American TV Shows’ Dominance

Both of these articles The International Language of Tube by June Thomas and Who’s Afraid of a Few Subtitles? The Rise of International Television by Alison Willmore discuss the roles of international TV shows on the global scale and their chances to become as popular as the American ones. Both of these authors encourage the rise and popularity of non-American TV shows; however, both of them acknowledge the factors that may hinder their attractiveness and fame.

In the article The International Language of Tube Thomas analyzes the popularity of American and non-American TV shows. The article examines Danish, Norwegian, British, French, Spanish and other non-American shows and the reasons of their high ratings and excellent reputations. Thomas also talks about the barriers that may impede the popularity of these shows: language and accessibility. According to the author even though Danish show Borgen is extremely well-known and high-rated, because there was only Danish version of the show, non-Danish people could not watch it. “Unfortunately, since I don’t speak Danish, that source was of no use to me” writes Thomas and describes the language barrier as the primary difficulty of non-American shows to become well-known globally. Thomas also highlights the problem of accessibility of the non-American shows that are available only on the national TVs that are not accessible worldwide.

In the second article Who’s Afraid of a Few Subtitles? The Rise of International Television using the specific examples Willmore describes the American method of remaking the foreign TV shows. The Returned is the illustrious example of non-American TV show that is adopted and re-made by the Americans. Willmore quotes the part of Charlotte Koh’s, Hulu’s head of content’s, words who states that “We’re used to sharing our stories with the rest of the world. We’re not used to dubbing or subtitling, really” (Koh). Koh’s explanation makes it clear why Americans tend to remake the foreign TV shows instead of subtitling or translating. Also, according to Willmore American shows are much more accessible globally, than French or Danish ones.

What are the Major Factors that Impede Non-American TV Shows’ Popularity?

It is obvious that every small country in the world has even one high-quality TV show that is popular in that country or region but totally unknown globally. What are the factors that make American shows much more well-known than non-American ones? The answer is obvious: non-American TV shows are not in English and generally people are not enthusiastic to read subtitles; non-American shows are less accessible; themes of the non-American shows are usually not global, but more culturally constructed; American TV shows are much higher-budgeted and have extremely high-quality technological effects.

All these factors hinder the popularity of non-American TV shows on the global scale. Even though there are some extremely well-known exceptions –The Returned, Borgen, Spiral, still non-American TV shows that are produced in smaller countries or in non-European countries tend to be popular only inside the boarders of that specific countries. Georgian well-known TV show The Detectives can be considered as the great example of this case. Since Georgia is a small country, not culturally or economically influential or popular, even the most popular TV shows like The Detectives are not able to become well-known outside the country.

Why The Detectives Can Never Become Popular Outside Georgia?

Even though The Detectives is very similar to the other investigation TV shows, it can never achieve success outside Georgian boarders. The first reason is its language; The Detectives is in Georgian and nobody except Georgians in the world speaks Georgian. The second reason is the setting of the story – it is set in the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi. Why would the members of the non-Georgian audience like to watch the TV show that is set in the city that they have never even heard of? The third reason is accessibility – one can only watch The Detectives on the national TV channels. Even though there are web pages where The Detectives can be watched, there are no English or dubbed versions. The fourth reason is the lack of high-budget, technology and high-quality effects. Even though this show is not specifically on Georgian culture and the themes are universal, based on the real accidents, these four factors are absolutely enough for the members of the foreigner audience not to watch it.

The Detectives is only one specific example of the TV show that is produced in the small culturally “minor” country; however, the reasons of non-American TV shows’ less attractiveness are the same for all foreigner TV shows. Despite the popularity of some exceptional non-American TV shows, the majority of them are not known at all. I believe there are many elaborated, sophisticated, non-American shows that would have been astoundingly popular, but are absolutely unknown because of the cultural and technical reasons.

 

Hollywood’s Strategies and Blockbuster Movies

 

The both articles Why Hollywood Is Caught in the Blockbuster Trap — and Won’t Break Free Anytime Soon By Anita Elberse and The Rise and Rise of the Comic Book Movie By Thomas Winward discuss today’s immensely popular comic book characters, blockbuster movies, “blockbuster era”  and Hollywood’s strategies of selling the Lowest Common Denominator movies.

In her article Anita Elberse greatly focuses on Hollywood’s one of the most successful strategies – new project’s resemblance to an existing hit. According to Elberse since the taste of the consumers constantly changes, this method guarantees the movie’s success. Elberse uses her own data to demonstrate the immense popularity of the “non-original” movies that are actually based on other hits, books, video game, or the comic book. The incomes of these “non-original” movies are striking, “In 2011, non-original films collected $6.6 billion at the box office, significantly more than the $3.5 billion grossed by original films” (Elberse). It is remarkable that according to the income, among these blockbuster movies the films based on comic books are the leading ones. According to the author Hollywood’s primary motivation is to make the movies successful in the marketplace. Usually the financial investment and the popularity of the products are directly proportional, thus Hollywood high-profitable blockbusters tend to be the most lucrative and popular.

The second article by Thomas Winward answers to the significant question about the comic book movies: what caused this storm of their popularity (Winward)? The author analyzes the story-line of the comic book movies particularly the relationship between the Joker and Batman and arrives to a conclusion that these movies are based on today’s actual political and international problem: “how much bad does it take to achieve good” (Windward)? Even though these blockbuster comic book movies may cover serious political/social issue the reason of their popularity lies merely in their special, high-quality effects, action and fighting, high-budget, and Lowest Common Denominator. These movies are products that produce the most of a company’s profit and hold up the rest of the organization.

What Is Hollywood’s Strategy Focusing on Blockbuster Comic Book Movies?

There are many factors that determine the popularity and the market success of the comic book movies. It is obvious that Hollywood uses its own strategies, how to make these movies immensely profitable as well as popular throughout the universe. This strategy includes: 1.The Lowest Common Denominator, 2. the extremely high-budget/the impressive, special effects, and 3. resemblance to an existing hit. These are the primary components that determine the profitability as well as the fame of Hollywood’s blockbusters. 

The term Lowest Common Denominator means that the movie is appealed to as many people as once as possible. In my opinion this is one of the most influential strategies of Hollywood. To examine the comic book movie The Dark Knight, the problems illustrated for example the battle between good and bad, morality, right vs. wrong, are easily comprehensible for all types of audiences, despite their age, sex, social status and etc. The Lowest Common Denominator is definitely the key to success of these blockbuster movies.

It is obvious that all these comic book blockbuster movies are extremely high-budget films. The fact that the majority of the high-budgeted movies have impressive technological and high-quality effects, music, design also attracts the audience. The movie The Amazing Spider-Man is the typical example of the high profitable comic book movie with high-class effects. Hollywood invests enormously large amounts of money in these potentially successful blockbusters while these movies prove to be successful and become extremely profitable. In my opinion this strategy of releasing high-budgeted blockbuster movies itself guarantees their popularity and productivity.

Would the Amazing Spider-Man or The Dark Knight or any of the comic book movies have been so globally popular if not the theme’s, motif’s and characters’ resemblance to an existing hit? I think this resemblance is one of the key factors of their success. To take an example of all these popular heroes, themes and story-lines, the large amount of them are re-makes of the older versions. This method of Hollywood, focusing on the earlier popular hits guarantees the attractiveness and thus profitability of their remakes.

It is obvious that Hollywood uses the sets of strategies to make its high-budgeted movies world-wide popular and thus immensely lucrative. From one perspective these blockbusters are indeed successful in the marketplace; however, from the other perspective creativity, originality, and artistry is lost. Unfortunately, because of their Lowest Common Denominator, high-budget and fame, these comic book blockbuster movies substitute the earlier elaborated, refined, sophisticated, and original movies.