Both India and China have a very large market base.
And is ours peanuts? We're in the top ten line of film producing countries, and our market is the largest in Southeast Asia.
It's really a myopic solution for weaklings to hide under the skirt of a protective mother because he can't slug it out with the bullies.
You could argue it's a weak thing to hide under the skirt of a protective fiction like free markets, taking the Americans at their word that all they want is a level playing field.
Remember, under the Bush years America had eight years of free markets. Was there abuse? You bet. Would it have been corrected by market forces--what do you think? Free markets are supposed to be self-correcting--I didn't see much self-correction in those eight years.
Free markets had eight years--count them--to prove its case. Well it did--the world economy went to the toilet and millions of people were put out of work. We need a different paradigm.
Actually, I'd call a complete faith and utter faith in the free markets delusional to a monstrous extreme. Free market? Level playing field? Are you kidding me? America's local movie market is the most protective of all--they block book their theaters for Hollywood hits, and woe to the independent that doesn't have the backing of a major Hollywood studio. I can see it, in all the malls and multiplexes here. Not to mention the American audience is if anything less demanding and more ignorant of world cinema than Filipinos ever were. They're sheep, consuming product from an assembly line.
As Harry Tuttle of
Screenville put it:
What is scary is that the domestic American market is the most profitable in the world : more screens than in India or China! Yet they still make the most of their money abroad. And every year they complain about being on a slump... As if any country in the world could not have their cinema industry survive on a smaller budget than theirs!
The aggressive hegemony of the Hollywood culture overtakes the biggest revenue shares in almost every country, leaving peanuts for the local films to pay off their costs. It's not fair.
And these Hollywood blockbusters don't even deserve to take the largest share of the cake, in most cases, because they are not always better films (whether it is better for the entertainment factor for the widest crowd, or better aesthetically) than the local production.
In these conditions, it is perfectly justified to halt the "free market" (which is skewed by the economic pressures coming from Hollywood distributors who sell their products in bundles to saturate the market and turn local exhibitors into dependent addicts) with protectionist laws. The domestic American market is itself THE most protectionist among the "democratic world of industrial countries". Non-American films sell less than 5% of admissions to the American public!
I don't see my proposal as hiding under anyone's skirts, or laying the blame at other countries--there is a real enemy out there, and it has to be dealt with.
Just because one is good, doesn't mean the other is bad.
So a managed economy isn't bad? Then we agree. That's good.
China is a socialist capitalist economy. And it's interesting to note that despite all the crises and storms that beset a capitalist economy, the societies behind them have weathered and went on to new heights.
Yeah. Got the US employment figures a few days ago for December. Eighty five thousand jobs lost. New heights, all right.
Whereas non-capitalist societies have withered and died, like the soviets who have promptly adopted a capitalist one, and you see it in Cuba. Not to mention China which easily embraced it.
Europe? India? China is freewheeling, but don't think for a moment they're not managing the importation of goods, film in particular. And as pointed out above, don't even believe for a moment America isn't protective about its domestic film market.
Did that prevent them from creating world class products?
Talent comes out no matter what the political system. Iran, China, the old Soviet Union--all had world class filmmakers.
You tell me. When they start flocking to see films in local film fests.
And you think they don't? Why hasn't Cinemalaya and the Cinema One Originals closed down long ago? The organizers see an emerging market, they're developing it as best they can. Talk to Ron Arguelles, talk to Laurice Guillen.
You overlooked one fundamental thing. Japan's domestic market, even as early as the 19th century, is quite mature, sophisticated and demanding because of high literacy rate.
And you think we don't? We were under the American educational system till 1946, remember, and it persisted for years afterward. Japan had its first film screening a year after the Lumiere brothers projected their first film, in 1896; we projected our first film in 1897, produced our first feature in 1912, and had our first Filipino directed film by 1919. Our audiences have been supporting the industry until recently, when Hollywood started its expansion on foreign markets. But I've written about this before, here.
Any country with a mature domestic market with a large middle class demographics like the US, Japan, Korea and UK can easily compete on a Global scale.
Japan was a basket case coming out of the war. It was a basket case again during the Asian economic crisis, and it doesn't have the vigor it used to have right now. The UK has had it's ups and down; the USA too. When we were under American rule and some years after the war we were in very good shape economically.
Don't buy into the myth of foreign superiority. They've had their ups and downs, and so have we. Check your figures, and your own history.
What I am saying is for third world countries like the Philippines, the only way to transcend their product mediocrity and compete globally is to think global. They can't rely on the low standards of catering to an immature domestic market to match global standards, especially one with a very small middle class content.
Who says we need a big middle class? The Filipino industry was living off its own market for decades, since before the war.
Now you go back and read your economics and the roots of globalization.
Thing about economic theories, they can change. Globalization has a very sorry reputation at the moment. Check your recent news articles. Textbooks can go out of date.
That's why you have hollywood leading the pack.
Now Harry--who's American, by the way, and very knowledgeable about their film industry--tells you exactly why Hollywood leads the pack.
Brocka? O'Hara, who never finished college? What's wrong with these people, I keep wondering?
More exceptions than the rule.
O'Hara, Brocka, Bernal, Bernal, Ad. Castillo, Jarlego, Posadas, Guillen, de Leon, de Leon, Reyes, delos Reyes, Silos, Conde, Nepumoceno, Diaz, Velasco, Ilarde, Henares, de la Cruz, Torres, Martin, Tahimik, Red, Romana, Ermitano? And that's just off the top of my head?
I'd say there are over a hundred exceptions., and more every year, thanks to Cinemalaya, Cinemanila, and Cinema One Originals That's a lot of exceptions.
Not really. All those mega corporations are carefully being looked into and regarded with suspicion; more regulations are being put into place. China, that economic powerhouse, is looking inwards. The bloom is off, the boom is over. Listen to NPR, read The New York Times.
Dream on.
Now
that's an argument.
Really, read them. That's reality knocking on your 'globalizing,' free market world.
I have no problem with that. The question really is whether what's good in you is good enough to make you what Korea and Japan is today, or even a Taiwan and Malaysia.
The myth of the superior foreigner.
A global economy is quite ruthless and unforgiving.
Now THIS we agree on. But believing in some fairy tale of an idealized free market where friendly countries let products go in and out through their borders with just a wave hello or goodbye isn't going to make that market any less ruthless, or more forgiving.
