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Title details for Red Carpet by Erich Schwartzel - Available

Red Carpet

Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy

by Erich Schwartzel
Sean Patrick Hopkins
Audiobook
1 of 2 copies available
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1 of 2 copies available
"This is a fascinating book. It will educate you. Schwartzel has done some extraordinary reporting."  — The New York Times Book Review
 
“In this highly entertaining but deeply disturbing book, Erich Schwartzel demonstrates the extent of our cultural thrall to China. His depiction of the craven characters, American and Chinese, who have enabled this situation represents a significant feat of investigative journalism. His narrative is about not merely the movie business, but the new world order.” —Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree and The Noonday Demon
An eye-opening and deeply reported narrative that details the surprising role of the movie business in the high-stakes contest between the U.S. and China
From trade to technology to military might, competition between the United States and China dominates the foreign policy landscape. But this battle for global influence is also playing out in a strange and unexpected arena: the movies.
 
The film industry, Wall Street Journal reporter Erich Schwartzel explains, is the latest battleground in the tense and complex rivalry between these two world powers. In recent decades, as China has grown into a giant of the international economy, it has become a crucial source of revenue for the American film industry. Hollywood studios are now bending over backward to make movies that will appeal to China’s citizens—and gain approval from severe Communist Party censors. At the same time, and with America’s unwitting help, China has built its own film industry into an essential arm of its plan to export its national agenda to the rest of the world. The competition between these two movie businesses is a Cold War for this century, a clash that determines whether democratic or authoritarian values will be broadcast most powerfully around the world.
 
Red Carpet is packed with memorable characters who have—knowingly or otherwise—played key roles in this tangled industry web: not only A-list stars like Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, and Richard Gere but also eccentric Chinese billionaires, zany expatriate filmmakers, and starlets who disappear from public life without explanation or trace. Schwartzel combines original reporting, political history, and show-biz intrigue in an exhilarating tour of global entertainment, from propaganda film sets in Beijing to the boardrooms of Hollywood studios to the living rooms in Kenya where families decide whether to watch an American or Chinese movie. Alarming, occasionally absurd, and wildly entertaining, Red Carpet will not only alter the way we watch movies but also offer essential new perspective on the power struggle of this century.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    February 8, 2022

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593555606
      • File size: 343337 KB
      • Duration: 11:55:17

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 8, 2021
      Wall Street Journal reporter Schwartzel makes an eye-opening debut with this accomplished account of how soft power—namely, entertainment—helped China become one of the most influential players on the global stage. In 1994, the country started allowing Hollywood movies in theaters, and soon after imported films began screening there, Schwartzel writes, the country rapidly became “a market too big to ignore and too lucrative to anger.” But the country’s government disapproved of politically inclined films such as Seven Years in Tibet and Kundun. Studios that ran afoul of the regime (including Disney) were denied access to the Chinese market, and the government engaged in box office “blackmail” in order to make North Korea the villain (instead of China) in MGM’s update of Red Dawn and to incorporate Chinese actors in Transformers. Schwartzel covers a lot of ground, explaining how, for instance, China’s tactics for “using... movies to change minds” were learned from old Hollywood. While later chapters on China’s influence on African infrastructure projects feel like filler, it’s overall nonetheless an illuminating look at what China learned from Hollywood, and why Hollywood needs China to survive. It’s a fascinating take on the crossroads of film and global politics.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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