Emilles Godnice Hampp

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IUP Communication
Entertainment Media

Globalized Films as America’s Mask

If someone brought up a conversation discussing the film industry, the first thought
that comes to our mind will obviously be America and Hollywood movies. Namely in
Indonesia, most audiences or movie lovers are more exhilarated and more up to date on
Western movies, in particular Hollywood movies rather than the Indonesian movies itself.
This is not a surprise since Hollywood movies are spread and watched by a massive global
audience. The dominance of Hollywood's film industry in the world pushed American culture
to be hegemonic towards the world. Whether intentional or not, America has utilized their
films to promote their country, and by having a massive audience globally, their films
become channels to influence their culture to the world. Being the most powerful country,
America has created big impacts on various aspects of a nation, including politics,
economics, and even entertainment. What is inside Hollywood movies are influencing people
around the world. From Rodman’s observation in 2012, he stated that though American
filmmakers are continuously influenced by movies from around the world, the scale of their
influence to the world is much higher.

Maisuwong’s journal discussed the possible motives on why America promotes their
cultures through their movies. After Maisuwong selected and watched 30 Hollywood movies,
he concluded several possible motives of America. He explained that America aims to
propagandize the good side of their country and to publicize their reputation. They also aim
to promote the American nationalism, in which they use it as a guarding tool against other
interference. Other than that, they aim to liberalize other countries, in this case, their movies
majorly promote freedom of expression that pushes people to be more aware of their rights.
Lastly, they aim to spread their lifestyle, values and ideology to the world. From those
possible motives, America is seen as focusing on creating their own culture and
implementing it to the whole world as if creating a universal culture. In this day of age, the
world has become more liberalized, it is easier for America to access people’s mind subtly.
Having the possibility to dominate the world from their movies, it could lead to America
creating a world as a community with one culture and that could be capitalism led by
America.

Cultural Effects of American Movies

The highlight of Hollywood’s influence on other countries is the American culture.

According to Maisuwong’s journal, he discussed three main expected cultural effects of
American culture to the world through Hollywood Movies. The three expected effects
discussed are language, lifestyle, value and ideology effects. American movies have
influenced people’s style of language, the way they speak and even their choice of words.
Majority of people outside America who speak English use an American accent. Many chick
flick movies play a huge part in this cause. For instance, movies like Clueless and Mean Girls
both contain popular phrases that are still often used by people, not just American, who speak
English.

American movies also have an impact on people's lifestyle. This can be seen from as
simple as their fashion to their personal emotions. A lot of American movies produce their
actors and actresses to have fashionable clothing, hairstyle, makeup, etc. Rachel Greene from
the show Friends hairstyle and fashion used to become very iconic that people try to
implement it to themselves. Today, Rachel Greene’s fashion style is having a comeback and a
lot of teenagers and young adults are inspired by her style. Unfortunately, the lifestyle effects
do not stop just positively. Other times, American movies portray behaviour that in most
countries is considered negative if those behaviors are absorbed by their people. For instance,
movies like Neighbours show American college life as partying, drinking, using drugs, doing
crimes and more. Teen audiences are more likely to follow and absorb those cultures.

Values and ideology is also an aspect of culture that American movies could impact
the world. From Maisuwong’s research, this aspect is the least impacted to the audience. Still,
there are certain changes in the audience’s behaviour and thought from the values and
ideology contained in American movies. America used their movies as an instrument to
create a great reputation for their country. During World Wars, it turns out America was not
really the best country. But World Wars movies produced by America show other countries
being bad, violence, brutal and cruel. Freedom is the main ideology that these movies show.
After watching war movies, people would think that freedom is something they have to gain
and fighting for it is the only way for it to be granted. These movies illustrate America as the
greatest nation that has benevolence, great morals, ethics, and further more. America is a
country that stayed neutral almost throughout the World Wars. But when the wars started to
spread to many nations in the world and turned more violent and cruel, America declared war
against the enemy of freedom. America helped other nations that were invaded and became
heroes. How does this all change people’s thoughts? It seems that after watching Hollywood
movies, people will start to believe that in order to gain peace they must have freedom and
must require more inside their lives.

Movies That Represents America

After all that we have discussed, we can say that the film industry was invented by
America. There is plenty of American culture and values reflected in movies. According to
pennlive.com, there are 13 movies that very much define America and their culture. Among
those movies are To Kill a Mockingbird, West Side Story, Steel Magnolias, Star Wars and
Jaws.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a movie about the depression era, where this young girl was
taught by her father, a lawyer, how to defend a wrongfully accused black person. The movie
shows that even in a community, a strong person with morals can stand up and do the right
thing no matter the consequences. West Side Story is a movie that is set in a multiracial, blue-
collar neighbourhood. This movie is about the conflict between white street punks and the
gang of Puerto Ricans. West Side Story received much criticism for portraying Puerto Ricans
wrongly. Steel Magnolias is a 1989 movie, talking about a friendship between several girls in
different phases of their lives. This movie shows how those several women supported each
other through  hard and good times (Adams 2015).

The movie Jaws was published in 1975 and tells the story of how these several men
fought against a white shark that invaded their quiet island. Foulkrod stated that this movie
shows different people with different backgrounds that come together for one goal. Jaws did
not only represent America but also created a tradition for summer blockbuster movies
(Adams 2015). Star Wars is also a movie that not just represents America in a way, but it also
effected a change in pop culture. Since the 1977’s Star Wars: A New Hope entered theatres, it
changed the whole landscape of entertainment. More movie sequels, reaching fans through
various ways such as merchandising, and tie-in books were made after Star Wars. Though
Star Wars did not create this tradition, it was the biggest factor on why these actions were
done. The success of Star Wars inspired other film studios. Since the mid-1980’s, popular
movies were unintentionally shaped for the audience to expect a sequel (Washington 2019
(Washington, 2019)). I, myself, feel like successful movies would easily be forgotten if the
story does not go on in another sequel. This sequel tradition is still happening today, it can be
seen from movies like Fast and Furious, Rambo, Justice League, and more.

Hollywoodization

After discussing several movies, how it represents America and how it created a
culture, a lot of Asian film industry have also taken inspiration from the phenomena. Asian
film production has adopted Hollywood movies production style, this is the process of
Hollywoodization (Ibbi 2013). Por Kuldip Rampal introduced the term Hollywoodization as
an idea of a process where Hollywood influences the film industry in Asia in adopting the
Hollywood manner of production, dressing or even imitating the name (Ibbi 2013).
Understanding this, there are a number of Indonesian movies that immediately come to mind
in accordance with the effect of hollywoodization. One of which is the 2019 movie Gundala
that resembles similar style with the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has released 12 movies throughout 12 years and has
become the most prolific franchises in the history of cinema. Overall, MCU has gained more
than $20 billion at the global box office, including its Avengers: Endgame that is the highest-
grossing film of all time (Whitten 2021). The MCU fandom has spread to the whole wide
world, creating audiences that are always anticipating their next productions. A lot of people
have become emotionally attached to the franchise, not just that, they are willing to invest in
a lot of the franchise’s merchandise. In the following five years, the Marvel Cinematic
Universe narrative will continue with at least a dozen more theater releases and at least 10 TV
episodes connected to the core universe (Whitten 2021).

The movie Gundala that was released in 2019, is an example of an Indonesian movie
that was an effect of Hollywoodization. Though the characters of Gundala were based on
Indonesian original comics, the adaptation to a movie and the style of production are similar
to American superhero movies. Gundala is a movie directed by Joko Anwar, this movie talks
about Sancaka, whose father was a factory worker who died in a protest. Sancaka was also
left by her mother, he had to live and survive alone on the streets of a town that day by day
became worse. Since then, he felt as if he needed to save and help people that are in need
(kumparan.com, 2020). Gundala is expected to have a sequel just like other American
movies, the production team has also created official merchandise that people can buy. A lot
of their production style proved the existence of Hollywoodization. Though the
cinematography is not as great as American superhero movies, a lot of Indonesian audiences
are proud of this movie. In this case, people are proud that Indonesia is now starting to be
seen as globalized from the result of the movie Gundala. But there are scholars who stated
that America uses movies as a tool to access the world and the world to access America, and
so maybe Indonesian movies are not globalized. Burrows created a statement saying that
“there can be world cinema, but rather than American cinema, it does not exist. What we call
global cinema is nothing else but the global americanisation of culture.” (Ibbi 2013).

America’s Hollywood movies are viewed by a mass audience from around the world.
Hollywood movies dominate the film industry. Their movies portray America and American
culture, audiences from different cultures are exposed to those movies. The strong wave of
Hollywood movies also brings their culture to the world. These cultures bring impact to many
aspects of a country and its society. It has been shown that the distribution of American films
changes the world’s audience’s language, lifestyle to values and ideology. Their domination
in the film industry also fabricated Hollywoodization. The process in which Asian production
styles are following how Hollywood produces their movies. The world is growing and many
countries are becoming more globalized. This can be seen from Asian movies changing and
starting to portray a more global culture. But this statement is still disapproved by several
scholars who point out that the cultures shown are not global cultures. America is the pillar in
the film industry, and what is contained in their movies creates a huge influence in the
world’s society, politics, economics and even entertainment. Therefore, plenty of modern
movies produced in Asia countries are bound to have followed American culture. In a sense,
this means that though it may seem as if the society of the world is globalized, it is truly
Americanized.
References

Maisuwong, W., 2012. The Promotion of American Culture through Hollywood Movies to
the World. International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT), 1(4), pp.
1-7.

Ibbi, A. A., 2013. Hollywood, The American Image and The Global Film Industry. Cinej
Cinema Journal, Volume 3.1, pp. 94-105.

Washington, J., 2019. Four Ways 'Star Wars' Changed Pop Culture. [Online]
Available at: https://www.cleveland.com/life-and-culture/g66l-2019/12/4b1f2a94797403/
four-ways-star-wars-changed-pop-culture.html
[Accessed Friday June 2021].

Adams, S., 2015. What movies define America? Here's our list of 13 must-see American
movies. [Online]
Available at:
https://www.pennlive.com/entertainment/2015/06/what_movies_define_america.html
[Accessed Saturday June 2021].

Kumparan.com, 2020. Sinopsis Film Gundala, Tayang Sore Ini di SCTV. [Online]
Available at: https://kumparan.com/sinopsis-film/sinopsis-film-gundala-tayang-sore-ini-di-
sctv-1u3bkrqvgYR/full
[Accessed Saturday June 2021].

Whitten, S., 2021. The 13 highest-grossing film franchises at the box office. [Online]
Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/31/the-13-highest-grossing-film-franchises-at-
the-box-office.html
[Accessed Friday June 2021].