ABSTRACT
The political economy-based analyses of Globalization and Global culture build not only on Marx but also on the work of Braudel and the Annales School idea of a world economy as well as on later dependency/world-systems theory. A political economy approach stresses the corporate domination of the media, the commodification of media forms, the role of government support and interventions, and the exercise of economic and social power. Emphasizing political economy and cultural policy, the authors emphasize the global infrastructure of Hollywood hegemony which operates through corporate and state domination and the US government’s role in capital accumulation within the film industry. A political economy approach to Global Hollywood uncovers ways that private industry benefits from public support and monies, so that the “free market” comes to signify a highly protected North American “home market.” Even with the decline of American economic power and the “rise of the Rest,” US hegemony and that of neo-liberal ideologies persist.
