Globalization is not funny

Will you be staying up late this Sunday night to watch the Oscars? It's that time of year again when America gives out awards for the best films and the best people in films. But I read a news article this week that says - although it's nice to get an award - Hollywood cares less and less about what America thinks of its films.

Growing up in Europe, you probably don't think twice about watching Hollywood films and American TV series. But it would be quite different if you lived, say, in China or Brazil. To give you an example, China only allows 20 foreign films to be shown in cinemas each year.

Countries like China, Brazil and Russia are called "emerging markets" for lots of products made in the West - including films - and the movies fans who live in these countries are becoming very important for Hollywood. Why? Because there are more people in the rest of the world than there are in the US, and films can make lots of money in other countries - even if they flop at home in America.

Knowing this, the US film studios, who make most of the films we see, have started to make the kind of movies that people in Russia, Brazil and elsewhere will want to watch. That's changing the style of films that Hollywood produces.

You can already see the change. More films now have scenes in foreign instead of US cities. Increasingly, movies are being made with stories from books or legends that are popular - or at least known - in particular countries. This means that, in the future, fewer films will be about American culture.

Perhaps the most dramatic change is in the genres of films that are being made, because certain films travel better than others. Safe, family-oriented films are generally popular, for example – and of course there are always people who enjoy movies with lots of action and mindless violence.

What doesn't travel well is comedy. You'll know this already if you've ever seen awful, German-dubbed versions of foreign films that are only funny in their original languages. But what Westerners like us find hilarious is often just confusing - or worse - to people in other cultures.

Unfortunately, this probably means that Hollywood will make fewer films that are funny or have deep cultural roots. It's possible that as films become more "international", they'll also become less interesting.

Source: The Economist, 2011