Chirac says U.S. culture endangers the world

It is amazing! French President Jacques Chirac has flown halfway around the world to Vietnam to complain about American cultural imperialism. It seems that three decades after the fall of the Republic of Vietnam to the communists, English is much more popular than French as a second language among the Vietnamese. No doubt Chirac is miffed that the Vietnamese are not more grateful for a century of forcible contact with the subtleties and nuances of French culture.

It is truly remarkable the way lefties like Chirac (Yes, I know his party is center-right, but center-right in most of "old" Europe is distinctly left by US standards.) complain most bitterly about the dominance of Hollywood movies. This is the same Hollywood that rightwing Americans castigate as leftist, anti-capitalist, anti-Christian, even anti-American. Predictably, Chirac suggests that the answer for nations like his is more government subsidies for movies and other cultural endeavors. Does it not occur to them that making movies that appeal to consumers might be the answer?

For many decades. US films have been big business all around the world. Particularly high budget action flicks with lots of special effects do better across cultures than complicated dramatic or comedic films that are often language or culture specific. Conversely, the US market is relatively inhospitable to foreign films since our audiences are impatient with subtitles, let alone low-budget dubbing (often done with a British, rather than American, English vocabulary). Much of this is a matter of scale. If there is a really popular European film with a story that will play well to US audiences, they can dub it into American English or show it here with subtitles in a few "art" houses, or they can sell the rights to a US studio which will remake the movie here and draw larger audiences. For every Das Boot that manages to make it across the Atlantic, there are a dozen remakes like The Man With One Red Shoe (a Tom Hanks comedy which was a French hit as The Tall Blond Man With One Brown Shoe).

Chirac's complaint also comes at a time when the dominance of Hollywood is declining under very intense pressure from Bollywood (India) and Hong Kong. At least Chirac can count on widespread support for his critique, American cinema is also a frequent target of Islamic radicals. but then they also object to Bollywood as well. Even Egyptian, cinema the leading source of films in Arabic, is routinely condemned by Islamists.

IHT: Chirac warns of risk from U.S. culture