Molti lo temono, molti lo auspicano, tutti lo constatano: è l’imperialismo di Hollywood nel mondo del cinema.
Chi studia la globalizzazione delle culture fa giocoforza del cinema un caso privilegiato, i costi dell’opera mettono la settima arte sempre a rischio di monopolio…
… In no other cultural area is America’s export prowess so strong. Movies are very expensive to make, and in a given year there are far fewer films released than books, CDs, or paintings. These conditions appear to favor dominant producers at the expense of niche markets…
Ma anche a rischio “concentrazione”…
… Moviemaking also is prone to geographic clustering. Many cultural innovations and breakthroughs are spatially concentrated. If a good Italian Renaissance painter was not born in Florence, Venice, or Rome, he usually found it worthwhile to move to one of those locales…
Ecco allora che si crea un epicentro da cui si detta legge al mondo (del cinema): Hollywood. Un caso di “imperialismo culturale” che vede gli americani nelle vesti dei padroni e i poveri europei in quella degli sfruttati…
… European movies, in particular, have failed to penetrate global markets and also have lost ground at home…
Vediamo meglio quali sono stati i mali che hanno ucciso – o azzoppato – il cinema europeo. Bè, sono tanti…
… television, excess subsidies, demographics, language, the size of the American market, and Hollywood’s more entrepreneurial environment….
Gli USA hanno un vantaggio evidente: il mercato interno…
… The United States has at least one natural advantage in movie-making—it has the largest single home-market for cinema in dollar terms (although total attendance is higher in India)….
Ma non si tratta di un vantaggio decisivo, in fondo l’hanno sempre avuto, mentre le fette di mercato europee sono crollate solo di recente…
… The United States, for instance, has been a large country for a long time, but only recently have European movies held such a low share of their home markets. In the mid-1960s, American films accounted for 35 percent of box office revenues in continental Europe; today the figure ranges between 80 to 90 percent…
Poi, a Hollywood ci si occupa solo di un certo tipo di cinema, non puo’ essere la causa di tutti i mali…
… Furthermore, only certain kinds of cinema cluster in Hollywood. In a typical year the Western European nations make more movies than America does. In numeric terms most of the world’s movies come from Asia, not from the United States… The Hollywood advantage is concentrated in one very particular kind of moviemaking: films that are entertaining, highly visible, and have broad global appeal…
Gli europei investono poco nei loro film poiché esportano poco. Ma perché, al contrario, Hollywood esporta tanto, al punto che la Francia ha deciso politiche protezionistiche?…
… As recently as 1985, French movies outgrossed the Hollywood product in their home market. Since that time, Hollywood’s ability to capture so much of French film revenue (often up to 80 percent) has come largely because French revenues have declined, not because Hollywood revenues have risen so much…
Gli anni ‘70 hanno segnato un punto di svolta…
… The turning point in this dynamic appears to have started in the 1970s. Before the 1970s, most national European cinemas still experienced a significant degree of export success, whatever problems the industry as a whole had…
Ma probabilmente la televisione ha giocato un ruolo preminente rispetto alla produzione a stelle e strisce. La cosa sarebbe avvalorata dal timing…
… In Germany, 800 million movie tickets were bought in 1956, but only 180 million were bought in 1962. At the same time, the number of television sets rose from 700,000 to 7.2 million. In the U.K., cinematic attendance fell from 292 million in 1967 to 73 million in 1986. In France, movie attendance dropped from 450 million in 1956 to 122 million in 1988…
La crisi “da televisione” avrebbe fatto il vuoto e Hollywood fece irruzione in quel vuoto.
Hollywood sarebbe diventata più forte proprio quando l’Europa era più vulnerabile.
La crisi da TV aveva colto gli USA nel decennio precedente, ma Hollywood reagì alla grande rintuzzando l’attacco…
… Hollywood responded actively to this challenge. Starting as early as the 1950s, American moviemakers responded to television by making high-stakes, risky investments in marketing, glamour, and special effects. In the 1960s American directors found greater latitude to experiment with sex and violence; this trend was formalized with the abandonment of the Hays Code in 1966. By the 1970s, Hollywood movies had become significantly more exciting to mass audiences than they had been a decade before. Jaws and Star Wars were emblematic of this new era…
Anche la demografia contribuì ad affossare l’Europa. I vecchi non amano uscire la sera, nemmeno per andare al cine…
… In most countries, individuals older than thirty-five no longer go to movies in significant numbers, preferring instead to watch television. Moviegoing is the province of the young. Most European countries suffer twice here. First, they have older populations than does the United States. Second, the traditional “art house” styles of European film are better suited to old audiences than to young ones…
D’altronde, il modello di business era diverso: gli USA puntarono sul noleggio delle cassette, l’Europa sui diritti TV.  Ora, fare film per la TV rende il prodotto meno esportabile. La qualità degli effetti, per esempio, è scarsa visto che la TV non li valorizza…
… Glitzy special effects are rare. We find these same features in made-for-TV films in the United States. A few of these films are excellent (such as Steven Spielberg’s early Duel), but most are undistinguished and boring, despite the immense talent in Hollywood… The home video market, more prominent in the United States, is more competitive and demanding than television, and imposes greater discipline on the moviemaker…

Collegato al ruolo della TV è quello dei sussidi…