professors world peace academy

Professors World Peace Academy

THE GLOBALIZATION OF HOLLYWOODAuthor(s): Scott R. OlsonSource: International Journal on World Peace, Vol. 17, No. 4 (DECEMBER 2000), pp. 3-17Published by: Professors World Peace AcademyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20753277 .

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THE GLOBALIZATION OF HOLLYWOOD

Scott R. Olson Professor of Communications Ball State University

Muncie, Indiana 47306 USA

Scott Olson is Professor of Communication Studies and Dean of the College of Communi

cation, Information, and Media at Ball State University. His primary research interest is

global audience receptions of film and television programming. His most recent books are

Hollywood Planet: Global Media and Competitive Advantage of Narrative Transparency and

Komunikacja w Organizacji i Zaradzaniu (Managerial and Organizational Communication). His articles have appeared in several communication journals, he has lectured in several

countries, and he helped establish a School of Communication in Poland.

Brazil, Hong Kong, and other centers of international television

and film production have joined with the United States in forming a

global Hollywood media aesthetic in the scramble for audiences. It

means engaging audiences with media texts in a way that allows

vastly different kinds of audiences to make sense of them.

If success in the global media has at least in part a textual basis, these textual differences must stem

from attributes of the producing culture. Those countries particu

larly successful in exporting film and television are are microcosms

of international audience taste.

By virtue of its ethnic diversity, the United States produces media

programming that is differentiated within and anticipatory of global market tastes. Ethnic diversity at

home shapes the kind of films and television programs that Americans

watch, and helps make these media

exportable to the rest of the world. Economic and political

explanations of global media do not tell the whole story. Textual

explanations for global media success must be taken into account.

There was a time not long ago that Holly wood was the apotheosis of indigenous, authentic culture, and that view is still held

by cultural elites in many countries. In the last round of the GATT talks, France fa

mously tried to limit the amount of Ameri

can media programming allowed into its

borders (Moerk and Williams, 1993). Most of the fear of American media is based on the premise that American values are be

ing exported within the media like soldiers in a Trojan Horse, but recent studies have

found indigenous cultures to be quite re

silient in their interpretations of Western

media (Liebes and Katz, 1993; Gillespie,1995a & 1995b; Roome, 1999). The era of throwing up barricades in resis

tance to imported media has for all practi cal purposes passed, however. The effec

tive hybridity or interstitiality of contem

porary cultures is of increasing interest to

scholars (Bhabha, 1999; Davis, 1999; Naficy, 1999; and Nagel, 1999). The essence of

Hollywood is now too ephemeral and om

nipresent a foe for a barricade to keep it out.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON WORLD PEACE VOL. XVII NO. 4 DECEMBER 2000 3




The reason for the holes in this wall are simple. Hollywood has be come an aesthetic, and is no longer just a place in California. That aesthetic

has been increasingly adopted by other media production centers in other countries around the world. Contrary to what is commonly reported, Hol

lywood is not particularly an American aesthetic, at least not anymore.

Hollywood is a global aesthetic, and that in a nutshell sums up its transnational appeal.

"Going Hollywood35 no longer means packing up and moving to Los

"Going Hollywood" now means joining Brazil, Hong Kong, and other production centers in the scramble for global audiences. It means adopting a certain way of engaging audiences with me dia texts, a way that allows vastly different kinds of audiences to make sense of the same media texts.

Angeles, nor does it mean adopting a certain disaffected personal deportment, the sunglasses and espadrilles and deconstructed jackets that served as mock

signifiers for a high status witirin the film

industry. "Going Hollywood55 now means joining Brazil, Hong Kong, and other production centers in the scramble

for global audiences. It means adopting a certain way of engaging audiences with

media texts, a way that allows vastly dif

ferent kinds of audiences to make sense

of the same media texts. Hollywood has

so transcended geography that its name

has been appropriated and is now used

to describe media capabilities in coun

tries outside the United States: for ex

ample, the film production center in In

dia is now commonly called Bollywood and in Hong Kong it is called

Dongfang Haolaiwu, or "Hollywood of the East."

THE GOLDEN MEAN OF IMAGES

Understanding how this Hollywood aesthetic diaspora evolved can best be illustrated by a metaphor. Early in this decade, an interesting research project

was conducted at the University of Texas at Austin by Judith Langlois and at the University of Arkansas by Lori Roggman (Bower, 1990). Langlois and Roggman took photographs of 32 different faces representing a mix of

4 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON WORLD PEACE

VOL. XVII NO. 4 DECEMBER 2000




ethnicities, used computer imaging technology to "morph55 these images into a single face (that is, to blend the features of each into a new coherent

whole), resulting in a new synthetic image in addition to the 32 real, origi nal faces. These 33 images were then shown to individuals who were asked

for their assessment of the images5 attractiveness: which face was the most

beautiful?

Interestingly, the raters were overwhelmingly most attracted to the com

posite face, which to them seemed warmer, softer, prettier, and more famil

iar. Part of its beauty must have been in the fact that we could all see our

selves in her?that her face was a microcosm of all our faces. Langlois and

Roggman concluded that averageness1?features normed across an entire

population or even the human race?must in part form the basis for attrac

tiveness (Bower, 1990). A study since then by Perrett, May, and Yoshikawa (Bower, 1994) found

that a certain amount of cultural distinctiveness combined with the aver

ageness led to optimal attractiveness, but the scientific consensus remains

that averageness is the basis of attraction (Rhodes, Sumich, &Byatt, 1999). One need not be a behavioral scientist to see the metaphoric significance of these findings. For those interested in culture, the message is fairly clear:

appealing images have a prevailing norm underneath the surface, the com

ing together of diverse idiosyncrasies to form an attractive and familiar whole. This metaphor says something about what is attractive in the mov

ies and television programs that cross national boundaries and succeed in

the international marketplace. In order to be intelligible, they have under

neath them a normative mode of communicating. They are appealing be

cause we see a part of ourselves in them. A motion picture like Titanic

functions like that 33rd face because there is a golden mean for images. Why are some national media industries more successful than others at

creating international markets for their products? There are usually two

explanations given in answer to this:

(1) International political pressure by superpowers forces movies and tele vision programs into countries that might not otherwise have wanted

them. Media programming is not without ideology, and the indigenous media production capacity of colonies and other areas have been ham

strung before, such as during events leading up to the American Revo

lutionary war.





(2) Unfair pricing and other economic incentives make it difficult or im

possible for local sovereignties to resist media imports and undermin

ing the local production of film and television programs. This has cer

tainly been the case in some African countries.

But while both of these are true to some extent, they don't account for

the success of non-superpowers, such as Hong Kong or Brazil, in media

exporting, nor do they account for the enthusiasm shown in many coun

tries for the imported product. Audiences around the world are sincerely attracted to Titanic and Walker: Texas Ranger^ choosing them over compet

ing media imports. Consequently, a third explanation is required. It is not exclusive, nor

intended to replace the other explanations, but rather to examine cultural

reasons that work independently of the political and economic reasons used

by the other two schools of thought:

(3) There are textual reasons why some media are successfully exported? that is, the film or television program itself exhibits traits that make it easier or more popular to consume, in the same way we might prefer a

Toyota to an indigenously produced automobile. The text itself exerts a force leading to its acceptance and success.2

It is the argument of this paper that if success in the global media has at least in part a textual basis, these textual differences must stem from at

tributes of the producing culture. Further, those countries that are particu

larly successful in exporting film and television are so because they are mi

crocosms of international audience taste. The United States, Hong Kong, and Brazil (among others) are "culture factories" producing a product with

culturally transparent attributes.

HOLLYWOOD'S MARKET ADVANTAGE

The best way to begin to understand how texts might be produced for

export by "culture factories55 is by applying Michael Porter's (1990) theory of "national competitive advantage55 to film and television production. Porter's question was: Why are certain countries strong in certain indus

tries? For example:

6

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON WORLD PEACE VOL. XVII NO. 4 DECEMBER 2000




Sweden is particularly strong in the production of mining equipment Japan is particularly strong in the production of consumer electronics

Italy is particularly strong in the production of ceramic tiles (Porter, 1990)

Porter argues that specific factors present in the nation combine to en

able preeminence, to give that nation a competitive advantage. These fac

tors include:

The availability of natural resources

Favorable regulatory policies Uniquely educated and configured workforce Unusual industry structure

Blind luck.

These factors combine in a fortuitous way to make such a nation what

he calls a "home base55 (Porter, 1990) for successful global competitors in a

particular industry. The home base is the nation in which the essential com

petitive advantages of the enterprise are created and sustained. Porter doesn't

spend any tim on it, but Brazil, Hong Kong, and the United States are three areas with a home base advantage in the global media.

Porter does not argue that nations have some sort of generalized and

deterministic advantage which enables them to do well in whatever indus

try they choose, such as that the British are industrious and frugal and therefore successful at whatever they do. On the contrary, the very things that make the British successful at producing and exporting pop music

may make them unsuccessful at pharmaceuticals. For Porter (1990), competitive advantage emerges in one of two types:

"Factor-based55 competitive advantage, which results from an abundance

of cheap labor or natural resources. This type of advantage is hard to

sustain because lower cost labor or more abundant resources can fre

quently be found elsewhere.

"Differentiation55 advantage, which results from conferring on a product attributes that make it more desirable to consumers even though it

might be more expensive than a competitor. Those differentiations in

clude:

1. Product quality or perceived quality (e.g., Coca-Cola); 2. Special features (e.g., Macintosh computers);





3. After-sale service (e.g., Lexus automobiles).

The differentiation approach has typically been the route to sustainable

competitive advantage. It certainly characterizes the appeal of the Ameri

can media: Hollywood films and television have little factor-based advan

tage of this sort due to huge production costs, yet are differentiated in such a way in the marketplace that they have an inherent desirability.

Sustainable home base advantage is created through what Porter (1990) calls the "diamond55 of four interrelated national attributes:

1. Factor conditions?the labor force, natural resources, infrastructure, capi tal, and knowledge capital available in a certain national industry. Spe cialized labor is the most significant of these factors for the film and television industry;

2. Related and supporting industries?the suppliers, subassemblers, dis

tributors, and other companies in a value chain. In the film and televi

sion industry, this refers to supplier industries, special effects firms, cos tume design shops, production insurance firms, post-production houses, film laboratories, studio space, specialized photographic equipment, writers, and acting talent, all within commuting distance of each other.

Los Angeles certainly shows this level of integration, but then so does Rio de Janeiro, where the a $250 million "Projeto Jacarepagua55 studio

complex resides; 3. Firm strategy, structure, and rivalry?the way firms in a particular coun

try organize themselves and compete with each other, and how that

competition can lead to global predominance. Porter (1990) reasons that if the toughest competitors are domestic, international competi tors will prove easier to defeat. The close quarters of head-to-head stu

dio competition in California are increasingly matched by studio com

petition over telenovela production in Brazil and over action film pro duction in Hong Kong (where studio rivalries can even turn violent);

4. Demand conditions?the type of domestic consumer and what they ex

pect from the product. The more demanding the domestic consumer, the better for the industry.

When these four advantage categories are applied to the film and tele vision industry, it is easy to see why success concentrates in a few areas, such as Hollywood, Brazil, Hong Kong, and India. While the factor con






ditions, supporting industries, and industry structure are all important to the success of media industries, the most significant factor of all is con sumer expectations. Increased exposure to global media has produced in

creasingly sophisticated global audiences who have come to expect the

Hollywood aesthetic. The success of that aesthetic is its similarity to the 33rd face.

THE HOLLYWOOD AUDIENCE

The most important aspect of competitive advantage in Brazil, Hong Kong, and the United States relates to the nature of domestic demand there. The domestic audience has come to expect the "Hollywood55 aesthetic, an aes

thetic that has definable attributes. The audience does not necessarily ex

pect products from California, because "America is...just another brand

name55 (Yoshimoto, 1994, p. 195). Domestic media consumption patterns in the United States are some

what different than in other parts of the world. Audiences are complicated and segmented, of course, but the following generalizations about the US

media audience have some basis in their consumption patterns:

The US audience is parochial?inward looking and generally uninter ested in imported media, the one significant exception being children's

programming.3 What this means is that in spite of all the sensations

they seek from the media, they also want the familiar?hence the suc

cess of sequels that basically retread the original plot. The US audience's primary expectation for the electronic media is that

they be pleased and entertained.

The US audience expects to get what it wants from the electronic media, and gives fairly little thought to what it needs ̂ problematic though that distinction is. Of very little interest to the general US audience is what cultural elites feel might be in the audience's best interest.

The US audience shares many elements in common with the American audience that Alexis De Tocqueville observed in 1850, audiences born of a culture that was:

1. Preoccupied with commerce and practical matters instead of sci

ence, art, or literature;





2. More attracted to the tangible and the real than to tradition and to formalism; 3. Focused on gratifying the body instead of the mind.

The contemporary US audience is also, according to Baudrillard (1988), primitive, ahistorical, and Utopian.

Finally, and most importandy, as to the question of how Hollywood became a global aesthetic, the US audience is multicultural, a mix of

indigenous and immigrant peoples, cultures, customs and languages. The extent of ethnic diversity in media consumption in the United States has changed significantly since the time of the invention of motion

pictures, paralleling the increasing diversity of American society generally.

The electronic media will, of course, go where the audience is, and these psychographic attributes govern the way films and television pro grams are produced in California, still the dominant center for the Holly wood aesthetic. Studios in California, seeking to capture as much of the audience as possible, will obviously develop products conducive to audi ence tastes. Attracting that domestic audience means the adoption of con

ventions which satisfy its longing for the familiar, for entertainment, for

practical and tangible matters, and for the primitive and Utopian, but for

doing so in a way that is attractive to the full range of cultural diversity. Films like Titanic found a way to appeal to African-Americans, Italian

Americans, Korean-Americans, and Latin Americans.

Given an audience that has specific expectations for the electronic me

dia but are themselves extremely diverse in cultural background, there are

only a few ways to craft programs for them. Elsewhere (Olson, 1999) I have argued that successful electronic media succeed by linking to mythotypes designed to overcome what Blumenberg (1985) called "the absolutism of

reality.55 By this phrase, Blumenberg means the existential dread that our lives might be short, meaningless, and ultimately ephemeral, the very things that myth and religion try to negate. This negation is most easily accom

plished by appealing to those emotions that block out the absolutism of

reality: wonder, awe, purpose, and participation (Olson, 1999). That can be done in a culturally particularized fashion, but the psychographic pa thology of domestic audience demand in the United States necessitates the

adoption of certain conventions by California film and television studios:






A simple "good guys55 vs. "bad guys55 plot, with clear division of appear

ance, behavior, and objective between protagonist and antagonist; Resistance to the idea of film as art;4 Middle class sentiments (see Wright, 1995); Formulaic and emotional stories with happy endings (see Cawelti, 1976); Stories with clear, simple, and predictable affect: e.g., thrills, laughter, tears (see Gitlin, 1990);

Obsession with beauty (see Douglas, 1995 on what she calls the "bionic

bimbo55); Action (Gitlin, 1990); Hope and optimism.

While these conditions are not conducive to "art55 films, they are con

ducive to textual transparency?a prop

erty whereby media are perceived to be indigenous by the viewing audience

(see Olson, 1999). Ultimately, it is in

transparency that all the demand fac

tors create a transportable media text.

By virtue of their ethnic diversity, the United States (and for similar reasons, Brazil and Hong Kong) produces media programming that is differen

tiated within and anticipatory of glo bal market tastes. Economic model

By virtue of their ethnic diversity, the United States (and for similar reasons, Brazil and Hong Kong) produces media programming that is differentiated within and anticipatory of global market tastes. Economic

modeling has enabled even more sophisti cated predictors of global taste in media programming.

ing has enabled even more sophisticated predictors of global taste in media

programming (Neelamegham & Chintagunta, 1999).

THE GLOBAL TEXT

Think of what makes a myth or legend or fairy tale work, the storytelling that enables tales like "Cinderella55 to transcend time and space. The same

basic devices enable media programming to connect to diverse audiences.

These devices have been identified (Olson, 1999) and revolve around com

monly found mythic themes:





1. Circular stories?tales that begin where they end, or return to the same

equilibrium as existed at the beginning of the tale. Every episode of a situation comedy for example, restores itself to the pre-conflict state of

affairs.

2. Archetypal characters?familiar stock heroes, villains, and incidental char

acters that keep story lines within the comfort zone of audiences. The similarities between Luke Skywalker and King Arthur or between Obi

Wan Kenobi and Merlin are a case in point. 3. Open-ended plots?stories that lend themselves to endless cycling, reno

vation and recapitulation. The Mahabharata is a classic example; Star

Trek a more contemporary example. 4. Inclusion strategies?devices that pull audiences into the action and help

them feel involved. The point-of-view shot, a standard device in the

Hollywood omniscient style (well described in Arijon, 1991), is one

example; it literally places the viewer into the perspective of a character in the narrative.

5. Negentropy?the process by which the electronic media assure audi

ences that life is not fundamentally chaotic, but rather orderly and pur

poseful (see Kubey & Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Titanic was a good ex

ample of this because it reaffirmed true love and triumph over death.

6. Awe?spectacle that inspires the audience. In the case of the Hollywood

aesthetic, this is primarily instilled by high production values that present majestic vistas, lavish sets, and lush costuming. This is more common

in theatrically released motion pictures than in television programming, but HDTV may change that soon. New digital production techniques, exhibited in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and elsewhere, further

enhance the audience awe.

7. Omnipresence?saturation of the human environment by electronic

media stimulation. This creates a condition in which being an audience member is a common and frequent experience in numerous venues,

from shops to restaurants to sports bars. Synergy, the marketing tech

nique of creating additional iterations of a media narrative through apparel, toys, games, computer products, and spin-offs in other media, is one aspect of omnipresence.

These attributes of global media texts do not describe most national cinemas. They do not describe the French cinema, or the Swedish cinema,

12

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON WORLD PEACE VOL. XVII NO. 4 DECEMBER 2000




or the Chinese cinema. Those cinemas are not part of the Hollywood aes

thetic.5 The aesthetic of the global text is analogous to the aesthetic of the 33rd

face, a type of beauty that is accessible because it is familiar, open, reassuring, inclusive, and everywhere.

The domestic US audience is not the only one receptive to the aesthet ics of the global Hollywood text. Similarities between American and Bra zilian audience demand demonstrates how that aesthetic has international

appeal. It is not surprising that the domestic audience in these two coun

tries should be similar. Both the United States and Brazil are former colo nies with large and diverse indigenous populations, populated with many races and a history of slavery, with vast geographic and demographic differ ences and a frontier, both democracies, both hailed as the wave of the fu

ture. Home demand in these two countries has these things in common:

1. The domestic audiences in Brazil and the US are large; 2. The domestic audiences in Brazil and the US are a significant percent of

world market share; 3. The domestic audiences in Brazil and the US have a voracious appetite

for the media; 4. The domestic audiences in Brazil and the US are receptive to synergy, to

product merchandising and marketing spin-offs; 5. The domestic audiences in Brazil and the US have high expectations for

the production values of cinema and television, and share the desire for a spectacle.6

Telenovelas are a good example of a global text, and of how the Holly wood aesthetic has escaped California: they are crafted to domestic de

mand in Brazil, but are also amazingly transparent, rendering them univer

sally exportable and comprehensible. As with the Langlois and Roggman's 33rd face (Bower, 1990), telenovelas are convivially familiar and conven

tional in the way the golden mean of images appeals to its audience. Even

so, telenovelas still have a slight veneer of cultural peculiarity glued on top of the global text.

Telenovelas are big business. In Mexico, 30 to 40 telenovelas are pro duced every year, totaling more than 4500 hours of programming, and

generating $500 million in revenue annually. Venezuelan telenovelas are

exported to 30 countries, generating sales of $20 million/year. Finally, Brazil's





TV Globo network produces eight telenovelas a year, worth $31 million

through exports to seventy countries. Salsa eMerengue and Rei do Gado are

two examples (Margolis, 1997). So while Brazilian cinema has historically been a "national allegory55 (Xavier, 1997), and in other words quintessentially Brazilian, Brazilian television has been multinational in appeal and iden

tity?a global text crafted within the Hollywood aesthetic. Brazil's telenovelas are popular throughout the world and can attribute

their success to the Hollywood aesthetic devices used therein. Soap operas in general stick to easily exportable human themes, such as self-reliance,

good defeating evil, and romantic love. Brazilian telenovelas differentiate themselves in the marketplace due to their high production values, use of

...economic and

political explana tions of global me dia don't tell the whole story. Tex tual explanations for global media success must be taken into account.

location shooting, mix of genres (comedy, parody, politics, as well as the essential

melodrama), clever use of theme to gener ate interest (e.g. Explode Comcao), and syn ergy (CDs, apparel, toys, etc.).

When it comes to soap opera the Hol

lywood aesthetic is deployed better in Bra zil than it is in the United States. Some (for example Wasser, 1995) go so far as to say that telenovelas embody nothing of the originating; culture?that while Brazilian

cultural values are scarcely being exported, telenovelas "undermine the au

tonomy of their own national culture55 (p. 425). For Wasser, Hollywood isn't "American55 anymore and TV Globo isn't Brazilian. They cater too

much to international tastes to be domestic, and their domestic audience is

effectively international. Both are part of a global culture. The same pat tern has been repeated in other cultures successful at exporting media, from

Japanese video games and anime to Hong Kong action pictures to British

pop music.

To repeat this argument in a nutshell, economic and political explana tions of global media don't tell the whole story. Textual explanations for

global media success must be taken into account. If there are textual differ

ences that account for the success of certain national film and television

industries, they originate in the culture, and can be explained through home demand. Home demand in Brazil and the United States is similarly de






manding and multicultural and encourages the development of transpar ent texts. That transparency is seen in the narratological devices of circular

storytelling, archetypal characters, open-ended narratives, audience inclu

sion strategies, negentropy, high production values, and omnipresence. Telenovelas are just one example of transparent texts becoming interna

tional successes.

The face of a telenovela, or Pokemon, or Titanic embodies a little bit of all our faces. Like the 33rd face, the morphed golden mean of 32 real faces, the global text is a composite, born of the necessity of making sense to a

culturally complex domestic market. That face and those texts combine the

slightly exotic with the mostly familiar. The successful global media text is a transparent microcosm of the audience watching it because it embodies

all of us. We see ourselves in it. The face in the audience and on the screen in Brazil and in the United States is the 33rd face, and is a microcosm of the complex multicultural planet we live in.

The developed world is so interdependent that media programming produced almost everywhere looks less and less culturally idiosyncratic and more and more global, gravitating to a global mean of images. The face on our television is the 33rd face. Like it or not, from the inside out, not as a

product of cultural imperialism but as a matter of aesthetic choice, we're all

going Hollywood. If the world is going Hollywood, what of those pure cultures, those

that are untouched by outside influence, virgin identities unadulterated by

foreign media?

Going . . .

going . . .

gone.





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NY: Routledge. pp. 181-199.

Notes

1 When referring to facial appearance, the word "average'5 in English has a connotation of plain or even dull looks. That use should not be confused with this more scientific use. By "average,55 Langlois and Roggman meant the most normal nose, the most normal eyes, etc.,

which, it turns out, tends to be a quite attractive visage.

2 By "text55 in English we mean any site of negotiated understanding, anyplace where a

producer enters meaning and a consumer decodes it. It could be a book, but also a film, billboard, postcard, or dance. A face can be a text, too, such as the 33rd face. The meaning is negotiated there, which means that the reader or consumer has as active a role in deter

mining its meaning as the producer of the object. 3 Pokemon and The Power Rangers are the two best examples of Non-American media

programming that succeeded in the United States. Their success is due in part to the ability to dub voices easily?in the case of Pokemon due to the animation and in the case of Power

Rangers due to the masks worn by the characters. Segments of Power Rangers in which the characters are unmasked are actually restaged and reshot in the United States with American actors.

4 Until quite recently, studios paid little attention to the maintenance of original film

negatives, and in the early days of cinema, acetate was routinely bleached to retrieve the

silver from the emulsion and make way for new motion pictures. There was little conception of them as an art form worthy of preservation. The recent establishment of a national regis ter of historic films has ensured that at least some film classics will be preserved as works of art.

5 This is by no means a criticism of those national cinemas. Some of the greatest films have come from them. On the other hand, whatever their "artistic55 accomplishments, they are far from formidable players in global media market share.

6 This change in audience demand exemplifies the shift in Brazil from focussing on a "national cinema55 (and therefore a largely domestic market) to producing global texts using the "Hollywood55 aesthetic. In the history of cinema, Brazil is primarily regarded as the cradle of Cinema Novo, which had the minimalist anti-Hollywood aesthetic of "a camera in the hand and an idea in your head55 or what Glauber Rocha called "the aesthetics of hunger55 (Xaiver, 1997). These scarcely describe the telenovelas of the 1990s.




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