Peter Bart: A Coat Of Paint On The Hollywood Sign Can‘t Obscure Industry’s Erosion Of Creative Courage
21.10.2022 - 02:13
/ deadline.com
A team of painters were at work this week restoring the mega-photographed Hollywood sign, a mission that carries a perverse irony.
All week I’ve been assaulted by studies and reports describing how Hollywood, the industry town, has essentially surrendered its leadership in the universe of pop culture.
The message: The industry has dimmed its vision even though the Hollywood sign may linger on.
Originally signaling a real estate development, the Hollywood sign’s construction coincided with the first Oscars and thus became an optimistic symbol for the future of glitz and glamor. Now, decades later, the “founders” would be daunted by the cutbacks and layoffs that characterize today’s Hollywood.
In sector after sector of pop culture, America’s vision seems to be diminishing while other nations are expanding their roles in the new “multipolar” landscape.
Whether in music, social media or other platforms, a young consumer even in Hollywood is likely hooked on the same pop culture diet as their equivalent in Mumbai, whether it’s Afrobeat or Squid Game or a video from Prague. Indeed the energy of innovation is growing worldwide while Hollywood’s sags.
RELATED: History of the Hollywood Sign – A Photo Gallery
The data is occasionally ambiguous, but what it suggests is that consumers of pop culture worldwide are substantially cutting their preference for American product. Imports from the U.S. constituted 25% of the total in 2020, down from almost 40% a decade earlier, according to one World Trade Organization study.
Of course, Netflix and its brethren are pushing hard for international growth to counter limitations in the U.S. market, and Paramount+ is linking with Canal Plus in France.
But meanwhile, U.S. cultural imports from