As global tensions tighten and shift, the media industry of the United States is under scrutiny, and not always with a positive eye. Segrave mentions that long the standard setter for entertainment, especially in television and film, Hollywood has dominated the world entertainment market for years (1997). With simple story lines, action plots, international stars, and aggressive marketing techniques, Hollywood movies have prevailed in the world film market The American film studios have perhaps exploited advantages and formed an intentional "Hollyworld" (Segrave, 1997). Some of the factors in this situation are direct ownership of theaters, price fixing, block booking, and favored treatment from the U.S. government. One of the current debates in the field of media studies is the factor of U.S. media stomping all over the world, in a rampage of cultural imperialism, the bourgeois liberalization or homogenization of entertainment (Kahn, 1993; Nye, 2002). Sreberny-Mohammadi and others comment that particularly in the field of television this is a sensitive subject (1997). It is the purpose of this paper to provide an overview of the influence of U.S. media in other countries with a particular focus on Japan and China, two significant world nations.
Some believe that the Hollywood moguls turn out sex-laden, violence-driven movies and television, creative an image of the U.S. that is negative and not representative of the U.S. as it actually is. For instance, Boston University communications professors Margaret and Melvin DeFleur collected opinions from teenagers in countries around the world and found that teenagers in 11 countries had a "perception of American women as sexually immoral, and Americans in general as violent and materialistic" (Miller, 2003, 1).
According to Wasko (1994), Hollywood, movies, and the silver screen were once seen as synonymously, but there have occurred great changes in the film industry during the ...