Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
HARVEY B. FEIGENBAUM
America tends to dominate markets for popular culture, especially
in the areas of television and film. Recent trends have tended to reinforce incentives to import American audiovisual and film products abroad. Anxiety
about the impact of these American imports has led many countries to pursue
policies aimed at protecting their national cultures. While technological change
has made such measures more difficult, nevertheless some techniques work
better than others. This paper examines the problem of Americanization by
asking the following questions: First, is Americanization a problem? Second,
what has been done about it? And finally, are there smart practices likely to
emerge in the new environment of market-driven culture?
This paper argues that Americanization has significant economic and
political consequences. It has economic consequences because cultural diversity is a public good that provides economic benefits and encourages innovation. The paper argues as well that Americanization affects the way in which
people think about politics. The complex political spectrum Europeans and
others have known is gradually being replaced by the more-limited American
spectrum, reducing peoples sense of their political options. The argument is
drawn from a larger, long-term project on the political economy of film and
television in advanced industrial societies. Since the mid-1990s, I have conducted interviews with a wide array of company executives, policymakers,
artists, and scholars involved in the film and television industries of several
countries. I have visited facilities and have conducted interviews in France,
Britain, Italy, Germany, Belgium, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and
Canada over the course of this period. In an effort to learn exactly how the
industry worked, I also visited Hollywood on several occasions and took part
in the production of films and television shows in Los Angeles, New York,
HARVEY B. FEIGENBAUM is professor of political science and international affairs at the George
Washington University. He has published The Politics of Public Enterprise and Shrinking the State
(with Jeffrey R. Henig and Chris Hamnett), among other books and articles on political economy.
He is a frequent commentator on American, Canadian, and European media.
Political Science Quarterly
107
108
AMERICANIZATION
Many people, especially in the United States, associate a fear of Americanization with the French. In many ways, France is almost an ideal-type in its battle
with Americanization. The French, after all, are famously concerned with
expelling anglicisms from their language: computer is replaced with ordinateur,
jet by avion raction, e-mail by couriel. While the population there has often
viewed such efforts, especially the Toubon Law,3 as simply political buffoonery
aimed at playing to the chauvinism of the conservatives political base, the concern lies not only with the nationalistic right. The political left was not happy
with the opening of Eurodisney in the Paris suburbs, and much of the resistance to globalization, symbolized by such movements as Jos Bovs crusade
against McDonalds, comes from a perceived threat to French and European
folkways. The French are clearly the strongest, though hardly the only supporters of the notion of the cultural exception: that culture policies should
Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations? Foreign Affairs 72 (Summer 1993): 2249.
For example, Marc Lynch, Voices of the New Arab Public (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2006); Benjamin R. Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld (New York: Ballantine Books, 1995); Peter
J. Katzenstein, Walls between Those People? Contrasting Perspectives on World Politics, Perspectives on Politics 8 (March 2010): 1125; Joseph S. Nye, Soft Power (New York: Public Affairs,
2004); Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008); Martha Bayles,
Americas Cultural Footprint (New Haven: Yale University Press, forthcoming).
3
Rpublique Franaise, LOI n 94-88 du 1 fvrier 1994. 2 February 1994.
1
2
CULTURAL CHALLENGE
109
be exempt from neoliberal trade agreements, most especially those under the
World Trade Organization.
The French are not alone in this worry, of course. Italians launched the
slow food movement, Canadians try to preserve northern culture,4 and
altermondialistes (the new French expression for opponents of the current
capitalist version of globalization) are represented by virtually every nationality on the planet.5 Nor is the concern limited only to those outside the United
States. A bestseller by the respected political theorist Benjamin Barber6
mourned the impact of American-style capitalism on the globe, with globalization offering people only the options of consumerism (McWorld) or
primativism (Jihad). Freedom is reduced to the right to choose among
items for purchase, with the only alternative a depressing variety of primordial barbarisms.
110
dominance of the small screen was less pronounced. However, the U.S. balance of trade in television programs became overwhelmingly positive as
private channels proliferated.10 The exponential growth of private television
networks financed by advertising, added to a flood of new media options
provided by cable, satellites, and the Internet, has led to a Hobbesian competition for market share amid an overall audience that has barely expanded.
Simple arithmetic has meant that fewer and fewer people are watching any
given show or movie. Private networks, now the majority in most countries,
are thus increasingly cost-sensitive, and have evoked a strong preference for
importing cheap American products over locally produced television shows,
despite near-universal preferences of audiences to see their own cultures on
television. For example, in a comparison of the most-watched television shows
in Australia, France, Italy, Sweden, and the United States, only in Australia was
the most-watched show an import.11 The film industry is somewhat different,
but virtually all non-American film industries survive by virtue of subsidy
programs or favorable tax treatment, often added to protectionist measures
on film exhibition. Neoliberal policies are increasingly a threat to these measures as well.
This American dominance of film and television is important for those
who are interested in politics and for those who are interested in political
science (that is, the way we try to understand politics). The most important
new movement in political science in the last decade or so has focused on the
role of ideas in shaping politics. In international relations, this has taken the
form of constructivism,12 which departs from earlier notions (most especially
realism) in positing that interests of states and peoples are socially constructed. Thus, politics can only be understood through the lens of subjective
perception, and ultimately, ideas, values, and norms are intrinsic to understanding behavior. In its most extreme form, this approach reaches the same
impasse as phenomenology or the sociology of knowledge school associated
with 1930s Frankfurt: can anything be known if everything is subjective? The
improvement that constructivist theorists have made to the earlier phenomenological formulations is in asserting that reality is an inter-subjective construction, that is, a shared view of the world. Their difference with the earlier
theories asserting a sociology of knowledge is that the inter-subjectivity
10
European Audiovisual Observatory, Yearbook 2008, chap. 2, accessed on the website of
the European Audiovisual Observatory at http://www.obs.coe.int/yb2008/public/CNumPage.html,
14 July 2009.
11
Television: Most-watched Programs, International Herald Tribune, 23 May 2005.
12
John Gerald Ruggie, What Makes the World Hang Together? Neo-utilitarianism and the Social
Constructivist Challenge, International Organization 52 (Autumn 1998): 855885; Nicholas Onuf,
Legal-Historical Rule-Based Approaches to Constructivist IR Research, (paper presented at the
colloquium (Re)Constructing International Relations Research, University of Southern California,
6 October 2001).
CULTURAL CHALLENGE
111
noted by the theorists of the 1930s was based on class. Constructivists today
do not make this assumption.13
However, if we are willing to accept more-limited assumptions, and simply
posit that ideas are important, and that they are also intrinsic to the formation
of interests, then we find common ground with the latest movement in comparative politics: ideational analysis, that is, ideas matter. Indeed, the rejection of logical positivism by a great many, perhaps most, comparativists and
constructivists, gives them epistemological common ground, as well. In both
fields, the degree to which reality is viewed as subjective is a matter of debate.
Once we concede that ideas are important, then the source also becomes
important. To the extent that ideas generate ideas ( pace Marx), I shall try to
argue that cultural diversity is a source of intellectual innovation and that a
reduction in cultural diversity, consequently, negatively affects the capacity
to innovate and influences the nature of politics. I shall also try to argue that
this lack of diversity has economic roots ( pace Hegel).
First though, it is important to note that the relation between American
cultural products and the behavior of those who import them is not simple
or mechanistic. That is, I do not concede the assumptions of hypodermic
or magic bullet theories as understood in the communications literature.
These theories present the relationship between media and behavior as direct
and unsubtle, in which people absorb the claims and ideas of the media wholly
and uncritically, and then behave as the medias message intends.14 For one
thing, American movies (if not television shows) are quite varied and eclectic.
Not all films (or television shows) espouse the same values or ideas, as the
works of John Wayne and Michael Moore bear testimony. But if it makes
sense to talk about national cultures at all, it is reasonable to assume that a
wide variety of films exported by the United States share some set of values
one might associate with America.15 The process of acquiring these American
values and habits is gradual, subtle, and, for any one receiving culture, incomplete. Moreover, not all who are exposed to American culture necessarily react
the same way. American values are always mediated through the lens of
the receiving society, and the impact is greater in some places than in others.
Cumulatively, the effect is not necessarily one of cultural domination, but there
is very probably some impact.
The process of acculturation is frequently subtle and indirect. James
Scott has noted that even in the developing world, subordinate groups develop their own interpretations, understandings, and readings of ambiguous
13
I am grateful to Peter J. Katzenstein for pointing this out in an e-mail, 19 April 2010.
See, for example, David Croteau and William Hoynes, Media Society: Industries, Images and
Audiences. 2d ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge, 2000), 237238.
15
Lary May, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 2000), 1 and passim.
14
112
CULTURAL CHALLENGE
113
21
Desmond King, Americanisation and Cultural Diversity at Home and Abroad: Cultural Factors in
the Decision Making of the European Union (Athens: Etablissements Emile Bruylant, 2002), 167.
22
George Lakoff, Dont Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (White
River Junction, VT: Chelsea Books, 2004).
23
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 1980, 2003); Dallmayr, Language and Politics; Gemma Fiumara, The Metaphoric Process
(London: Routledge, 1995).
24
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York: Verso, 1991).
25
Margaret Kohn, Civic Republicanism versus Social Struggle: A Gramscian Approach to
Associationalism in Italy, Political Power and Social Theory 13 (Autumn 1999): 201235.
26
Organization of American States, Recommendations, Theme 1, Meeting of Experts, Vancouver,
Canada, 19 March 2002, unpublished.
27
UNESCO, 2001, accessed at http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID534321&
URL_DO5DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION5201.html, 31 December 2010.
114
Harvey B. Feigenbaum, Public Policy and the Private Sector in Audiovisual Industries, UCLA
Law Review 49 (August 2002): 17671781.
29
From The Essence of Religion, quoted in Friedrich Engels, Feuerbach: The Roots of the Socialist
Philosophy (New York: Cosimo, 2008), trans. Austin Lewis, 83.
30
Karl Marx, Selected Writings, ed. Lawrence H. Simon (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing,
1994), p. 121.
31
King, Americanisation and Cultural Diversity, 151.
32
Richard Kuisel, Debating Americanization, in Ulrich Beck, Natan Sznaider, and Rainer
Winter, eds., Global America? The Cultural Consequences of Globalization (Liverpool: Liverpool
University Press, 2004), chap. 5.
28
CULTURAL CHALLENGE
115
they think and act like Americans. Kuisel finds reasons to discount all of these
critiques. Neither Coca-Cola nor McDonalds significantly modified their formulae to please the French market, and while any countrys national culture
may be difficult to define and may have many aspects, this does not mean that
national cultures do not exist, nor that Americanization is not a problem.33 He
argues that on the last issue, research is not yet definitive, but is suggestive that
Americanization is not trivial.
Of course, for some observers, Americanization is an improvement over
the status quo. It is not hard to see American values as improving the lives
of women in oppressive, fundamentalist cultures of the third world, where
not only second-class status, but frequently pain and disfigurement (such as
clitorectomy) are inflicted on the female members of the polity. Nor should
one see this as a benefit reserved to the third world. The American version
of English was a form of linguistic liberation for those on the wrong side
of the class divide in the UK. As Oxford historian Ross McKibbin put it,
For the working classes use of Americanisms was a means of escaping from
Cockney [sic] without adopting BBC English.34
Boon or bane, Americanization has had an impact on the rest of the world.
Indeed, one need look no further than Great Britain for ample evidence that
American culture has had a serious impact. As early as 1931, the Radio Times
concluded that Americanization was responsible for new manners of thinking, for higher pressure of living, for discontent among normally contented
people, for big ideas, and for Oh yeah.35 Nor is this opinion limited to the
more impressionistic writers of the inter-war period. As recently as the beginning of the new millennium, the sociologist A.H. Halsey, working from the
2000 British Social Attitudes Survey, could conclude that Britain had become
hopelessly Americanized.36 Evidence of Americanization is, of course, not
limited to Britain. A McDonalds opens approximately every four hours37
around the world, and they are often greeted as welcome signs of modernization.38 While most societies prefer seeing their own cultures on television,
33
116
in 2005 six of the top ten shows in Australia were American, as were all of the
top five.39 As often as not, even the French prefer American movies.40
For these reasons, countries as dissimilar as France and Australia, Korea
and Canada have implemented mechanisms to protect their national cultures
from assimilation. Characteristic of this concern, the Maastricht Treaty of 1991
amended the Treaty of Rome with Article 151 (replacing Article 128) and now
says that the European Union (EU) must respect and promote the diversity
of its cultures.41 Among many variations, all have taken a special interest in
audiovisual industries, and all have taken measures to protect producers in the
areas of film and television. What follows is an examination of such policies.
PUBLIC POLICY
IN THE
AUDIOVISUAL SECTOR
Concern over cultural diversity is a relatively new focus for many countries.
Public policy in the audiovisual sector, which in this paper is limited to television and film, has historically been focused along three poles: setting of
technical standards, regulation of the internal market, and supervision of
content. Regulation of the internal market has been somewhat different,
as one might expect, in liberal countries like the United States, where the concern has focused on competition and the avoidance of monopoly, from moreinterventionist countries, where the market has for a long time been the
monopoly of a public service provider. In the area of film, the private sector
has had a larger role in all advanced capitalist countries.
Technical Standards
The issue of technical standards has largely been one of establishing a collective good for producers and distributors to avoid cacophony on the spectrum
and to allow economies of scale in the case of competing standards such as
NTSC (National Television System Committee adopted by the United States
and Japan) and PAL (Phase Alternate Line adopted by most of Europe) or
SECAM (Squentiel Couleur Mmoire adopted by France and Russia).
The technical standards were not simply debated in terms of developing a
collective good, but as different countries developed different standards, these
became issues of industrial policy and international competition. This was not
only true of Frances attempt to encourage others to adopted its SECAM
system, but similar debates cropped up again in the 1990s as governments
considered the advantages of different high-definition television systems.
Here, Japans much-vaunted MITI (Ministry for International Trade and
Industry) ended up backing the wrong horse, as its producers favored an
Television: Most Watched Programs, International Herald Tribune, 23 May 2005.
Kerry Seagrave, American Films Abroad (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997), 272.
41
King, Americanisation and Cultural Diversity, 150.
39
40
CULTURAL CHALLENGE
117
Alan Riding, Spain May Loosen Iron Grip on Public TV, The New York Times, 27 May 2004.
The term public sphere is associated with the work of Jurgen Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into Bourgeois Society, trans. T. Burger and F. Lawrence
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989).
42
43
118
44
CULTURAL CHALLENGE
119
120
Hillard, Federal Communications Commission; Riding, Spain May Loosen Iron Grip.
John Izod, Hollywood at the Box Office: 18951986 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
57
Douglas Saunders, All the Worlds a Screen, The Globe and Mail, 17 October 2000.
58
Ibid.
55
56
CULTURAL CHALLENGE
121
Hollywood Reporter, 25 November 2000; Le Matre, 25 November 2000, 21; Sotinel, 25 November 2000; on MEDIA 2007, see Europa: Summaries of EU Legislation, accessed at http://europa.eu/
legislation_summaries/audiovisual_and_media/l24224a_en.htm, 15 July 2009.
60
CSA (Conseil Suprieure delAudiovisuel), Les Chiffres cls de la tlvsion et du cinema (Paris:
Institut National de lAudiovisuel and Centre National de la Cinmatographie, Paris, La Documentation Francaise, 1997), 145.
61
Yoon and Feigenbaum, Global Strategies; Byung-il Choi, When Culture Meets Trade
Screen Quota in Korea, Global Economic Review 31 (December 2002): 7590, accessed at http://
www.mcnblogs.com/mcindie/archives/2006/02/s_korea_to_cut.html, 22 April 2010.
62
Dossier, Le Monde, 78 January 2001.
63
James Harding, Blairs Law of Convergence, Financial Times, 17 October 2000.
122
64
CULTURAL CHALLENGE
123
Arts lobbies in the United States have tried to make economic arguments
to justify spending on culture.65 These tend to be of two types: first, that arts
spending creates spread effects. Spending on the arts generates small businesses with employment consequences such as restaurants around an art
museum or, as is the case with film, spending on film infrastructure attracts
investment (from movie producers) and generates high-paying jobs (electricians, technicians, etc.) in an industry that does not pollute. A second type
of argument focuses on the changing of the economy, with prosperity being
increasingly dependent on the nurturing of creativity and the development
of environments attractive to creative people.66
Like most economic arguments, these are controversial. More than likely,
some arts spending generates spread effects beyond the initial investment,
while other spending does not. Nor can anyone doubt that some creative
people are responsible for generating an awful lot of money. From highly
paid movie stars to brilliant software engineers, this is a truism. However, that
is not to say that all creativity is lucrative, or that most creative people pay for
themselves. The poor, starving artist is not a clich for nothing.
However, while economic appeals for cultural policy do not always fall on
sympathetic ears, there can be little doubt that much of the impetus behind
spending on local film and television production is motivated by high-minded
nationalism and by low-minded pandering to the supplications of lobbies.
And while questioning the logic of subsidies for film and television policies
may be motivated by economic skepticism, it is equally a question as to why
non-American film and television production companies do not challenge
American hegemony. Of course they do.
Some foreign film and television producers are successful. America was a
net importer of films from France before the First World War, after all. More
recently, in the current era of Hollywood hegemony, the one region that seems
almost unconcerned by this particular American challenge is Latin America.
Indeed, many Latin American countries export Telenovellas to each other
and to the rest of the world. The United States imports them for the Spanishspeaking networks serving its hispanophone community, and the newly liberated, post-communist Russia became a major client for a 20-year-old Mexican
soap opera, as its population emerged from 70 years of documentaries about
tractor factories and hung on every plot twist devised in the sentimental
Mexican export. Australians have also been successful exporting television
series (indeed some Australian television shows depend on the British market to break even)67 and have built a reputation for quality films from directors
65
Stephen Jay Tepper, Creative Assets and the Changing Economy, Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society 32 (Summer 2002): 159169.
66
Tepper, Creative Assets; Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class (New York: Basic
Books, 2004).
67
Interview with Australian television producer Ben Grant, February 2005.
124
like Peter Weir and Bruce Beresford. Any number of countries can lay claim to
the occasional film that is successful on the international market, from Germanys
Lola Rennt to New Zealands Whale Rider, to the British-produced, Frenchfinanced, Indian-cast melodrama Slumdog Millionaire.
Reasons for Americas domination of entertainment markets would necessarily make the length of this paper unwieldy, but to summarize, American
films dominate the world for essentially three reasons: first, the huge internal
market allows for lavish spending on production values that make U.S. films
attractive to audiences looking for entertainment and escape; second, U.S. film
companies are the only ones with a capacity for world-wide distribution;68 and
third, the need to appeal to a multicultural domestic market has guided the
evolution of American films toward stories that are broadly appealing and
good candidates for international sales.69
Thus, there are good reasons for countries to wish to promote their cultures by protecting and subsidizing their native film and television industries.
However, as with most policies, some work better than others. Moreover, as
the international environment evolves for reasons owing to both changes in
technology and developments in the world economy, it is worth considering
some alternate ideas.
SMART PRACTICES
Eugene Bardach introduced the notion of smart practices as a more appropriate appellation than best practices.70 He argues that the term best practices is unrealistic in the face of the improbability of exhaustive comparison of
policies and the inability to control for most contextual conditions. Bardach
means his notion to be more than a substitute for an overused term, and rather
offers a methodology of policy analysis. I am using the term less rigorously
here. My intention is to be suggestive, rather than definitive, but I do think
it worthwhile to trawl the worlds culture policies for successful innovations:
In the area of cultural protection, what have been the smart practices? Moreover, are there smart practices in other policy areas that may be worth adopting
in the cultural area?
The most important remark to make at the outset is that in the face of
economic and technological forces that encourage Americanization, protectionism works, at least regarding the preservation of domestic film industries.
France and Korea have vibrant film industries; the Italian industry essentially
disappeared under the bracing winds of competition. Cinecitt, the famous
68
CULTURAL CHALLENGE
125
complex established by Benito Mussolini, was reduced for the most part to a
television studio and an offshore production facility serving Hollywood;71 and
the British industry courted disaster until the National Lottery restored funding. It is still difficult to distribute many British-made films, however, due to
foreign control of distribution within the UK.
However, maintaining a domestic film industry is not the same as protecting national culture. Subsidized and protected industries must still offer
products that people wish to see, if they are to compete with American films
and television shows. Films that no one watches hardly contribute at all to the
national culture, let alone protect it.
In this regard, France and Australia represent interesting contrasts. French
law requires French television networks to devote 2 percent of their turnover
to financing French films (Canal Plus, the subscription service, is required to
devote 9 percent of turnover to this purpose) that they must eventually show
on their television networks. Moreover, all films receive an automatic subsidy
from taxes collected on French movie tickets (the latter, in effect, means that
American films subsidize French films, because most films exhibited in France
are American). The effect of this is that there is little discrimination in France
against films that have little chance of pleasing large publics. Moreover, the
filmmakers frequently charge that additional subsidies, which do discriminate
on the basis of perceived quality, tend to go to art-house films, which, once
again, appeal to only small segments of the French public.
Australia, in contrast, combines very small subsidies that are easy to obtain,
so new filmmakers can write scripts, but for a film to qualify for a major subsidy
from Screen Australia, the script must demonstrate a market attachment, and
this is usually demonstrated by having lined up an agreement with a domestic
distributor. This strategy does make it more likely that the film will have some
appeal to a larger segment of the Australian population, but it also makes the
local industry very dependent on the tastes of a tiny number of distributors.
Korea subsidizes film rather differently than either France or Australia.
While it maintains some quotas on the number of foreign films (read American
films) that can be shown in Korean theaters, it maintains a state-subsidized
film production facility that is open to all Koreans.72 Australia has adopted a
similar approach, but with a significant difference. The states of Queensland,
New South Wales, and Victoria have all built film studios and postproduction facilities, either as public facilities (Victoria) or as development writedowns for private investors (Fox in New South Wales, Dino Di Laurentis in
Queensland). While the facilities were created to serve both domestic and
international (read American) clients, the problem that has developed down
Sonia Harford, La Dolce Vita One More Time, The Age, 24 March 2003, accessed at http://
www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/03/23/1048354471922.html, 14 September 2009.
72
Yoon and Feigenbaum, Global Strategies; Choi, When Culture Meets Trade.
71
126
under is that the success of the facilities with American filmmakers may
have crowded out local Australian producers. Attracting a significant foreign
clientele not only amortizes the cost of the facility, but provides enough work
to maintain a community of Australian technicians and artists who are then
available for local productions (financed, as it were, by Americans). Some
Australian filmmakers complain that the facilities are too successful and
are constantly occupied by foreigners who pay wages that price Australian
producers out of their own market. This is difficult to document.
At the supranational level, the European Union has devoted about a hundred million euros per year to aid European film and television industries. As
mentioned above, the various MEDIA programs aid several stages of film and
television production, from development to distribution and marketing. While
some analysts have criticized these successive five-year programs for not allocating enough money to script development, in my view, other problems loom
larger.73 For one thing, the European Commission has seen the industry problem as one related to the fragmentation of the internal market, as if member
states were as worried about competition from each others films as they were
worried about American competition.74 Most important of all, though, is the
feeble level of support. One hundred million euros a year may seem like a lot
of money, but in fact, it is only equal to the cost of a single Hollywood movie.
With the average European budget roughly one-tenth that of an American
film, it is hard for Europeans to match Hollywoods production values, professionalism, and marketing power. Sometimes, however, even modest productions occasionally can become Hollywood-style blockbusters: Slumdog
Millionaire received 830,000 euros for distribution from the MEDIA program,
with a total cost of 11 million euros.75 Of course, not everyone hits the lottery.
On the allocation of development funding, see Victor Henning and Andre Alpar, Public Aid
Mechanisms in Feature Film Producton: the EU MEDIA Plus Programme, Media, Culture and
Society 27 (2005): 229225 at 239.
74
Anna Herald, EU Film Policy: Between Art and Commerce (European Diversity and Autonomy Papers-EDAP, 2004), 11, accessed at www.eurac.edu/edap., 8 August 2007.
75
Europa press release, 23 February 2009, accessed at http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.
do?reference5MEMO/09/81 on 18 July 2009.
73
CULTURAL CHALLENGE
127
studios are economically successful is that not only are they large enough and
rich enough to pay for hugely expensive productions, they have deep enough
pockets to absorb the heavy losses in a high-risk business; for every film or television show that makes money, ten do not.
Since the film production companies outside the United States are much
smaller than their American counterparts, the traditional solution to solving
this economic problem is to have the state substitute for the private American
studios. The state, via subsidies and tax shelters, assumes the risks and costs
associated with the film business.
However, there are other mechanisms that can facilitate the reduction of
risk. In an earlier version of this article I considered the way in which risk is
spread in other sectors, especially in home finance. This suggestion has more
than a tinge of irony in the discussion that follows, but I think it is worth
exploring. In the United States, government policy created a secondary market
for home mortgages via a financial intermediary called (now infamously)
Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae, as a purchaser of home mortgages, which it
repackages and resells, was intended to (and did until the recent bubble)
spread the risk of investment over a broader group of investors. While it got
into trouble when the repackaging obscured the risk of the original mortgages,
Fannie Mae was historically an extremely beneficial tool for diversifying and
reducing risk. This agency, later a private corporation, made home ownership
possible for many Americans who otherwise would have been faced with extremely high interest rates to compensate for the risk that they might not be
able to make payments on their homes. The limits of this idea became obvious
at the end of 2008, when the housing bubble burst, but the idea of using secondary markets to spread risk for publicly desired purposes was a good one.
The economic collapse that cascaded with the failure of Lehman Brothers
in September of 2008 dramatically illustrated the problems that came with
the abuse of secondary lending, especially with the securitizing of debt and the
opacity of risk in a high-leverage environment and an economic bubble. The
catastrophe that followed was a clear warning that any mechanisms for secondary finance need to be transparent, and that high degrees of leveraging
are a formula for disaster.
Nevertheless, at some point, when financial markets become more stable,
it will be possible to think again of how the private sector might become involved in financing film and television production outside of the United States.
Since these investments are relatively risky, financial instruments will need to
be priced accordingly, but properly priced, higher risk opportunities can find
buyers. Shifting some of the burden of financing film and television to the private sector in the form of creating secondary markets for entertainment investments has two additional advantages: it creates a kind of market attachment
along Australian lines, in that those projects with greater commercial appeal
should be more easily refinanced, while more artistic films can still benefit
from the lowering of risk.
128
There is some evidence that in the United States, at least, the private
sector has already begun to move in this direction. In April of 2010, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission green-lighted two requests to create
futures exchanges for Hollywood box office receipts.76 While the Motion Picture Association worried that short-selling might adversely affect revenues,77
the move could also encourage film investment as a futures exchange that
would allow investors to hedge bets on films, off-setting risks.
CONCLUSION
The problem of Americanization is an important part of the study of the causal
impact of ideas and the political consequences of cultural change. There is, I
think, reason to believe that the consequences of cultural diversity go far
beyond cultural industries, and Americans have as much of a stake as do
the countries being Americanized.
While anecdotal, examples can be instructive. The argument here is that
homogenizing cultures alters the conditions of entrepreneurship and innovation. When we are exposed to foreign cultures, we rethink our own, and often
think differently as a consequence. Thus, cultural contrast can stimulate new
ideas. Consider the case of Starbucks. The name on the door recalls the first
mate of the Pequod in Herman Melvilles classic American novel, Moby Dick.
However, inside, one finds neither pictures of whales nor a seafood menu.
Instead, we are presented with aspects of Italian coffee culture (espresso,
doppio) and that curious amalgam of a milk shake and espresso, trade-marked
as a Frappuccino. A five billion dollar/year business was created when an
American entrepreneur got an idea from Italian culture. Examples abound:
fusion restaurants open everywhere. French youth dance to music inspired
by North Africa, while suburban Parisians reinvent the hip-hop culture to fit
their environs. This is a form of international learning. Especially in film and
television, there are economic advantages derived from overseas cultural
products. The Seven Samurai led to the Magnificent Seven (or Shakespeares
King Lear became Akira Kirasawas Ran). American television borrowed
often from the British (The Office, Steptoe and Son), while the British imported reality TV platforms from the Dutch-Spanish Endemol corporation.
French films have often served as prototypes for Hollywood blockbusters
(True Lies, Three Men and a Baby). In each of these cases, the product in
question is not so much an imitation as a hybrid. Other innovations owe their
Back to the Futures: Hollywood Exchange Approved, The New York Times, 21 April 2010,
accessed at http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/back-to-the-futures-hollywood-exchangeapproved/?scp51&sq5Hollywood%20futures&st5cse, 22 April 2010.
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Michael Cieply and Joseph Plambeck, Hollywood Tries to Block Market for Movie Bets, The
New York Times, 7 April 2010 accessed at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/business/media/08futures.
html?scp52&sq5Hollywood%20futures&st5cse, 22 April 2010.
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CULTURAL CHALLENGE
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