HUMA 2740

Lecture 15

- “Trade follows film” – officials began noticing that foreign consumers

would want to buy American products seen in movies
o American movies should be exported abroad aggressively
- Many countries fearing onslaught of American movies undermining
their own movie industries and other forms of national and regional
culture, attempted to impose quotas on number of films that could be
shown
o Hollywood saw this as an attempt to limit their profits
- Hollywood responded by using full weight of fed govt’s State
Department to try to resolve various disputes diplomatically and if
unsuccessful they would stop (or threaten to stop) sending movies to
the country altogether
o Became a symbiotic relationship between Hollywood and State
Department and this relationship exists today as well even
though they are both separate entities
- Effect of turning foreign moviegoers against their own govt and most
of these govts would then relent and allow Hollywood to get its way
- England, Germany and France examples of where this took place
- John Trumpbour
- The Red Scare was another factor influencing govt interest in
supporting the film industry
- After the Russian Revolution of 1917, many political and business
leaders in US became concerned abt the influence of this new
Communist state on world affairs
 - Wanted to show the world that their capitalist system and
representative form of govt was preferable to all other forms
- Hoped to promote adaptation of American way of life by other people
around the world
American Public Broadcasting Abroad

- US govt had already established a well-funded public broadcasting

system before the creation of the CPB and PBS
- But wasn’t accessible to American audiences as a result of an
agreement between the American govt and early communist
broadcasters
- Institutions like the Voice of America, Armed Forces Radio and
Television and Radio Free Europe were designed to provide info,
entertainment, diplomacy, and propaganda to foreign audiences and
to American service personnel abroad
- This foreign broadcasting system began at the start of WW2 when
the OWI began renting privately owned short-wave radio transmitters
and building new ones
- These radios stations known collectively as the Voice of America
- Activities of VOA were cut back at end of WW2 but then were
increased again after the Cold War began
- Became part of activities overseen by the US department of State
- 1953 – VOA was made part of the United States Information Agency
and remained there until the USIA was dissolved in 1999
- Now run by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which
oversees the foreign broadcasting activities of the US govt