HOLLYWOOD PLANET
CINEMA INDUSTRIES AND THE GLOBAL POPULAR
MEVIT4220/3220
Autumn 2009
Henry Mainsah
“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 can’t; the proof is that it continues stronger than ever” - Jean-Luc
Godard, French filmmaker
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Department of Media and Communication
Some observations
Film charts 2009
http://www.variety.com/
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Department of Media and Communication
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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Department of Media and Communication
Why is Hollywood so dominant?
Political economy explanations
Looking at the film texts
Turning towards reception
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Department of Media and Communication
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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Department of Media and Communication
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
Market concentration - vertical and horizontal
integration
– Merging of Time and Warner
– Sony’s acquisition of Columbia Pictures
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 Columbia’s 2700-film
library on 8mm film for playing on its video walkmans
(Cope, 1990: 56)
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Department of Media and Communication
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
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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Department of Media and Communication
Hollywood’s 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 film’s 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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Department of Media and Communication
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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Department of Media and Communication
Bollywood: Context of economic growth
Deregulation of India’s 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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Department of Media and Communication
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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Department of Media and Communication
It’s 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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Department of Media and Communication
Understanding through reception studies
Theories of reading:
– Encoding-decoding
– Textual poaching
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Department of Media and Communication
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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Department of Media and Communication
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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Department of Media and Communication
“the universality, or primordially, of some of (the American media’s 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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Department of Media and Communication
Fin
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Department of Media and Communication