The Hindu : Moves to curb Hollywood dominance in films

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 09, 2003

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Moves to curb Hollywood dominance in films

By Gautaman Bhaskaran

Chennai Feb. 8. Hollywood's global dominance is well known. So too are its subtle and not-so-subtle methods to elbow out local films. The problem may not be visible in India, where, thanks to a large population which does not speak English, Indian language movies continue to enjoy good patronage.

Also, with subtitles still an impediment, Hollywood's efforts to invade Indian screens have not been as successful as American movie mughuls might have wished them to be because Indians still do not prefer to read subtitles as they watch images. And, it is enormously expensive to subtitle a work in several languages. What is more, it kind of looks strange for a Tom Hanks to break into Hindi or a Nicole Kidman to lisp words in Tamil if a Hollywood producer were to resort to dubbing!

In Europe, these are no obstacles. The French or the Germans or the Norwegians are perfectly willing to watch a subtitled picture, and it makes little difference if a Richard Gere or Jennifer Lopez is not European; the colour of their skin provides a unique affinity.

These plus points for Hollywood producers obviously work against the European local cinema in a climate where especially young viewers are crazy about slick Hollywood films, complete with technical marvels, fast pace and beautiful people.

Sick of seeing their own home-grown productions failing at the box-office, a group of French movie producers, directors and actors scored an impressive victory over Hollywood during the last World Free Trade accord in 1994: cinema and other forms of audio visual entertainment were excluded from the agreement. This compromise was called the "cultural exception.'' What this meant was that France and any other nation could grant preferential treatment to their own cinema, television and radio through subsides and quotas. Halls had to screen local films for a certain number of weeks in a year, thereby minimising the threat of Hollywood competition, which comes along with big bucks and huge publicity stunts.

Now, with the World Trade Organisation starting to negotiate on trade in services, the U.S., Japan and a few other countries are eager to reopen the debate on "cultural exception.'' But, this time, the French are not alone.

Last week, representatives from professional cultural organisations in 35 nations, supported by France and Canada, met at the Louvre in Paris in an effort to preserve the "cultural exception.'' More pertinent, they wanted UNESCO to organise a global convention that would seek to remove culture from WTO's ambit.

The French President, Jacques Chirac, warned the representatives that the battle ahead would be tough. He was right. For, American productions now account for 85 per cent of movie audiences all over the world. In the audio-visual trade during 2000 with just the European Union, the U.S. had a $ 8.1-billion surplus, divided equally between films and television rights.

Further, America continues to "barter'' bilateral and regional trade pacts for gains in other areas of commerce and business that often include the audiovisual sector, thus opening new markets for Hollywood films.

Yet, the French, largely because of their own Government initiatives, now have a flourishing movie industry, while things are not as bright in the rest of Europe. Take Spain, for instance: its domestic films accounted for a mere 12.5 per cent of the 2002 box-office share. American fare sailed past with a whopping 70 per cent! Elsewhere in Europe, local stuff could garner still smaller shares.

This reaffirms a widely-held belief among arts organisations the world over that Hollywood must not be allowed to blanket diverse creations. Uniformity is boringly suicidal. But the struggle to shift the debate on culture from WTO to UNESCO is bound to be fraught with frightening hurdles, especially now that the U.S. has decided to return to this global body after an 18-year absence.

Yet, the French are not as worried as they were nine years ago, when they had to take to the streets to defend their cultural rights. The discussion on the arts now enjoys enough attention.

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