Ah! The French again....

[Gurdur]

Last time I checked, I controlled my consumption of cultural products, not any giant company.

Really? Are you aware of the various blacklists and commerical efforts surrounding the creation and use of the blacklists in Hollywood during the McCarthyist years?
Or to take a much more modern and quite different example, are you aware of how much your choice of fruit and vegetables at your local supermarket is limited by the large corporations?

You're pretending to take power away from giant companies on behalf of consumers, but what you're really advocating doesn't transfer that power to consumers at all. It doesn' increase their choices, it RESTRICTS them. It takes power away from BOTH consumers AND corporations and gives it to government beaurocracies.

That would be simply not true in many cases. Here the original poster was showing that consumers were wanting to exercise political power of choice through govt. regulation. Got nothing to do with "beaurocracies".

 

[mumblethrax]

Fundamentally, I think the problem is that most of the world is receptive to American culture, while American culture is not at all receptive to the rest of the world.

For example, The Choir was seen by every single French citizen, made eleventy trillion euros, and was somehow elected to Parliament. In the US, it made less money than I can find in my couch. Titanic, meanwhile, made three times as much in worldwide receipts as it did in the US. So the US has a huge market for its films, and France has a much smaller market. If we assume that the cost of production correlates in some way to its perceived value, France is at a distinct disadvantage when competing for the French market.

Moreover, anyone who has ever dealt with the film industry, even tangentially, knows that it's nothing like a free market. There are vertical monopolies, oligopolies, and trade organizations that virtually guarantee that you won't be able to get your independent film out of the arthouses, if you even manage that. It's also a perfect candidate for price discrimination; Hollywood doesn't need to charge as much for distribution in India, they only need to recoup the costs of translating and distributing the film, so they can very easily penetrate the market and outcompete local films, except to the degree that filmgoers are seeking a different experience than Hollywood offers.

But it can still be asked why we should care if French movies get made or not. I guess that's just a matter of what you want the market to look like. Personally, I like being able to go to the local arthouse and having a choice between the best of international filmmaking, instead of choosing between Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, Doom, and Snakes on a Plane.

 

[Jorghnassen]

If only this cultural exception thing could prevent the MPAA from imposing stupid censored version of movies (such as Eyes Wide Shut, and to a much lesser extent, that last Bond movie) all over North America...

The only way to get complete control over what one wants to watch is through piracy.

 

[Orwell]

Fundamentally, I think the problem is that most of the world is receptive to American culture, while American culture is not at all receptive to the rest of the world.

For example, The Choir was seen by every single French citizen, made eleventy trillion euros, and was somehow elected to Parliament. In the US, it made less money than I can find in my couch. Titanic, meanwhile, made three times as much in worldwide receipts as it did in the US. So the US has a huge market for its films, and France has a much smaller market. If we assume that the cost of production correlates in some way to its perceived value, France is at a distinct disadvantage when competing for the French market.

Moreover, anyone who has ever dealt with the film industry, even tangentially, knows that it's nothing like a free market. There are vertical monopolies, oligopolies, and trade organizations that virtually guarantee that you won't be able to get your independent film out of the arthouses, if you even manage that. It's also a perfect candidate for price discrimination; Hollywood doesn't need to charge as much for distribution in India, they only need to recoup the costs of translating and distributing the film, so they can very easily penetrate the market and outcompete local films, except to the degree that filmgoers are seeking a different experience than Hollywood offers.

But it can still be asked why we should care if French movies get made or not. I guess that's just a matter of what you want the market to look like. Personally, I like being able to go to the local arthouse and having a choice between the best of international filmmaking, instead of choosing between Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, Doom, and Snakes on a Plane.

Exactly!

 

[Leif Roar]

No, I'm afraid you're simply wrong. If the art-house flicks you were interested in were popular, then people would fork over their own money for them in large numbers, and there would be no marketing and distribution issue. They AREN"T well-distributed and marketed because not many people DO want to go see them.

So why was Ishtar well-distributed and marketed?

It takes a lot of money to distribute and market movies. Small producers, the kind who make art-house flicks, don't have the money. While, in theory, more affluent players could decide to back such movies, in practice the major players in the movie industry are incredibly risk adverse (which is why the major studios seem to abhor original or ground-breaking movies, while producing tons and tons of low quality movies with roman numerals in the title.)

In addition, the major players are also movie producers themselves, and as such they would be competing with their own movies by giving support to third party ones. Every dollar of marketing given to "Le Femme Nikita" is one dollar more that the marketing of "Point of no return" has to fight against.

 

[CBL4]

Originally Posted by mumblethrax
Fundamentally, I think the problem is that most of the world is receptive to American culture, while American culture is not at all receptive to the rest of the world.

I think the only reason this is true at all is because Americans are mostly monolingual and English is so popular elsewhere. American's don't want understand French and don't want subtitles but most younger educated people speak English to some degree.

American do not reject foreign culture if the language problem can be overcome (e.g. karaoke) or does not exist (Beatles, Rolling Stones, Road Warrior.)

CBL

 

[mumblethrax]

I think the only reason this is true at all is because Americans are mostly monolingual and English is so popular elsewhere. American's don't want understand French and don't want subtitles but most younger educated people speak English to some degree.

American do not reject foreign culture if the language problem can be overcome (e.g. karaoke) or does not exist (Beatles, Rolling Stones, Road Warrior.)

Fair points, but I think there's more to it than that. France has a famously love-hate relationship with the US, for example, and the US has set the standard for what is cool for most of the past 60 years. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones owe a great deal to the blues, after all, and Mad Max to American car culture. They are palatable to American audiences because they are, to some degree, imitative, not just because they are in English.

 

[Ziggurat]

Really? Are you aware of the various blacklists and commerical efforts surrounding the creation and use of the blacklists in Hollywood during the McCarthyist years?[/B]

Um... What year is it today?

Or to take a much more modern and quite different example, are you aware of how much your choice of fruit and vegetables at your local supermarket is limited by the large corporations?

My choice in vegetables is primarily limited by the fact that I, and most of the people where I live, am unwilling to pay significantly more money for a larger variety of fruits. Safeway doesn't keep exotic fruits off the shelf because of some conspiracy, they do it because people won't pay enough above what it costs. It's really quite siple.

That would be simply not true in many cases. Here the original poster was showing that consumers were wanting to exercise political power of choice through govt. regulation. Got nothing to do with "beaurocracies".

Governmental regulation becomes a "one size fits all". When one group exercises their choice through the government, it stiffles the choice of those in the minority. In some cases, this is a necessary trade-off for democracy to work. When it is not necessary, it becomes a restriction of freedom. And I do not understand how you think bureaucracies are not involved: they are NECESSARILY involved in ANY government regulation.

 

[Ziggurat]

Fundamentally, I think the problem is that most of the world is receptive to American culture, while American culture is not at all receptive to the rest of the world.[/B]

You have GOT to be kidding me. Have you taken a look at Saturday morning cartoons lately? It's like half of them are Japanese imports. We're PLENTY receptive to foreign culture. It just needs to be appealing. Some cultures are quite capable of producing appealing cultural products (Japan is one example for TV, Hong Kong is an example for movies, there's countless examples in terms of cuisine), some are not.

The US is very good at producing appealing cultural products in no small part because the production of those cultural products IS a free market with lots of diversity. We make what people want, because that's the only way to survive in a free market. It's really only natural that cultural products produced in more closed and controlled environments (France, for example) are not nearly as appealing to a broader audience. That's got nothing to do with the US being less receptive, and everything to do with us being more competitive.

For example, The Choir was seen by every single French citizen, made eleventy trillion euros, and was somehow elected to Parliament. In the US, it made less money than I can find in my couch. Titanic, meanwhile, made three times as much in worldwide receipts as it did in the US.

Because Titanic was globally appealing. It was a smash hit in India and Japan, for example. But tell me: the Choir may have been a smash hit in France, but was it a smash hit in Japan? Was it a smash hit in India? No. Why? Because it wasn't appealing to them. Don't pretend that the two are equivalent, because they aren't. Titanic may have been junk, but it was junk people all over the world wanted to see. The Choir was not.

So the US has a huge market for its films, and France has a much smaller market. If we assume that the cost of production correlates in some way to its perceived value, France is at a distinct disadvantage when competing for the French market.

One word: "Waterworld".
Big budgets don't dictate success.

There are vertical monopolies, oligopolies, and trade organizations that virtually guarantee that you won't be able to get your independent film out of the arthouses, if you even manage that.

You can if you've got something people want to see (note that people wanting to see something doesn't necessarly correlate with it being "good"). Blair Witch, anyone? They didn't guarantee it stayed out of theaters, they latched onto it and propelled it to the top the moment they smelled profit.

It's also a perfect candidate for price discrimination; Hollywood doesn't need to charge as much for distribution in India, they only need to recoup the costs of translating and distributing the film, so they can very easily penetrate the market and outcompete local films, except to the degree that filmgoers are seeking a different experience than Hollywood offers.

Conversely, production costs are much lower in India, they can produce in the local language without having to dub or subtitle, and their films are much more directly relevant. Bollywood is doing quite fine, they're hardly starving under an oppressive onslaughtof American films.

But it can still be asked why we should care if French movies get made or not. I guess that's just a matter of what you want the market to look like. Personally, I like being able to go to the local arthouse and having a choice between the best of international filmmaking, instead of choosing between Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, Doom, and Snakes on a Plane.

Can't you already do that? Seems to me that protectionist regulations aren't going to lead to more great French movies, all it will do is ensure the existence of more mediocre and bad French movies. It also seems to me that your number-one complaint is that you're dissatisfied with the consumer choices of your fellow citizens, and want the government to end-run around that to produce your personally desired result.

 

[Ziggurat]

I think the only reason this is true at all is because Americans are mostly monolingual and English is so popular elsewhere. American's don't want understand French and don't want subtitles but most younger educated people speak English to some degree.

Americans are quite willing to put up with subtitles if the movie is appealing enough. "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" didn't seem slowed down by its subtitles at all, because it was a damned fun movie to watch. I don't think the problem with French movies in the US is a language one, I think it's mostly that the stories are usually not interesting to US audiences. They're often boring, depressing, or both. The French do not make competitive movies.

 

[Orwell]

Zig, I think we shouldn't treat culture as just another consumer good.

A little fun exercise: replace movies with books...
"Americans are quite willing to put up with translations if the book is appealing enough. "Zazie in the metro" didn't seem slowed down by its translation at all, because it was a damned fun book to read. I don't think the problem with French books in the US is a language one, I think it's mostly that the stories are usually not interesting to US readers. They're often boring, depressing, or both. The French do not write competitive books."

 

[Leif Roar]

They're often boring, depressing, or both. The French do not make competitive movies.

Which particular boring and/or depressing French movies in particular did you have in mind?

 

[Mycroft]

Zig, I think we shouldn't treat culture as just another consumer good.

A little fun exercise: replace movies with books...
"Americans are quite willing to put up with translations if the book is appealing enough. "Zazie in the metro" didn't seem slowed down by its translation at all, because it was a damned fun book to read. I don't think the problem with French books in the US is a language one, I think it's mostly that the stories are usually not interesting to US readers. They're often boring, depressing, or both. The French do not write competitive books."

I don't think it makes a huge difference.

When books are translated, it's not necessarily obvious. When movies are translated, you either have subtitles or dubbing, which can be annoying if the story isn't good enough to take your mind away from it.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Zig, I think we shouldn't treat culture as just another consumer good.

Why not?

The French seem to be rather obsessed with their culture, trying to do everything from ban words that came over from English to attempting to cleanse the internet of things the French disallow. Yet English is chockful of French words and nobody objects. Why would they? It's part of history. Cultures always borrow from each other. Only for some reason people object to it happening...why? If a custom is good enough to be borrowed, why stomp on it? The Japanese love Xmas. They saw it was fun and cool, and took it and modified it to trim out all the bits they didn't care about. Why not? Is there some rule that says we're supposed to keep our eyes on our own papers, or something?

Funny how it's the cultures that embrace and absorb outside alien cultural influences that go on to be so successful at exporting their own, whereas the ones that insist on "cultural purity" are the ones that nobody's interesting in appropriating anyway.

 

[Ziggurat]

Zig, I think we shouldn't treat culture as just another consumer good.[/B]

Why not? The only grounds I can see on which to treat cutural products differently is free speach: that is, free speach concerns should make cultural products LESS regulated than other consumer goods. But that's not what you're arguing, is it?

A little fun exercise: replace movies with books...
"Americans are quite willing to put up with translations if the book is appealing enough. "Zazie in the metro" didn't seem slowed down by its translation at all, because it was a damned fun book to read. I don't think the problem with French books in the US is a language one, I think it's mostly that the stories are usually not interesting to US readers. They're often boring, depressing, or both. The French do not write competitive books."

Sorry, but I'm really not seeing what conclusion you expect me to draw from this thought experiment. You'll need to spell it out a little more explicitly, because I'm not really seeing a problem here.

 

[epepke]

Nobody is preventing no one from seeing, or eating what they want. Nobody is arguing that US cultural production should be banned or anything of the sort. See, the problem is not what people want to watch or eat, but how culture is distributed and marketed. For instance, I don't expect a small Canadian movie production to have the access to the same numbers of view screens as star wars. I also don't expect them to spend as much in marketing as a big US studio production does. They don't have the money nor the means. But see, I want to be able to watch the small canuck film when I feel like it, and I have no objections to my government making up a few rules to make sure that the small canadian production gets on TV or on a few view screens.

The best instance of that I know of is when the Second City troupe got in trouble with the authorities for not having enough Canadian Content. They said, "well, we're Canadian, and the show is from Canada; isn't that enough?" The authorities said "no." So they put in a segment with a couple of guys in toques eating back bacon, drinking beer, and calling each other "hoser" in the thickest stereotypical Canadian accents. This was wildly popular, and they went on to do a fairly decent version of Hamlet only with beer and flying dogs.

Most of the troupe emigrated to the US.

 

[CBL4]

Originally posted by Ziggurat
Americans are quite willing to put up with subtitles if the movie is appealing enough. "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" didn't seem slowed down by its subtitles at all, because it was a damned fun movie to watch.

There are exception but I cannot think of many. Do you know another popular movie with subtitles?

I would bet there are more popular Australian films than foreign language films. I would also bet there are more top 40 Australian singers than songs in a foreign language. Is it because Australia is more culturally similar than the rest of the world or is it English?

CBL

 

[TragicMonkey]

There are exception but I cannot think of many. Do you know another popular movie with subtitles?

I would bet there are more popular Australian films than foreign language films. I would also bet there are more top 40 Australian singers than songs in a foreign language. Is it because Australia is more culturally similar than the rest of the world or is it English?

It's the language.

Subtitles require more work, because you have to read and you might miss action while doing so. Takes practice. It doesn't help that most Americans are used to lots of action occuring on the screen, so they fear they'll miss something in the time it takes to read a couple of lines.

I like foreign films myself, and would rather deal with subtitles than deal with horrible dubbing. Nothing kills a good movie as fast as crappy voice-acting from the dubbing actors.

As for another popular movie with subtitles, that Mel Gibson Jesus thing seemed to do pretty well.

 

[Orwell]

Why not? The only grounds I can see on which to treat cutural products differently is free speach: that is, free speach concerns should make cultural products LESS regulated than other consumer goods. But that's not what you're arguing, is it?

Simple: culture = identity.

By the way, consumer culture puts some pretty obvious limitations on free speech, since all it cares about is reaching the greatest number and making a profit.

Sorry, but I'm really not seeing what conclusion you expect me to draw from this thought experiment. You'll need to spell it out a little more explicitly, because I'm not really seeing a problem here.

I just wanted to make the notion that cultural products are not like any other consumer products clearer, since we typically (or at least I do) hold books in greater respect than films. And I wanted to make your comment about french films sound even dumber that it already was.

 

[WildCat]

But see, I want to be able to watch the small canuck film when I feel like it, and I have no objections to my government making up a few rules to make sure that the small canadian production gets on TV or on a few view screens.

How many mountie musicals can you watch, anyway?