Hollywood shaped American popular culture by portraying democratic and capitalist ideals and values. Modern filmmaking in Latin America is hampered and helped by its close ties to Hollywood. Hollywood has made significant inroads as an export market and a location for offshore film production. Filmmakers at the time were attempting to develop a new film language to produce a cinema of “underdevelopment” that could be used to educate the public rather than entertain. The biggest studios in Hollywood have signed allocation and co-production deals with their Latin American counterparts. Hollywood, the epicenter of the American film industry, has profoundly influenced filmmakers in other parts of Latin America. Hollywood movies are seen and enjoyed all over the world, and they have a significant impact on global culture and social mores. American values and ideals, both beneficial and harmful, are frequently reflected in Hollywood films instead of counting on government support or European co-production money alone. Hollywood’s major studios produce most of the world’s highest-grossing and most popular movies. Hollywood’s highest-grossing films have done better in international markets than domestic ones, both in box office revenue and ticket sales. As a result, this essay will analyze how Hollywood has impacted filmmakers in Latin America.
According to Death of a Bureaucrat film, Death of a Bureaucrat are a black comedy and one of the most unexpected Cuban films. It shows how the ordinary citizen in a communist country has to waste time and effort navigating bureaucracy to get by. Regarding politics, Hollywood presents an Americanized and biased view of the world (Craig, 2008). Hollywood paints a simple, good-versus-evil view of global issues, stereotypically portraying Muslims, Russians, South Americans, etc., as villains who stand in the way of progress and freedom. Some WWII films exploit anachronistic innovations in historical drama to paint Americans in a favorable light while exaggerating the United States’ participation in the Allied triumph and downplaying the role of other countries. Alea had to have the video smuggled out of Cuba to be released in the United States, even though it harshly mocks essential parts of Cuba’s developing communist society. It also pays homage to and mirrors the work of cinematic greats like Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and Luis Bunuel, all of whom are prominently featured in the film’s opening credits. It is a long black-and-white comedy about a society that has undergone a socialist revolution and now demands that the government treat the dead with the same dignity as the living (Craig, 2008). The newly socialist country is a thinly veiled Cuba, and the hilarious turns and characters are reminiscent of Hollywood comedy traditions and stars like Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton, and even Marilyn Monroe. There is also some surrealism and dark comedy in there that calls to mind the work of Buuel. Hollywood has significantly impacted the global Latin American film industry and media. Several countries have their film industries because of the success and popularity of Hollywood. The broad adoption of Hollywood’s storytelling style, special effects, and marketing tactics has increased the production of high-budget, memorable effects-laden films. Hollywood significantly impacts the international media industry since American television shows and movies are broadcast and viewed worldwide. This has led to greater dissemination of American culture and values and has impacted other countries’ media industries (Craig, 2008).
Nine Queens; Nine Queens is a 2000 Argentinian crime thriller written and directed by Fabián Bielinsky, which pulls extensively on Hollywood influences. Hollywood achieved international commercial success within the confined confines of the art house cinema theatre (Copertari, 2005). Latin American films illustrate the two-way nature of the film distribution and exhibition market. Hollywood’s leading studios dominate international film markets because they are much bigger and wealthier than their overseas counterparts. Costly special effects, high pay for international movie stars (who may then leave their home country’s film industries), and massive advertising budgets contribute to this. Hollywood has indeed lobbied the US extremely effectively over decades to maintain cultural exports are categorized as just another type of trade in international agreements and to help it obtain control over transmission networks abroad. Certain long-held assumptions regarding the bond between South American and US-dominated cultures are shaken up by the fact that the film has been remade in Hollywood (Falicov, 2007). Hollywood movies undermine the moral standards of all societies and corrupt their youth by celebrating sex and violence. Even in the United States, Hollywood’s moral standards were heavily criticized during the 2000 presidential campaign. The film Nine Queens is a helpful example of these concepts since it shows how the model/copy formula and the idea of a pure cultural form fail to describe the film’s content adequately.
Conclusion
In conclusion, many of Hollywood’s highest-grossing pictures have done better at the international box office than films from any other region, particularly South America. Hence, liberal principles of universal significance, such as women’s rights, the dangers of tyranny, the unique selling proposition of each human existence, and the potential for personal achievement through hard effort, are typically promoted in Hollywood films. It should come as no surprise that the nation’s most eager to ban Latin American films are also the ones that place the most negligible value on free expression.
References
Craig, L. (2008). Exhuming Death of a Bureaucrat. Bulletin of Latin American Research, 27(4), 519–533.
Copertari, G. (2005). Nine Queens: A dark day of Simulation and Justice. Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 14(3), 279-293.
Falicov, T. L. (2007). The cinematic tango: Contemporary Argentine film. Wallflower Press.
Hamilton, C. (2012). Sexual Revolutions in Cuba: Passion, Politics, and Memory. UNC Press Books.
Dore, E. (2009). Cubans’ memories of the 1960s: the ecstasies and the agonies. Revista, 7(16), 34-38.
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