Global Hollywood

by Toby Miller, Nitin Govil, John McMurria

Why is Hollywood so successful? Overwhelming almost every other national cinema in its own back yard and virtually extinguishing foreign cinema in the multicultural United States, Hollywood seems everywhere all powerful. This book addresses the vacuum left by textual analysis in examining this success. Turning to political economy, cultural studies, and cultural policy analysis to highlight the material factors underlining this apparent artistic success, Global Hollywood considers such factors as the numerous hidden subsidies to the U.S. film industry and copyright limitations, which prevent the free flow of information. Most of all by relocating cultural production and through its relationship to world markets more generally, contemporary Hollywood has transformed itself to attain ever greater global clout and reach.
The authors also address the key areas of copyright, marketing, distribution, and exhibition that are cornerstones of the global industry apparatus. Challenging the simplicities of the cultural imperialist model and Hollywood's free market rhetoric, this book is the first academic study to retheorize the continued and expanding success of the Hollywood cinema factory.

240 pages, Paperback

First published August 20, 2001

About the author

Chair of the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at University of California, Riverside. His research interests include film and TV, radio, new media, class, gender, race, sport, cultural theory, citizenship, social theory, cultural studies, political theory, cultural labor, and cultural policy. He is editor of Television & New Media and Social Identities, editor of the book series Popular Culture and Everyday Life (Lang); he has also been chair of the International Communication Association Philosophy of Communication Division; editor of Journal of Sport & Social Issues; and co-editor of Social Text, the Blackwell Cultural Theory Resource Centre, and the book series Sport and Culture (Minnesota) Film Guidebooks (Routledge) and Cultural Politics (Minnesota). Miller has taught media and cultural studies across the humanities and social sciences at the following schools: University of New South Wales, Griffith University, Murdoch University, and NYU.