Courtesy of Kate S.
Globalization or Americanization?
Last couple decades more and more people are trying to decide if they support or not globalization. Doesn`t matter what they will decide for themselves the world becomes more and more economically and culturally interdependent. My argument today is not about globalization being good or bad for the world society, but about globalization not having an American face. I know think that Americanization is only a part of the process of globalization.
What is globalization? The term usually describes economical interdependence of the countries. Globalization can also refer to the transnational circulation of ideas, languages, or popular culture through acculturation.
Although the US is at the forefront of the current information revolution, which is creating many similarities in social and cultural habits (such as television viewing or Internet use) that are attributed to Americanization, correlation is not causation. The reality of the world right now is that if the person needs to use Internet he or she has to know at least some English. People are getting access to American culture very easily, but…does it mean that the rest of the world has been Americanized? I don`t think so. Americanization is just a part of globalization. “Of course, because the US exists and is at the forefront of the information revolution, there is a degree of Americanization, but that is likely to diminish over the course of the twenty-first century as technology spreads and local cultures modernize in their own ways.” (J. Nye, TaipeiTimes,2004).
I don`t want to talk about economical part of globalization, but the cultural part is the one that I`m interested in. A lot of Americans think that USA is the one and only importer of movies to the entire world.(Movies means also American culture.)That is a very wrong opinion because there are some pretty competitive movie industries in the world.
Latin American soap operas have a huge market all over the world. Currently, the best-known telenovelas come from Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela. The telenovela is a form of melodramatic serialized fiction. These programs have traditionally been compared to English language soap operas and even though the two genres share some characteristics and similar roots, the telenovela in the last three decades has evolved into a genre with its own unique characteristics. For example, telenovelas in most Latin American countries are aired in prime-time six days a week, attract a broad audience across age and gender lines, and command the highest advertising rates. They last about six months and come to a climactic close. (LaPastina, A. 2008) Telenovelas are usually focused on the relations between romantic couples as the main motivator for plot development. Telenovelas market includes Hispanic America, Brazil, Spain, Portugal, and also have a wide following in Russia, Eastern Europe, France, Greece, Italy, the Philippines, Israel, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, China, South Korea, and Japan. In the Arab world, telenovelas are incredibly popular with families stopping their day from midday onward to watch these shows whose contents often reflect many of the moral and social questions faced in cultures like Morocco, Algeria, and Egypt.
A good example of America using a foreign concept in the movie industry is a famous TV show the “Ugly Betty”. This show was written and produced in Colombia between 1999 and 2001. The show was adapted in US and premiered in n 2006 on ABC. The show had been filmed also Portugal, Germany, Russia, Turkey, USA, Israel, India, Netherlands, Spain, Greece, China, Poland, and Brazil. This show was popular in every country it had been aired.
Another big movie industry that had already beat Hollywood in the number of movies produced is Bollywood, the Hollywood of India. When combined with other Indian film industries it is considered to be the largest in the world in terms of number of films produced, and also the number of tickets sold. According to bussinessweek.com in 2002 Bollywood produced 1,013 films vs. 739 that been made in Hollywood and sold 3.6 billion tickets compare to 2.6 billion that been sold by Hollywood. At the same time Hollywood made $51 billion while Bollywood only made $1.3 billion. The average production cost of the Bollywood film was $1.5 million when the production cost of the Hollywood movie was about $47.7 million. Obviously Hollywood makes a lot more money out of the movies, but Bollywood spends a lot less and it sells way more. It also seems like Bollywood`s market is still growing so this huge movie industry has a pretty good looking future.
For years Japan had been an innovator in horror movie industry. Japanese horror movies are famous for being psychological and very simple, and at the same time very scary. American producers did a few remakes of J-horror. I think the three of most famous of them are “The Ring”, “The Grudge” and “The Eye”. This example also supports the argument that globalization doesn`t mean Americanization, it`s just a transnational circulation of ideas.
There is another growing movie industry outside of the USA, and it is Russia. After USSR broke apart all fifteen Soviet countries got their independence, but still all of them speak Russian language. After years of struggling Russian economy is finally arising back, and so does the movie industry. Russians start making movies again, and there is a big market to sell them: all 15 former Soviet republics, some countries that are still influenced by Russia (like Mongolia or Bulgaria), and of course, Russia itself. The progress of Russian movie- making definitely exists: Russian director T. Bekmambetov was invited to make a famous Hollywood movie “Wanted” after he made a few Russian blockbusters.
So, does the US is the only one country that sells its culture through the movies? The answer is no. The world becomes more and more global, and cultures are collaborating with each other. Maybe somewhere in Egypt someone is probably watching an American remake of Japanese horror movie in Arabic right now, and somewhere in Ukraine someone is enjoying an Indian movie in Russian. That`s what globalization is, and Americanization is only a part of it.
Works Cited
LaPastina, Anthony.2008. Telenovela. The Museum of Broadcast Communication. Retrieved December 1, 2009 from http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=telenovela
Nye, Joseph. 2004, October 22. Globalization Is Not Americanization. TaipeiTimes http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2004/10/22/2003207970
