Hollywood's Embassies : : How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the World / / Ross Melnick.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Columbia University Press Complete eBook-Package 2022
• VerfasserIn: Melnick, Ross,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Columbia University Press, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: Film and Culture Series
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

Beginning in the 1920s, audiences around the globe were seduced not only by Hollywood films but also by lavish movie theaters that were owned and operated by the major American film companies. These theaters aimed to provide a quintessentially “American” experience. Outfitted with American technology and accoutrements, they allowed local audiences to watch American films in an American-owned cinema in a distinctly American way.In a history that stretches from Buenos Aires and Tokyo to Johannesburg and Cairo, Ross Melnick considers these movie houses as cultural embassies. He examines how the exhibition of Hollywood films became a constant flow of political and consumerist messaging, selling American ideas, products, and power, especially during fractious eras. Melnick demonstrates that while Hollywood’s marketing of luxury and consumption often struck a chord with local audiences, it was also frequently tone-deaf to new social, cultural, racial, and political movements. He argues that the story of Hollywood’s global cinemas is not a simple narrative of cultural and industrial indoctrination and colonization. Instead, it is one of negotiation, booms and busts, successes and failures, adoptions and rejections, and a precursor to later conflicts over the spread of American consumer culture. A truly global account, Hollywood’s Embassies shows how the entanglement of worldwide movie theaters with American empire offers a new way of understanding film history and the history of U.S. soft power.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION “Shop Windows,” “Cultural Embassies,” and Hollywood’s Global Exhibition -- PART I EUROPE When Expansion Was Paramount (1923– 1993) “Shop Window” Cinemas and the European Expansion of U.S. Film Exhibitors -- CHAPTER 1 HOLLYWOOD’S BRITISH INVASION AND THE BATTLE OF BIRMINGHAM, 1919– 1929 -- CHAPTER 2 HOLLYWOOD’S EUROPEAN ADVENTURE, 1925– 1941 -- CHAPTER 3 A NEW BATTLEGROUND U.S. Exhibitors Under Nazi Occupation, 1941– 1945 -- CHAPTER 4 POSTWAR EUROPE AND THE LEGACY OF HOLLYWOOD CINEMAS, 1945– 1993 -- PART II AUSTRALASIA Banking on Australasia (1930– 1982) Global Banks and U.S. Cinema Ownership in Australia and New Zealand -- CHAPTER 5 FOX CHASES HOYTS U.S. Cinema Ownership in Australia, 1930– 1936 -- CHAPTER 6 THE FOX CHASE IN NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIA, 1936– 1946 -- CHAPTER 7 HOLLYWOOD AND AUSTRALASIAN CINEMAS, 1946– 1982 -- PART III LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN Hollywood in Cinelandia (1927– 1973) U.S. Cinemas and Local Politics in Latin America and the Caribbean -- CHAPTER 8 CINE METROS Y CINE PARAMOUNTS, 1926– 1941 MGM and Paramount’s Latin American Shop Window Cinemas -- CHAPTER 9 PROP(AGANDA) WINDOW CINEMAS, 1933– 1945 Ufa, Hollywood, and the Battle for Hearts and Minds Through South American Cinemas During World War II -- CHAPTER 10 HOLLYWOOD CINEMA EXPANSION IN POSTWAR SOUTH AMERICA, 1945– 1973 -- CHAPTER 11 CARIBBEAN DREAMS, 1929– 1973 Hollywood Cinemas in Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Trinidad -- PART IV MIDDLE EAST Hollywood’s Muddle East (1925– 1982) Political Change in Egypt and Israel and the Consequences for Hollywood’s Middle Eastern Cinemas -- CHAPTER 12 BUILDINGS, BALLYHOO, AND BOYCOTTS IN EGYPT, 1925– 1947 Alternating Realities at Hollywood’s Egyptian Cinemas -- CHAPTER 13 NO MEETING IN THE MIDDLE, 1947– 1956 Hollywood Cinemas, Egyptian Revolution, and Israeli Independence -- CHAPTER 14 AFTER THE REVOLUTION, 1957– 1982 Twentieth Century- Fox, Egypt, and Israel -- PART V AFRICA An “Unhappy Image of the United States Before an African Population” (1932– 1975) Race, Industry, and Rebellion at Hollywood’s African Cinemas -- CHAPTER 15 MGM AND THE “UNCROWNED KING OF SOUTH AFRICA,” 1932– 1937 Hollywood Shop Window Cinemas in a Bitterly Protected Market -- CHAPTER 16 FOX HUNTING ON THE AFRICAN CONTINENT, 1937– 1956 Twentieth Century- Fox and the Struggle for Control of African Cinemas -- CHAPTER 17 A “ROYAL” MESS Racial Strife in Colonial Zimbabwe, the Struggle for Independence in Postcolonial Kenya, and the End of Hollywood’s Control of South African Cinemas, 1959– 1975 -- PART VI ASIA Eastern Promises (1927– 2013) Hollywood’s Cinemas in China, India, Japan, and the Philippines -- CHAPTER 18 BENSHI AND BALLYHOO, 1927– 1973 Hollywood’s Shop Window Cinemas in Japan and the Philippines -- CHAPTER 19 JOINING THE GLOBAL METRO CUB CLUB, 1936– 1973 MGM and Fox’s Shop Window Cinemas in India -- CHAPTER 20 CHINA AS HOLLYWOOD’S FINAL FRONTIER, 1946– 2013 Hollywood’s Chinese Cinemas and the End of Hollywood’s Exhibition Empires -- EPILOGUE Global Exhibition Flows in Reverse Before the Pandemic, 2013– 2019 -- NOTES -- INDEX