Edward Copeland, mastermind and organizer of the online ""Best" non-English language films poll, reports that Danny Leigh at the film blog at The Guardian (UK) is wondering about our motives ("The view: Is Hollywood America?"):
Naturally it's nice to see this kind of attention lavished on some of history's finest yet lately neglected films; but between Copeland's poll (coming after The Guardian's similar exercise earlier in the year) and the surging popularity of foreign movies in the UK, I can't help wondering how much of the current enthusiasm for what was once known as world cinema is purely that - and how much a rejection of Hollywood at a time when the wider America is so reviled. In other words, is George Bush responsible in some odd tangential way for the rediscovery of Jean Renoir and Fassbinder?I see his angle regarding Hollywood hegemony, but to attribute anti-American (or, rather, anti-Bush) motives to this particular project is stretching things quite a bit.If so, it's clearly a phenomenon with differing degrees of enmity; few US bloggers are likely to share the anti-Americanism of many British audiences. And yet in both cases there may be an underlying notion of Hollywood as a tool of a cultural imperialism that, however murkily, reflects the actual imperialism of US foreign policy. Follow that logic far enough and Hollywood flicks aren't just dopey time-killers - but sermons straight from the bully pulpit.
When it comes to Hollywood movies, I thought we had the British (Robin Wood, Raymond Durgnat) and the French (the Cahiers du Cinema crowd) to thank for originally helping us see the artistic worth of American studio pictures once dismissed as "dopey time-killers."
On the other hand, according to the incessant drumbeat of Fox and the rest of the far-right media, "Hollywood" is America's greatest enemy (since Ronald Reagan left town, anyway) -- especially its outspoken movie stars and Jewish singers! Their favorite targets are Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin, George Clooney, Barbara Streisand... So, in this climate, if we really wanted to appear "anti-American" (by their definition) wouldn't we actually align ourselves with "Hollywood"?
But this effort to showcase films that aren't in our native tongue (including non-British films, if you want to put it that way) has nothing to do with contemporary politics. It has to do with looking beyond the English-speaking film-world to... the rest of the world and the diversity of movies beyond the five government-selected nominees for the annual Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, and the like.
I like The Guardian's film coverage, but they do have a peculiarly blindered view of non-English-language cinema. Look at this story/headline: "Ever been duped into seeing a foreign film?"
Foreign films, we're told, are enjoying an unprecedented boom at the British box office. A recent study from the UK Film Council claims that since 2004, 23 subtitled films have taken more than £1m at the box office, while in the 1990s, only nine foreign-language films crossed the £1m mark. While some cinephiles rejoice, however, others know all too well what lies behind this sudden renaissance.And this is different from the marketing campaigns for English-language (even "Hollywood") films... how? Sex, genres and movie stars (not necessarily in that order) have always been the main selling points for movies. Yes, it's long been a joke that English-language distributors make trailers that use a corny narrator and deliberately avoid using footage with foreign dialogue. But are people really "duped" by that approach -- any more than they are by every other trailer that grossly misrepresents some component of the film, whether it's the amount of sex or violence or action or laughs?Indeed, very often, the success of a foreign film in Britain lies in a shrewd pre-release campaign whose main aim has precisely been to deprive the film as much as possible of its foreignness. Instead of fighting famous British prejudices against all things foreign, distributors feel they haven't got any other choice but to accept them and play with it.
There are now marketing rules when distributing a foreign-language film in Britain. First, sell it as a genre film, a black comedy for Volver, a thriller for "Tell No One" or "The Lives of Others," a war film for "Apocalypto," a romantic film for "La Vie En Rose" and "A Very Long Engagement," an action movie for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," a horror film for "Pan's Labyrinth."
Second, make it look sexy at all costs: promote Penelope Cruz rather than Almodovar, Juliette Binoche rather than Michael Haneke....
Does anybody recall when "Swedish movie" was primarily a pop-culture euphemism for (soft-core) porn? Johnny Carson and Bob Hope made a million jokes about it. Let's not forget the American sales campaigns for some of Ingmar Bergman's early movies:
"Summer Interlude" (1951) -- retitled "Illicit Interlude" in the US: "The most INTIMATE love story ever told"
"Monika" (1953): "A Picture for Wide Screens and Broad Minds"
"Sawdust and Tinsel" (1953) -- retitled "The Naked Night" in the US: "DESPERATELY they fought the desires, the passions that dragged them down deeper and deeper into... 'The Naked Night'"
(Taglines courtesy IMDb.)
Jim, great post, but I'd quibble on the whole "imperialist views of the Bush administration" thing, and whether or not they're an aberration. Imperialism has been a big part of our government since WWII, perhaps earlier. There are many kinds of imperialism, most of which do not involve direct military invasion, and our government practices them all. But the threat of intervention by the U.S. military has always backed them up.
Hollywood has traditionally supported our imperialism in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. First, on the not-so-subtle side, are the jingoistic military films that celebrate the means by which we enforce our global reach. Recent examples include Behind Enemy Lines and Jarhead. These films, while they may have superficial, anti-war sentiments, affirm the basic righteousness of our military and its place as defender of our global hegemony.
The most damaging films are on the subtle end of the spectrum. These films--from Dodgeball to The Bourne Ultimatum to Pee Wee's Big Adventure--uncritically endorse or present as "normal" our materialistic, consumption-obsessed society. It's a society that uses an enormously disproportionate amount of the world's resources, and whose corporations rapaciously sequester the same at the expense of their rightful owners. Which is, of course, is just another form of imperialism.
God, I need a latte -- diatribes are such hard work.
Rick: Points well worth considering -- and it's absolutely true that Hollywood has long been one of America's most effective propaganda tools. (Likewise, the corporate-owned news media is inherently conservative, even when it's not overtly so -- always reinforcing a conservative "marketplace" view of the world.) I was just trying to use Leigh's "imperialism" rhetoric to turn the question on its head a bit and look at it from another angle.
He wonders if the "cultural imperialism" of Hollywood is being equated by these movie bloggers with the "actual imperialism" of the US government. I'm saying: 1) If this is so, why do American media outlets like Fox now consider "Hollywood" to be anti-American, and anti-Bush in particular?; and 2) Don't confuse a celebration of "non-Hollywood" films with a condemnation of Hollywood, or a condemnation of America (no matter how the idea of America is being willfully eroded from within by the people in power at the moment). Both of these are likely to be addressed much more directly. The latter idea -- though interesting -- smacks a little too much of the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" philosophy that has resulted in so much anti-US blowback over the decades.
"...few US bloggers are likely to share the anti-Americanism of many British audiences"
Says who? In a past life writing political posts online I found that practically every blog I could find had an anti-American Imperialist theme. While there are certainly right-wing bloggers, a few I tussled with personally, the overwhelming amount were liberal or progressive minded. Look at The Huffington Post and then try to find an equivalent right-wing version, where one site of enormous readership has well over a hundred right-wing conservative bloggers contributing. The biggest right wing blogs are single-authored, like the morally challenged Michelle Malkin or spin-offs from Fox News(sic) like Sean Hannity.
And yes, I do remember "Swedish" movies being linked to pornography. Particularly those entailing volleyball for some reason. I can't remember now if the movie Travis Bickle takes Betsy too was Swedish or not and I'm too lazy to stick the DVD in right now to check but it wouldn't surprise me.
Jonathan: Those so-called "conservative" sites/blogs (actually they're mostly Christian-right or neo-conservative, generally in favor of a Big Brother centralized government like Bush's) are out there, but they're pretty sad: townhall.com, redstate.com, worldnetdaily.com, cns.com, rightwingnews.com, foxnews.com... I have no idea what their traffic is like.
Danny Leigh is making the kind of boneheaded assumption of "you're either for us or against us". Part of the motivation for the foreign language list was that too many lesser Ango-American films were crowding out many better films in those top 100 films lists. Some of us like both foreign and domestic.
The list came in the wake of Bergman's and Antonioni's deaths. Period. End of story. I like Leigh, but he's stretching to make a political point that will resonate with his English readership. Of course, since we've all probably done our share of pandering, I can't get too upset...
To expand on a point Peter Nellhaus made: many US theaters still don't play foreign films unless it's, say, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.
I grow wary of modern American cinema, so it's nice having variety with non-english films (backtracking to another era in Hollywood history is a good change of pace too.)
Point is, it has nothing to do with my lack of faith in the current administration.
Besides ... I thought everyone agreed that top 100 lists -- any top 100 list -- was arbitrary. Why is the top 100 foreign films suddenly have this deep seated anti-American meaning?
Some of the above posters make an excellent point about the ways in which Hollywood films subtly promote a value system that, at best, can be described as in sync with the dominant cultural ideal of the Western world (that is to say, capitalism) and, at worst, can be said to be potentially destructive and harmful.
However, I think that foreign films can be equally guilty of promoting complacency in their own ways. Godard, often described as a radical, seems to me in "Breathless" and "My Life to Live" to be nothing more than a defeatist, putting forward the notion that we wile away our lives with existential chatter while ignoring the fact that our lives will abruptly end in tragedy and senseless death. After watching a Godard film, are you really going to view capitalism in a different way and change your life accordingly?
My point is that we should never make blanket statements about films from different nationalities (i.e. "Hollywood films are conformist and promote mindless consumption, foreign films are subversive and promote a questioning of the American value system). Even a filmmaker like Spielberg, often described as the "poet of the middle class", seems to me a far more subversive artist working within the Hollywood system than many give him credit for. "Schindler's List" has made me question the ways in which capitalism can allow for both heroism and exploitation within its structure more than any film I can think of (the only one close is perhaps "The Third Man").
I happen to believe that American cinema is still the richest one in the world (and I say that as a Canadian), but I seek out foreign films because there are so many treasures to be discovered. Why close yourself off to the possibility of something great emerging from another nation? It's not anti-American to enjoy some foreign films (just as it's not necessarily pro-American to enjoy American films or reject certain foreign films), it's simply a matter of open-mindedness and taste.
When people say they don't want to see a film that's subtitled, I don't think it's the reading they're objecting to, it's the IDEA of a foreign film (brilliantly satirized in "The Simpsons"' presentation of a Romanian film entitled, if I remember correctly, "Leaves of Autumn"). Sometimes I have come across foreign films that are the very embodiment of everyone's worst fear of a foreign film: boring, pretentious, with no connection to the reality of human existence (the overrated "What Time Is It There?" comes to mind). But that is a small price to pay when the treasures of films as rich (and accessible, I might add) as "Shame", "Les Diaboliques", "Tokyo Story" and, yes, "The Seven Samurai" are there to be discovered.
Just to be a contrarian, I am surprised no one has made the argument that the idea of this list is ghettoization (is that a word?) of foreign language films--i.e. an admission that they can't compete on level ground with the lingua franca movies. That would make it anti-anti-American if I don't fail to not make my point.
All: I've often objected to this "foreign language" label as a ghettoizing term. A feature film is a feature film (the term "feature" referring only to a running time of... what? 45 minutes or more?). I don't even think documentaries should be separated out, because they involve just as many aesthetic choices as any fictional features. (Is an improvised scene by actors significantly less "documentary" than a cinema verite-style scene in which the subjects say and do whatever they're going to say and do?).
That said, I do understand why some people want their nonfiction over here and their subtitled movies over here
Alex, I think you're right that it's the prospect of reading subtitles that bothers many. If they just watched the movie they'd know it's a fairly automatic and intuitive process. I know better, but when people would ask me about, say, "Pan's Labyrinth," I'd have to think for a moment before I remembered it wasn't in English. And a lot of movies (like "Schindler's List" or Herzog's "Stroszek") are in more than one language. I don't really notice, because subtitles have never been a conscious issue for me.
Dane: Perfect. Or is it "anti-anti-anti-American"? I do appreciate the notion that the very idea of creating a category for "non-English language" (non-documentary, non-silent, before-2002) films may sound rather... imperialistic? Still, that's not the intention. As I said in the original post, it's a self-conscious (good-hearted!) effort to highlight films that are too often ghettoized, not to ghettoize by categorization.
I know better, but when people would ask me about, say, "Pan's Labyrinth," I'd have to think for a moment before I remembered it wasn't in English. No long deep observation here just a simple, "Isn't that wild?" I do that myself all the time. I never think back to a foreign-language film and remember the dialogue as in anything but English. Reading subtitles is absolutely intuitive, it doesn't detract at all.
In my house, whenever I make any kind of crazed proclamation (I do it fairly often) I finish with, "Who's with me?" Kinski never uttered the words in English but that's how I remember it and everyone in the house knows what I'm talking about (we're a well-educated film house).
It's been my observation that a lot of the No Subtitles Wanted crowd do, actually, read. It may be on the lite side but reading is reading and I don't understand the idea that movies aren't "supposed to have text." Or that music is supposed to be about Luv and poetry is supposed to be about flowers, etc. Even people who aren't necessarily narrow overall, are often categorically narrow for reasons I can't fathom. I totally understand that on a given night you want something specific to "escape", but to set out these restrictions for movies (and the other stuff) is like Lent 365 days a year.
American Imperialism?
This is perhaps the most often heard rallying cry of the Islamofacists and their supporters in the Arab world and in the far left West. All turn their audiences’ attention to the putative crimes of American imperialism or the Zionist imperialism that imperialist America supports.
But even the most superficial review of American history from the Spanish-American war to the present will reveal that there is no American imperialism. It is a lie concocted by the “hate America” crowd here and in the Islamofascist world.
We freed Cuba after liberating it from Spain. We did not occupy it, annex it, or even establish any sort of control over it.
Regarding the two World Wars, one need only paraphrase Colin Powell at a recent conference in Europe: we have fought two wars to liberate our European friends from the totalitarian designs of the Kaiser and Hitler. We suffered the loss of hundreds of thousands of our brightest and our best in the course of those two wars, and we never asked for anything in return except enough land in which to bury our dead.
Has any German government since WWII objected to the tens of thousands of American troops on German soil protecting it from the expansionist intentions of the former USSR and pouring hundreds of millions of our dollars into the German economy? Does South Korea view the presence of American troops on its soil as a form of imperialism, or are we welcome protection against the insane nuclear aspirations of North Korea?
Regarding what our enemies have termed “cultural imperialism,” they are correct in so far as American language and culture have become the most powerful influences on other cultures throughout the world. But no one is forcing other cultures to buy our products, view our films, or speak our language. They do it because they find it enjoyable and beneficial to do so.
Ironically, it is the Arab history of conquest, expansion, genocide, and destruction that best fits the definition of imperialism.
Just thought I'd chime in with one added bonus to exploring foreign films (aside from the possibility of seeing a great one...I just saw "Bob Le Flambeur" for the first time and, man, what a cool movie!): when you begin to watch enough of the films, you actually start to learn the language! I've been recently viewing quite a bit of Godard and Melville, and damned if I can't understand and speak quite a bit of French (of course, being Canadian, we learned it in grade school, but everyone forgot it quickly). Perhaps that's the ultimate goal: to understand the language so thoroughly that subtitles are no longer necessary.
P.S. I'm doing my best to ignore the previous, out-of-left-field rant against Arab nations. That was bizarre, and slightly off-topic.
Did Christopher Hitchens change his name to David?
Haha nice Jonathan.
Just fyi David, quite a lot of South Koreans (and more and more Japanese) DO in fact object to American military bases on their soil.
However I'm not personally a cultural zealot. I pretty much adhere to the view of 'survival of the fittest', and if American movies, music, and soft drinks have become the most popular around the world, it's probably simply because most people like them. And I don't really see much wrong with that.
I'd better keep quiet about how I like Irish beer, and recently saw "The Lives of Others". It would be an open invitation for a German/Irish Coalition to come and protect its cultural imperatives in Amerika. How could I possibly protest?
I'd better keep quiet about how I like Irish beer, and recently saw "The Lives of Others".
http://cinemabuster.info