Media, Global Culture and Hollywood

The term globalization has become somewhat of a cliché as it serves to explain a wide range of issues across various parts of the globe. Many scholars believe that globalization is slowly transforming local cultures into a new universal culture that may be based on the values and practices of modernity. This new global culture is essentially Western in character and exhibits characteristics such as individualism, rationalism and other values that are dominant in Western nations. The cultural dimension of globalization is also an obvious result of the tremendous increase and dominance of American media and entertainment products. The global flow of cultural media products means that cultural distinctions have become less powerful than the free flow of information and the spread of commercial programming (Katz, 2000). Also, modern media systems facilitate the convergence of national cultures though entertainment conglomerates who utilize global communications networks and digital technologies to distribute their products world-wide (Barnet and Cavanagh, 2001: 8). A prime example of cultural globalization with an American agenda would be the power of Hollywood and its movies in the global market.

According to research, US exports close to $8 billion worth of entertainment products each year.MTV is noted as one of the most spectacular global entertainment programming of the 1990s for reaching nearly 210 million TV households in seventy-one countries. Hollywood is not far behind, in 1995, 50.9 percent of Hollywood's total income came from international markets (40.7% in 1986, 41.8% in 1995) (Vogel, 1998). In 1999, the top four grossing movies at the international box office were Titanic, Jurassic Park, Star Wars: Phantom Menace, and Independence Day.4 Each of them made more money abroad than domestically, with Titanic earning more than twice as much overseas. This increase in domination of Hollywood movies across cultural spaces is cited as one of the most important factors for transforming cultural industries in other countries.

As a result, many countries now create policies to maintain control over their cultural content and to create a fostering environment for their own entertainment producers. In this context, France and Canada have known to be aggressive in implementing these policies but ironically American entertainment still dominates their markets. Seventy-five percent of the television watched every night in Canada is of foreign origin; four out of five magazines sold in Canada are foreign; foreign films take up 96% of screen time at Canadian theaters, and 70% of the content on Canadian radio stations is non-Canadian. Most of this foreign material hails from the U.S. Thus the current situation for global entertainment is conceptually complex yet culturally vibrant. As nations open up more and more, the spread of information and ideas increase and local markets in various countries are being flooded with foreign goods and concepts. Many economists/sociologists predict that this will lead to a "dumbing" down of individual cultures, and produce a new, global culture.

Is it safe to say that with the global expansion of US media companies comes the global expansion of US culture?