Contraflow of communication

The globalization of Western media has been a major influence in shaping media cultures
internationally and has tended to increase Western cultural influence, but this chapter will
examine how the flow of media products is more complex and not just one way.
As we have seen in previous chapters, the US media’s imprint on the global communication
space is profound: US-based companies own much of the infrastructure of global
communication from satellites to telecommunication hubs and cyberspace, as well as multiple
networks and production facilities.
As a result of the increasingly mobile and globally networked system, in which content can
circulate immediately around the world, the global media landscape is nevertheless in a
process of transformation and the traditional domination of Western, or specifically
American, media is being challenged by the availability of media from major non-Western
nations, from television news in English provided by countries such as Russia (Russia Today
(RT)) and China (China Global Television Network (CGTN)), to entertainment from India
(Bollywood), Brazil (telenovelas) and South Africa (infotainment and entertainment).

From Japanese animation to Korean and Indian films, from Latin American soap operas to
Turkish dramas and soaps to Arabic, Chinese and Russian news, over the last two decades the
media world has witnessed a multilingual and multifarious growth in media content from the
majority world.

Such growing visibility of what has been called ‘subaltern flows’ is an indication of the
changing power structures in the world. such as in the emergence of the BRICS grouping
of countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). This has coincided with the
relative economic decline of the West, to complement, if not challenge US hegemony in the
field of media and communication.

The media of the BRICS countries – television news from Russia and China and
entertainment from India, Brazil and South Africa – are increasingly important components
of the global media landscape.

Brazilian telenovelas are exported to more than 100 countries and are particularly popular
within the Lusophone world, in which Brazil continues to dominate the media.

South Africa-based, pan-African networks, such as M-Net and NASPERS – the online and
entertainment giant – make it a major presence on the continent.

Growth of China
In the arena of international communication during the past two decades has been the rise of
China as a major economic power. As the world’s largest country in terms of population and
one of its oldest continuing civilizations, China has a significant cultural role in the era of
globalization.

The accelerated global growth of China’s media parallels the extraordinary expansion and
internationalization of the Chinese economy in the last two decades.

By 2016, China had become the largest importer for more than seventy countries and
accounted for about 10 per cent of all imports globally. Chinese companies are becoming
increasingly competitive in global markets, making sizeable investments and acquisitions all
around the world.

According to the IMF, China’s share of global GDP in terms of purchasing power parity
(PPP) has grown from just over 4 per cent in 1990 to nearly 18 per cent in 2016, while that
of the G7 countries – the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Canada and Italy –
shrank from nearly 51 per cent in 1990 to about 31 per cent in 2016.

Since it joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, China imports have surged
from $243.55 billion to $1.68 trillion in 15 years, an average annual growth of more than 10
per cent (IMF, 2017).

China has used an array of strategies to ensure that its viewpoints are visible in the global
media-sphere including television documentary and feature film. In 2014, addressing the
Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs, President Xi Jinping announced
that China should ‘give a good Chinese narrative, and better communicate China’s messages
to the world’

As part of disseminating this message to the world, the state-funded ‘central media’ – Xinhua
News Agency, China Central Television, China Radio International, People’s Daily and the
English-language China Daily – were generously funded for global expansion.

This funding came as part of a broader government effort to create internationally

competitive media conglomerates in China that would make ‘China’s voice heard
internationally’.

in 2000 and targeted at developing countries, particularly in Africa, Nairobi has emerged as a
hub for Chinese media’s presence in Africa, while StarTimes, one of China’s largest pay-TV
companies,

The Xinhua News Agency, too, has expanded its international operations, being particularly
strong in the developing world and claiming to articulate a Southern news agenda.
 In 2017, China Radio International was broadcasting in sixty-one languages via its six
overseas regional hubs and thirty-two correspondents and had affiliations with seventy
overseas radio stations and eighteen global internet radio services.
This funding came as part of a broader government effort to create internationally
competitive media conglomerates in China that would make ‘China’s voice heard
internationally

As the main instrument of Chinese global communication, CGTN available in French,

Spanish, Russian and Arabic – is emphatic about its mission: ‘we cover the whole globe,
reporting news from a Chinese perspective. Our mission is to create a better understanding of
international events across the world, bridging continents and bringing a more balanced view
to global news
reporting’ (CGTN website).

Disney is collaborating with China’s Ministry of Culture to help develop the country’s
animation industry, and with Shanghai Media Group – one of China’s largest media
corporations – to make films for global audiences (Barboza and Barnes, 2016).

Despite the strict regulation of imports of foreign films and entertainment programming, the
global media giants are extremely keen to consolidate their operations within what is one of
the world’s largest and fastest-growing media markets (PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC),
2016; Kantar, 2016). Co-production – in state jargon ‘officially assisted production’ –
between Hollywood studios and Chinese companies has become increasingly common: forty-
two films were co-produced between 2002 and 2013, although this often requires the scripts
to be edited not to offend the sensibilities of the Chinese government (Kokas, 2017).

Chinese government strategy of ‘going to sea by borrowing a boat’ – namely – using

Hollywood resources to transform the Chinese film industry, seems to be working.

although Hong Kong-made ‘action films’ have attracted international audiences since the
1970s, as have internationally recognized Chinese actors like Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan,
Maggie Cheung Manyuk, John Woo, Michelle Yeoh and Gong Li (Morris, Li and Chan
Ching-kiu, 2006).

The global success of such films as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Hero (2002)
and House of Flying Daggers (2004) opened up Chinese films to international audiences,
helped in no small way by marketing, advertising and co-production with major Hollywood
studios.

Another form of contraflow is Chinese investment in Hollywood to remedy some of these

deficiencies, which the Dalian Wanda Group has been doing with investments in movie
theatre chains in the United States and Europe, as well as owning production companies such
as Legendary Entertainment.
In 2016, the Dalian Wanda group and Sony Pictures entered into a strategic alliance to co-
finance Sony Pictures’ releases in China. Wanda Group, together with other Chinese
companies, is also investing in sports media – one of the most profitable and global genres,
while the Chinese presence in global financial media is also rising:
Chinese media companies are also developing Chinese content, ranging from
historical dramas, feature films, game and chat shows, to news and current affairs, potentially
for a global audience (Keane, 2013; Bai and Song, 2015). Chinese creative industries have
come of age in the last two decades, facilitated by activist state intervention and developing a
‘creative economy’ in which
‘value is produced through innovation, both techno-scientific and aesthetic’ (Chumley, 2016:
2). The growing Chinese presence on the internet and in shaping cyber-capitalism.

The other Hollywood – the Indian film industry

India is among the few non-Western countries to have made their presence felt the global
film market. Particularly significant is India’s $2.5 billion Hindi film industry based in
Mumbai (formerly Bombay), the commercial hub of India, thus ‘Bollywood’. In terms of
production it is the world’s largest film industry: every year a billion more people buy tickets
for Indian movies than for Hollywood films and, after China India has the largest movie-
going audience in the world. Given the size of India’s 1.2-billion population and the place
that cinema has among people’s leisure activities, cutting across regional, class, gender and
generational divisions, it remains the most popular form of entertainment (Kaur and Sinha,
2005).

main languages, notably Tamil, Bangla, Telugu and Malayalam. More films are made in
India each year – more than 1,000 in 20 languages – than in Hollywood,
but their influence is largely confined to the Indian subcontinent Hindi films are shown in
more than seventy countries and are popular in the Arab world, in central and South East
Asia and among many African countries. However, in terms of earning revenue from film
exports, India is no match for the United States – India’s share in the global film industry was
extremely small. One reason for the popularity of Indian films among other developing
countries is their
melodramatic narrative style, often a storyline which emphasizes dichotomies between the
poor-pure-and-just versus rich-urban-and-unjust, enlivened with song and dance sequences.

Films have also contributed to the burgeoning popular music industry and a mainstream
Indian film is unlikely to succeed without prominent musical support. Although most of the
films are social and family-oriented dramas, Indian film-makers have also experimented with
other major genres of cinema, such as historical, mythological, comic, supernatural and
‘Western’.

In 1995, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, starring Shah Rukh Khan, was the first major film to
focus on an Indian family in Britain – the film had a ten-year uninterrupted run in a Mumbai
cinema until 2005. Director Karan Johar’s 1998 love story Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, his 2001
family drama Kabhi Khushi Kabhi
Gham and 2003 love triangle Kal Ho Na Ho – the first mainstream Indian filmset entirely in
the West – did extremely well in the overseas market. These successes have ensured that
Indian films are being seen as a serious export earner.

Indian film exports have witnessed a steady increase in the past two decades.
Industry estimates suggest that the entertainment and media sector in India was worth $19
billion in 2016 and it was expected to grow (FICCI-KPMG, 2017).

The globalization of Indian films can also be witnessed in the trend of non- Indian actors
appearing in Indian films. British actor Toby Stephens, previously cast in the 2001
commercially and critically acclaimed Lagaan, played a key role in the 2005 historical film
Mangal Pandey: The Rising, set in the colonial period, while British actress Alice Patten
starred in the 2006 hit Rang De Basanti. Since then, many more foreign actors have appeared
in Hindi films including Irish actor Clive Standen in Namastey London (2007), Brazilian
actress Giselli Monteiro in Love Aaj Kal (2009), American actress Sarah Thompson Kane in
Rajneeti (2010), Australian actress Rebecca Breeds in Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013) and
Chinese actress Zhu Zhu as the leading lady in the 2017 film Tubelight, set against the
backdrop of the 1962 India–China border war

Hollywood–Bollywood collaboration started in earnest in 2002 with the release of the

action thriller Kaante, the first mainstream Indian film to employ a Hollywood production
crew, while Mangal Pandey: The Rising, became the first Indian-made movie to be released
worldwide by 20th Century Fox.
Since then, major US studios such as Columbia Tristar (Sony Pictures), Warner Brothers,
Disney Pictures and Fox have been investing in Bollywood. One transnational player who has
succeeded where others have failed is Rupert Murdoch with Fox Star Studios, benefiting also
from the extensive presence of News Corporation aligned companies in the Indian media
sphere, notably STAR Plus TV. It also distributed My Name is Khan, a 2010 film almost
entirely set in the United States, which addresses a global audience about the issue of anti-
Muslim discrimination as a result of 9/11 – a sign of the maturing of mainstream Indian
cinema. The film, which was released in sixty-four countries, and listed by Foreign Policy
journal as one of the top ten 9/11-related films, provided an important alternative perspective
to the wide-spread anti-Muslim prejudices in the West.
On the other side of the coin, Indian companies have also started to invest in Hollywood.
Their most prominent collaboration was the 2012 Oscar-winning film Lincoln.

One notable example was Disney’s 2016 Bollywood production Dangal, which made $217
million in the international market, with China accounting for $178.3 million of this figure,
making it the most successful Indian film internationally.

Bollywood is also increasingly being watched not in

theatres but on laptops and other mobile digital devices, with both Amazon Prime and Netflix
having special rates for Indian films for the global audience. Yet the industry continues to be
stunted by various factors, including a poor communication infrastructure as well as piracy,
which accounts for an annual loss of substantial revenues. Nevertheless, according to industry
estimates, Indian film industry revenues are likely to touch $3.7 billion by 2020, primarily
driven by mobile digital delivery mechanisms.

The dramatic rise of Turkish TV dramas

By 2015, Turkish TV dramas were being watched by more than 400 million people in over
140 countries (Tali, 2016), being especially popular in the Middle East. where there has been
a perceptible decline in the consumption of American popular cultural products (Edwards,
2016).

Starting in 1990 with the Star 1 channel, private broadcasters bypassed the law to provide
commercial content to Turkish television. During this ‘pirate period’, the Turkish consumer
enjoyed US commercial television for the first time and domestic ‘creative innovation’,
where cultural taboos were broken and censorship was challenged (Aksoy and Robins, 2000).
As a result, Turkish popular culture was reflected on screen, with relatively liberal TV series
seeing huge domestic success throughout the 1990s.

The expansion in the Middle East began in 2008, when the MBC first broadcast the Turkish
TV drama series Gümüş (Silver), which tells the love story of Mehmet and Gümüs and ran
very successfully in Turkey between 2005 and 2007.

One example that demonstrates the popularity of Turkish programming is Muhteşem Yüzyıl
(Magnificent Century, 2011–14), a lavish soap opera about the Ottoman empire and Sultan
Suleiman the Magnificent, with his beautiful concubines, living in the Topkapi Palace. This
series has been seen in diverse countries, including Greece, many within the region of the
former empire (Alankuş and Yanardağoğlu, 2016).

By 2016, more than 70 Turkish TV dramas were reaching 400 million viewers worldwide in
more than 80 countries, across the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia
and South Asia, with new markets opening up in Latin America.

These television shows earned Turkey $130 million in export sales in 2012, up from only $1
million in 2007 (Williams, 2013). By 2015, global exports of Turkish TV series were
bringing in revenue of $350 million (Tali, 2016), while some industry estimates suggest that
Turkey is projected to have total global export figure in this area of $543 million by 2019 and
in some estimates as high as $1 billion by 2023 (PwC Global Entertainment and Media
Outlook 2015–2019).

As a 2017 study noted, romantic soap operas exported to the Middle East, promote ‘an image
of Turkey as an ideal society where Islam co-exists with modernity, where men and women
are equal, and where capitalism and consumerism do not erode traditional social and religious
values’ (Jabbour, 2017: 152).

Some scholars have characterized this as ‘neo-Ottoman cool’ (Kraidy and Al-Ghazzi, 2013),
referring to Turkey’s growing soft power role in successfully combining Islam with
democracy, while others have contested this idea suggesting that this ‘neo- Ottoman cool’
does not register the full dynamics of contingent relations between economy, politics,
ideology, and media flows

However, while the successful expansion of Turkish television programmes into the Middle
East and Greece has conjured a series of ‘cultural proximities’ (Straubhaar, 1991) in these
regions, which has been and could be utilized as soft power by Turkey, it is also argued that
this ‘soap opera colonialism’ does not necessarily translate into regional hegemony, as the
soft power success of Turkish television has not resulted in hard power success in diplomacy
and geopolitics (Yörük and Vatikiotis, 2013).