“We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States, because if somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary they don’t like, or news reports they don’t like,” Mr. Obama said.Well, thank you Mr. Obama, Sony Entertainment (Japan), AMC Entertainment (Wang Jianlin company), Regal Entertainment. (Anschutz company), Cinemark and Carmike etc. (the oligopoly group), and all of you dweeb executives looking after your bottom line. For ANYBODY out there who does not already know how heavy censorship is already in the US, this is your wake up call.
I have the benefit of living in East Asia just now and I can tell you this, the absolute garbage that dominates the international movie screens that is produced in America right now is a direct reflection of the need / desire / opportunity inherent in global media companies trying to sell "entertainment" to a global population when a very large portion of the global population is in nations with either Tsar type leadership (Russia), Religious Fiefdoms (you know this group), or communist dictatorships (umm China), or quasi-unpredictable elite run "democracies" (India, Malaysia, Indonesia...).
Much of what dominates the screens, let's call it "trash action", is there because it has nothing to say, just BS violence with every antagonist being defeated by what seems to be the only nation on the planet capable of defeating anything. And what nation might that be? Well the US of course. The US military and or police and or civilians in alliance with the US military or police seem to be the only group of people attacked by every space alien ever dreamed up, every global calamity... you name it. And every one of these movies make the US look representative of the globe and the US always saves the globe... So if there is one theme that is consistent, it's that white people from the US (with the occasional non white thrown in for political purposes) are the only saviors of the human race.
The moral of the story is these companies want to sell their pictures around the world, most of who's cultures are still intact (outside of the window dressing played to their cultures by the elites of those nations who are pretty much global elite citizens, not really representative of their respective cultures), and in order to sell theses pictures around the world, they have to appease the governments and censors of the various nations to get their pictures shown. This means you get movies that are treated like corporate food: designed not to offend the pallets of a large number of people, ie; watered down, tasteless, bland and uninteresting content. It's all economics, making money.
The films also reflect the culture of the WIERD defined in this paper as Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic, which may suggest why the films are popular. The propaganda and forced consumption of everything from the WIERD countries by the non WIERD countries is one of the longest standing phenomena, culturally and economically, since the earliest days of colonialism to today's neo-colonialism, of the world's lesser developed nations. As the WIERD countries become even weirder to many a people outside of the bubble of the WIERD nations, their "entertainment" reflects this and maintains it's curiosity level amongst people not from those nations.
I can only imagine what some Afghani farmer, tilling his land with an Ox and living in a mud hut thinks when he sees an American Solder. Martian? Might as well be. What about when their TV blasts the music videos commonly viewed by 10 year old WIERD children on a routine basis? Don't you think that farmer just might want to vomit even thinking his child would view that Sh%@?
Well, it does seem that some of the most accepted and promoted attributes of American Media content in America are the most repulsive and or insulting to one hell of allot of people around the world, emphasizing how weird in fact the culture's of the WIERD nations are. However, it seems repulsive and insulting usually gets through so long as it does not incite people to think! So if a media company from America wants their movies to regularly appear on the screens of the movie houses in nations where people aren't WIERD then they better make sure the themes are not going to challenge or offend either a) the balance of power of the non WIERD nation, b) the cultural value set that exist there c) the egos of the dictator/s that might run the non WIERD nation or d) the censors and politicians that might claim offence on behalf of their "constituents" for political theater.
Though it must be said that the underlying themes in internationally successful movies like "Avatar" where complete mutiny and actions deemed treasonous in any WIERD nations that take place are celebrated around the world or the first "Hunger Games" where sectors of that fictitious nation riot against the state, occasionally get through the sensors, or maybe they don't for I have not seen the actual end version released of these films outside of the US (of course those themes also got by the average American who from my non-scientific observation did not even get or place any weight on those underlying themes).
And I digress...
The point I am trying to make here is a simple one. There is a huge amount of self censorship in EVERY media outlet in the US right now being applied by the media conglomerates (oligopolies) in their global production of "entertainment". In the new WIERD nation oligarchical reality (oligarchy has pretty much been the greatest indirect "export" of the WIERD nations for generations and for which the formula is now returning to home base, where the "democracy" is now pretty much theater and the "rich" is being narrowed down to those who work for the military state and it's various off shoots or multinational corporate entities), it's all about making money and placating the population with formulated reality, extreme scripted "reality" and bland, ethnocentric movies that feed self importance to the populous of the WIERD nations and make sure the non WIERD nation's people know who is out there ready to save the world from themselves.
It's all economics baby! Culture is dead in the eyes of Media Conglomerates. They play by their own rules and get weirder every day. The best thing any person can do who lives in a WIERD nation is to turn all of it off and read.
