Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

164 SPECIFICITIES OF GLOBALIZATIONGLOBALIZATION, INFLUENCE AND RESISTANCE: CINEMATICREPRESENTATIONS AND EXPERIENCE IN JAPAN AND THAILANDKrisnadi Yuliawan SaptadiIntroductionBen Okri, a Nigerian writer, once said that if anyonewants to conquer a nation, first they have to invade theirstories. Sometimes, when we talk about globalization,many people believe that Hollywood, with all itsblockbusters, has already done exactly what Okri said.As Wim Wenders, a famous German film director,once said to his fellow Germans, “The Americans havecolonized our subconscious.”The feelings represented in Okri’s and Wenders’statements are the reason why Hollywood is oftencriticized for overwhelming global audiences with“American culture.” In the eyes of the world, Hollywoodis America. It represents not only the glamour ofAmerican movie stars, but also their “soft power”—what many see as the cultural imperialism—of theworld’s lone superpower.It is a fact that although Hollywood produces only a smallfraction of the world’s feature films, it garners about 75percent of theatrical motion picture revenues and evenmore of the video rentals and purchases. Moreover,despite some twists and turns in individual years,the long-term trend has clearly favored Hollywood’sincreasing domination. Hollywood’s proportion of theworld market is double what it was in 1990, while theEuropean film industry is one-ninth of the size it was in1945. Further, in Western Europe in 1985, 41 percentof the film tickets purchased were for Hollywood films;by 1995, however, the figure was 75 percent.Starting in 2000, Hollywood films generally hadgreater box office sales outside the United States thanat home. Eighteen such films took in over USD100million internationally, a total not matched by anyfilm produced outside the United States. While therewas an interloper in 2001 (the Japan animated filmSpirited Away took in over USD200 million), it was theexception that proved the rule, as the top 10 films at thebox office in 2001 were all Hollywood products. Theglobal situation in years after was no different.Historically, Asian markets have not been verysignificant for Hollywood. They have not generatedas much revenue for the studios as have European andLatin American markets. However, this began to changein the 1980s and especially the 1990s. Nowadays,Hollywood movies take about 96 percent of box officereceipts in Taiwan, about 78 percent in Thailand andabout 65 percent in Japan.A number of factors have contributed to the growthof Asian film markets and to Hollywood’s increasingdomination of them. Trade liberalization has allowedmany more Hollywood movies to come into Asiantheaters, and economic growth has given more people themeans to see them. The building of modern multiplexeshas dramatically increased the number of venues forfilm exhibition, while the privatization of televisionand the development of new distribution technologiessuch as video, cable and satellite have created whole newmarkets for film beyond the theatres.While the distribution-exhibition sectors of Asianfilm industries have welcomed this market expansion,the production sectors have not always been soenthusiastic, insofar as multiplexes and the newhome-based entertainment outlets tend to fill up withHollywood films. Hollywood’s economic, institutionaland political power gives it a competitive advantage thatfew industries in the world can match: only Hollywoodcan afford to spend USD200 million on a single film;only Hollywood has the global distribution networkand publication powers that can get its movies intotheaters worldwide; and only Hollywood has the USgovernment behind it, pushing to open foreign marketseven further.As markets around the world expanded and as Hollywoodclaimed a bigger and bigger portion, the logical thinghappened: Hollywood studios began to earn more oftheir money outside of the US than they did inside.From the 1950s through the 1970s, Hollywood earnedabout 30 percent of its money overseas. That percentagebegan to climb in the 1980s and today the averagestudio production earns well over 50 percent of itsrevenue abroad. That number is expected to grow overtime, with some industry figures predicting the foreignshare of box office earnings could rise to 80 percentwithin the next 20 years. This means that Hollywood isAsian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows