ABSTRACT
In recent years, some attention has been given to the dynamics of a distinctive form of transnational media consumption primarily oriented around the reworked menu of “world cinema” (Chaudhuri 2005). This is an emergent discourse, by which I mean that it is neither a radically new proposition nor one that can be easily contained within the ways of thinking that went before. For much of the twentieth century, there was a widespread, and quite remarkable, consensus concerning the practice of positioning the cinemas of the world as primarily national, indigenous institutions neatly arranged in a hub-and-spoke relationship with an “international” Hollywood industry. A distinguishing feature of academic studies in “national cinema” was their tendency to assert various “reflective” and “effective” attributes of feature films as social objects (Hayward 1993; Gittings 2002; Hake 2002). In the first instance, the “reflective” component of the national cinema paradigm rested on the claim that a film can represent the producing nation. In this light, films were seen as naturalistically indicative of a nationally specific aesthetic and, by extension, as presenting a literal framing of the cultural identity, behaviors, and beliefs of the producing society. The parallel claim of an “effective” component of national cinema related instead to the identification of the cinema as a socializing force with a degree of persuasive power. Here, the film medium was granted a role as a nation builder, with this claim resting specifically on the purported community-building effects they exerted on citizens watching “national” films (see Jarvie 2000).
