HOLLYWOOD PLANET CINEMA INDUSTRIES AND THE GLOBAL POPULAR

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HOLLYWOOD PLANETCINEMA INDUSTRIES AND THE
GLOBAL POPULAR

• MEVIT4220/3220
• Autumn 2009
• Henry Mainsah

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• In spirit, if not in fact, we have already
  entered the 21st century. The world is our
  audience - Steve Ross, chairman of Time Warner
• this cultural phenomenon is much stronger than
  any other and it cannot disappear. It cant the
  proof is that it continues stronger than ever -
  Jean-Luc Godard, French filmmaker

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• Some observations
• Film charts 2009
• http//www.variety.com/

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Some general observations

• Hollywood movies dominate the domestic market in
  the US
• They are equally dominant in other European
  countries
• France might be an exception here
• The occupy a dominant position in the cinematic
  landscape in Asia, Africa, Latin-America and
  Oceania
• There are a few interesting exceptions
• Thus a more global outreach than any other cinema
  industry

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Why is Hollywood so dominant?

• Political economy explanations
• Looking at the film texts
• Turning towards reception

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The production - distribution system

• Financing
• Good access to investments
• Production
• The studio system - star contracts, scripts
  purchase
• Distribution
• Global distribution system
• Marketing -
• The star system, branding etc.

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Economic strategies

• mass is critical, if it is combined with
  vertical integration and the resulting
  combination is intelligently managed The
  importance of a large, vertically integrated
  operation in your home country cannot be
  emphasized enough, for it enables you to build
  globally - Steve Ross, TimeWarner CEO
• Now Sony can control the whole chain. Its
  broadcast equipment division manufactures the
  studio cameras and the film on which movies are
  produced in Columbia it owns a studio that makes
  them and, crucially, determines the formats on
  which they are distributed. That means it can
  have movies made on high definition film so they
  can be viewed on Sony high-definition
  televisions, and videoed with Sony VCRs. It can
  re-shoot Columbias 2700-film library on 8mm film
  for playing on its video walkmans (Cope, 1990
  56)

• Market concentration - vertical and horizontal
  integration
• Merging of Time and Warner
• Sonys acquisition of Columbia Pictures
• Film companies as multi-media conglomerates
• Forging of new links between the major studios
  and other media operations such as television
  production companies, network and cable
  television channels, music and recording
  businesses, book, magazine and newspaper
  publishers, theme parks, and, computer games,
  toys, electronic hardware

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Nature of the industry

• High level of risk attached to the product
• High dependency on creative talent
• Extremely costly business
• An average American film in 1989 cost around 30
  million - 20 million to production cost, 7
  million to domestic marketing, 3 million to
  studio overheads (Economist) - Titanic (1997)
  200 million
• Difficult to anticipate audience preferences
• Film companies driven to devise strategies to
  limit risk
• Cut costs
• Extend markets
• Control of critical hubs of film business

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Hollywoods dispersible texts

• Marketing, merchandizing and media hype operate
  to pluralize mainstream film by raiding the
  texts for capitalizable features that can
  circulate in their own right. The dissemination
  of images, characters, songs, stars, ideas, and
  (re)interpretations of the film extends to
  presence in the social arena of potential viewers
  - Barbara Klinger
• Promotional operations do not only work on the
  finish text but shape its assembly in the first
  place
• Multiple bids to capture audiences intratextually
• Each films construction as combination of
  attractions
• Extratextually
• Via advertising, publicity, and ancillary
  products - satellite texts orbit films - licensed
  products, media coverage arranged by symbiotic
  relations between distributors and press outlets
• Logic of cross-promotion
• Ancillary products and publicity serve to guide
  potential viewers to films
• Satisfied audiences in turn guided to purchase
  ancillary merchandise(if films gain success at
  Box Office its brand value can be exploited in
  overseas markets, DVD and TV, and via more
  licensing and merchandizing)

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Contra flows Global Bollywood

• Top film producer in the world
• Popular Indian cinema - International profile
  second only to Hollywood
• Shown in more than 70 countries - popular
  elsewhere where among south Asians, but also in
  Middle-East, Asia, Africa
• Mumbai film industry worth 3.5 billion
• Exports jumped twenty-fold between 1989-1999
• Employs 2.5 million people

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Bollywood Context of economic growth

• Deregulation of Indias media sector in the 1990s
• Advancements in media technology and the
  availability of satellite cable television,
  online delivery systems
• Global marketing strategy
• Changing global broadcasting environment
• Bollywoodization of television - Zee Cinema,
  Max, Star Gold

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• What effects are these Hollywood products having?
• dichotomy between difference and sameness?
• What is it about certain narratives that allow
  them to be easily read - more appealing to wider
  audiences than others?
• Is political economy the only explanation?

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• Its a fallacy...to equate shared narratives with
  shared meanings. The fact that American TV shows
  are rebroadcast across the globe causes many
  people to wring their hands over the menace of
  cultural imperialism seldom do they bother to
  inquire about the meanings that different people
  bring to and draw from these shows... (Gates,
  1995 62)

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Understanding through reception studies

• Theories of reading
• Encoding-decoding
• Textual poaching

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Indigenous readings of Hollywood texts

• Liebes and Katz(1993) - The Export of Meaning
  Cross Cultural Reading of Dallas
• Americans saw it as lesson on how wealth fails to
  bring happiness
• Moroccans as an aphorism that wealth itself is
  evil
• Russians as an exercise in politics of capitalism
• Palestinian Arabs as parable of the moral
  degeneracy of modernism
• Israeli Kibbutzniks as evidence that all
  Americans are unhappy
• Miller (1995) - The Consumption of Soap Operas
  The Young and the Restless and Mass Consumption
  in Trinidad
• Popularity due to an indigenous cultural
  criterion
• Summarized with calypso term bacchanal - scandal,
  confusion, bringing truth to light
• Viewed as realistic - scenes do not look like
  Trinidad - truth in relation to key structural
  problematics of Trini culture
• Not a matter of Trinis finding hidden meaning in
  text, but of the projecting some part of
  themselves

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Exportable narratives

• Many media products from other nations are
  virtually unexportable
• Not all transnational successes are American -
  Brazil, Mexico, Peru produce and export soap
  operas, many of them to Spanish-language market
  in US.
• However few transnational media exports match the
  American ones for versatility, ubiquity, and
  sustainability.
• Openness to varied readings is a distinct
  advantage to those trying to sell films and TV
  programs internationally

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• the universality, or primordially, of some of
  (the American medias themes and formulae...makes
  programs psychologically accessible the
  polyvalent or open potential of many of the
  stories, (increases) their value as projective
  mechanisms and as material for negotiation and
  play... (Liebes Katz,1993 5)
• Cultures throughout the world may not share
  narratives, but persons in these cultures share
  the human experience, and it is this that
  provides a way to account for particularly
  successful narratives. Every human knows knows
  what it is to laugh, cry, wonder, and
  participate... Films and television programs that
  engage these emotions most directly, most
  undiluted by cultural encrustation, are the most
  likely to seem familiar and archetypical, not
  because they correspond to indigenous mythology,
  but because they are premythic (Olson, 1999
  48-49)

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Fin