Abstract
“It doesn’t
escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain
in someone else’s. And so I want to salute the spirit of Patsey for her
guidance. And for Solomon, thank you for telling her story and your own.”
- Lupita Nyong’o
When these lines were uttered by Lupita Nyong’o in her
acceptance speech for best supporting actress in 86th Annual Academy
Awards, it overwhelmed millions of viewers all around the world. We cherished
these words because for us they compiled the hardships of unknown heroes whose
random narratives appear somewhere from slumber like 12 Years a Slave and redefine the worth of human existence. What we
also felt at that moment was the magic of cinema; the enlightenment that it
brings to us. Are we missing something here? Yes, maybe. What we are overlooking is the authority that
Hollywood imposes under the hood of cinematic narration. No matter how
inspiring 12 Years a Slave is, it
will always be known as Brad Pitt’s movie; the movie of a white for the blacks.
Apart from this, if we sight over the celebrity factor, we will find people
like Ellen Degeneres who has not only become the liberated voice of the women
but also of gays, whose audacious and confident personae has become a
celebrated tale for the underlings in the society; however, she too is a white
who voices the unvoiced.
This tale follows with the likes of The Colour Purple (1985), film by Steven Spielberg, a white, based
on the novel of Alice Walker, a black, about a black woman; or with Slumdog Millionaire, a cinematic
representation of third world nation seen from the eyes of whites that went on
to grasp even Oscars and this string of endless heroic tales by whites never
stops. The attempt that I will be putting in this paper will be to unveil the
efforts that White Culture (C) of Hollywood has taken to stream the tales of
others (c) and how legitimate they have been in their efforts over the years.
Also, do we really need Hollywood to project our identity? Should there be a
celebration if we are acknowledged by them?
Keywords:
Hollywood, Culture, Identity, Cinema, Recognition.
Full
Paper
The films made in Hollywood are not only seen in America, but
are viewed by massive audience around the world. Additionally, the Hollywood
movies firmly dominate the majority of market share in the world film industry.
It gives the impression that using cinema is the best medium for America to
gain recognition and friendship across the world. Films produced in Hollywood
portray a smooth storytelling and attract the people to keep watching them from
the beginning until the end. The promotion of American culture through cinema is
a phenomenon where America subtly wants to dominate the world by spreading out
its own culture and tradition through the movies. Its transferring of culture
becomes more relevant while the concept of Americanism is known worldwide since
it became the world superpower. America tries making the American values in the
films meaningful to others thereby making films as a new political ploy in
world politics.
The audience receives the message(s) contained in the movie
at almost the same time, but the interpretations of the movies are different,
in which it depends on personal perception and external environment. America is
the only super power in the world, its decision to promote its American culture
to international community may affect the relations with other nation states.
The movies have a high ability in capturing imagination, shaping, and directing
the sense of what was real, true, and preferable, because movie contains both
motion picture and sound. The popularity of American culture may make the rest
of the world to decide whether to fear or favour the promise of Americanization
and a globalized planet.
Maisuwong in her article entitled “The Promotion of American Culture Through Hollywood Movies to the World
Audience: A Threat to National Identity and Sovereignty” comes forward with the
question that what could be the cultural effects of Hollywood movies? A hypothesis
can be made that there is an attempt to create a universal culture by
propagating and promoting American culture through Hollywood, thereby
dominating other cultural communities all over the world. Another observation
can be that, film has an ability to reach mass audience globally; thereby
providing powerful persuasive messages by letting people learn through play.
Thus, films with cultural values may provide preferred consequences to the
proposed objectives of the film producers. The pure economic power of the U.S.
entertainment industry is impossible to ignore. According to certain reports
published in various newspapers and magazines, The U.S. exports approximately
$8 billion worth of entertainment product each year. The most popular TV show
in the world is The Bold and the
Beautiful, with 500 million viewers in 98 countries. Even in closed
societies such as Iran, bookstores are filled with Persian translations of
novels by John Grisham, Danielle Steele and Sidney Sheldon. Hollywood earns
roughly half of its revenues overseas. In 1999, the top four grossing movies at
the international box office were Titanic, Jurassic Park, Star
Wars: Phantom Menace, and Independence Day.4 Each of them made more
money abroad than domestically, with Titanic earning more than twice as
much overseas.
Critics of the development theory were especially anxious
about “cultural imperialism” or “media imperialism,” which was often equated
with American values such as consumerism and individualism. They argued that
Third World countries were developing even more slowly than they would have, if
they had not been forced to adapt to an alien culture and its technological
manifest destiny. From this theory spawned the fears of “cultural
homogenization” and “cultural synchronization.” On the other hand it is seen
that they argue that American cultural content does not make people subjects of
American ideology but empowers them to develop their own identities. French
producer Marin Karmitz noted that “sound and pictures have always been used for
propaganda, and the real battle at the moment is over who is going to be
allowed to control the world’s images, and so sell a certain lifestyle, a
certain culture, certain products, certain ideas.” France and Canada aggressively
implement protectionist policies, but American entertainment still dominates
their markets. Seventy-five percent of the television watched every night in
Canada is of foreign origin; four out of five magazines sold in Canada are
foreign; foreign films take up 96% of screen time at Canadian theaters, and 70%
of the content on Canadian radio stations is non-Canadian. Most of this foreign
material hails from the U.S. Scholars such as Jesus Martin-Barbero mobilized
Antonio Gramsci’s notion of hegemony to discredit the idea that the media is
capable of forcing dominant ideology down the throats of the masses. Using a
hegemonic model, which assumes that dominant class interests are not uniformly
imposed on the subaltern classes but selectively adopted and adapted by them,
Martin-Barbero argues that, in the realm of popular culture, audiences have the
power to resist and transform dominant cultures through a complex process of
“mediation.”
Hollywood has been successful in creating a parallel world of
reality entertainment absorbing movie fans across the world and stimulating
high levels of consumer interests. Hozic (2000) observed: “Hollywood is
currently one of the largest and most profitable sectors of the U.S. economy.
In just few decades, it has transformed itself from a dying company town into a
merchandising emporium of movies, games and licensed characters.”
The movies of Hollywood were presumed to take advantage of
the power to disseminate unsettling political ideas, despite the tight control
that the mostly conservative executives exercised over films, or film content
and their single-minded drive for profits. Hollywood has undoubtedly delivered
predictable doses of modest pleasure to an undifferentiated market while
reaffirming the centrality of consumerism to the American psychic and political
economy. It was a general consensus of all those who had a say in society that
whatever be the case, Hollywood’s dream machine should not be wrecked in any
way. By the means of communication and persuasion and, by taking recourse to
the popular medium of cinema, Hollywood was successful in creating its cultural
authority and establishing its political power around the world. Sklar, made
this idea clear by explicating the fact that Hollywood moguls were not cast as
heroic defenders of civil liberty, nor were they adversaries cast as ‘cartoon
bluenoses’, the entire story appeared to be uneasy, bitter at times, and genial
too, and projected the idea of negotiation over the disposition of cultural
space.
Many a time, this observation is also taken in account which
directs that some versions of film theory assert that the very technical
practices and narrative conventions of the movies obviated most possibilities
of active and critical viewership by “constructing” viewers as consumers, more
broadly as subjects of advanced capitalism and indeed as men and women. Film
critics past and present have observed that in the forties, Hollywood movies
were widely recognized as crucial ideological tools in the campaign to convert
the rest of the world to capitalism and democracy as the place where “millions
around the world obtain most of their ideas about the United States”, they
possessed a “unique ability to sell American ideas in every land.” Hollywood as
the capital of entertainment has become a brand on its own right that has, for
a century created and maintained unrivalled brand equity with audiences, the
media, the cinema programmes and with film financers. Hollywood has such strong
equity that films are not only the preferred choice of movie goers worldwide as
box-office trends clearly demonstrate, but they are also the preferred choices
of movie theater bookers around the world because they draw the biggest
audiences. For them strategic marketing delivered a superior performance. This
strategy acted as an intent to acquire and maintain their dominance wherever
possible thereby trying to shape the competitive environment to their
advantage, what Porter (1980) would define as a quality-based competitive
strategy. They succeeded because they developed and maintained a set of
superior strategic marketing capabilities that enabled them to ‘out-think’ and
‘out-perform’ their rivals for almost a century.
There are numerous explanations of the dominance of
Hollywood; some can be taken up here correspondingly. It was because of the
World Wars that the European movie production came to a halt, a void was
created in the entertainment industry, which was later filled up by the
Hollywood cinema industry. The idea that movies are essentially a medium of
communication, with a high degree of universality in their impact on the human
mind, became suddenly an insistent fact. The potential power of a visual image
flashed on a screen, and reaching armies and nations with the international
language of pictures, was more clearly understood. Apart from filling up the
void, Hollywood also succeeded in establishing its foreign distribution
infrastructure. The government of the United States actively assisted the
Hollywood Industry to penetrate the foreign markets, so as to create its impact
all over the world. Usage of new technologies, and controlling the distribution
channels were another feather in the hat of the Hollywood Cinema Industry, to
create its impact on the countries across the world. Hollywood established
movies, as a legitimate business and enabled access to capital; its adaptability
and flexibility is another adage to its long lasting and far-reaching effect.
It has consistently demonstrated superior marketing blended with communication
expertise; its commercial orientation and strategies of production explicate
the idea of movie being tailor made to entertain audiences exclusively. There
is an attractiveness of the cinema language offered by Hollywood, which is
another dominating factor used by the industry to leave a lasting impact on
world audience.
Since the paper aims at elucidating the idea of legitimizing
cultures through Hollywood, it is important to take some movies in the same
accord, and to explore how these movies created worldwide effect through the
lens of Hollywood. There will be an inclusion of some movies which will bring
forth the situations and turmoils of under-developed and Third world nations
also, as its theme, projected by Hollywood and, its impact on audience across
the globe.
The
first movie with which the discussion starts is a 2006 comedy-drama film
The Devil Wears Prada, a
loose screen adaptation of Lauren Weisberger's
2003 novel of the same name.
It stars Anne Hathaway as
Andrea Sachs, a college graduate who goes to New York City and gets a job as a
co-assistant to powerful fashion magazine editor Miranda
Priestly, played by Meryl Streep.
It grossed over $300 million, mostly from its international run.
Although the movie is set in the fashion world, most designers and
other fashion notables avoided appearing as themselves for fear of displeasing
U.S. Still, many allowed their clothes and accessories to
be used in the film, making it the most expensively costumed film in history. The
Devil wears Prada, Lauren Weisberger's best-selling roman à
clef about a bright young woman's brief period of servitude at a fashion
magazine, provides the satisfaction of vicarious payback. Its portrait of
Miranda Priestly, the haughty editor of a ‘glossy rag’ called Runway, is a
collage of unforgiving slights and unforgotten grudges, glued to the page with
pure, righteous venom. The movie is a commercial attempt, and has a worldwide
effect. It gives an amazing celebration of fashion to people of other nations
apart from America.
Milk is the second movie taken up here, which is a 2008 American biographical
film based on the life of gay
rights activist and politician Harvey
Milk, who was the
first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board
of Supervisors. Directed by Gus
Van Sant and written by Dustin Lance Black, the film stars Sean
Penn as Milk and Josh
Brolinas Dan
White, a city supervisor who
assassinated Milk. The film was released to much approbation and earned
numerous accolades from film critics and guilds. Ultimately, it received eight Academy
Award nominations, including Best Picture, winning two for Best Actor in a Leading Role for Penn and Best Original
Screenplay for Black.
Milk begins on Harvey Milk's 40th birthday (in 1970), when he was
living in New
York City and had not yet
settled in San Francisco. It chronicles his foray into city politics, and the
various battles he waged in the Castro neighborhood as well as throughout the
city, and political campaigns to limit the rights of gay people in 1977 and
1978 run by Anita
Bryant and John Briggs. His romantic and political relationships are also
addressed, as is his tenuous affiliation with troubled Supervisor Dan White;
the film ends with White's double homicide of Milk and Mayor George
Moscone.
This biopic traces the last eight
years in the life of Harvey Milk, the ill-fated politician whose life changed
history, and whose courage still inspires people. When Milk was elected to the
San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, he made history for being the first
openly gay man in American history to be voted into public office. But the
rights of homosexuals weren't Milk's primary concern, as tellingly evidenced by the wide array of
political coalitions he formed over the course of his tragically brief career.
He fought for everyone from union workers to senior citizens, a true hero of
human rights who possessed nothing but compassion for his fellow man. This
movie is another attempt by the Hollywood industry to project the idea of Human
Rights and Queer Studies to some extent, with Milk as its chief protagonist.
The movie leaves an indelible mark on the world audience with its theme and
execution, the point to be noted here is how, for Hollywood it is an easy
attempt to express and explicate ideas, and secondly how maturely the global
audience responds to it. The spell left by this industry leaves audience
awestruck, and at the same time pursues them to think on serious matters like
this.
The
third movie under consideration is Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire,
it is a breathless, exciting story, heartbreaking and exhilarating at the same
time, about a Mumbai-based orphan Jamel, who rises from ‘rags to riches’ on the strength of his lively
intelligence. The film's universal appeal will present the real India to
millions of moviegoers for the first time. The film's surface is so dazzling that you hardly realize
how traditional it is underneath. But it's the ‘buried structure’ that appears
to be pulling us through the story like a big engine on a short train. "Slumdog
Millionaire" (2008) bridges two Indias by cutting between a world of
poverty and the Indian version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." The
story of Jamel begins from the slums of Mumbai elucidating a brutal existence. From
a petty thief, impostor and survivor, mired in dire poverty, he improvises his
way up through the world and remembers everything he has learned. He is
accused of cheating and desperate to prove his innocence, an eighteen-year-old
orphan from the slums of Mumbai reflects back on his tumultuous and chaotic
life while competing to win 20 million rupees on India's game show entitled Who
Wants to Be a Millionaire. Though Jamel makes a convincing case for himself,
one question still remains: why would a young man with no apparent desire for
wealth or fame is so determined to win big on a national game show? Of course,
it won't be long until everyone finds out the answer to this burning question,
because as Jamel sits down to find out whether he will be rich beyond his
wildest dreams, 60 million viewers remain transfixed to their televisions eager
to see if he will correctly answer the final question. The movie is another
reflection of a Third world Nation and shows situations and plight of slum
dwellers, coming from Hollywood, it not only was more impacting but also
changed people’s outlook about these slum children. Winner of the Academy
Awards, it portrayed India in a new light, unseen and unnoticed by many till
date.
12 Years a Slave is
the fourth and last movie taken up in the paper, a 2013 British-American historical drama film and
an adaptation of the 1853 memoir Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup,
a New York State-born free African American man
who was kidnapped in Washington, D.C., in 1841 and sold into slavery. Northup worked on
plantations in the state of Louisiana for
twelve years before his release. 12 Years a Slave received wide critical acclaim, and
was named the best film of the year by several media outlets. It also proved to
be a box office success, earning over $172 million on a production budget of
$18 million. The film won three Academy Awards: Best Picture (becoming
the first film made by a black director or producer to receive the Academy's
highest honor), Best Supporting Actress for
Nyong'o and Best Adapted Screenplay for
Ridley. It was awarded the Golden Globe Award
for Best Motion Picture – Drama.
For all the film's artistry, the undercurrent of many 12 Years a Slave conversations are
hinged on race and how Hollywood has for decades given short endeavors to one of the most inglorious
chapters in the nation's history. The film's director, British filmmaker Steve McQueen, said repeatedly during the
long awards season that Hollywood appeared more comfortable making Holocaust
movies than slavery stories. And in her opening monologue, Oscar host Ellen DeGeneres even joked that if McQueen's telling
of the enslavement of Solomon Northup didn't take the top Academy Award, voters
could be branded as "racists." Whether or not Oscar voters were
motivated by fear of looking racially insensitive, or to correct a perceived
historical wrong, can never be known. But one top Oscar strategist said that Academy Awards voters have a long history of honoring
movies that take on the subject of race
relations.
In winning the best picture honor, 12 Years a Slave became the first
feature directed by a black man to collect the definitive Academy Award,
capping a remarkable year for people of color in Hollywood. Brad Pitt, one
of the winners of the best picture Oscar remarked backstage, "At the end
of the day we just hope that this film remains a gentle reminder that we are
all equal. We want dignity and opportunity for ourselves and our family, and
that another’s freedom is every bit as important as our own. That’s it. That’s
everything." This movie again takes up a serious issue of slavery and how
people became victim to it is its prime focus. Coming from a White producer
Brad Pitt, though the movie lucidly presents the life of Northup, but this fact
can never be denied that the movie will be known by its association with a
White firm. The reception it got from the global audience is tremendous and
once again shows how Hollywood as an industry is influential enough to leave an
ineffaceable mark across the world.
All the four movies, taken up here
deal with four diverse themes and the most important thing to note in all of
them is their Hollywood affiliation. All the movies create a kind of culture,
which when seen from the lenses of Hollywood proves to be acceptable. The
stories of the four protagonists dwelling in different parts of the globe show
how, when brought under one umbrella of Hollywood, led to so many accolades and
changes in perspectives. Through the equipment of entertainment, Hollywood
succeeds not only in creating culture but also legitimizing it. It deals with
so many diverse themes and plots but the label it carries forth with itself is
truly appreciating. The positive thing to note here is that, whatever be the
means, the attempt of Hollywood is always to reach an end of innovation,
acceptance of reality and novelty. With entertainment as its tool, there is no
doubt in appreciating the attempts made by Hollywood cinema, in the welfare of
mankind across the globe.
There can be certain cultural
effects of Hollywood movies on the global audience. Some of these can be, a
change in their Language speaking (accent), change in their lifestyle, there
will be another change in the value and ideology framework(s). These changes
are positive as well as negative in their own accord. They are negative because
they have the strength to bring a complete reversal in existing values, thereby
creating a new identity and culture, destructing the indigenous traits of a
nation and its civilization, and the positive thing to note here can be an
emergence of a universal Culture, inclusive of cultures and ideologies,
practiced in nations across the globe. Hence, it can be said that Hollywood
propagates a culture worth imbibing, though the hallmark it carries with it
cannot be discarded, but the aftereffects it leaves on audience is something
which should be appreciated and rewarded.
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