The End of Hollywood Supremacy: Cinema Goes Global

If you live in what is known as ‘The West’ then your idea of cinema, and the films that you are constantly seeing advertised and shown at your local cinemas is mostly made up of...Hollywood. For everyone in the west, American cinema reigns supreme, which may seem normal, unimportant, however, there is a problem. Each nation in the west comprises its cinema of films from its own film industry and American films, as does nations in the east. The problem with this being that there is very little going in the opposite direction. America wants nothing to do with foreign cinema. Hollywood lives in a bubble, one that is about to burst.

American Cinema wants to continue to dominate everywhere and give nothing in return, and they have employed many tactics in order to keep it that way. One of the most known examples is American remakes of foreign films: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Oldboy being the most recent examples that come to mind. Now, it isn’t that these remakes were particularly bad, (although the old boy remake was terrible) its more that there was no need for them, no need to remake these films simply on the basis of having them be in English. But money talks, as they say, and a good film from another country can bring in millions as an American remake with millions of dollars behind it. Any show of excellence from another country is immediately paved over by America’s hijacking of it, all to keep the spotlight on Hollywood.

Another way in which America is trying to maintain its bubble is by giving the allusion of foreign cinema being present in America. In 2009 Slumdog Millionaire won Best Picture at the academy awards, along with winning seven other awards in different categories at the event. Now, I’m not saying Slumdog Millionaire didn’t deserve to win those awards, far from it, what I’m actually saying is that a Indian orientated film with an all Indian originated cast winning all those awards at an American award ceremony gives the impression that Bollywood has broken into America, when it just hasn’t.  It was a British film, by a British director, that America took credit for. Im not saying there was any corruption either, it was a happy coincidence for the American microcosm.

But, this is all changing now, and the American bubble is ready to burst. America has become saturated with remakes of its own films and of foreign films. It is showing that it is running out of ideas. Soon enough people everyone will see that there are fantastic films coming out of Europe, Asia, and Australia. They are finally seeing that cinema is a global commodity, and that other cultures have unique narratives, directors, and actors to offer. This is of course only helped by the growing popularity of eastern cultures in the west, most notably Japan’s. Very soon American cinema will not exist, and neither will foreign cinema, we will just have a global pool of interesting and engaging films, a global cinema.

Conor M.