Introduction
Globalization has brought about several changes in the operational processes across the world. One of the major changes that can be noted is the increased media communication that is growing in significance (Blakley 2001). The globalization ideology is has sparked a debate among scholars, with others believing that it has led to the spread of Americanized international lifestyle, commonly characterized by the phrase (‘McWorld’). The network consensus makes cross-border communication the primary trend of globalization. The proponents of globalization define it as a tremendous lifestyle destruction process that is working through the media (Bolton and Olsson, 2010). The elites highlight the advantages of social pluralism in the world in which societies can easily be influenced especially with the development of technologies such as the Internet, satellite television TV and modern telephone systems (Chopra and Gajjala 2011).
The film industry has also developed as a result of these advances and has taken up the transnational approaches in their production. Globalization has led to the creation of films through international collaboration, and be sold to viewers all around the world. This implies that films developed in Europe end up in America, Africa and other continents. As a result, these audiences often attempt to mimic the foreign cultures portrayed in these films. Kung-Fu films are popular in every region around the world. Throughout the last millennium, the film industry filled a very strong position that has been prolonged beyond the civilized world. The film industry films, appearance, styles, celebrities, and manufacturing designs set styles in the United States as well as overseas. Despite Hollywood’s wide-reaching hegemony, however, culturally and nationwide the film sectors have always performed and continue to play a crucial role.
Rumours of social imperialism appeared in the post-World War II under various titles, such as neo-colonialism, soft imperialism, and economic imperialism. Over the years, it has obtained numerous other brands such as media imperialism, structural imperialism, social reliance and synchronization, electronic colonialism, ideological imperialism, and communication imperialism. Such concepts are explaining social imperialism appeared in the Sixties and obtained popularity by the nineteen seventies. The study motivated the UNESCO, to put in place systems that can help in monitoring international information flows.
It is clear that the international business of films produced in the United States is expanding. People are taking into account such progress and how it has influenced their cultures and lifestyles. This paper seeks to explore the US hegemony that is applied across the world through the use of films.
1 Literature Review
Hegemony is the power or popularity of influence that one country may exercise over another or others. The phrase hegemony is acknowledged to Antonio Gramsci, an Italian scholar, who developed the concept (Chopra and Gajjala 2011). His opinions, based on the concepts of Karl Marx, led to the concept that media are resources are powerful tools that the elites use to perpetuate their power, prosperity, and position by popularizing their own viewpoint, lifestyle and values. Moreover, the media exclusively present components into individual knowledge. In such a way, the Walt Disney Company uses its influence and power as part of the media to put its opinions into its movies that are changing the global cultures.
2 The US hegemony in a globalizing world
Some countries produce more than one hundred movies on an annual basis such as Europe, Italy, China, India, Japan and the United States. The USA is not the largest manufacturer with regard to numbers of movies, but is the largest exporter of the films it produces to all other countries. The USA exports more movie and television series to other nations than it imports. In most situations, the balance of trade is in favour of the USA. All other countries, both developed and developing are net importers of movies and TV content and most of what they transfer is from the USA.
American creative sectors in movie, TV, music, books and software generate more trade revenue than any other industry in the country, such as farming, airplane and vehicles. They also dominate the globe in thoughts and pictures of Los Angeles; New York and other US centers (Blakley 2001). On the contrary, only a minor section of the United States theatre and TV airtime are given to material from other countries. Although most USA citizens may have no or little knowledge of other global cultures from other countries, most people from other countries outside the USA are familiar with the symbols and language of the United States and the general lifestyle. Neoliberal globalization has increased western – the US and Western European countries – and, in particular, Hollywood’s reputation in the international movie business (Hamm and Smandych 2005). This has been majorly through the privatization of media possession, a particular Western European market, opportunities in the former Communist China, and development of satellite TV, the web and the DVD, combined with deregulation of nationwide transmitting in European countries and Latina America (Bolton and Olsson, 2010).
Majority of countries have had to open their social markets due to strong requirements from a few western countries, leading to the rapid increase of Hollywood’s influence in the international social market (Blakley 2001). The US government and the film market degrees recognize that the film and TV production sectors remain some of the most highly competitive all over the globe. As a representation of its scale with regards to the variety of production companies, US movie manufacturers obtained as many as 3190 businesses. Cross-border offers in the movie circulation and distribution market included 22%. Cross-border offers were not noticeable in the 1980’s, but they have progressively increased since the mid-1990s (Hamm and Smandych 2005). The US obtained the largest variety of movie submission companies in other countries. During the overall period examined, the US obtained 283 foreign submission companies (28.5%), followed by the UK and North America. Although there are some highs and lows, particularly right after 2001 due to the successive economic downturn, the US has been the primary car owner in cross-border offers, in submission, together with production and distribution (Chopra and Gajjala 2011).
World film distribution is managed by the US via preparations that would be unlawful locally because of their risk to competition. Consequently, social products from the film market colonize the cultures of international viewers and help form a hegemonic lifestyle, which has confronted the lifestyle of other societies and the creation of different methods of life (Bolton and Olsson, 2010). While neoliberal social policies and media investment meet, transnational movie companies have taken key positions and have occupied the international movie market with their investment and social products (Blakley 2001). In other words, the complex governmental characteristics at the point of nationwide state authorities implementing liberalization measures and the transnationalization of the film market have been commonplace (Mirrlees 2013).
2.1 Post war media policy in the U.S
Cultural policy is an essential element in the worldwide popularity of the America movie market. The objective of the America government’s movie plan is to eliminate movie allocations in other countries so as to ensure that their movie marketplaces are start to America movies. At the beginning of the past several decades, UNESCO recognized the remarkable characteristics of social products and confirmed the right of country declares to apply guidelines that secure and offer social appearance in a Conference on the Security and Marketing of the Variety of Cultural Expedition. While Europe, particularly Italy, ardently reinforced the convention, the USA rejected to sign it and intensely lobbied against it. How do worldwide audiences understand America films? One presentation is that different audiences understand America movies in different ways and that the film market purposely generates story components that are vulnerable to ‘plural definitions to suit different viewers (Hamm and Smandych 2005).
In the twenty first century, the US government has extended its aspect in liberalizing the worldwide social market with bilateral speaks, often leading to free business contracts (FTAs), between the US and other countries, such as Sydney and South Korea (hereafter Korea). While the significant objective of the FTAs is fair competitors in worldwide business, it also focuses on that nationwide government authorities must follow start and clear rulemaking procedures as well as non-discriminatory rules in several areas, such as the removal of material allocations in the social market (Bolton and Olsson, 2010). Therefore, any account seeking to understand what is currently unfolding in US movie and social plan must engage with two viewpoints. On the one side, the problems should be theorized in regards to the rise of the governmental financial purchase – neoliberal financial and social guidelines – because the US has used neoliberalism as a fundamental tenet in pushing other countries to start their social marketplaces. However, more significantly, modern problems should be contextualized traditionally in regards to FTAs, because FTAs, as aspect of a new worldwide and business plan, have considerably modified the landscape of the worldwide movie market (Chopra and Gajjala 2011).
The US, as the most highly effective nation-state, has utilized FTAs to be able to force several nation-states, such as North America, South America, Australia and South Korea, to lower their limitations to The film market movies, particularly since UNESCO started to discuss the Conference on the Security and Marketing of the Variety of Cultural Expedition in 2001 (Mirrlees 2013). Several countries have had to start their social market, leading to the rapid increase of Hollywood’s impact worldwide. The film market has ongoing to control the worldwide box workplace, taking more than 60 percent share of the worldwide movie market over the last several decades, and The film market has increased its presence in several countries, such as South Korea in the middle of the FTAs (Craig, Douglas, and Bennett 2009). Neoliberalism can be explicated as a modern condition of capitalism most appropriately described by four signs, not only privatization, deregulation and liberalization, but also globalization. In the social market, the significant neoliberal styles have been towards liberalization and the globalization of the household market to worldwide companies, particularly those from the film market. Transnational social areas, such as the film market degrees, have occupied the worldwide market with their investment and social items and have become significant players.
Thus, several theoreticians claim that the aspect of condition power is reducing or decline as a significant power in the worldwide economic system and in the lifestyle of the present borderless globe. They claim that financial and governmental globalization deteriorates the value of the nation-state, which in turn certainly also deteriorates media organizations, which, like public transmitting media, are linked with the nation-state and are required to serve the entire population. Lifestyle no more remains linked with set places such as town and country, but requires new definitions that indicate prominent styles growing in a worldwide perspective. Countries can thus be seen to be losing their social power over their own communities at the same time as their financial and governmental sovereignty.
The US State Division has considerably reinforced the film market by driving other countries to start their social marketplaces, which means the US government has been greatly involved in the social business problem by challenging that other government authorities should take a hands-off approach in the social area (Chopra and Gajjala 2011). The main theme of US worldwide social plan has been to flourish a network of worldwide business depending on its condition power, which is among the most powerful on the globe (Kawashima 2011). As the primary of a liberalized business program, the US can media its investment advantages to maximum impact. As such, the worldwide benefit of the film market movies is evocative of the complicated traditional relationship between globalization and the nation-state (Bolton and Olsson, 2010). Although the question of Hollywood’s worldwide attraction is very common among students of transnational economic system and lifestyle, many accounts fail to address the complicated governmental characteristics at the point of the nation-state of the US, nationwide government, and the transnationalization of the film market.
The US government’s assistance for its movie market has a lengthy history, and this technique has highlighted the value of information-based items, making the US State Division a highly effective government agent on part of such areas as software applications, insurance, banking and entertainment recently. The social market has lengthy been essential to this technique, but has obtained even more importance recently, because it is one of the most successful areas for the US economic system in worldwide business (Mirrlees 2013).
Since the Second World War, US plan has generally reinforced the liberalization of worldwide business – that is, the removal of synthetic limitations to business and other disturbances, such as charges, allocations and financial assistance that countries use to secure their household areas from worldwide competitors. The US government sought and eventually secured a liberalization of the audiovisual market from the first General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) discussions in 1947 (Blakley 2001). As western countries started to settle on the preparations that would regulate the postwar globe, theatre was high on the list of excellent problems, and the film market wanted to recover its international marketplaces. The US State Division released a round letter, ‘American Motion Pictures in the Post-war World’, encouraging worldwide embassies to offer advice and assistance to the film market companies. Another example of the US government’s assistance for the film market that officially started with a 1918 Act of The legislature allowing companies the right to operate as a legal cartel in worldwide marketplaces (Craig, Douglas, and Bennett 2009). When the member countries of UNESCO discussed the aspect of lifestyle and social diversity in 2001, the US had to rejoin the worldwide social organization, because the worldwide society cannot be managed successfully any longer. After the Sept 11 enemy attacks in the US, the government believed that US security could no more be described in simply army terms and UNESCO would offer an ideal community in which to advertise a genuine and positive image of the US through its program of cross-cultural conversation (Hamm and Smandych 2005).
2.3 Cultural imperialism (America being the Empire/ its popularity and it impact on the world)