lbo-talk-digest V1 #5292

Daniel Davies dsquared at al-islam.com
Thu Nov 15 22:54:36 PST 2001



>Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 10:43:38 -0800
>From: Brad DeLong
>Subject: Hezbollah and Likud


>But the fact that Ariel Sharon heads Likud and the Israeli >government
>does no more to turn Hezbollah into a "legitimate civilian"
>organization than the fact of Bloody Sunday does to turn >the IRA into
>a Benevolent Society.

Not sure what point you're trying to make here; the IRA has returned members to Westminster since the beginning of the 1970s troubles. At least one of its commanders (Martin McGuinness) has shared a platform with prominent US politicians. If it makes it any easier, think of the chaps in the Lebanese Parliament as "Sinn Fein Hezbollah".

dd


>Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 10:44:53 -0800
>From: joanna bujes
>Subject: Re: Cultural Imperialism


>About craftsmanship I
>don't know. I suspect what people like about American >movies is the
display
>of conspicuous consumption in the making of the movie and >in the movie
>itself. There's such Dionysiac waste in it; makes you feel >like the
>universe overflows with wealth. A reason for optimism >perhaps.

This view seems to depend on the assumption that it's only the special-effects monster films which are popular outside the USA. Which isn't true; romantic comedies with no meaningful stunts or special effects are also more popular when done by Yanks.

The actual asnwer to Doug's question (why do the French have to subsidise their film industry?) is twofold, I think.

1) The subsidies are "here because they're here". If you start off subsidising your film industry, you're going to get films which need subsidies. Providing government money is not a neutral act with regard to the kind of pictures that get produced. You don't need to be a public choice theorist to suspect that a lot of the French film industry is basically a producer lobby group.

2) I don't accept arguments based on the hegemony of the English language, because France ought to be a big enough market on its own for films to pay back their costs of production, and Canal + in particular has proved that you can make money out of French films. But I think a few economic arguments are relevant:

US films can amortise the fixed costs of making a film over a larger market, so they are likely to have lower distribution costs; showing US films is probably somewhat more profitable for the cinema-owners.

Plus, France is a nation of small towns, so it is less likely than the US and UK to support multi-screen cinemas, meaning that any films being shown pushes out other films to a greater extent than it does in more large-urban markets.

So it's that much more difficult to make money in French cinema releases; on the other hand, French television is ludicrously profitable.

In related news, I can thoroughly recommend "Amelie". It's lovely.


>As for quality? I would exchange the entire Hollywood >production of the
>last twenty years for ONE movie by Satyajit Ray or Ghose.

Oh come off it.

By the way, if we're starting the campaign against film industries which produce truly appalling commercial crap, Hollywood would have to be third on the list after Bombay and Hong Kong. Everyone likes to bore on about how great "Bollywood" is, but if you've ever actually sat through one of the bloody things, they're pretty painful.

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