Cultural flows in the global arena.

1. Insularity in the global
cultural center?
-Peaslee & Coates (Political
economy of foreign film, 2003)
- Biltereyst & Meers (The
international telenovela debate and
the contra-flow argument, 2000)
Schmid (Islam’s books go unread,
2001, IHT)

2. American culture & unequal cultural flows
-U.S. entertainment industries generate more overseas revenue than any U.S. industry except aerospace
(Center for Strategic and International Studies)
- 70% = Market share of European film market for American produced films
- 85% = Market share of Latin American film market for American produced films
- 6% = Market share of foreign films in U.S. (Source: Coates & Peaselee, 2003)
- More than 90 percent of pop music in world written predominantly in English (Holborow, 1999)
- 28% of world’s books published in English, 13.3% in Chinese, 11.8% in German (Graddol, 1997)
- Of books translated worldwide, 6% translated from non-English languages into English, 50% translated
from English to other languages (2001, Publisher’s Weekly)
- More than 80% of the works translated into other languages originate in four: English, German, French
or Spanish. English alone accounts for almost 57%. (2001, LA Times)
- EU/USA audiovisual sector deficit = $7 billion in 2002 (Phillipson); U.S. films captured 90 percent of
German/Dutch box office (1998), market share of EU films in US = 3 percent (1998) (Phillipson)
- CNN: 200 million households in 212 countries & territories
- Aljazeera English: Available in more than 60 countries and 140 million homes BUT no major U.S.
cable/satellite provider offers it
- 584,000 = Number of students from other countries studying at U.S. colleges/universities (2003)
-161,000 = Number of American college students who spent at least one semester abroad (2003)

3. American culture & unequal cultural
flows
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/intl/
http://www.imdb.com/boxoffice/alltimegross?region=world-wide
Global box-office receipts for all films released in 2010 reached a
high of $31.8 billion, an increase of 8% over 2009, according to the
Motion Picture Association of America.
(http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/24/business/la-fi-0224-ct-mpaa-
stats-20110224 )
DVD sales account for about half the profits for a movie.
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2012/how-much-does-
hollywood-earn/

4. -- Past 25 years imbalances have not diminished, but seem to have increased.
-- The supremacy of English is more pronounced than it ever was.
-- There is a slight decline in the positions of central languages such as French and
German.
- No indications that the proportion of book translations from peripheral languages has
structurally changed.
-- In the Netherlands stable: about 10% of all translations are from other than the three
main languages (English, German, French)
-- Books translated from more languages than 20 and 40 years ago. So there is an
increase in diversity in this sense. But the overall number of translations from
peripheral languages has not clearly increased.
-- The more central a language in international translation system, the more types of
books are translated from this language. Book statistics in the Netherlands distinguish
33 categories of books, ranging from `religion' and `law' to `prose' or `history'. Only
translations from the most central language, English, are represented in all 33
categories. Translations from German are found in 28 categories, translations from
French in 22 categories, from Italian in 10 categories, etc.
--UNESCO 2010 Report on Translation and Publishing

7. Highest
Grossing
Films,
Globally,
2016 in
millions of
dollars

11. Interbrand Best Global Brands 2012

12. Interbrand Best Global Brands 2012

13. Different ways to
measure cultural flow
- Music
- food
- clothing, styles
- Social media trends
- travel
- Raw materials
-Language
- people/immigration
-Dance
What matters?
- cultural origin
- cultural raw materials
- cultural voice
- cultural form
- cultural content
- Is everything a cultural hybrid?
- Is the U.S. a comparative anomaly in terms of unequal cultural flows?

14. Global cultural flows
" 'Some people are more in charge of (globalization) than others.
Some initiate flows and movement, others don't; some are more
on the receiving-end of it than others; some are effectively
imprisoned by it.' ”
--Doreen Massey (as cited in Tomlinson, 1991, p. 131).

15. HOMEWORK
MASTER CLASS with Dr. Julianne
Malveaux. Media, Gender, & the
Economy (Korbel Building)
Journalist, economist, commentator
and former Bennett College
President, has long provided African
American perspective on American
policy and the economy.
Room 1020, Korbel