Cultural Impact: 'Spirited Away' and the Domination of Hollywood

This essay explores the challenges faced by foreign language cinema in the face of Hollywood's dominance, using Hayao Miyazaki's 'Spirited Away' as a case study. It discusses how Hollywood's large budgets and media corporatization often overshadow foreign films, limiting their distribution and audience reach. The analysis examines the commercial, political, historical, and ideological contexts of 'Spirited Away', highlighting its cultural significance and the obstacles it faced in appealing to a wider international audience due to limited advertising and marketing efforts. The essay also considers how the film reflects Japanese culture and historical events, influencing its reception and investment from the Hollywood film industry. Ultimately, it argues that Hollywood's dominance creates a competitive disadvantage for foreign films, making it difficult for them to achieve widespread recognition and success.

Running Head: INTRODUCTION TO THE FILM INDUSTRIES 0
Introduction to the film Industries

INTRODUCTION TO THE FILM INDUSTRIES 1
In the past few decades, Hollywood has dominated over cinema industry and has thrown out the
foreign language cinema out of the business not even from the Hollywood however from the
nation of the origin too. According to a study foreign films cannot even make one percent of the
box office in the U.S (McDonald and Wasko, 2008). In countries like Brazil, Japan, China there
is a huge spurt in cinematic production but still Hollywood dominates everywhere and this is a
huge setback for cinematic world as this creates a barrier for other foreign cinematic content and
people are choosing Hollywood over them. Due to their big budget and media corporatization,
Hollywood is trying to steal the show and therefore it becomes difficult for the foreign language
cinema to attract a bigger crowd or to spend too much amount to appeal to masses.
Hollywood has a major production value in respect to other foreign films and the budget of
American films can be more than $250 million which is a very huge amount that a foreign film
has invested in its production and even after a foreign film crosses all these barriers successfully
it becomes almost impossible to attract a large number of audience without spending a huge
amount for advertising purposes. Another reason behind the unsuccessfulness of foreign films in
Hollywood might be because of the people who dislike using subtitles or watching dubbed
movies (Turner, 2002).
Hollywood has killed a lot of foreign cinema industry and invaded them and the local industry
has to fight against the situation. With regards to the contribution from the investors, they do not
hesitate to put their money in Hollywood for the advertising and production but it is not same in
the case of foreign films due to the pre-assumption that the foreign movies will not do any good
in the cinemas (Mossig, 2017). It might be a negative investment same case scenario is when it
comes to television broadcasting, the TV broadcasting, the transmission arrange don't purchase
any outside dialect substance or program even while on discharging day or after the outside

INTRODUCTION TO THE FILM INDUSTRIES 2
movies don't get more screen when contrasted with Hollywood studio discharge which covers
around 3000-4000 screens though different motion pictures simply get around 10-20 screens.
Spirited away was released in 2001 and is an animation movie, it is based on a 10-year-old girl
and her adventures a mystical world which is ruled by gods and spirits or witches. The movie has
been directed by Hayao Miyazaki and Kirk Wise. The film was made under the financial plan of
$15-19 million and it played extraordinary in the movies and was a standout amongst the best
motion pictures ever of and went ahead to net around $289 million everywhere throughout the
world. This film at first was released on VHS and then in DVD format and even got an Oscar,
making it a strong seller. Spirited away even won so many other awards and got nominated too
(Box Office Mojo, 2018). This movie influenced so many people it depicts Japan's bubble
economy in 1980’s that how people became so greedy and to depict the whole situation the girl
Chihiro’s parents get turned into pigs which symbolizes greed and how people have become
greedy and the movie also displays the concerns regarding generational conflicts in modern
Japanese society and issues related to environment. All the soundtracks in the movie were
composed by the director’s regular collaborator and he was Joe Hisaishi who received the couple
of awards for his splendid works, later the songs were dubbed into English by Walt Disney who
also provided 10 percent of the movie budget and each character in movie was hand drawn by
Miyazaki with the help of animators and he checked all the work himself hence this movie was
based on the fantasy genre (Ryan and Kellner, 1990).
Although this movie was a great hit but it could have earned more in box office if a little bit
more efforts were made in advertising and since the advertising was limited the movie did not
get a greater chance to gain more audience and even Disney just mentioned about the movie in a
very small section on their official website’s page where they publish about films and also gave a

INTRODUCTION TO THE FILM INDUSTRIES 3
very small budget for promotions of the movie as compared to others and failed miserably to
market the film properly (Beugnet and Sillars, 2017). The younger children were afraid at first
when Yubaba was introduced, the witch who runs the bath house. The movie could not capture
greater audience due to the as the Japanese animations tend to throw a lot of adult responsibility
on the characters of their child which creates an unsuitable atmosphere for the young children as
well as the parents. It kind of created the emotional distress (Yirmibeşoğlu, 2015). The
westernized look in the animation reflects the situation of the World War II occupation of the
Japan by the American armed forces. The storyline is truly inspired by the culture and the
adventure of that appeared during the World War II. The film depicts the historical significance
of manga in Japan.
This movie was based on Japanese culture and depicted it’s political and historical context so
even the investors did not make a big investment thinking that it will not play well in the
Hollywood and gave it a very low budget for the promotional and advertising purposes and due
to low advertisement many people were unaware of the release date as well as about the movie.
Inaccessibility is the main reason behind not able to appeal to a wider international audience and
also a very limited market exposure is the reason behind underestimation of the film in
Hollywood. With the new technologies, huge budget, and high number of the investors, the
media also form the opinion by their side (Eisenstadt, 2017).
Therefore, it can be said that the Hollywood has succeeded in conquering the cinematic universe
and dominating over the foreign films and giving them a huge competition and has changed the
cinematic universe completely and making it harder for the foreign films to get featured in
Hollywood successfully and get fame.

INTRODUCTION TO THE FILM INDUSTRIES 4
References
Beugnet, M. and Sillars, J., (2017) The reflexive turn: mediating and remediating Hollywood:
introduction. Screen, 58(2), pp.197-201.
Box Office Mojo, (2018) Spirited Away [online] Available from
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Eisenstadt, S.N. ed., (2017) Music on Demand: Composers and Careers in the Hollywood Film
Industry. Routledge.
McDonald, P. and Wasko, J., (2008)The contemporary Hollywood film industry. Wiley-
Blackwell.
Mossig, I., (2017) Global distribution and cluster development: Hollywood and the German
connection. In Globalising Worlds and New Economic Configurations (pp. 51-62). California:
Routledge.
Ryan, M. and Kellner, D., (1990) Camera politica: The politics and ideology of contemporary
Hollywood film (Vol. 604). Boston: Indiana University Press.
Turner, G., (2002) Film as social practice. California: Routledge.
Yirmibeşoğlu, G., (2015) Globalization and international trade. International Journal of Social
Sciences and Education Research, 3(5 S), pp.1787-1796.