Serious jingoism? ... Jamie Foxx fighting terrorism in Saudi Arabia in The Kingdom
It's been listin' time again this week, as what seemed like every man, woman or child who ever blogged lined up to take part in a poll organised by Edward Copeland to find the world's most esteemed non-English language movies. And rigorous the process has been too, with a nominating committee, no less, proposing 122 candidates from which to choose your favourite.
Naturally it's nice to see this kind of attention lavished on some of history's finest yet lately neglected films; but between Copeland's poll (coming after The Guardian's similar exercise earlier in the year) and the surging popularity of foreign movies in the UK, I can't help wondering how much of the current enthusiasm for what was once known as world cinema is purely that - and how much a rejection of Hollywood at a time when the wider America is so reviled. In other words, is George Bush responsible in some odd tangential way for the rediscovery of Jean Renoir and Fassbinder?
If so, it's clearly a phenomenon with differing degrees of enmity; few US bloggers are likely to share the anti-Americanism of many British audiences. And yet in both cases there may be an underlying notion of Hollywood as a tool of a cultural imperialism that, however murkily, reflects the actual imperialism of US foreign policy. Follow that logic far enough and Hollywood flicks aren't just dopey time-killers - but sermons straight from the bully pulpit.
Indeed, the excellent Bright Lights had a post last week discussing just that notion of studio movies. There is, Erich Kuersten remarked on such coming features as The Kingdom, much angst colouring Hollywood's vision right now - but also still a "serious jingoism" that tells the audience: "we need crazy tyrants [...] unafraid to bloody up the joint. That is, if we want to win the unwinnable - or do you want bombs in your living room? Do you want to get trampled on by the muddy feet of terror?"
Historically, there's no avoiding the way in which Hollywood has entwined itself with America's political tempers. Think back, for instance, to the Reagan 80s, that epoch of sunlit lunacy in which the prevailing climate inspired a film industry awash with cant and cocaine to churn out loudly triumphalist action movies and nostalgic homages to an idealised 50s. (After which, of course, came the last period in which American cinema was remotely fashionable - a stretch that in extending from 1992's Reservoir Dogs to Being John Malkovich seven years later coincided with the era when the rest of the world last felt half comfortable with America's influence).
And yet there still seems something pat about the idea of the US film business as merely the entertainment division of an occupying army. Not least there's the irony that to America's own right-wing, Hollywood isn't a byword for state propaganda, but for the weaslings of treacherous liberals (I'd refer anyone interested to the conservative film blog Libertas). In addition, for all the dumb gung-ho of the action genre, what I think of as the definitive Hollywood product is altogether less hawkish: the values it promotes (family, redemption, manic self-realisation) may be treacly twee, but ideologically they owe more to Oprah than Henry Kissinger.
Equally, much of what practically makes up "Hollywood" is scarcely American at all. You imagine Guillermo Del Toro, David Cronenberg and Ang Lee (each of who have recently made films for the studios) would be no more at ease with the idea of themselves as agents of American power than they would with the idea of themselves as American. And the studios they're working for? Universal is part-owned by French money; Columbia exists under the parental arm of Sony.
On-screen too, the story's not so simple. Yes, it's hard not to feel disorientated when the 6 o'clock news brings word of the latest atrocities in Baghdad and Mosul and two hours later you're watching trailers for Rush Hour 3 or Disturbia. But that kind of wilful fluff shouldn't obscure the fact that, in cinematic terms, Hollywood still puts forth substantial work from belly-of-the-beast film-makers like Michael Mann or David Fincher, whose movies are clearly more than just wallpaper for a sedated body politic. (All this, of course, without exploring the wider American landscape of David Lynch, Todd Haynes, Lodge Kerrigan...)
And politically, it would be simplistic verging on the slack-jawed to paint every film-maker in Hollywood as a mere patsy when even now there are angry voices making themselves heard on the industry dollar - whatever his failings, Michael Moore has been as important a focus for dissent as anyone in the US over the last seven years; Spike Lee's unco-opted nature remains snarkily inspiring. By all means, enough tat has been made on Hollywood lots for the very name to be shorthand for the icky and mediocre - but it's galling to see the pugnacity of someone like Lee forgotten, particularly if the fiercest activism of the person doing the forgetting came complaining about a lack of Godard films on BBC2.
Which I suppose brings it back full circle - to the noble business of acknowledging the cinemas of Europe and beyond. It's just important, perhaps, to remember in the process that however loathsome its political class may be, the US can't quite be written out of movie history yet. And with that, I'll start preparing my own selection for Copeland's poll - although I can't say I'm wowed by the longlist. Five films by Truffaut but none from Chabrol? Run Lola Run but no Spirit of the Beehive, Festen, or Le Corbeau? I'll refrain from cursing bloody Americans, and wish you happy voting...
