Mevit 1001 Fall 2020 Bolk 2 PDF

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Mevit 1001 Fall 2020 Bolk 2
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Bolk 2 Comparing International Film Distribution and Regulation in Canada and China

MEVIT1001 Fall 2020 Innføring i medier og kommunikasjon: Teori og historie October 22, 2020

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Introduction: For this assignment, I have chosen to do a comparative analysis on Canada and China's relationship with the American film industry, also known as Hollywood. I have picked these two countries because they both have a unique relationship to the American film industry. Canada is in the position of having almost no local film industry or distribution, and relies on the distribution of American films to keep the film industry alive. China has a thriving local film industry, but they also have strict rules regarding the importation of Hollywood films. They also successfully influence the American film industry into editing their films to cater to the Chinese government’s various wishes and demands. The question I will answer throughout this paper is as follows: How do Canada and China differ when it comes to the distribution of local and international films? To begin this paper, I will give an overview of Hollywood’s domination of film culture and how this impacts other countries. I will then look at the history and national culture that surrounds the film industries in Canada and China. Afterwards, I will compare different aspects of the film industries in Canada and China, including the annual earnings from films, as well as what regulations are placed on the film industries. To finish, I will summarize the findings and give a clear overview of how Canada and China differ when it comes to the distribution of local and international films. Hollywood Dominance In order to look at how Canada and China handle the distribution of international films, we need to look at where those international films tend to come from. It's not a secret that the most successful films are American, Hollywood-made films. Hollywood is the global hotspot of the film industry, and films that were made there in the United States are shown in theatres all over the world. While there are films from other countries that receive international attention, it’s American films that end up dominating the global film industry (Merziger, 2013, p. 794). While American films are shown in cinemas around the world, most countries also have some sort of local film industry themselves, films that were created in their respective country. In some countries, local films can be the majority of what the population watches, while in others it can

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be almost exclusively international (Hollywood) films that are shown. Canada and China are on opposite sides of this divide between local and international films. To gain more context, we’ll look at the culture surrounding each of these film industries.. Canadian Film Culture As a result of sharing a language, a border, and much history, Canada and the United States have many cultural elements that are shared between the two countries. While these two countries have much in common, it’s the U.S. that is the larger and more influential nation. This is also true regarding film. While Canada's local television and music industries are prominent and well established, the industry of Canadian films is almost non-existent. There are a few reasons for this. One is that American companies have controlled Canadian cinema screens since the 1920s, and another is that the Canadian government has done very little to help Canada’s movie industry (Cuthbert, Morris, & Zuschlag, 2019). As a result, the overwhelming majority of films shown in Canada come from Hollywood. Chinese Film Culture As one of the world’s oldest countries, China has a deep history and independent cultural identity. China’s film industry also has its own long history. Cinema in China can be traced back to 1905, when a Beijing opera titled The Battle of Dingjunshan was adapted to film by the Beijing Fengai Photo Studio (Aranburu, 2017). This movie was made only three years after the world’s first film was created. The Chinese movie industry is considered to have been properly started in 1913 with a movie called The Difficult Couple (Aranburu, 2017). China has continued making local and national films ever since. This has led to a well developed industry of creating Chinese films. Comparing China and Canada: Population and Box Office Earnings To compare Canada and China, we need to understand the difference in scale between these two nations. As the world’s largest country in terms of population, China is nearly forty times bigger than Canada. This will need to be considered throughout all the comparisons made here.

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The earnings from each country's box office are similarly imbalanced. In 2019, the Canadian box office earned approximately 770 million U.S. dollars (Statista, 2020b). That same year, the box office in China earned approximately 9.3 billion U.S. dollars (Statista, 2020a). As the film market in Canada earns less than one tenth of what China does, it’s understandable that Hollywood would be more interested in the Chinese film market. We will see more about this later on. If we take a look at how much impact local films had on these earnings, we see that 77.6% of China's box office earnings were generated from locally made films (Statista, 2020c). We can see how this makes sense, as China’s film industry has been around for a very long time. The opposite side of this is that 22.4% of the box office earnings came from internationally made films. Looking at Canada, we can see that locally made films were responsible for only 1.7% of the earnings in the Canadian market (Statista, 2020b). That means that 98.3% of box office earnings in Canada went to international films. Given that Hollywood films are made in English, and made by a culture not dissimilar from Canada’s, it’s understandable that Hollywood could dominate Canada’s cinema screens like this. In addition, Canadian government has done very little to protect or prioritize Canadian-made cinema (Cuthbert, Morris, & Zuschlag, 2019). From this we can see that China is a much larger market for films than Canada, and that most of that film market is Chinese-made films, while people in Canada almost exclusively see internationally made films. Comparing China and Canada: Democracy and Communism Canada is a democratic country where people can generally express and create what they want. Regarding film regulation, provinces in Canada use a movie-rating system like many other countries, including the United States (“Film Ratings,” n.d.). This means that any kind of film can be made (barring those with content that breaks laws) but it will receive a classification based on the content within the film. If that content is deemed to be too extreme for general audiences, it will not receive wide distribution. While this can act as a practical form of censorship, it is a restriction, not a ban.

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China on the other hand, uses much more censorship than Canada does. Unlike most countries, there is not a movie-rating system in place. Instead, the government uses censors at the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of the People's Republic of China to ban content that it decides is not fit for general audiences (Langfitt, 2015). This is not limited to violence or sex within the film, but also extends to how China is portrayed in the movie (Langfitt, 2015). Comparing China and Canada: International Film Regulations As stated earlier, Canada does not have any regulation that restricts distribution of Canadian-made or international films. The vast majority of films that are shown in Canada are international films, so placing restrictions on these could be a problem. China has strict rules regarding the import of foreign-made films. In fact, they only allow 34 international films to play in cinemas each year (Croteau & Hoynes, 2018, p. 538). This rule ensures that Chinese-made cinema will always hold a prominent position in the Chinese film industry. Hollywood studios have found ways around this restriction by including Chinese producers and other elements in their films in order for it to count as locally made films (Croteau & Hoynes, 2018, p. 538). Comparing China and Canada: Relationship with Hollywood As we saw earlier, the Chinese film market generates a large amount of income, and therefore represents a large potential source of income for the American film industry. Hollywood has worked to get around the 34 films per year restriction, but they have also begun adding or altering elements in films in order to please the Chinese government (Croteau & Hoynes, 2018, p. 538). An example of this is the film Iron Man 3, which added scenes with Chinese characters and brands that were not present in the original version of the film (Tsui, 2013). It seems that Hollywood is willing to cater to China’s very strict censorship regulations. McMahon (2020) writes, "China might be distinguished for its ability to wield state censorship with such strength that it can weaken Hollywood’s financial power.” Meanwhile, Canada’s relationship with Hollywood is very different. Canada does not censor or place demands on films that come from America. Canada actually contributes to the Hollywood 5

film industry by being a popular filming location. According to Magder, Handling, & Morris (2019), the American film industry takes advantage of the tax breaks and lower prices in Canada, and over 50 years has led filming in Canada to become a multi-billion-dollar industry. Canada gives financial incentive for American films to be made there, but does very little to foster the development or distribution of Canadian-made films. Conclusion China and Canada have very different attitudes when it comes to the distribution of local and international films. In China we see a local film industry that is doing well financially. This local film industry is protected by placing very strict rules on the importation of international films. They have also begun exerting pressure on Hollywood to alter the contents of these imported films to better fit the Chinese market and government’s wishes. Chinese films are still the majority of what the population pays to see, but Hollywood is making adjustments to try and claim a larger portion of that income. Canada on the other hand has done very little to protect their local film industry, and Canadian-made films make up less than 2% of the annual cinema earnings as a result. For the import of international films, not only are there no restrictions or regulations for American films coming to Canada, but Canada actually offers tax incentives for Hollywood to film inside of Canada. In this way, we can see how China and Canada have very different approaches to the distribution of local and international films.

Literature List

Aranburu, A. M. (2017). The Film History in China: Past and Present. Journal of Evolutionary Studies in Business, 2(1), 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1344/jesb2017.1.j021 Croteau, D., Hoynes, W. (2018). Media/society (6th Ed.). Sage Publications. Cuthbert, P., Morris, P., Zuschlag. (2019). Film distribution in Canada. In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/film-distribution-in-canada Film Ratings. (n.d.). Retrieved June 9, 2021, from https://www.mpa-canada.org/film-ratings/

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Langfitt, F. (2015). How China's censors influence Hollywood. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/05/18/407619652/how-chinas-censors-influe nce-hollywood?t=1603120111406 Magder, T., Handling, P., Morris, P. (2019). Canadian film history: 1974 to present. In The Canadian Encyclopedia.Retrieved from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadian-film-history-1974-to-present McMahon, J., (2020). Selling Hollywood to China. Forum for Social Economics. https://doi-org.ezproxy.uio.no/10.1080/07360932.2020.1800500 Merziger, P. (2013). Americanised, Europeanised or nationalised? The film industry in Europe under the influence of Hollywood, 1927–1968. European Review of History: Revue Européenne d’histoire, 20(5), 793–813. https://doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2013.833716 Statista. (2020a, Feb. 4). Box office revenue in China 2012-2019. https://www.statista.com/statistics/497954/box-office-revenue-china/ Statista. (2020b, Sep. 29). Canada box office revenue 2007-2019, by production origin. https://www.statista.com/statistics/475880/canada-box-office-revenue-production-origin/ Statista. (2020c, Oct. 15). Share of box office revenue in China 2007-2019, by region of movie origin. https://www.statista.com/statistics/260212/share-of-box-office-revenue-in-china-by-dome stic-and-imported-movies/ Telefilm Canada's new "Success Index" more than just box office. (2011, Nov. 24). Screen International. https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.uio.no/docview/1897723749?accountid=14699 Tsui, C. (2013). 'Iron Man 3' China-only scenes draw mixed response. Retrieved from https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/iron-man-3-china-scenes-450184

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