Asianized and Hollywoodized

The idea of Hollywood becoming Asianized is quite importance in the world of globalisation in 

which companies and industries that had been primarily nationalise such as Hollywood being 

produced in America for Americans, whereas now Hollywood will use actors, directors and 

martial arts choreographers. It is not just the idea of Hollywood hiring people from other 

regions just because of the talent; it’s also the potential audience of the regions that they want, 

for example using a actors such as Chinese’s Jet Li. Not only would Hollywood aim at the 

western world with actors such as Jet Li but also the potentially massive market of China, 

whose population is around one billion, 1/7^th of the world population.

But it not just a one way street Asian films are becoming more Hollywoodized, areas of Asia 

that once had been dominated by Hollywood now have local films that can rival Hollywood 

movies. Hong Kong boast 50% of box office were that of local films in 2001. Movies have 

becoming more transnational as globalisation continues to grow and shape many different 

industries including the film industries for example movies such as Kill Bill which is set in Japan 

and America but is filmed in china give a brief view into the working of globalisation. Another 

example is Pacific Rim, filmed in Canada, directed by a Mexican, with Japanese’s, British and 

American actors shows the try potential of a Asianized Hollywood and globalisation.    

Klein, Christina 2004, ‘Martial arts and globalisation of US and Asian film industries’, Comparative America Studies, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 360-384   

The specular economy of celebrities

The fall of celebrities have always interested the general public, the people who want and wish to be as 

famous and well known but never achieving the goal. The idea of the specular economy has become 

progressively more importance for celebrities, as the “celebrities are in fact at the forefront of the expansion 

and use of social media and networks for reputation management. Indeed, some ‘stars’ such as MC 

Hammer have remade themselves through their presence on Twitter” (Marshall, 2010, p498).

                                                                   by Brian Solis

Many celebrities will post status updated or tweets on Facebook and Twitter respectively, but this form of 

publicity for the celebrates is still generally a two-way mirror as Marshall (2010) puts it, a the public are like 

the cops able to look into the interrogation room in which the celebrity is in revealing personal information. 

 But there are others that will willingly tweet with the public and make theirs interactions more like a window 

where two people can interact and see each other.  The example I will use which I heard on the radio, is 

when a cast in the Australian show Offspring, died many were extremely upset and stated tweeting about it, 

but hash tagging the wrong group instead of Offspring the TV show it was Offspring the 90’s band. One of 

the band member, Noodles, would tweet about how the guy deserved, as it’s a TV show, all for a laugh.   

The reason why specular economy is so big in the world of social media is because of the idea of mirrors, 

we look at celebrities as mirrors, something to aspire to, something to aim for, good looks, money and fame. 

But a mirror can also show faults in a person, flaws in celebrities for the example that Marshall uses is tiger 

wood who in 2009 was revealed as a fake, someone who had another persona that remained hidden for 

years. for this reason I think celebrities have become more open about their lives on social media because 

of, one not letting the media be the first to find out and secondly to try and publish a good reputation with 

the public by showing more of who they are.

Reference

Marshal, P.D 2010, ‘The Specular Economy’, Society, vol. 47, no. 6, pp. 498-502 

Games and the Global Cultures of Production

Construction and minecraft

Mine craft in its basic form is a game where players get to expolore a vitually limitless area and

create wonderful constructions from the world around them. For example a player could build a 

castle on the edge of a cliff. The way construction has change and possible help the game to 

grow is the modification of the game play which is at no extra cost, just an extra download onto 

the PC. The extra game elements add a whole new way to play and alter the game experience 

for the player, for example the mods add the ability to construct pipes and wires all the way up 

to a nuclear reactor to charge all the machines in a player own world. The programmers ‘“can 

extend or change the text by adding their own writing or programming’’ in which ‘‘the ability to 

add permanent components to the text presupposes the demiurgic power to co-create the 

virtual world.’’’ (Raessens, J. 2005 p.381)

                                                                                image by Nemesis29

This new co-created virtual world not only happens mine craft but many other games as DLC 

(downloadable content) this has been happening since 1997 when one of my all-time favourite 

game  ‘Total Annihilation’ released new content in the form of extra units every month.  But in 

the gaming world of today where many games require internet connection to play most gamer 

would not view patch, which will undated prior to the game being able to be played, as 

downloadable content, yet the follow the construction idea, they modify or change the game 

slightly thus altering the experience of the played game. (Raessens, J. 2005 p.381) patches 

may just be something as simple as fixing a game error which is quite common for new games 

or it could be something as complex as adding a whole new element to the game such as a 

new playable race in World of Warcraft. 

                                                               image by HeonGaiden

Raessens, J. 2005, ‘Computer games as participatory media culture’, Handbook of

Computer Game Studies, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, pp. 373-388 

Political Micro blogging

 Micro blogging for politician and the use of social media is still new, many higher ranking Politician do not use twitter to is full advantage as shown by Larsson’s (2010) graph of top ten users in the Swedish election of 2010. But twitter is still only used by a small number of people 19% of American internet users but as low as 1-8% of Swedish internet users a clear minority. (Larsson, p 747, 2010)

                                                                   picture by susstudio_x  

Like many of the great technological changes in history it takes time to get use to and for it to become fully effective but once it does, it will be so common place that it would be hard to image how elections were ran before, for example how did politicians advertise their point of view quickly and efficiently without the use of TV.  Just like the use of TV within the political arena, micro blogging will become common place in the next few years.

Because of how new the concept of micro blogging is not much research have been done on micro blogging and the effect of how micro blogging is not really understood for the moment, more study is needed to be able to understand the full effect on how the micro blogging can affect the outcome and peoples decisions at an election, for now it seem with examples of the Swedish election that it has not played a major role yet, but as time goes on that may change and we could see more politician using micro blogging to get tire points across.