As Tyler Cohen goes over in his article “Why Hollywood Rules the World, and Whether We Should Care,” American movies are globally dominant. A variety of reasons that coincide with the rise of technology in movie productions being conducive to American filmmaking techniques explain why Hollywood is king. Hollywood being king is kind of scary considering the history of a king’s relationship to his people and American history of how elites/the majority have treated everybody else. Kings generally have absolute power, where any decision they make is unchallenged, and often he acts in the best interest of himself first, second, and third, with the people coming dead last, if even in the race at all. Thus when Hollywood is deemed as the king of the moviemaking industry, and rightfully so, it is only natural the certain things and people are portrayed in a very specific light.
I can’t imagine a media outlet where stereotypes are more enforced than movies. The nightly news potentially would give Hollywood a run for it’s money, but I think Hollywood movies would still come out on top. The ability to create how certain groups of people are perceived as Hollywood movies do, especially to a global audience that might not have access to those people in real life, is incredibly powerful. Hollywood movies are able to alter, or at least reinforce, how people perceive certain groups even when they do have access to those people i.e. America. Cohen asked whether we should care if Hollywood is king, and though Hollywood has become more diverse in terms of the nationality of the personnel used to create movies, they are still plugging people into the same archetypes and stereotypes. I think a better question to ask is do people even realize there are movie making centers other than Hollywood? Bollywood is a real place, not just another joke in a Hollywood movie. How can people not be fed stereotypes by Hollywood if they don’t even know there are other movies to consume?