Horrible Hollywood!

We all go to the cinemas these days to wind down by watching a film. We splurge at the candy bar, sit through a 2 hour film (with 20mins of ads) and walk away feeling satisfied. But these days I cannot stand the films being shown at cinemas. Films obviously all have a conflict and follow the journey of resolving this conflict, but for some reason it's all sunshine and lollipops. 
As Rabiger (2004) points out films follow a three act structure which feels right to the general public. There is a beginning, middle and end which go from the inciting moment to the climax and resolution. TV Tropes call this the 'Hollywood Formula'. Now the structure's boring but works, except it isn’t written that every film has to have a happy ending, there just needs to be a resolution.                                                        
Hollywood has decided every film must have a happy ending, and a film with no happiness will not get past the proposal. Films worth watching that are of significance and mind boggling themes are being pushed into the abyss, as commercial cinema complex's play films that are box office hits. A couple of years ago an Australian film named 'Animal Kingdom' was praised by the film world. I was working at a Broadmedows cinema; I was so excited for it to be released only to find out that a select few cinemas would screen it. Hang on, an Australian film not being shown at every cinema in Australia? Surely that's not right.
As Pieterse (2009) writes, globalisation is “shrinking the world” and involves the reconfiguration of states with regionalisation. Western cinema has become regionalised to a mainstream of Hollywood cinema.
Hollywood's films were making more money hence the big cinema chains didn’t want to support an Australian film with the gamble of losing money. Seeing this happen I realised Hollywood was colonising the western cinema world.
Hollywood has Deterritorialised western countries and their separate film cultures by implementing their money making formula onto private corporations.

 Friends with Benifits vs No Strings attatched, YouTube

References

Pieterse, J 2009, Globalisation and Culture: Global Melange, Rowman & Littlefield, USA

Rabiger, M 2004, Directing the Doumentary, 4^th edn, Focal Press, Boston

TV Tropes, 'The Hollywood Formula', retrieved 1 August 2013, <http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheHollywoodFormula>

Informational Flows

I walked into the kitchen to get something to eat, as I was hungover and starving, and saw my mother placing a stamp on a letter to send out. I asked who it was for and she said something, but I had zoned out straight away as I stared deep into my fridge for some nourishment.
Later in the day I asked her why she was using mail as her informational medium and she told me "I find it more authentic and easier". It got me thinking a bit and we started to compare how she used to send and receive information. She told me it was either sending mail, telephone calls or most of the time face to face interaction. Then she told me nothing much has changed as she still uses these same mediums, but does SMS a lot more and sends an e-mail occasionally. She said she had tried to use Facebook and Twitter but found these mediums confusing, and found slang like YOLO silly and hard to understand.
She then mentioned she does use the internet now to find out most of her news, but only after hearing from the television and if she wants to investigate the subject more.
In the Rantanen reading (2005, p.7), he mentions different definitions of globalisation. One that caught my eye was Tomson's as he describes it as "the growing interconnectedness of different parts of the world, a process which gives rise to complex forms of interaction and interdependency". After talking to my mother and reading this, I realized that globalisation may be a way to connect people faster and easier from different corners of the world. But due to these forms becoming complex we are leaving those behind who do not grow up with the technology to either catch up, or disconnect themselves from the growing social and technological landscape. As well as this though, younger generations are becoming more and more socially inept, as they struggle to hold a conversation face to face due to their use of explaining themselves in abbreviations and thumbs. Therefore globalisation is affecting every generation in positive and negative ways.

References:

Rantanen, T 2005, The Media and Globalization, p.7, Sage, London

Hello!

Hi!
My name is Christopher McFarlane and I'm 19 years old.
Currently in my second year of completing a Bachelor of Film and Digital media, (majoring in film) and this is my blog on globalization for ALC215!
In my spare time I watch film and documentary's, play sport (AFL mostly), as well as djing and producing electronic music. My plan is to incorporate film with the globalization topic each week, but may end up talking about the recent changes in electronic dance music (EDM) as well, to further my points.
I hope you all enjoy my blog and feel free to comment, I look forward to the next 12 weeks of blogging on this topic :-)