Does It Make Sense To Speak Of ‘World Cinema’ In The Global Age?

Globalisation and Cinema Industry

Does it make sense, in the Global Age, to speak of ‘World Cinema’?

It is evident that there have been extreme changes in the world cinema in the past century. The development of cinema has been sequential. At first the primitive technologies were used to bring the cinema to the audience and it gradually developed and nowadays advanced technologies are used for creating the cinema. It is known that after globalisation the relationship within various countries have changed significantly. Globalisation has not only affected the cultural aspects of a nation but it has also helped in cross-cultural combination.

Globalisation has paved way for the nations to explore the cultural aspects of various countries (Vaughan, 2014). In recent years the communication within nations has been easier and cheaper due to availability of the transportation system as well as the new technologies to communicate through audio and video processes. After globalisation there has been increased integration within nations and it has also affected the cinema industry. In recent times, it is evident that the cinema industry has broadened and it has reached beyond the national borders. Cinema from one country is shown in other nations. There are various categories of cinema that can be emphasised here. The categories may include war themed movies, historical movies, crime themed cinema etc.

If cinema is to be considered as one of the key media by which we may imagine places, it should also be regarded that place also happens to be the template for imagining cinema (The Global Internet Generation Comes of Age. 2009). Thus, Cinema has been analyzed as a way of expressing specific to geographically diversified culture. Within taxonomy of cinema, privilege is granted towards national cultures. Those studies that foreground auteur analyses appeal frequently to national cultures for explaining particular attributes of film texts. Certainly it may be argued that in the global age, speaking of world cinema makes complete sense and that framing it as national cinema would be considered vulnerable within an era of globalization. It has been identified by scholars engaged into globalization from several disciplinary perspectives, that our senses of place and space have been reconfigured by globalization (Sinkwan, 2008). They further underpin the important role played by mass media within the complex process of how we imagine as well as frame ideas of place, and associated ideas of culture, community, identity, nation, and society. Far from considering place irrelevant however, re-conceptualization of place is quite encouraged in context to intensified global social relations. It implicates place and culture.

The obvious question that may be posed by the term “world cinema” is that if there exist various sort of national cinemas, styles, genres, etc., how can the concept of world cinema make sense? Globalization did not cause place to lose its relevance so much as it has been intensifying struggles with place to the extent of being social construction (Rapf, 2004). Places have no natural boundaries or confined in scale. If at all it exists, it is drawn by social actors. An impact of globalization is the diminution of place being the basis for culture or identity, improved transformation networks and postmodern thinking and that communication enables imagining communities depending on race, gender, sexual orientation, class or ethnicity.

World Cinema and Cultural Diversity

As a representation means, cinema offers audiences the pictures of our physical as well as social world, reflecting us the place where we live, share community with, and different from each other. Cinema is nothing but a depiction of history and stories explaining how we got here as well as the reason behind our community to be as it is (National identity in global cinema: how movies explain the world, 2011). On participating in the production, cinema is said to bring us together as people or workers who determine own social horizons. If the cultural work devotes to depict a given place, it also defines that place being all that cultural workers undertake. Then, place is not just depicted symbolically, but also embodied by characters of a film and all workers. The contemporary world is attributed by the mutual bond between time as well as space. With increased facility, frequency, and immediacy, social relations are said to extend further (Chaudhuri, 2014). After globalisation there has been increased integration within nations and it has also affected the cinema industry. In recent times, it is evident that the cinema industry has broadened and it has reached beyond the national borders. Cinema from one country is shown in other nations. There are various categories of cinema that can be emphasised here. The categories may include war themed movies, historical movies, crime themed cinema etc.

International migration has been common since ages, and capital mobility as well as global circulation of cultural products is quite common (Irwin, 2010). The innovative part of globalization is its intensity within the immediacy of contemporary social relations. Regional, international, intranational, forced or voluntary migration have been common experiences. It has been noted by Russell King () that only very few people in western world in present day live all throughout the same place. He remarked a trend towards increasing diversity of countries of migrant source as well as change within pull and push migration factors. The concept of world cinema as transcultural communication media envisions this idea of cinema neither as means of tradable cultural specificity nor as heterotopias of experience liberated from place constraints, however as place for recognition as well as representation of cultural variance (Holden, 2010). Globalization did not cause place to lose its relevance so much as it has been intensifying struggles with place to the extent of being social construction. Places have no natural boundaries or confined in scale. If at all it exists, it is drawn by social actors. An impact of globalization is the diminution of place being the basis for culture or identity, improved transformation networks and postmodern thinking and that communication enables imagining communities depending on race, gender, sexual orientation, class or ethnicity (Global Mexican cinema: its golden age: ‘el cine mexicano se impone’, 2014).

World cinema is said to contain everything and meant for everyone. It bears a complete difference set to the extent that these may become salient within the overarching procedure of trans-cultural communication. This concept bears the promise of bringing everyone together; thereby transforming that remains commercially effective within the means of intellectual transformation. The most essential matter here is the epistemological dimension or non heterotopian view of cinema as one aspect which underpins as well as bears every possible variance of cultural differences. At situations, where established tools to define cultural objects of cinema appears to be a failure at situation in particular where the national cinema concept lost its force. This concept of world cinema vows to re-establish the aspect of unity of cinema object by making it one with everything (Brands, 2008). If the principle of national cinema is applied to the idea of world cinema, it may be identified that in world cinema the issue that national cinema has with the inter-textual character, seems to disappear suddenly. In context of world cinema, coherence is established due to inter-textuality, referring that all sorts of various cinema are associated since all refer to each other, implicitly or explicitly, directly or indirectly, and consciously or unconsciously.

Representation of Place in Cinema

World cinema is usually referred to as a web with interrelated texts. The web structure bears nodes as well as hubs, referring to the various cinemas constructing world cinemas vary size wise. In fact a web is an enhanced manner of visualization world cinema than that of a map, since web has no pre-existing boundaries amidst west as well as east, but only nodes as well as hubs that are not similar as political, economic, and cultural hubs and nodes. If cinema is to be considered as one of the key media by which we may imagine places, it should also be regarded that place also happens to be the template for imagining cinema. Thus, Cinema has been analyzed as a way of expressing specific to geographically diversified culture. Within taxonomy of cinema, privilege is granted towards national cultures.

There are different films and a certain thread that binds all the films and the in the area of globalisation. As it is seen that there are no boundaries of nation in the film that are done in the age if globalisation as the directors are more into making a cross cultural films and they like to add exquisite locations from around the world (BBC News, 2015). With the entry to other countries are becoming more lenient, they film makers are trying to tell their stories to the people about the world that they see around them.

The newer films are global in nature and they are of higher quality by design. There are co productions that involve many countries like Asia, Europe, and Latin America. The directors like to tell their imagination to the people and they go places just to capture the stories and the locations they follow the people around the world in order to present to the world the best movies. There are lot if freedom that the filmmakers get in terms of making the film

With the expansion on the exchange of the cultures and the media products to other countries mainly the western cinemas to the rest of the world, there has been a homogenous market that where the films are marketed to all parts of the world at the same time. Films like Twilight and Pirates of the Caribbean are released to all parts of the world tom grab more audience and generate more revenues (Edictive On Filmmaking, 2013).

There was a time when it was said that it was the golden age of the cinemas. It was said that the actors were far better than they are now and they are considered as legends. But there arises a question as to why they were so good or why were they so popular? The people consider that the cinemas of the earlier days were good and they portrayed the lives of the people, in an influential way. Films like “life is beautiful” or “it happened one night” are considered to be films that changed the perspective of the world film in the earlier times. It was seen that the people from the rest of the world were not able to see or enjoy the film as because they were not released worldwide at that time (Gao, 2009).

World Cinema and Transcultural Communication

With the increase and the development in the technology and the easier ways by which the films are made have made there has been an increase in the number of films that are made. The films have gained popularity once more over the world (Gardner, Nicholls and White, 2012). With the new age films the directors are using the stories that are popular and are best sellers in the market. By this the film makers are sure, that the people would like to watch the stories in the big screens. There are lot of films that are based on the stories like Harry Potter, The Twilight, P.S. I Love You etc, which are made into films just because they were good books and they have wide popularity among the people.

The trend is not just in Hollywood, it is seen that the film makers of all most all the countries are trying to adopt the stories of the famous authors in their films, make be because they lack good stories or they want to make profit and adopting the famous stories are a good way to gain success. The success of the film lies in the fact that the people are also interested to watch the stories on the big screen (Kronig, 2000).

The animated films are gaining pace and they are attracting the people more than ever and specially the children. The films are made with the intention to attract the children (NPR.org, 2011). The film makers know that if they target the children they will have additional crowd due to the parents that will accompany the children tom the movie hall. Thus the film likes the Frozen, Ratatouille, Wall E, and Tangled, How to train your Dragon are films that attracts the children and draws the children.

The globalisations have a wide impact on how the films are made. The film makers now have to understand the needs of the people all over the world in order to attract and create a market globally (Vanderschelden, 2010). The marketers and the advertisers are also trying to add more value to the advertisements and they promote the films religiously in order to draw the attention of the people. It is seen that the people are drawn to the movie halls due to the promotions that are made before the films and not really the content of the film.

The films like the Superman, Spiderman, Batman, and Ironman are made using high technology and special effects that make the film visually attractive. The people are more drawn to the films because of the animation, affects, and the technology that these films use. With the use of new technology the film makers are more comfortable with the way they can make the films and they are sure that it will pull the crowd (Vang and Jakobsen, 2013).

Thus the globalisations of the films are making the films more acceptable to the people and they are watching more and more films, thus the industry is one of the growing one in today’s world. The film makers are adding more real life stories that the people can relate to. In context of world cinema, coherence is established due to inter-textuality, referring that all sorts of various cinema are associated since all refer to each other, implicitly or explicitly, directly or indirectly, and consciously or unconsciously. There are more features like the nature and other aspects like dreams and magic that has become a popular subject in the film (Williams, 2000). They film makers are adding music and dance that are influenced by the eastern culture and are gaining more popularity. The film makers are exploring wild and diverse topics that they use in their films like mutants, aliens, superheroes that have gained much popularity in the recent times of globalisation (Yang, 2014).

References

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