Large numbers of Americans rarely consume cultural media products produced outside of the United States and/or produced in languages other than English
Dal Jong Yin’s “Hierarchy in Globalization Trends.” The model is quite useful. However, I believe it needs to be adjusted to account for the unique situation/positionality of the United States.
I am currently reading, and reviewing, a well-done text book, Globalization and Media in the Digital Platform Age, written by Simon Fraser scholar Dal Yong Jin. Jin, unlike many global media and communication scholars, has not been fully seduced by the cultural globalization, hybridization and glocalization perspectives whose adherents have dominated global media and communication studies for more than two decades — is this the longest ever dialectical swing away from one pole (cultural imperialism) to the other (cultural globalization), I sometimes wonder? đ
Jin develops a solid middle ground between cultural imperialism and cultural globalization in this textbook, published in 2019. That is, he is careful to acknowledge that the reality of hybridization, which sees cultures inevitably mixed in cultural products and objects, does not erase substantial differences in cultural and political economic power. Jin also smartly acknowledges the fact that everything is indeed a hybrid, to one extent or another, does not prevent hegemonic forces of globalization from co-opting and (ab)using hybridization and glocalization to suit their own globalizing (cultural) interests.
Avengers: Endgame, an American Hollywood film, is the top-grossing film of all-time, globally, according to Box Office Mojo.
Hollywood films dominate Top 200 all-time biggest grossing films globally
If you want to get an idea of just how predominant American Hollywood films are globally, take a look at the Box Office Mojo all-time top grossing films page. The page, or, really, pages list(s) the top global grossing films according to box office receipts and includes 1,000 films. American Hollywood films â and films originally produced in English â dominate this âglobalâ list.
On Sept. 28, 2020, all of the Top 20 grossing films of all time, globally, were Anglo-American produced films.
Here are some of the highlights from the list, which underscore the continued predominance of American Hollywood films globally, at least when dominance is measured by way of money produced:
All of the Top 20 grossing films, globally, are Anglo-American produced films originally produced in English.
All of the Top 50 grossing films, globally, are Anglo-American produced films originally produced in English.
All of the Top 100 grossing films, globally, are Anglo-American produced films originally produced in English.
The very first non-Anglo-American film to break into the Box Office Mojo all-time top 1,000 grossing films, globally, is a Chinese film, Ne Zha, released in 2019. As of Sept. 28, 2020, it was ranked at No. 115. Globally, at that time, Ne Zha had garnered $726 million in box office receipts. Meanwhile, in the United States â and this a perfect example of American Cultural Insularity in the Center (ACIC) â Ne Zha had made only $1 million in box office receipts.
Detective Chinatown 2, another Chinese film, ranks at No. 187 on the Box Office Mojo all-time list as of Sept. 28, 2020, with $544 million in box office revenue. Meanwhile, the film earned less than $2 million in the United States.
Just two of the Top 200 all-time grossing films globally are produced in a non-Anglo-American country, both in China. Both of those films did extremely poorly at the box office in the United States, offering further evidence of American Cultural Insularity in the Center and of un-even cultural flows and hierarchies. Cultural flows have historically skewed heavily in an outward direction from the United States with barely even a trickle of foreign films flowing in the other direction into the United States, at least when flow is measured by way of box office receipts, which is a powerful indicator of both political economic and cultural might.
Dominant Group Studies (DGS) and Dominant Cultural Group Theory propose that we focus critical and empirical attention on the ways in which Dominant Cultural Groups (DCGs), most notably, culturally and linguistically and educationally and racially privileged Americans, are both especially insular and also comparatively arrogant vis-a-vis their own dominant culture and relatively ignorant vis-a-vis the culture of so-called “others.” [Image Credit: theinclusionsolution.me]American Cultural Insularity in the Center (ACIC) also draws upon a new theory I am developing called Dominant Cultural Group Theory (DCGT). I situate this theory within the broader domain of what I call Dominant Group Studies (DGS).
I am not the first to have put forward a proposal for Dominant Group Theory, though, to the best of my knowledge, I am the first to call for a field of study called Dominant Group Studies. Within the fields of media and communication studies and theory, Razzante & Orbe (2018) have recently begun to develop a Dominant Group Theory (DGT). Razzante and Orbe (2018) focus on how âdominant group members communicate with co-cultural group members within oppressive structures,â and therefore zero in primarily on communication with not much focus on culture and language. In contrast, I am much more interested in, and DCGT is much more focused on, the dynamics of power vis-Ă -vis the production and consumption of popular culture and the specific role that language, e.g. English as a nationally and globally dominant language for particular dominant groups inside the United States, play in terms of the (lack of) empowerment and ability of non-dominant groups to alter dominant groupsâ comparative stranglehold on (global) cultural production and consumption.
Razzanteâs and Orbeâs (2018) âfive premisesâ of DGT are useful in terms of articulating a critical version of Dominant Cultural Group Theory (DCGT), which at heart, is a normative critical theory. These five premises are:
In each society, a hierarchy exists that privileges certain groups of people: in the United States these groups include cisgender men, European Americans, Christians, heterosexuals, the able-bodied, native English speakers (emphasis = my own), and those from the middle and upper classes;
Othersâtrans persons, women, people of color, Muslims, LGBT persons, people with disabilities, non-native English speakers, and those from a lower classâare marginalized as co-cultural group members;
Although representing a widely diverse array of lived experiences, dominant group members will share a similar societal position that provides them with societal advantages compared to their co-cultural group counterparts;
While dominant group members share an advantaged position in society, their lived experiencesâlike their co-cultural counterpartsâreflect a diversity of perspectives that resist essentialist understanding; and
On the basis of varying levels of privilege, dominant group members occupy positions of power that are used in their negotiation of traditionally dominant communication systems.
Hollywood films dominate Top 200 all-time biggest grossing films globally
