
releases – dwarf counterpublics.
Neoliberal hegemony champions economies of scale, where consolidated and
protected capital produces big budget cinema with dazzling aesthetics, couched in an
enmeshed strain of celebrity culture. Blockbusters are then marketed with millions of
dollars and global systems that disseminate cultural information across millions of
“channels” like fast food restaurants, supermarkets, books, CDs, amusement parks, and of
course theatres. It is no surprise The Transformers – a high-tech movie about toys that
change into vehicles – earned nearly $10 million on its opening night. As Peter S. Grant
and Chris Wood argue, it is not magic or taste necessarily, it is “in the mathematics.”
(Grant and Wood, 2004, p.83). When it comes to commercial exhibition spaces, they
maintain: “The outcome is not rocket science: a rational exhibitor will give her best play
dates to the big boys.” (Ibid, p.85) They further their argument by writing that the object
of “the game” is to make the most profit, and that exhibition is just where things get
started. (Ibid) With integrated global media cartels and financial institutions connecting
the dots, the numbers for this aspect of the neoliberal “game” fair well, for some.
As stated earlier, not all efforts outside of this system are oppositional and/or
progressive, 20 but I would argue that all the grassroots d/e articulations described here are
counter-hegemonic, and are leaning toward the democratic and progressive. As with the
quote that introduced this chapter, “alternative spaces” often percolate through the
20 In The Cultural Resistance Reader Ralph Ginzburg reminds readers of this caveat when he
recounts one of many “counterpublic” events that occurred in Georgia, USA, in the 1920s: a mob
that brutally tortures and murders by lynching an African American man.
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