Crossover Cinema

Continuing from the last blog post, I further analyse the concept of the globalised film industry through to crossover cinema. Crossover cinema is used to illustrate an emerging form of cinema that crosses cultural borders at the stage of conceptualization and production and hence manifest hybrid cinematic grammar at the textual level, as well as crossing over on terms of its distribution and reception (Khorana, 2014). This is the incorporation of two different cultural background influencing each other to create an end product, and in this case, a movie. Attempts at cross culturally producing a movie has not been most successful, however, the Hollywood movie, “Slumdog Millionaire” based in Mumbai, India, was a successful attempt at crossover cinemas, winning 8 Oscars, even though the confidence for its success was slim.

According to Khorana S, the inter-text and the extra-text of the cross cultural films is intrinsic to a crossover film. This leads to the emergence of issues such as Bollywood’s attempt at promoting cross cultural film in hopes that one day it will make it into Hollywood and their renowned film statuses. My understanding of this is that if Bollywood’s main aim is to enhance its cross cultural elements in a film in hopes that western audiences would pick up on it and decides to watch it, their search for a Western audience may not come to fruition (Khorana 2014). There is an underlying understanding that there is a certain practice that Hollywood adopts and its secret has been a success for a long time now, other global film industries has been trying to figure out what this practice is and trying to walk in Hollywood’s footstep.

Another issue that arises is audience’s interpretation of a foreign film. Watching today’s news on Middle Eastern countries, all we see is violence and war, murder and rape. Audiences unknowingly succumb to the conception and perception that the media is broadcasting and thereby influences our opinion on Middle Eastern countries. A crossover film may harm a country’s reputation because of an opinion from non-Arabic viewers. Sensitive issues such as suicide bombing and religions in Arabic movie are reflected as “crazy” and “insane” to Hollywood viewers because of their limited understanding of the cultural meaning in a film and the realistic lifestyle of the Middle Eastern and their religion. Here’s a video on the perceptions of Arabs and Americans film:

All in all, what we must really understand is that the success of crossover film industry definitely play a role in portraying globalisation all around the world. The Slumdog Millionaire film was a huge success as it portrays Mumbai poor lifestyle in contrast to the rich lifestyle at Taj Mahal and the fated love story of the characters.

Reference:

Khorana, S 2013, ‘Crossover Cinema: A Genealogical and Conceptual Overview’, Producing a Hybrid Grammar, pp. 1-7.

Globalisation: We Are The World

(source: progressivechristiaity.org)

Globalisation, to put simply, makes up every aspect of our lives, from checking the weather forecast in the morning, making a freshly roasted cup of coffee to typing up this very blog post, it involved some sort of globalisation traits. It is an international community influenced by technological development and economic, political and military interests characterised by interdependence, interactivity, interconnectedness, and the virtually instantaneous exchange of information. (Khorana 2014)

Helen & Kean (2002) found the birth of globalisation started as far back as the thirteenth century, when Marco Polo first started trade routes in spices and Christopher Columbus in Tobacco. Then on, it grew and evolved to the mid 1800s up to the World Wars with start-ups in infrastructures, technological advancement and world trade boomed. The great depression sent countries protecting their economies and financial status and from 1945, globalisation stabilised and continues to flourish until today.

Globalisation has many positive and negative effects, whether they cancels each other out is still a mystery yet to be solved. It is undeniable that globalisation has allowed countries to freely trade goods and services encouraging worldwide competitions and boosting the economies. Consumers and the market benefits from the increase in consumer choices and the profit margins of countries. Information are able to travel to their destination instantaneously at the click of a button, this availability of information almost immediately increases production and efficiency. Advances in technologies raises the standard of living and quality of life while increasing investments worldwide

However, where there is success, there is repercussions. The downside of globalisation shows unfair trade practices, wealthier countries have more accessed to education and information allowing them to monopolise the poorer country’s economy. Comparing a third world country to a wealthy country, small business in the third world country would never be able to expand their trading because of the domination of multinational company. Their inability to invest in technology because of their financial status lowers their productivity and efficiency. Investors in wealthier easily outsource their labour markets to these third world countries to take advantage of their cheap labour wages and skills availability.

As the saying goes, the richer gets richer and the poorer gets poorer. In order to reduce and eradicate this inequality, perspectives on globalisation should change, whereby globalisation should be harnessed for the benefit of the world’s citizen, trade liberation should be encouraged and governments are in place to provide stability for the market. Globalisation should be used for poverty reduction. Organisations such a World Vision are In place to challenge those unjust structures which prevents the poor to flourish in the worldwide economy. Our perspectives of globalisation should be that the citizens of earth strives to live in peace and harmony, helping out one another, because we are the host on earth, and it is everyone’s responsibility regardless.  

 Reference:

Khorana, S 2014, ‘BCM111: International Media and Communication’, powerpoint slides, BCM111, University of Wollongong, delivered 6 July 2014.

Ryman & Kean, H 2002, Globalisation: the poor must come first, World Vision internal paper, delivered June 2002, <http://www.worldvision.com.au/Libraries/3_3_1_Aid_Trade_and_MDGs_PDF_reports/Globalisation_The_Poor_Must_Come_First.pdf> 

Appadurai, A (1996) ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’ Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 27-47

O’Shaughnessy, M and Stadler, J (2008) ‘Globalisation Media and Society (fifth edition) Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 458-471