Scholarly blog post for Uni
Week 9
Asianisation of Hollywood
Klein (2004, p. 361) made the statement that Hollywood was becoming increasingly influenced by culture of the East ten years ago, and the comment is still sustainable in todays Hollywood culture.
Hollywood is big business, and where it still the age of the Sound of Music and the Wizard of Oz, Klein's argument would have no merit. But film executives in Hollywood realise the potential in the Asian market for their movies, and in the past decade there has been a recent influx of movies that have been influenced by Asian texts and movies.
The Oscar-award winning film 'The Departed' is a prime example of Hollywood 'borrowing' an idea from the Asian film market, with the Departed openly copying from the Philippine film 'Internal Affairs'. But that is not the only case of Hollywood copying ideas from an Asian counterpart, with the sequel to the hit comedy film "The Hangover' looking seemingly like a less family friendly version of the movie 'Lost in Thailand'..
There has also been a growing trend in Hollywood of casting asian actors in lead female and male roles recently, where as before the only asian actors that stood out in Hollywood were action heroes such as; Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee and Jet Li.
The growing popularity of the comic book movie, i.e. Iron Man and the rest of The Avengers movies and TV programs is a homage to the Japanese comic book movie industry which has been extemely popular in the Asian market for decades, with the Japanese film industry making films about Armor, Bushido and Kabuki, plus many, many more.
Klein (2004) claimed that Hollywood's Asian influence had "superseded the stereotype of martial arts films", and with Hollywood ever to happy to 'copy' a film idea from their Asian counterparts, Klein's ten-year old statement is continuing to be proven correct.
Klein, Christina 2004, ‘Martial arts and globalisation of US and Asian film industries’, Comparative America Studies, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 360-384.
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