Abstract
“Breakthrough” global blockbusters like Black Panther (2018) and Crazy Rich Asians (2018) create disturbances among critics and firms forced to wonder if such ripples of diversity will become waves of new cinema wiping out the hegemony of Hollywood and the global West. In this essay, we establish the context for this phenomenon in terms of film’s historical relationship to marketing. Through this context, we theorize a transnational aesthetic for global blockbusters, one that may serve to limit ripples of diversity, breaking waves of change against the rocks of a banal cinema of Americanized nothingness.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Reyes, Ian and Wyatt, Justin
(2019)
"On the Banality of Transnational Film,"
Markets, Globalization & Development Review:
Vol. 4:
No.
3, Article 2.
DOI: 10.23860/MGDR-2019-04-03-02
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/mgdr/vol4/iss3/2
Included in
Anthropology Commons, Communication Commons, Economics Commons, Film and Media Studies Commons, Marketing Commons, Other Business Commons, Sociology Commons
Author Bio
Ian Reyes is an associate professor in the Harrington School of Communication and Media at the University of Rhode Island working at the intersection of media theory and marketing theory. His research has been published in journals including Consumption Markets & Culture, Marketing Theory, and the Journal of Marketing Management. His current projects address social media engagement, popular music cultures, and transmedia strategies.
Justin Wyatt is Associate Director of the Harrington School of Communication and Media and Associate Professor of Film/Media and Communication Studies at the University of Rhode Island. He is the author of High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood and The Virgin Suicides: Reverie, Sorrow and Young Love and the co-editor of Contemporary American Independent Film: From the Margins to the Mainstream.