> But Anglo countries like Canada or Australia or New Zealand make many fewer. UK makes slightly less than the US.
No surprise there. Same language (no translation barrier) and a shared background as former British colonies (well, or being British) really seals the deal there. But also there's really no language aspect to analyze here; we can't say that America's media culture undermined the local non-English speaking of say, New Zealand, because most of the people there already spoke English already.
Although the impact on accents is another matter, I am sure.
> There must be more to this; places like Nigeria, India, China, Japan all make more feature films compared to the US. Countries like Spain, France, Germany, UK make about half as many. Mexico, Brazil are in the top 15..
Some of those other countries definitely fall under my criteria. Japan and India both have their own traditions to preserve (Bollywood is a thing), and my understanding is that the CCP has made resisting Hollywood's influence an explicit goal.
The rest of it? Dunno. There's clearly just some other factor at play here that I don't have my thumb on. I can't explain why Brazil and Mexico produce that many movies, this is the first time I've heard that.
> Population size probably matters more and gdp less
I think that's really close, but not quite it. I think the real thing here is having the cultural and economic circumstances that allow people to go and produce media and art for consumption. For some forms of media (especially movies) this is going to largely be a factor of money and population, since that is expensive. But that might not be true for all types of national media. Manga in particular is a fairly small industry, with roughly 40,000 workers and a mere 4,000 artists. Hollywood alone is 10x bigger.
My mind also jumps here to Russia, and how important its literature scene is to both the country and the language. Population is certainly a factor, producing great literature at the country level is often about giving a lot of people the chance to try and seeing what happens, but money really isn't as much a factor given that novels are cheap to produce. Funding great novels is pretty cheap once you've identified worthwhile novelists, since it involves paying maybe the living expenses of a few people.
Perhaps my takeaway here is that Movies are the national media of America (and India too, to be fair), and what we're seeing in some countries is the competition between American movies providing pressure to move to English, and other forms of local media grounding the country in question in its native tongue. That idea might need more fleshing out.
> but having some unique to say helps.
Oh yes, that is certainly very important.
0 - Although for a short while the UK definitely punched above its weight, from the 60s until the 80s or so. The theory I've heard is that this was a side effect of having a really good welfare system; people were able to quit their jobs easily and create music and art, and some of it was really good.
No surprise there. Same language (no translation barrier) and a shared background as former British colonies (well, or being British) really seals the deal there. But also there's really no language aspect to analyze here; we can't say that America's media culture undermined the local non-English speaking of say, New Zealand, because most of the people there already spoke English already.
Although the impact on accents is another matter, I am sure.
> There must be more to this; places like Nigeria, India, China, Japan all make more feature films compared to the US. Countries like Spain, France, Germany, UK make about half as many. Mexico, Brazil are in the top 15..
Some of those other countries definitely fall under my criteria. Japan and India both have their own traditions to preserve (Bollywood is a thing), and my understanding is that the CCP has made resisting Hollywood's influence an explicit goal.
The rest of it? Dunno. There's clearly just some other factor at play here that I don't have my thumb on. I can't explain why Brazil and Mexico produce that many movies, this is the first time I've heard that.
> Population size probably matters more and gdp less
I think that's really close, but not quite it. I think the real thing here is having the cultural and economic circumstances that allow people to go and produce media and art for consumption. For some forms of media (especially movies) this is going to largely be a factor of money and population, since that is expensive. But that might not be true for all types of national media. Manga in particular is a fairly small industry, with roughly 40,000 workers and a mere 4,000 artists. Hollywood alone is 10x bigger.
My mind also jumps here to Russia, and how important its literature scene is to both the country and the language. Population is certainly a factor, producing great literature at the country level is often about giving a lot of people the chance to try and seeing what happens, but money really isn't as much a factor given that novels are cheap to produce. Funding great novels is pretty cheap once you've identified worthwhile novelists, since it involves paying maybe the living expenses of a few people.
Perhaps my takeaway here is that Movies are the national media of America (and India too, to be fair), and what we're seeing in some countries is the competition between American movies providing pressure to move to English, and other forms of local media grounding the country in question in its native tongue. That idea might need more fleshing out.
> but having some unique to say helps.
Oh yes, that is certainly very important.
0 - Although for a short while the UK definitely punched above its weight, from the 60s until the 80s or so. The theory I've heard is that this was a side effect of having a really good welfare system; people were able to quit their jobs easily and create music and art, and some of it was really good.