At 10:35 AM 11/13/97 -0700, you wrote: >There is also the fact that audiences prefer American studio films. >They vote with their dollars, yen, dinars, etc. People around the world >like to go to American movies. That is why the distributors and >exhibitors book them. They sell tickets for a living. > >Movies were invented in France, and there has been world cinema as long >as there has been any cinema. The search for excuses as to why American >films are the most popular can go into all sorts of gyrations, and >everyone can bemoan the simplistic and jingoistic content of US studio >output... but audiences prefer it. Sad, but true. > > >Paul E. Clinco > ***** The question is more whether audiences are given a chance to see anything else. India and Hong Kong are two obvious examples of countries that consistently and overwhelmingly prefer their own films over US or other imports. Perhaps the same would be true of other countries if US distribution and marketing wasn't so powerful. After all, for most of the silent era, US films weren't the biggest but WW2 not only destroyed or severely crippled most European film industries but left the US itself in a position of economic and political power. It's not the the US was forcing the films on anybody but that there really wasn't any competition. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Lang Thompson http://members.aol.com/wlt4/index.htm ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/screensite