Media and Popular Culture
Hollywood (the American film and television industry) dominates most of the world's media markets. It is the chief medium by which people across the globe see American fashions, customs, scenery and way of life.
U.S.-based TV programs are re-broadcast around the world. Many of them through American broadcasters and their subsidiaries (such as HBO Asia, CNBC Europe and CNN International). Many of these distributors broadcast mainly American programming on their TV channels. According to a recent survey by the influential British broadcast media magazine Radio Times, The Simpsons, Lost and Desperate Housewives are among the most watched TV shows, with CSI being the most watched show among the surveyed 20 countries. American films are also extremely popular around the world, often dominating cinemas. Adjusting for inflation, the highest grossing film of all time is Gone with the Wind. Often part of the negotiating in free trade agreements between the U.S. and other nations involves screen quotas. One such case is Mexico, which abolished their screen quotas following the establishment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the U.S. Recently South Korea has agreed to reduce its quota under pressure from the U.S. as part of a free trade deal. Many U.S.-based artists, such as Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson are recognized worldwide and have sold over 500 million albums each. Michael Jackson's album Thriller, at 100 million sales, is the best-selling album of all time.
Read more about this topic: Americanization
Famous quotes containing the words media and, media, popular and/or culture:
“Few white citizens are acquainted with blacks other than those projected by the media and the so—called educational system, which is nothing more than a system of rewards and punishments based upon one’s ability to pledge loyalty oaths to Anglo culture. The media and the “educational system” are the prime sources of racism in the United States.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Few white citizens are acquainted with blacks other than those projected by the media and the so—called educational system, which is nothing more than a system of rewards and punishments based upon one’s ability to pledge loyalty oaths to Anglo culture. The media and the “educational system” are the prime sources of racism in the United States.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“There’s that popular misconception of man as something between a brute and an angel. Actually man is in transit between brute and God.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)