Hollywood makes more in sales abroad than it does at home, I was told recently. My view of it would be that Hollywood _is_ world cinema. I was surprised a few years ago, visiting New York, to find that the leftist filmmaker Ken Loach had a following amongst the NY avant garde. In my mind Loach was in the tradition of socialist realism, meaning 'art for the masses', and yet over the water it was apparent that in truth it was art for the intelligentsia - and thinking about it, in the UK too, I realised that's his audience.
In most European countries, and beyond there, too, I would guess, working class people consume American culture and middle class people hang onto a high culture that is more pointedly national. Though I was interested to hear that in S Korea the avant garde includes a school of 'yBa's', i.e. 'young British artists', but not as a national identification, but as a style (epater le bourgeois, roughly). -- James Heartfield Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age is available at GBP19.99, plus GBP5.01 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'. www.audacity.org