HOLLYWOOD PLANETCINEMA INDUSTRIES AND THE GLOBAL POPULAR

MEVIT4220/3220

Autumn 2009

Henry Mainsah

2 > Department of Media and Communication

“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

3 > Department of Media and Communication

Some observations

Film charts 2009

http://www.variety.com/

4 > 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

5 > Department of Media and Communication

Why is Hollywood so dominant?

Political economy explanations

Looking at the film texts

Turning towards reception

6 > 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.

7 > 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

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)

Market concentration - vertical and horizontal integration

– Merging of Time and Warner

– Sony’s 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

8 > Department of Media and Communication

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

9 > 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)

10 > 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

11 > 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

12 > 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?

13 > 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)

14 > Department of Media and Communication

Understanding through reception studies

Theories of reading:

– Encoding-decoding

– Textual poaching

15 > 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

16 > 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

17 > 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)

18 > Department of Media and Communication

Fin