The desire for Hollywood in the Global South in the era of the decline of the American empire

Abstract

In the geopolitical context of the new multipolar order, reinforced after the American failures in Afghanistan and Ukraine, is it possible that larger sectors of the audiences in the Global South - newly empowered by the strengthening of the BRICS and the relative decline of the USA - begin to perform a less desiring and more critical reception of Hollywood movies and series? To consider that and contribute to further research, I suggest that we should analyze the possibilities of such an erosion of the “desire for Hollywood” by adopting the concept I call “structure of the desiring reception of Hollywood”. I believe that structure to be constituted, manifested and reproduced in the psychic, ideological and identitary relations sustained by the desiring audiences of the Global South with “Hollywood’s geopolitical Americanist discourse”. I propose that such discourse is defined by two discursive vectors, respectively of representations, constructions and figurations of Americanness, enunciatory of United Statesian values, worldviews and ways of life, including its foreign policy; and of foreigness, in ways usually stereotyping, fantasizing and derogatory of peoples, cultures and rulers of the Global South. As for the Hollywood’s desiring audiences, despite their heterogeneity and negotiation capacity with that Americanist discursivity, I think that they have been structurally held hostage of an ideological, psychic and cultural condition of dependence, colonization and fascination in their bond with Hollywood products, which might be eroded in the new geopolitical circumstances. Finally, I suggest the use of a methodological operator called “regional geopolitical contexts of Hollywood reception”.