Movies, Television, and Globalisation

On his culture blog, Brian Micklethwait provides a reference to a preview of an American television program about the reactions of the muslim world to a perceived onslaught of American television and movies, and how they are perceived by many as “overt propaganda created to undermine their religious and cultural identity”, and yet that at the same time, people love to watch them.

Brian has some has some wise thoughts on the subject himself, and concludes by observing that inevitably the culture must move in two directions.

But all will eventually be well. They’ll make their own shows, that satisfy their young, but deflect the complaints of the complainers.

And then we’ll watch their shows too.

This all invites questions about just how cultural programming – television and movies – propagates around the modern globalised world, which is ultimately much more interesting than simply “America is trying to dominate the world with its propaganda”. It’s both simpler and much more complex. For one thing, American programs are not meant as overt propaganda, and they are certainly not aimed at the Muslim world. Hollywood is trying to make money, and that is all. The Muslim world is such a small market that Hollywood is essentially not paying attention at all, and this is even more so in the case of television than in the case of movies.

For there is a huge difference in the overseas reception of American television and American movies. American movies dominate the box office everywhere pretty much without exception. Local movies have a much smaller market share than American movies virtually everywhere, and Hollywood is selling the same movies to the entire world. Hollywood movies today make more money outside the US than they do inside the US (almost all of which comes from Europe and East Asia), so Hollywood is very conscious of what foreign audiences will want to see when making movies. Often this leads to what may be described as “lowest common denominator” film-making. Movies containing lots of explosions are popular everywhere. (Comedies travel far less well, which is why Hollywood makes fewer of them than it used to, and is why they have smaller budgets). However, rather than turning movies into “overt propaganda”, this tends to make movies bland. American film production does interact with the rest of the world, but in a slightly less direct way. Hollywood has a ferocious appetite for talent. Anything good that is done by filmmakers in the rest of the world tends to get co-opted by Hollywood. If audiences like Hong Kong style action sequences, then these will find their way into American film. The people making the films in America will often be the same people who made the ones in Hong Kong, working in Los Angeles and being paid far more (and working shorter hours) than was ever the case on the other side of the Pacific. When a film financed by a Hollywood studio but made by a Hong Kong filmmaker and filmed in Canada is shown in Spain, it’s a bit hard to tell just whose culture is being influenced by what. (I will be intrigued to see what happens when Iran becomes less oppressive, and some of the country’s many talented film-makers get the opportunity to make films in Hollywood. The thing stopping this is the political situation in Iran and certainly not that in Hollywood.)

The propagation of American television is totally different, although the final conclusion is perhaps the same. When a television market first becomes open to the world, American and other foreign programming typically dominates for a year or two. After that, locally made programming consistently rates higher than American programming, and American programming tends to fade from view, ending up confined to minor channels, the middle of the night and other off peak times. Local programming completely dominates. However, it is local programming that has been influenced by American and other foreign programming. For instance, the people of Eastern Europe spent much of 1990 watching old episodes of Dallas, but after that they went back to watching eastern European programming, only containing much less propaganda and with much higher production values than before. Similarly, American satellite television companies in the early 1990s started broadcasting American programming to Asia. They rapidly discovered that they could only compete with local broadcasters with local programming: Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV network (based in Hong Kong but broadcasting to most of Asia) today churns out an enormous amount of original Hindi language programming. (ESPN Asia also devotes a large portion of its programming time to showing cricket, which is hugely popular with Indian audiences.)

To gain large television ratings anywhere, it is necessary (as a minimum) for programs to contain local faces and be made in the local language. The local programming in question may be cloned versions of foreign programming, but, at least for what Hollywood refers to as “scripted programs” (ie drama) such clones are usually made with local values and local aesthetic judgements. Such programming tends to reflect local attitudes to feminism, homosexuality, and other “moral” issues. Local culture isn’t necessarily left behind, but, as competition does everywhere, the contact with the outside world improves the quality of the programming.

What are the consequences of this? Well, for one thing, the richer the country, the less likely it is that American television programs will form a significant part of the prime-time schedule. They are sold to “emerging” markets in larger quantities, but because these countries are poorer the studios don’t make huge amounts of money from such sales. The total amount of money made from selling American television programs abroad is tiny compared to that made from selling them domestically, so essentially no attention is paid to international markets when American networks and studios create and produce programs. Any effect that “Will and Grace” has on Saudi Arabia is not only not “overt propaganda” but is entirely unintended.

The situation is different with “non-scripted programs”, which basically means game shows and reality television, the programs are often made to precisely the same recipe in a vast number of different places. “Big Brother” is exactly the same in Australia as in Britain, and “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” is utterly identical (even down to the sets and the music) in all 106 countries (yes, really) that have produced a local version of the show. The creators of shows this successful do tend to make money from foreign versions of the show (although this is small compared to the amount made by local crews, local networks, local talent and the like), but I think it is debatable whether such shows are perceived as part of a foreign cultural onslaught. On the contrary, they tend to feature local everyday people, which may make them seem more local and immediate than drama program from any origin. And once again it isn’t clear that this is necessary an invasion of American culture. For the formats of these sorts of programs have not necessarily been invented in America. Neither of the programs I mentioned above were invented in America: “Big Brother” was originally Dutch and “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” British. These sorts of programs work internationally because human nature is much the same everywhere. Some formats work better than others. If someone somewhere invents a successful format for a show, it will affect television throughout the world very rapidly. But it isn’t a matter of America broadcasting its culture in a massive propaganda onslaught. It is much more complicated than that, and in some ways America is as much of a consumer as a producer. Once again though, the question of which culture is influencing which other is not simple.

And eventually, the Muslim world will discover this. The tragedy is that large portions of this part of the world have been cut off from this process. The worldview that results from this cutting off process makes the global cultural landscape look simpler and less complex and chaotic (and rich) than it really is. And that is the real shame.