Catherine Wright
Professor Jennifer Friedlander
Pomona College
10 December 2013
At the 2013 San Francisco International Film Festival, director Steven Soderbergh defined cinema as “a specificity of vision. It’s an approach in which everything matters, it’s the polar opposite of generic or arbitrary and the result is as unique as a fingerprint.” Unfortunately, he went on to say, most of the films produced in Hollywood nowadays do not fit this definition; they do not qualify as “cinema.” He blamed this lack of real cinema, mainly, on Hollywood’s ever-increasing reliance on international film audiences. While the international film market’s ever-increasing importance in American studios’ film development and production has not completely stamped out foreign film industries nor American independent cinema, I hope to prove in this essay that it is severely limiting both. The globalization of Hollywood can be traced back to the creation of the studio system, and has expanded over the last century, with Hollywood films inundating cinemas worldwide with Americanized, homogenized products, leading to a lack of valid cultural diversity in worldwide media. The American independent film industry has thus suffered, now tougher to break into than ever, and both foreign and native independent filmmakers are having to learn to become more resourceful in using new technological advances and online platforms to produce and distribute their material.
1. HollyWorld: What Globalization Means in The Film Industry
Domestic box office reports are read daily newspapers, seen on television news programs, heard on the radio, re-Tweeted and shared online. Edward Jay Epstein writes that the media “continues to breathlessly report these numbers every week,” newspapers running it on the front page (5). This obsession with domestic box office returns represents a general lack of understanding of the priorities of the film industry, because nowadays, box office returns from within the U.S. are little more than “bragging rights” (Epstein 5). Even the Oscars, a high-brow recognition of all of the critically acclaimed films that have been released in the last year, is little more than a flashy parade of the few films that get Academy recognition in an attempt to prove to the public that Hollywood is a respectable, “artful” institution (Epstein 7). Academy Award-nominated films are the exception, not the rule to the film industry; they are the movies Hollywood makes as a “decoy” to prove its artistic value, while raking in money from action-heavy blockbusters (Epstein 7). Epstein remarks, “the real art of the movies is the art of the deal” (87). Because behind the scenes, where scripts are written and movies are produced, Hollywood is not in the business of winning Oscars. It is in the business of making money, and what makes American films the most money is the rest of the world. This is the globalization of Hollywood.
Globalization can be defined as the “increased mobility of people, capital, commodities, information, and images associated with the postindustrial stage of capitalism, the development of increasingly rapid and far-ranging communication…and people’s improved access to these technologies” (Gasher 4). With the current advances in communication technology, everyone seems to agree that the world is getting smaller. Globalization allows an efficient exchange of ideas and commodities, bringing various cultural products to different populations. However, globalization in the film industry is less of an equal international exchange of products, but domination of one in particular: American movies. Stephen Prince argues that “global cinema is not really global at all, if that term be understood to represent a kind of equivalent cross-fertilization of filmmaking practices the world over,” seeing as Hollywood movies dominate so many foreign countries’ theaters, while U.S. theaters exhibit a very limited number of foreign films in comparison (4).
In their paper “The Globalization of Nothing,” George Ritzer and Michael Ryan propose the idea of Hollywood as an agent of “grobalization” (the combination of the words “grow” and “globalization”), which “focuses on the imperialistic ambitions of nations, corporations, organizations, and the like and their desire, indeed need, to impose themselves on various geographic areas,” in order to attain profit and expand their power (54). Though Bollywood far exceeds Hollywood in terms of the sheer number of movies made, the U.S. completely dominates in terms of worldwide distribution and revenue (Miller and Maxwell 34). Whereas “Indian films are a genre unto themselves, and do not manage to compete strongly internationally,” 121 of the top 125 films released internationally in 2001 were American, a trend has remained constant to this day(Brunet and Gornostaeva 60).
The importance of the international market in the film industry cannot be overstated. One of the United States’ largest exports, Hollywood studios today can make up to 80% of their profits on a movie from foreign distribution (Edelstein). It is not difficult to see why movie studios put so much weight on the international market. The question, then, is how did Hollywood come to rely so heavily on foreign film distribution?
2. The “Empire of Images”: The History of the Studio System and its Relationship with the International Market
In the very early years of the film industry, European countries like France, the birthplace of cinema, dominated, and by 1914 most film and film equipment were still imported to the United States (Miller and Maxwell 36). But the United States did not waste time in Americanizing the market, “a process aided by the legal codification of film and intellectual property and mysterious confiscations of French equipment by U.S. customs” (Miller and Maxwell 36). The influx of immigrants to California created a large labor force, which, combined with the “natural resources, infrastructure, capital, and knowledge capital available” within the Los Angeles area, established a financially stable and efficient industry (Olson 8). Early on in the studio system, Hollywood saw the value in distributing to the entire world, factoring in foreign receipts by 1919 (Miller and Maxwell 36). The U.S. began exporting film to countries, many of which, ravaged by war, could not form successful film industries for themselves (Miller and Maxwell 37). Eventually, The U.S. almost completely replaced France as “The Empire of Images,” the dissemination of its films reaching far and wide (Andrew 11).
The U.S. government also saw the value in the internationalization of the film industry, creating a motion picture section of the State Department in 1916, and passing into law the Webb-Pomerene Act, which made legal foreign film trusts that were not legal in the U.S., thus enabling “an international distribution cartel for the next forty years” (Miller and Maxwell 38). The United States’ strong economy in the 1920s, and the rigid consolidation of a few powerhouse movie studios (MGM, Paramount, Fox, Warner Bros., and RKO, the “Big Five” of the Golden Age) created an incomparable monopoly over film production, distribution, and exhibition (Nowell-Smith 35). Hollywood movies were well made and entertaining, and with the creation of a powerful star system, moviegoers across the world clamored for those recognizable faces. With the introduction of sound to film in the late 20s, studios started making “high-quality, high-expenditure productions for large audiences” to pay for the expensive technology that sound exhibition required (Cowen). These large audiences included foreign countries’ populations as well, the well-traveling “talkies” establishing English as the dominant language of cinema. By the end of the 1920s, Hollywood had become one of the (if not the) most productive and established cultural industries in history, encouraged by the rapid vertical integration of the “majors,” or the large film studios. Vertical integration is the “merger or acquisition of companies at different levels of production, distribution, and exhibition” (Jin 407). This meant that the film studios could have wider control over their final products, and Hollywood was continually streamlined into an efficient, factory-like system of film production.
The economical and well-organized assembly line of production meant a constant stream of cultural products was being exported to the world, and by the 1930s, “65% of all films exhibited worldwide came from Hollywood” (Nowell-Smith 53). Though the Great Depression took its toll on every aspect of the American economy, Hollywood was widely considered as “Depression-proof” (Nowell-Smith 55). During the “Golden Age” of Hollywood, the majors’ complete control and regulation—over production but also over stars, directors, and other behind-the-scenes talent, all held under strict contracts—was simply unmatched by the rest of the world.
Hollywood’s omnipresence started to wane after the infamous Paramount Decree of 1940, the Supreme Court case that outlawed vertical integration through studio control of all three phases of the film industry (production, distribution, exhibition) but significantly, only domestically (Miller and Maxwell 37). The situation was made worse for the major studios during World War II, “when the supply of American films was blocked off in German- and Japanese-occupied countries, and by the post-war extension of the Communist bloc” (Nowell-Smith 210). Cinema’s competition with television and radio also significantly challenged Hollywood’s supremacy, and the years following the Second World War saw domestic movie attendance shrink dramatically (Denby 30). In the 1930s, around two-thirds of the population went to movies every week, but the introduction and subsequent popularity of television over the next few decades offered screen entertainment within the home, meaning many more potential movie-goers opted to stay home, causing a sort of panic among studio executives (Denby 31).
But even when the introduction of television to the United States caused an almost-crisis in the film industry, “the mainstream…was forced to innovate,” and ultimately, the ever-resourceful studios found ways to bring the masses back to the theatres (Nowell-Smith 463). Regardless of technique or narrative, there was still the spectacle of film. Movies could provide things that television simply couldn’t; studios introduced widescreen epics like Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, and went full-force into the business of special effects, including 3D (Nowell-Smith 463). While many thought television meant the end of cinema, the film industry would not be so easily beat. The 60s and 70s saw the breakdown of the studio system, wherein studio executives as well as independent producers allowed and encouraged a creative response to television’s stronghold on the entertainment industry; films like Bonnie and Clyde and Taxi Driver were thought innovative and interesting enough to pull the public away from their televisions (Nowell-Smith 464). Studio support for a new generation of young, inspiring filmmakers almost indicated the beginnings of a significant shift in Hollywood filmmaking (Nowell-Smith 474). However, gargantuan blockbuster successes of the late 70s, namely Steven Spielberg’s Jaws and George Lucas’s Star Wars proved to the executives that “a single film could earn its studio hundreds of millions of dollars in profits, and convert a poor year into a triumph” (Nowell-Smith 475). It was clear that it was the high-concept, action-packed spectacles would bring in the big bucks. Thus, by the end of the 70s, “the effervescence of the new cinema had begun to subside; it either became marginal or was absorbed into the mainstream” (Nowell-Smith 463). The 1980s saw the increase of the “event-driven” film, meaning that to make money, a film had to be enough of a spectacle to get young people out of their homes for opening weekends (Denby 32).
The further consolidation of studios and their production units under fewer and fewer corporate conglomerates brought the corporate mentality to the film industry (or, even more so than before) (Epstein 35). This meant that studios were increasingly under more and more pressure to spend as little money as possible while still making as much money as possible. They had to find out what was commercially successful, and squeeze every dime they could out of those entities. This involved the inclusion of merchandise to tie in with a big film, and, of increasing importance throughout the 90s and early 2000s, honing in on the desires of the international film audience.
In the last few decades, the reliance on the international market has expanded to even greater extent than ever before. Though 1930s and 40s are considered the Golden Age of cinema, “the 1990s stood as the era when Hollywood achieved an international influence, a mass-entertainment market-place superiority, and millions in profits unparalleled in history” (Nowell-Smith 477). This is due to a variety of factors. First, Hollywood was there to provide content for overseas movie theaters when “foreign nations abandoned their ailing film industries and turned to assisting their television production.” (Nowell-Smith 479). Second, the combination of vertical and horizontal integration, the latter being the merging of companies “across the same level of production and distribution,” allowed for more bargaining power and lower overheads, as well as the acquisitions by U.S. film producers of over 1800 foreign production companies between 1982 and 2009 (Jin 414). This lowered costs by moving principal shooting to foreign nations with tax credits and lower wages for non-union workers (Jin 416). These factors, along with “the privatization of media ownership, a unified Western European market, opening in the former Soviet bloc, and the spread of satellite TV, the Web, and the VCR, combined with deregulation of national broadcasting in Europe and Latin America” all contributed to Hollywood’s international proliferation (Miller and Maxwell 36).
In the recent years, Asian and European countries have seen a “credit-fueled building boom, erecting shopping malls—often with multiplexes attached,” creating widespread opportunity for Hollywood film release (Schuker). Film executives are looking to China, Russia, Brazil, and other such countries with large, and especially young populations, to sell millions of tickets at the box office (“Hollywood Goes Global”). In the last ten years alone box office sales doubled worldwide, notable because it is not a trend reflected within the United States, as spending here only increased by one-third ("Hollywood Goes Global").
With international successes such as The Lord of the Rings, Transformers, Toy Story, and Harry Potter, to name just a few, Hollywood has perfected the art of using a handful of films to make most of their money, called “‘tentpole’ pictures because one blockbuster will prop up a studio’s quarterly or even annual earnings report” (Prince 5). Tentpole pictures allow for the “industry rule of thumb” that seven or eight out of ten films made will lose money, meaning that “overall profitability in the industry is dependent on the other two or three films out of the 10 that actually earn money above and beyond their costs” (Scott 50). This encourages high-risk, high-reward behavior in Hollywood; the studios may risk the millions of dollars that they put into production, distribution and marketing, but the rewards—millions of dollars of revenue—continue to reinforce this pattern of spending. As we have seen, Hollywood “moved early and aggressively into world markets in the teens and 1920s, and has not relinquished its presence since” (Prince 3).
3. “The movie version of an amusement park ride”: What International Audiences Want
William Eaton wrote about cinema: “There is a terrible sense of rush and hurry and flying about, which is intensified by the twitching film and generally whang-bang music” (Shone 54). When we watch high-budget action films we get a sense of this “twitchy” feel that Eaton is talking about; a sort of urgent rhythm as a result of quick cuts and fast-paced action with little time for reflection, with elements like music and special effects that simultaneously shock our senses and draw us into the story of the film. However, William Eaton wrote this in 1914. Not two decades before, cinema had been invented, originally marketed as a sort of a vaudeville show or circus event. Cinema originated as a “spectacle,” an aesthetically striking display meant for visual pleasure: the train leaving the station, the elephant getting electrocuted inspired shock and awe, and the “sheer novelty of moving pictures, rather than their content or a story” was what brought audiences to cinematheques in droves (Nowell-Smith 15). Even as film transitioned from twenty-second clips to feature length, movies made in the early 1900s were seen as “straightforward thrill rides, unadorned by such fripperies as plot, or characters, or stars” (Shone 56). Interestingly, it seems modern Hollywood cinema in the age of globalization has once again become a cinema of spectacle: “we are now trapped by an exasperating irony…movies have in some ways gone back to their crudest beginnings” (Denby 37). Today, many films with worldwide distribution are little more than series of spectacles patched together into a two-hour action flick. It seems we are in the age of “cinema of moments, of images, of sensory stimuli increasingly divorced from story” (Shone 56).
As studio executives are increasingly moving away from trying to answer the question “what does America want?” and towards the question “what does the world want out of America?”, it seems spectacle-based film is the answer. This shift of focus came about partially as a result of audience creation. The idea of audience creation is that the general public may not attend the movies as often they did in the 1930s, but if each movie released is tailored and marketed to a specific audience, the majors can still make a lot of money off of these groups of people (Epstein 90). In the search for the most profitable audience, studios needed a demographic group that was inexpensive to appeal to, that was expected to get out of the house to pay for a movie, that tended to “consume prodigious quantities of popcorn and soda” (seeing as movie theaters make most of their money off of concessions), and that was expected to buy large amounts of video games, fast food, clothing, and other potential merchandising tie-ins (Epstein 92). The demographic group that fits all of these qualifications: teenagers. It’s incredibly advantageous to film marketers that TV viewership of teenagers is concentrated among select channels (such as MTV) with cheaper advertising spots than the broadcast networks (and other channels with higher adult viewership), meaning that in 2005, 80 percent of movie advertising appeared on TV programs “watched primarily by people under twenty-five” (Epstein 84). The audience created for internationally-released films, therefore, is ideally made up of teenagers, and also ideally male, the reasoning behind this being the belief held by movie marketers that the female audience will watch “guy movies,” (especially if they’re “good”) but the male audience won’t watch “chick flicks,” ever (Edelstein). Denby outlines this process of audience creation, writing, “the studios grab boys when they are seven, eight, or nine…and hold them with franchise sequels and product tie-ins for fifteen years” (35). The franchise and merchandise elements are what keep the audiences that have already been created as long-term consumers.
In order to attract this key demographic, both domestically and abroad, producers have to choose content wisely. Edward Jay Epstein outlines what he calls the “Midas Formula,” the set of rules that are great predictors of a film’s international success and teenage audiences. They rules are as follows:
1. The film is based on children’s stories, comic books, or cartoons.
2. It has a young protagonist.
3. It follows a fairy tale-like plot, in that a weak human is transformed into powerful hero
4. The movie involves chaste or platonic relationships between sexes “to ensure PG-13 or better rating necessary for merchandising tie -ns and placing ads on children’s TV programming.”
5. It lends the possibility of making the characters into toys and games.
6. It employs stylized conflict: “dazzling, large-scale, and noisy in ways that are sufficiently nonrealistic and bloodless.”
7. The film ends happy, with good reigning over evil, and it “lends easily to sequel.”
8. It uses animation to create action sequences and visually stimulating settings
9. It does not employ too many celebrities, who often demand high salaries (Epstein 124).
Of course, not every internationally successful movie has followed this formula exactly. But many, such as Toy Story, Harry Potter, Finding Nemo, Star Wars, etc. employ many of these qualities. Olson has his own list of the winning characteristics, adding on to the Midas formula: “inclusion strategies” that completely immerse the audience in the narrative, such as the POV shot, as well as “negentropy,” which is the idea that the film assures the viewer that “life is not inherently chaotic, but rather orderly and purposeful” (14). He uses Titanic as an example for the assurance of order, because even though the ship sinks, the power of love triumphs over death.
In general, audiences will line up to see big noisy spectacle, “stuff all eyes like looking at,” (Dall). Because of the heavy reliance on dubbing, especially in Latin America and Asia, “studios have found that the formula for successful booking is…short on dialogue, long on action” (Epstein 65). The “stuff all eyes like looking at” also includes tried-and-true stars that have international recognition, such as Bruce Willis, Robert Downey Jr. and Arnold Schwarzenegger; the heterosexual, white male action hero, “an instantly recognizable global celebrity whose name and likeness are worth millions of dollars and are solely his property” (Epstein 46).
The simple truth is that spectacle travels well across cultures, borders, language barriers, religious beliefs, historical backgrounds, and age categories. Critics decry the “rushed, jammed, broken, and overloaded, action” that only provides “temporary sensation rather than emotion and engagement” that is so common in contemporary studio films (Denby 37). But it seems that international audiences prefer what Epstein calls “the movie version of an amusement park ride” to complex narrative structure, a lot of dialogue, and inventive cinematography—all essentially toxic to the huge budget movie (169). Any cultural specificity, for example, American-made comedies with a great deal of pop culture references, don’t do well abroad (“Hollywood Goes Global”). They’re hard to translate, as comedy is one thing that differs greatly across different cultures. Attributes such as “narrative complexity and God forbid ambiguity…become real obstacles to the success of the film here and abroad” (Soderbergh). Comedy and romance (with the rare exception of Titanic) simply don’t hold up against action films and/or franchise films.
They also don’t hold up against the one thing Americans loves to hate about the entertainment industry: violence. According to George Gerbner, violence is one of best deciding factors for whether or not a film will have box office success abroad: “It needs no translation. It speaks action in any language. It’s relatively culture-free” (Gerbner). An average Chinese teenager may not get a specific American cultural reference, but they will surely understand a car chase. Going back to the idea of audience creations, studio executives realized they needed something to pull in their teenage audiences within the span of a thirty-second trailer, and the most successful way to do that was using action with great special effects (Epstein 84). A study of 108 movie trailers found that approximately 76% of the previews in their sample featured at least one act of aggression, with an average of 2.5 aggressive acts per minute” (Xie and Lee 280).
The top ten highest-grossing films in the world are the following, in order: Avatar, Titanic, Marvel’s The Avengers, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, Iron Man 3, Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Skyfall, The Dark Night Rises, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest ("All Time Worldwide Box Office Grosses”). To my count, two of these are based on comic books, eight of them are a part of a series or franchise, and nine of them include a considerable amount of violence (I exclude Titanic here, though there is admittedly a great deal of death in the film).
Gerbner talks about how many studio executives claim they are “very unhappy” about the current exorbitant use of violence in cinema, as it is somewhat of an “international embarrassment” to Hollywood (Gerbner). But it continues to be included in films, because the rewards overwhelmingly outweigh the potential humiliation; it’s just too lucrative to stop. That being said, the high amount of violence in Hollywood movies doesn’t mean it’s all exceedingly graphic, bloody imagery. In fact, with the exception of the horror genre, the violence in mainstream Hollywood films is what Gerbner calls “happy violence”: all of the action without the explicit imagery. “People don’t want to see…violence that shows the tragedy and the pain and the harm and the damage that violence does” (Gerbner). Blockbuster films deal with death, but it is often largely shown with little affect; it is not particularly bloody and rarely included to make us feel sad. For example, within the first five minutes of The Avengers, six people die, yet we see not a drop of blood nor a tear shed. It seems the goal is more to help the viewer identify with the “good guy” and against the “bad guy,” in this case, Loki, who does all of the killing in this first scene (The Avengers). The protagonists of the film engage in violence as well, but only after we have already established them as the morally “good,” only using violence to fight against evil. The function of violence in most of these films does not seem to be to horrify us or force us to deal with real-life violence, but rather assist with character identification and provide visually interesting action sequences that all foreign audiences can follow. Still, this doesn’t get to the real issue of why violence in any form is entertaining, especially outside of the U.S.
One theory for this fascination with violence is that we are simply used to it, and therefore have a sense of connection to it: “there’s nostalgia with it because it’s recognizable.” (Dall). Watching two characters fight to the death is not what one normally thinks of as “nostalgic,” but millions of people around the world are attending these movies, therefore, viewers must get some kind of pleasure out of it. Anthropologist Jose Martin claims that it’s comparable to the stories we hear as children and fondly recall as adults. The violent action flick is “the old story” (Dall).
There have also been scientific studies conducted on the pleasure of viewing violence. George Gerbner is correct in saying that violence is popular “because it has to do with physical integrity.” Studies have shown that participants receive sensory pleasure “at the physiological level by watching and listening to shooting, explosives, and physical-attack scenes with…special effects or slow-motion cinematography” (Xie and Lee 278). This may have something to do with the way the brain reacts to danger: a “sudden release of neurochemicals” that cause us to feel confident against a threatening opponent, a “natural high that makes us feel more powerful.” (Xie and Lee 278). Though the danger encountered in action films is obviously not real and not realistically threatening to the audience member, the stimulation of these neurons and increase in adrenaline is very real. Perhaps in addition to this, violence is cathartic to watch. In many box office-topping films, violence solves problems, and Martin argues that we project these our own life problems onto these images of violence we see in the theater, creating a sort of cathartic release when the bad guy is killed (Dall).
The “Gatekeeper” of Cultural Products: Cultural Imperialism and the Hollywood style
The incredible dominance of Hollywood on the international market is undebatable. But that doesn’t mean that these foreign film industries have accepted and exhibited American movies without complaint or even governmental intervention. In the 1930s, Germany and France established a “contingent system, whereby Hollywood imports were restricted to a certain number per year” (Nowell-Smith 50). Today, China has strict quotas on the number of foreign films that can be shown, but it recently increased this number from 20 to 34 per year (Daniel).
Hollywood has a long history of adapting and reacting to international resistance to its movies. When the British established a quota system in 1927, studios set up production subsidiaries in England so that the films made would technically qualify as “British” and pass the quotas (Nowell-Smith 50). The government also has used Hollywood to its advantage on the international stage, as a means to spread Western values and pro-American sentiment. In the 1930s, The U.S. Department of Commerce “pressured other countries to permit cinema free access and favorable terms of trade,” and Hollywood producers as well as governmental officials supported the idea of films as “celluloid messengers from a free country” meant to “teach American values” (Miller and Maxwell 37). Known as Donald Duck and Diplomacy, one producer claimed Hollywood’s international presence was so important that the world “needed Hollywood more than the H bomb” (Miller and Maxwell 37). Hollywood was also directly involved The Marshall Plan for Europe, “whose provisions linked levels of aid directly to recipients' willingness to accept imports of US motion pictures” (Scott). More recently, The White House-Hollywood Committee was created to “ensure coordination between the nations we bomb and the messages we export” (Miller and Maxwell).
The governmental participation along with Hollywood’s already-established international distribution units have led to a generalized “dumping” of Hollywood movies on other nations (Gerbner). Olson laments, “unfair pricing and other economic incentives make it difficult or impossible for local sovereignties to resist media imports” which effectively undercut local production efforts (7). For many countries it is cheaper to simply import American material than invest in their own production of cultural product.
The widespread dissemination of so much Hollywood film seems to have had its influence, seeing as, despite the introduction of quotas in a number of countries, many foreign film industries have seen the success and proliferation of Hollywood movies, and paradoxically tried to copy it: “with their control of international distribution, the Hollywood corporations could and would define appropriate standards of film style, form, content, and money-making” (Nowell-Smith 50). This meant that the Classical Hollywood style—strict adherence to the continuity editing system, the use of goal-oriented protagonists and linear, chronological narratives, to name a few characteristics—became “a kind of international norm” (Prince 4). Hollywood had such a strong hold on the world market, however, that “imitation would not work, however competitive the product” (Nowell-Smith 50). Most successful local cinemas, instead of trying to copy Hollywood, “came into existence through a process of differentiation” from Classical Hollywood, such as the French New Wave, which consciously rejected Hollywood film technique (Andrew 12). Still, even if no other film industry has enjoyed the financial success that Hollywood has, its worldwide impact on film form cannot be ignored. Dudley Andrew calls the Hollywood style film’s “classical language,” like Latin is to spoken and written language, and it is the style that worldwide audiences have learned to expect (11). It is not just narrative form or technical style that are prone to international imitation. For example, “the Chinese…have bemoaned the fact that their leading directors make films that exoticize or ‘orientalize’ Chinese culture and history for Western audiences” (Ritzer and Ryan 76). Apparently, Hollywood’s influence is so powerful that the treatment of (one’s own) is sometimes represented through a Western point of view.
Additionally, American movie studios, not satisfied with their already omnipresent distribution, have also moved into “financing, producing, and marketing original movies” in countries where the native film industry is fairly established, such as South Korea and Brazil (Schuker). Recently, these local industries have become a much stronger competitive force against Hollywood’s dominance. “The global cultural landscape is becoming considerably more complex, and competitive pressures are mounting steadily,” especially taking into account the unpredictable nature of spectatorship (Scott). South Korea, for example decreased its share of Hollywood movies in their theaters from 80-90% in the 1990s to around 50% more recently, meaning local films are giving Hollywood a run for its money (Schuker). Not to be outdone, 20th Century Fox immediately reacted by creating a “new division so it could start developing, producing, and distributing local-language movies” (Schuker). It appears that even in local production in foreign countries, Hollywood is still behind the scenes, exerting its influence and stacking its cash.
All of the aforementioned tactics Hollywood uses to inundate the market with its products have caused it to receive a great deal of criticism for its role in working to “colonize a global audience and help form a hegemonic culture, which has threatened the existence of other cultures and the creation of alternative ways of life” (Jin 407). It’s all too reminiscent of Adorno and Horkheimer’s idea that “culture today is infecting everything with sameness.” And while I don’t believe that today’s Hollywood films are being used to manipulate the masses into passivity, the sameness perpetuated by the films is effectively bleaching out cultural diversity. “Hollywood exports of a model of film that contains an implicit threat to the diversity of international film culture” (Prince 6). The Motion Picture Association of America and U.S. Department of Commerce share the idea that cultural products such as movies “should proceed in as open and as free manner as possible,” free from restriction, clearly ignoring the fact that “cultural products are intimately bound up with matters of selfhood, identity, and consciousness” (Scott 55).
4. Homogenization of the Cultural Product
Because so many filmmakers over the years have imitated or at the very least been influenced by Hollywood style, many critics have pointed to the homogenization of the medium. Hollywood’s increased reliance on the international market in the past few decades have only worked to exacerbate these criticisms. Decreasing cinema attendance has caused the average number of imported films per year to go down, which may seem like an achievement against cultural imperialism, but in fact it limits diversity of material by limiting the quantity of the material itself, and puts more pressure on the movies that are distributed internationally to appeal to more people (Kawashima 482). Studios are spending millions of dollars on tentpole movies, meaning the audience has to be massive in order to recoup the costs. To quote Steven Soderbergh, “the bigger the budget, the more people [it’s] going to have to appeal to. The more homogenized it’s got to be, the more simplified it’s got to be.” The more people it can appeal to across all nations and races, the fewer people it can offend, and therefore, the more people that will buy movie tickets. Most studio-made movies are no longer “produced for the tastes or needs of any country,” but rather “they’re produced in a standardized, assembly-line-driven form” that appeases the international market (Gerbner).
This “dumping” over the range of the entire international market usually means creating a product that no specific culture will identify too closely with, nor be offended by: any worldwide text must be “transparent enough to allow audiences to project their own cultural particularity onto the text” (Fu and Govindaraju 217). This means that “studios are more comfortable with plots and characters from a parallel universe that does not mirror ours or, really, anyone's,” and villains work best without nationalities or races associated with them, unless, ironically, that nationality is American (Hirschberg). Outside of aliens, “the safest remaining characters are lily-white, impeccably dressed American corporate executives,” because they are stereotypically “greedy,” something it seems everyone can get against (Epstein 52). Narrative premises that are too specific to the American audience are scrapped and exchanged: the script for Universal’s Battleship, for example, was re-written so that the aliens attacking Earth threatened the entire world, not just the U.S; Paramount’s G.I. Joe was concerning to executives, who pointed out overwhelming presence of U.S. military, solved by padding the cast with international stars such as South Korea’s Byung-hun Lee and South Africa’s Arnold Vosloo (Schuker). The cultural transparency offered by Hollywood only works to limit the opportunities filmmakers have to do something location-specific or deal with more controversial issues.
This trend may be slightly shifting however, exemplified most recently by Iron Man 3. For Chinese audiences, the studio added four minutes with Chinese characters played by some of China’s biggest stars, and used some Chinese settings not included in the international version (that didn’t have much to do with the plot) (Daniel). Although at first glance, this may seem to be pleading the case for cultural diversity in blockbuster film, it’s noteworthy that only China, one of Hollywood’s biggest markets, was the one to receive the extra, culturally-specific scenes. It also came off as a little culturally insensitive; one Chinese blogger wrote, “the Chinese Iron Man 3 scenes were so clearly bolted on and irrelevant to the story line that many people here felt insulted rather than entertained,” and Chinese journalists encouraged the government to “take measures to…improve the quality of Chinese films” in place of the Hollywood movies (Daniel). But, it worked. Iron Man 3 broke China’s record for the biggest opening weekend for a foreign film, making $65 million (Daniel). With this success, it seems likely that we will be seeing more of the majors employing this type of country-based specification the future. Iron Man 3 is a good example of Olson’s idea that “the successful global media text is a transparent microcosm of the audience watching it because it embodies all of us. We see ourselves in it” (15). Iron Man 3 was simultaneously able to appeal to the American viewer as it was to the Chinese viewer, because both viewers got to “see themselves” in the text. Still, this was clearly more of a cheap ploy at ticket stubs than a real nod at Chinese culture, a four-minute investment that paid off in the millions. Even if this does become a feature of future films, as a whole, Hollywood movies are still homogenized films, these small tweaks only slightly detracting from their overall sameness.
The major studios have the advantage, yet also the responsibility, of playing cultural “gatekeeper,” deciding which films are produced and distributed to the world (Kawashima 480). Studio executives seem to love claiming that they don’t enjoy making violent, narrative-lacking superhero flicks, but continue to do so because it’s what the international audiences want. However, Olson argues that “international political pressure by superpowers”—most obviously and overtly, the United States—“forces movies and television programs into countries that might not otherwise have wanted them” (Olson 6). It begs the question, does the world really want an action-packed spectacle, or do they go see it because it’s what is available? Denby claims, “the audience goes because the movies are there, not because anyone necessarily loves them” (35). Studies back up his claim, showing that film’s success is positively correlated with the quantity of screens on which it was released (Craig, Greene, and Douglas 87). Since the majors have control over release of the films, they control what is available, and they are the ones deciding what will be popular. Also, Fu and Govindaraju find that:
“…in those markets with a culture more different from that of the United States, taste similarities have climbed up by a greater extent. These patterns resonate with the indication that the taste homogeneity among all countries has intensified…cinemative audiences have acquired increasingly indistinguishable preferences in choosing Hollywood features to watch” (228).
This quote also shows that cultures, especially those more different than the U.S., have been “trained,” over the course of many years of an inundation of Hollywood media, to prefer the same type of movie, because it’s what has been continuously offered to them. The predominance of the Western culture enforces “the idea that the rest of the world had little choice but to become increasingly like it” (Ritzer and Ryan 52).
Kawashima proposes a brighter alternative, defining culture as “an evolving phenomenon rather than a static property or dead heritage” that is open to diversity because there are always “new hybrid cultures emerging to thrive and previously unknown cultures appreciated by geographically distance people,” from which the whole world can gain (488). Perhaps international cinema will be more open to cultural diversity as burgeoning foreign film industries step up the competition and work to challenge Hollywood domination. For now, however, it looks like Hollywood calls the shots.
5. An Independent Variable: The Future of Indie Film in the Superhero Movie Era
One of the main criticisms of the current Hollywood system is the “proclivity of the majors continually to raise the stakes as they gamble on ever more ambitious blockbuster films, thus making the entry of new competitors increasingly difficult” (Scott 51). In the realm of “new competitors,” independent film is more often-than-not included. Independent films are, traditionally, those that raise money without the backing of a studio, and therefore, without a guarantee for distribution (Marcks 8).
It is certainly not true that the majors completely block out opportunities for the indie aesthetic or style. Though primarily focused on the high-budget “homeruns,” the majors have been involved with independent film distribution for years, with subsidiaries specifically created for this purpose, like Sony Classics and Fox Searchlight not only picking up indie films for distribution, but producing “specialty” films themselves (Marcks 9). The more recent years have seen a blurring of the line between “studio” and “independent,” creating a whole new breed of film: the “studio independent” (Marcks 8). While not technically independent in the true definition of the term, the studio independents are aligned with “many of the hallmarks of independent films, such as tone shifts, unsympathetic characters, and controversial subject matter” (Marcks 8). Still, the fact that they are integrated in the studio system means many of the aforementioned elements can be cut back or removed completely in the development process, as studio heads know that “edgier fare will have greater difficulty finding a release” (Marcks 8). The rise of the studio independent suggests the idea that studios “have lowered the risks associated with making independent-style films. Today gambling on independents seems to be rapidly becoming big business” (Marcks 9).
However, it is somewhat of a different story for the actual independent filmmaker. The studio has little incentive in funding smaller films because high-budget films are so much more profitable: “traditional films cost more because there is really no economic reason for them to cost less” (Block 12). As Soderbergh explains, though it would seem to make sense for the studios to simply make more cheap movies, the studios’ giant risks—spending 100 million dollars on one movie rather than a tenth of that on ten movies—is actually more financially favorable. To make a profit on a 10 million dollar movie, you need to make about 140 million dollars, after taking into account the cost of advertising, domestic wide release, and overseas distribution. Adding up the same costs for a 100 million dollar-movie means a studio has to make at least $320 million worldwide. So, although spending 10 million dollars sounds much better than spending 100 million, the amount of 100 million-dollar movies that make 320 million dollars or more far outnumbers the amount of 10 million dollar movies that make 140 million dollars or more (Soderbergh). Ironically, it’s not worth it for studios to spend only 10 million on a project, when 90 million more dollars will buy them fancy sets, great special effects, huge stars, and violence-heavy action—all things that equal dollar signs later on. The only movies that get made are the ones studios know (or think they know) will be home runs: “They don’t look at the singles or the doubles as being worth the money or the man hours” (Soderbergh).
It’s why Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters exists—the sequel to Percy Jackson which lost money domestically, while Paul Thomas Anderson pleaded for years to get funding for The Master, even after his critically-acclaimed film There Will Be Blood (Denby 34). It’s why Pacific Rim is in talks for a sequel, despite the fact that it struggled to reach $100 million in the U.S., while Alexander Payne didn’t release another film for seven years after his Oscar-winning Sideways (Denby 34). Percy Jackson made $220 million worldwide, Pacific Rim, $407 million, the highest grossing live-action original film released in 2013 (Buchanan). Anderson and Payne could not dream of these numbers.
In the last ten years, there has been a 100% increase in the number of independent films and a 28% drop in the number of studio films, but the studio market shares have risen by 7% (Soderbergh). Steven Soderbergh laments that this means that there are fewer studio-made movies, but they are costing a lot more money, and twice as many independent movies that are “scrambling for a smaller piece of the pie.” Independent filmmakers nowadays have twice the competition, competing for less money, meaning it is more difficult than ever to come up with the funding for an independent film, which Soderbergh believes is “the force that is pushing the cinema out of mainstream movies.”
Tom Shone fundamentally disagrees with Soderbergh, arguing, “the system we have right now—with films like Mystic River and The Deep End on the one hand and the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Finding Nemo and Pirates of the Caribbean on the other, with less dabbling around in the middle—is actually pretty good” (172). Tyler Cowen also claims that because more “micro-budget” films (those made on a budge of $100,000 or less) are made Untied States than in Europe, “independent or innovative filmmakers benefit from this infrastructure just as major studios do.” While this may be somewhat true, this overgeneralization of “innovative filmmakers” excludes filmmakers who don’t want to work with only $100,000 but don’t have the opportunity to work with $100 million—those in the middle ground (Cowen). I don’t agree with Shone that “less dabbling around in the middle” is a good thing, because, while it may increase opportunities on the ultra low-budget end of the scale, a budget of $5 million or even less—still tiny by studio standards—is harder and harder to come by.
It seems studios are only making it more and more difficult to be an independent filmmaker these days. For example, Sony Pictures Classics won’t pick up any film that costs more than $2 million, and “Focus Features is putting its resources mainly in co-production deals in Asia,” making pre-sale financing (how many indies made their money in the past) almost impossible (Epstein 165). And while independent filmmakers have created their own production companies over the years to make their own movies, “they are still almost wholly dependent on the distribution arms of the vertically integrated majors,” who still have almost total control over distribution (Nowell-Smith 477). One of the most common ways an independent film gets picked up for distribution by a studio is through the film festival circuit, but getting the film into one of the high-profile festivals (Cannes, Sundance, Toronto International Film Festival, etc.) is no easy feat; only one percent of the more than 2,000 films submitted to Sundance in 2009 were chosen to screen (Epstein 167). Block remarks that the odds are simply stacked against the independent film; “it seems that almost everything is biased technically and financially against its successful outcome” (15).
If the monopolistic control of the industry seems unfair, intervention or regulation on the part of the government seems unlikely. Kawashima explains that the oligopoly of the film industry is seen as “natural,” therefore governmental intervention, along the lines of the Paramount decree, today would seem like an intrusion on the natural economic development Hollywood has enjoyed (487). Also, such regulation, as Kawashima explains, would not even be beneficial, neither for the independent filmmaker nor the global consumer:
“if we start to legally force the majors to treat the independents on a non-discriminatory basis, there will be less incentive to build an efficient network of business, and films will be distributed unevenly across the globe. This might well lead to less diversity in products accessible for audiences” (488).
One option may be to wait it out. Some Hollywood insiders are predicting the demise of the blockbuster era. Producer Lynda Obst predicts that the flops—the giant misfires in what Hollywood thinks we want to see, will be the “ultimate challenge to the model,” forcing the studios to come up with new material, outside of the franchise/action realm (Edelstein). Spielberg also predicts an “implosion of the industry,” after a few of the giant movies fail miserably at the box office and “alter the industry forever” (Bond). Buchanan, however, disagrees, claiming that box office failures will mean that “Hollywood’s reliance on the same familiar franchises will only be hastened.” So, instead of taking a risk on a non-familiar, untested character and plot like The Lone Ranger (a huge flop), Hollywood will revert even more frequently and fervently to the superman and sequel model.
Steven Soderbergh, in his rather pessimistic speech, provides a sort-of solution to the lack of real cinema in Hollywood by essentially blaming the American audience. “The audience is complicit,” he says, meaning that we are allowing the studio system to remain as is by continuing to buy tickets, DVDs and downloads of big-budget monstrosities. “Too many crappy movies get made because the audiences don’t care” (Soderbergh). Certainly, if Americans and worldwide movie-goers alike simply stopped attending these movies, Hollywood would have to rethink its strategies. However, it is primarily incorrect to assume that the American audience alone has the effect to overhaul the Hollywood model (as we see with Percy Jackson and sequels). Secondly, it’s unrealistic to expect either the American public or the world population to suddenly become more interested in Soderbergh’s cinema as he defines it: with narrative experiment, character development, and intellectually challenging dialogue. It’s very unrealistic to expect that Hollywood will start spending more time and money on cinema any time soon, considering they are making billions of dollars a year on The Avengers and the like. But it also hard to imagine that, in 20 years, the only films released in Hollywood will be some version of Iron Man 12. Although the blockbusters of today are, as some would argue, “international embarrassments” and aren’t challenging anything in terms of film narrative or technique, I do not see their economic success and dominance of the box office as “the end of cinema” or anything quite so pessimistic. There will always be a need for story, there will always be creative people who tell those stories in innovative, thought-provoking ways, and there will always be an audience for these types of stories.
As we have seen with movements from around the world such as Italian neorealism, the French New Wave, and more recently, Mumblecore, filmmakers are nothing if not resourceful. Those that feel a desire and a need to write, direct, and produce films, within or outside of the studio system, will continue to do so, even when limited by money and resources.
The advancements in technology including digital video in the recent years have led to a “democratization” of cinema; there is the idea that anyone can make a film, especially in this digial age. Says David Denby, “digital is still in its infancy, and if it moves into the hands of people who have a more imaginative and delicate sense of spectacle, it could bloom in any one of a dozen ways” (38). The democratization of production goes hand in hand with the democratization of financing: platforms such as Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, websites “engaged in the crowdfunding of new ideas,” allow financially-strapped filmmakers to make money through grassroots campaigns (McCracken 33). While it’s not guaranteed any project will obtain all of the funding it needs, the opportunity is always there. Celebrities such as Zach Braff have popularized the website and its goals, and a couple of the documentary films funded by Kickstarter have been nominated for Academy Awards (McCracken 33).
In terms of distribution, even though the lion’s share of the control lies with the majors, “independent production companies will seek to distribute their own films, especially where these are directed to highly specialized audiences” (Scott 45). In the past, this meant limited release in small art-house cinemas, or straight-to-video or DVD. Nowadays, perhaps television is an answer; more opportunity amongst the massive quantity of television channels gives way to the possibility for more made-for-television movies. One can watch TV anywhere, “via ubiquitous DVRs, tablets, and computers,” and it appears TV is “now providing the sophisticated niche entertainment that movies once provided” (Epstein 167). Spielberg has said that even one of his most recent films, Lincoln, was barely picked up by a studio, and almost released on HBO instead (Bond). And even if these films don’t get theater exhibition or television screen time, those audiences that are so inclined to view them will find a way to do so online, via websites such as Netflix, Hulu, Vimeo, YouTube, or countless others. IndieFlix is one in particular that caters directly to indie fans; it is an “online streaming service” that “supplies global audiences with independent shorts, feature length narratives and documentaries” paying filmmakers on a Royal Pool Minutes (RPM) model, meaning that he or she gets paid for every minute of film watched (Winward). These films may never be seen by millions of people around the world, but IndieFlix is “using the immediacy of the Internet to not only supply niche audiences with their ideal viewing habits but also commercially reimburse the filmmakers and ensure those films can continue to be made” (Winward). Obviously, niche services such as IndieFlix cannot stand up against industry giants such as Disney, Warner Bros., or the other majors, nor can they single-handedly provide the salaries for independent filmmakers, or save the day for the future of independent film. But the Internet age has offered new hope to those filmmakers outside the bubble of the industry that have a story to tell. The congruent rise of the high-budget studio blockbuster, alongside the “studio independent” as well as Internet-based sources for the financing, production, and distribution of true independent film demonstrates that that American film today is “embracing different ideas of what cinema can be like, both inside and outside the mainstream” (Nowell-Smith 575). Without a doubt, for at least the foreseeable future, Hollywood’s strong dependence on international markets will compel it to continue the risky yet rewarding business of making expensive, spectacle-based, violent films, and this will continue to have implications for the homogenization of cultural products and the Hollywood influence on international film. But if history has shown us anything, it’s that “Hollywood can never rest on its laurels,” with the ever-changing nature of consumer tastes, and recent growth of competitive foreign industries (Olson 17). The proliferation of new avenues for independent film consumption, especially within the United States, but on the fringes of Hollywood “reflects, above all…that there is still room for difference, even in a world of reconsolidated monopoly power.” (Nowell-Smith 575)
Works Cited
"All Time Worldwide Box Office Grosses." All Time Worldwide Box Office Grosses. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Oct. 2013. This source is a list of the movies that have had the highest international box office sales. The movies that top this list explain everything about what sells at the box office worldwide: action films, franchise/series films, films based on comic books, and lots and lots of gratuitous violence.
Andrew, Dudley. "An Atlas of World Cinema." Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 45.2 (2004): 9-23. JSTOR. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. Andrew brings in world view cinema, but specifically comments on Hollywood’s predominance as the common denominator on the international stage, as well as various nations’ reactions to (and rejections of) Hollywood style.
The Avengers. Dir. Joss Whedon. Perf. Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson. Netflix. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Nov. 2013. I’m using this film, the third most successful film at the international box office, to analyze the content of internationally successful films. The movie is useful because it has many of the qualities traditionally used to make a film travel well: violence, superheroes, merchandise tie-ins, fantastical elements including extra-terrestrial villains, special effects, an overarching good vs. evil moral compass, etc.
Block, Mitchell W. "Independent Filmmaking in America." The Journal of the University Film and Video Association 35.2 (1983): 4-16. JSTOR. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. Although this article is rather old, it outlines the history of independent filmmaking in the United States, and also talks about the inherent disadvantages to being an independent filmmaker in the face of Hollywood. Economics are a big factor in this article, as he explains why the odds are stacked against independent filmmakers.
Bond, Paul. "Steven Spielberg Predicts 'Implosion' of Film Industry." The Hollywood Reporter. N.p., 12 June 2013. Web. Steven Spielberg’s bold comments at a USC panel, cited in this article, are what originally inspired me to write about this specific topic. He predicts an implosion of the film industry, and I wanted to explore his reasoning, and find out if he was right. Spielberg is also an interesting case, because it was his film, Jaws (along with Star Wars), that really kicked off the age of the blockbuster.
Brunet, Johanne, and Galina Gornostaeva. "Company Profile: Working Title Films, Independent Producer: Internationalization of the Film Industry." International Journal of Arts Management 9.1 (2006): 60-69. JSTOR. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. This article outlines Working Title Films as a good example of the modern studio that incorporates elements of independent filmmaking and the traditional studio system. It also mentions how Working Title operates on the international stage, where American movies flood the markets with their product.
Buchanan, Kyle. "Why Hollywood Will Double Down on More Sequels and Franchises After This Summer." Vulture. N.p., 15 August 2013. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. Buchanan provides a lot of specific examples of the ways in which the studio system is perpetuating the reliance on the international film system, and he doesn’t see this model ending any time soon, despite citing comments from industry insiders that disagree with him.
Cowen, Tyler. "Why Hollywood Rules the World, and Whether We Should Care." Minerva's Owl: Sources of Creative Global Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2002. N. pag. Cultural Policy. University of Chicago, 5 Apr. 2001. Web. 1 Nov. 2013. The chapter of this book outlines Hollywood's domination in the culture industry, and compares it to other nations' film industries, such as Western European countries and another power house for film, India. It will be helpful to use the historical context provided as well as these comparisons and contrasts to try and unpack Hollywood's influence worldwide.
Craig, C. Samuel, William H. Greene, and Susan P. Douglas. "Culture Matters: Consumer Acceptance of U.S. Films in Foreign Markets." Journal of International Marketing 13.4 (2005): 80-103. JSTOR. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. I wanted to really understand how American films are received abroad, and this article served me well in that. It speaks to the homogenization of the film industry, as well as attitudes towards Hollywood from around the world.
Dall, Chris, prod. "Friday Roundtable." The Daily Circuit. Dir. Mark Sanchez. Minnesota Public Radio. Minneapolis, Minnesota, 25 Oct. 2013. MPRnews. Minnesota Public Radio, 25 Oct. 2013. Web. 1 Nov. 2013. This source is a discussion on Minnesota Public Radio about film, especially blockbuster film, and the role of violence. The discussion is really interesting because it brings an anthropological perspective (Jose Santos) to the discourse, and he talks about some great reasons why Hollywood film the way it is, and why it is so violent.
Daniel, James. "Iron Man 3 Execs 'changed Film for Chinese Audience' by Adding Four Minutes to the Film with Chinese Actors." Daily Mail. N.p., 17 May 2013. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. This article was incredibly interesting because it pointed out all the ways in with the Chinese release of Iron Man 3 was different than the regular international release, and it shows how Hollywood is trying to appeal to specific markets like China, with its large and youthful population- a population that buys movie tickets.
Denby, David. "Has Hollywood Murdered the Movies?" New Republic 243.15 (2012): 29-40. Academic Search Premier. Web. 1 Dec. 2013. Denby has a lot of opinions about American film- some of which I agree with, some of which I don’t, but he knows a lot about film, whether it be history, technique, or industry. He gives a sort of optimistic outlook on independent film, which I appreciate and hope to conclude with in my own paper.
Edelstein, David. "David Edelstein and Producer Lynda Obst on Hollywood’s Blockbuster Problem." Vulture. N.p., 30 June 2013. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. Lynda Obst decries the standard of Hollywood films today, saying that she thinks (or maybe just hopes) that a couple of seriously devastating flops will force Hollywood to retrace its steps and go in a different, in her opinion better direction.
Epstein, Edward Jay. The Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2010. Print. One of the most useful sources I used, Epstein is an expert on Hollywood and the economics behind it, tracing the ways in which the international and especially teenage audience is changing the nature of Hollywood films. The interviews with studio executives and movie theater exhibitors add to his credibility on the subject.
Fu, W. Wayne, and Achikannoo Govindaraju. "Explaining Global Box-Office Tastes in Hollywood Films: Homogenization of National Audiences' Movie Selections." Communication Research 37.2 (2010): 215-38. Academic Search Premier. Web. 1 Dec. 2013. I wanted to learn about the apparent “sameness” in Hollywood films, and this is the article that helped the most with that, proving that international audiences haven’t always necessarily loved violent, action-packed films, but they go because it is what has been made available to them by the dominant Hollywood media.
Gasher, Mike. "Cinema in the Age of Globalization." Hollywood North: The Feature Film Industry in British Columbia. Vancouver: UBC, 2002. 3-23. University of British Columbia. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. While a little specific to British Columbia, Gasher opens the chapter with some clear and conclusive remarks about what globalization is and how it operates through Hollywood.
Gerbner, George. "George Gerbner on Media Violence, Part II." Interview by Richard D. Heffner. Open Mind. Thirteen, 28 Jan. 1994. Web. 3 Oct. 2013. In this interview, Gerbner talks about violence as it is portrayed in media, as well as what works well in internationally distributed films. Gerbner has the academic perspective on what “travels” well, which is a huge point of my paper. He knows everything there is to know about violence in the media, and how this relates to international film distribution. It's a rather dated source, and perhaps I could find something more relevant and up-to-date on violence from the recent years, but I think his ideas and the general concept that violence travels still holds very true today.
Hirschberg, Lynn. "What Is An American Movie Now?" The New York Times. N.p., 14 Nov. 2004. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. This NYT article talks about the norms and characteristics of the Hollywood films, specifically cultural ambiguity and a lack of specific nationalities or races. This will be useful when discussion the homogenization of film.
"Hollywood Goes Global: Bigger Abroad." The Economist 17 Feb. 2011: N. pag. The Economist. 19 Feb. 2011. Web. 17 Oct. 2013. This article gives an economic perspective to my paper, which is very beneficial, because, as we know, movie studios are in the business of making money. Obviously Hollywood has always been an international business, but this article gives hard evidence to prove that this is even more true within the last ten years. It also outlines three of Hollywood's most important foreign markets: China, Russia, and Brazil, and what the mainly male, teen populations in those massively populated countries are clamoring for.
Jin, Dal Young. "Transforming the Global Film Industries: Horizontal Integration and Vertical Concentration amid Neoliberal Globalization." International Communication Gazette 74.5 (2012): 405-22. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. This article greatly expanded my knowledge of vertical and horizontal integration, and demonstrated conclusively that the U.S. is completely dominating both of these techniques on the global scale, only expanding the dichotomy between Hollywood and the rest of the worlds’ film industries.
Kawashima, Nobuko. "Are the Global Media and Entertainment Conglomerates Having an Impact on Cultural Diversity? A Critical Assessment of the Argument in the Case of the Film Industry." International Journal of Cultural Policy 17.5 (2011): 475-89. Academic Search Premier. Web. 1 Dec. 2013. Kawashima gives a really detailed economic history and analysis of Hollywood, explaining why the government has never intervened to break of the oligopoly that is the studio system, except for the Paramount Decree over 70 years ago. The article is helpful in understanding the true financial background of Hollywood.
Marcks, Greg. "The Rise of the "Studio Independents"" Film Quarterly 61.4 (2008): 8-9. JSTOR. Web. 1 Dec. 2013. This article talked about the confusion of independent cinema—what counts as independent and what doesn’t? It also defined the “studio independent”—not really an independent movie but a studio made film with the characteristics and style of one, which leads to an interesting discussion of the blurring of lines between independent and studio, and how these two supposedly opposing formats can blend together.
McCracken, Harry. "The Kickstarter Economy." Time 2012: 32-36. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. This helped me understand how Kickstarter works exactly, and how independent films are being financed through this platform. Many very interesting and successful campaigns are being funded through small donations by regular people, which is a very interesting and opposing idea to that of the studio system.
Miller, Toby, and Richard Maxwell. "Film and Globalization." Communications Media, Globalization and Empire. Ed. Oliver Boyd-Barrett. John Libbey, 2006. 33-52. Tobymiller.org. Web. 1 Dec. 2013. This article is incredibly helpful when looking at the history of Hollywood domination in the global space, especially with the role of the U.S. government and it’s use of the film industry as a tool for spreading ideology.
Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. The Oxford History of World Cinema. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Print. This book is a general historical overview of cinema, from its invention through present day. This source is useful because it gives me a great historical background on not only Hollywood film, but international cinema. I can use this book to track how and why Hollywood has globalized over the past century, and how it has affected international markets.
Olson, Scott R. "The Globalization of Hollywood." International Journal on World Peace 17.4 (2000): 3-17. JSTOR. Web. 3 Nov. 2013. This article provides not only the economic and political background for the globalization of film, but also the textual reasons, and the ways in which Hollywood has created a global media aesthetic- one that the entire world is familiar with and can identify with. This will be useful in determining what makes media "exportable," with specificity in terms of what kinds of content, characters, and narrative structure make up this Hollywood style.
Prince, Stephen. "World Filmmaking and the Hollywood Blockbuster." World Literature Today 77.3.4 (2003): 3-7. Academic Search Premier. Web. 30 Nov. 2013. Prince has some very intriguing ideas on how globalization specifically operates within Hollywood, arguing that it is the globalization of really just one product- Hollywood films. He also introduces the term “tentpole” pictures, which is a useful expression when talking about studio budgets and revenue.
Ritzer, George, and Michael Ryan. "The Globalization of Nothing." Social Thought & Research 25.1/2 (2002): 51-81. JSTOR. Web. 30 Nov. 2013. The idea proposed by these two authors are incredibly interesting; they posit that globalization had led to the exchange of a product devoid of any meaning or cultural specificity, a product of “nothing.” They relate this idea directly to film and how Hollywood engages in “grobalization” rather than “glocalization,” in that it is using the world to grow its products and spread its ideology rather than encourage local industries to be included in filmic content.
Schuker, Lauren. "Plot Change: Foreign Forces Transform Hollywood Films." Wall Street Journal. N.p., 2 Aug. 2010. Web. 1 Dec. 2013. This article is one of the few that mentions the competitive nature of burgeoning foreign cinemas, using South Korea as a telling example of the ever-changing nature of international film. The article gives me great insights on how Hollywood is reacting to its competition, and perhaps what this could mean for the future of Hollywood’s domination (or lack thereof?)
Scott, Allen J. "Hollywood and the World: The Geography of Motion-Picture Distribution and Marketing." Review of International Political Economy 11.1 (2004): 33-61. JSTOR. Web. 1 Dec. 2013. Scott challenges the U.S.’s belief that movies as cultural product should be traded and disseminated without restrictions, seeing as they have implications for cultural identity. He also laments the lack of ability for newcomers to filmmaking to participate in filmmaking, with Hollywood risking more and more money on fewer and fewer films.
Scott, Allen J. "Hollywood in the Era of Globalization." Yale Global Online (2002): n. pag. 29 Nov. 2002. Web. 5 Nov. 2013. This article from Yale Global actually challenges my other sources' assertion of Hollywood as totally dominant, and that it is in fact facing competition worldwide. The article has a lot of hard facts and statistics, which will be useful, as well as a section on how the federal government has intervened in Hollywood filmmaking, and this could be interesting to explore as it relates to the United States' international image.
Shone, Tom. Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer. New York: Free, 2004. Print. Shone points to many of the blockbusters of the past few decades, beginning with Jaws and Star Wars, and relates them to modern-day blockbusters, explaining the differences in the industry between then and now. It’s very helpful to understand the source and the background behind these expensive, outlandish action flicks, and he also draws some conclusions that disagree with other authors that I plan to flesh out in the end of my paper.
Soderbergh, Steven. "The State of Cinema." Speech. San Francisco International Film Festival. San Francisco, CA. SF Film Society Blog. 30 Apr. 2013. Web. 1 Nov. 2013. This is director Steven Soderbergh’s speech at the San Francisco International Film Festival. His key argument is that Hollywood rarely makes cinema anymore, it just makes “movies,” and the complicit American audience is allowing this to happen. I love this speech because it is everything I feel about the film industry. Though not exactly an academic source, Soderbergh is an industry insider who, in this talk, very clearly explains the methodology behind the studios’ huge financial risks in making 100 million-dollar movies, and vehemently disagrees with the majority of their choices. It also is helpful in predicting what’s next for the film industry.
Winward, Thomas. “Is Cinema Dead? A Tale of Streaming Services, Piracy and Independent Film.” Screen Watch. N.p., 5 June 2013. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. This article gives a lot of great insights about how the independent film industry is adapting to changing technologies, and how streaming services are taking over from DVD and other formats. It gives a great outline of IndieFlix as well, which is something I had never heard of, but it seems like a successful platform for independent cinema.
Xie, Guang-Xin, and Moon J. Lee. "Anticipated Violence, Arousal, and Enjoyment of Movies: Viewers' Reactions to Violent Previews Based on Arousal-Seeking Tendency." The Journal of Social Psychology 148.3 (2008): 277-92. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 Dec. 2013. I looked to this article for insight on the reasons audiences find pleasure in watching violence, and in both citing other studies and doing their own researchers, the authors helped me understand it better from a psychological perspective.
