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The Business of Media Violence In 2001,

游客2023-09-16  32
问题                                     The Business of Media Violence
    In 2001, people around the world spent US $14 billion going to the movies. The U.S. domestic box office alone hit US $9 billion—a 75 percent increase from 1991—and there are huge revenues from home video/DVD sales, rentals and spin-off merchandise. But even these profits are dwarfed by music, the largest global media sector. In 2000, sales reached US $37 billion, with music consumption high among young audiences everywhere. Video games are not far behind: global sales for 2002 were anticipated to be US $31 billion.
An Expanding Foreign Market
    American media corporations earn fit least half of their profits from foreign sales. And global markets are growing fast as standards of living are rising around the world. Sales of TVs, stereos, VCRs and satellite dishes are increasing, and in the last decade or two, new and expanding markets have emerged in countries that have abandoned state control of media and distribution.
    Today, U.S. films are shown in more than 150 countries world wide, and the U.S. film industry provides most of the pre-recorded videos and DVDs sold throughout the world. American television programs are broadcast in over 125 international markets, and MTV can be seen in more foreign households than American ones.
    This international success has a tremendous impact nor just on the recipient countries, but also on the cultural environment of the U.S. To some extent, the tail is wagging the dog: more and more, the demands and tastes of foreign markets? are influencing what popular products get made in the U.S.
Action Sells: Film and Television
    Nowhere is this influence more evident than in the film industry. In the U.S. and Canada, movies rated "G"(General) and "PG"(Parental Guidance) consistently brings in more revenues than R-rated films. Yet the number of G and PG films has dropped in recent years, and the number of restricted films has risen. Two-thirds of Hollywood films in 2001 were rated "R".
    Film producers are unequivocal about why this is so: the foreign market likes action films.
    Action travels well. Action movies don’t require complex plots or characters. They rely on fights, killings, special effects and explosions to hold their audiences. And, unlike comedy or drama—which depend on good stories, sharp humor, and credible characters, all of which are often culture-specific—action films require little in the way of good writing and acting. They’re simple, and they’re universally understood. To top it off, the largely non-verbal nature of the kind of films that journalist Sharon Waxman refers to as "short-on-dialogue, high-on-testosterone" makes their dubbing or translation relatively inexpensive.
    There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. The film Titanic made almost US $2 billion in worldwide sales as of 2001—making it the biggest-grossing movie of all time. The British film The Full Monty was an international hit; and My Big Fat Greek Wedding debunked all the profit formulas in 2002. But such offbeat successes are hard to predict. A flick such as Die Hard or Terminator is much more of a sure thing. Most film budgets today average US $75-100 million, so Hollywood studios don’t like to take chances.
    All this means enormous pressures on the American movie industry to abandon complexity in favor of action films. The effect is a kind of "dumbing-down" of the industry in general. Foreign investors are much less likely to invest in films focusing on serious social themes or women’s issues, or ones that feature minority casts. Such films, however brilliant, are not where the big money is. Worldwide appeal determines casting and script decisions and the overwhelming demand is for white actors and action.
    Success breeds success, and the sheer ubiquity of these productions and all their spin-off products and businesses around the world is in turn fueling an ever-growing demand for U.S. popular culture products.
    Foreign market pressures are driving the $1.9 billion Canadian film and television industry as well: international sales are essential for a country with such a small domestic market. And so, as the Writers’ Guild of Canada points out, "distributors are now the gatekeepers of Canadian television." According to the Guild, the pressures of foreign markets are resulting in more non-Canadian writers, and television series that look less and less Canadian.
    It’s hard to compete with the giant next door. Because American studios export so widely, they can sell an hour’s worth of TV entertainment to Canadian broadcasters at a cost well below what it would cost Canada to produce its own. (It’s been said that two minutes of original television production can buy an hour of American drama). And getting a film shown in Canadian theatres can be a challenge when most theatres are owned by large multinational corporations.
Explicit and Violent Music Lyrics Go Mainstream
    In the last decade, social analysts have also noted a steady increase in violent and anti-social music lyrics and images. Once relegated to the fringes, "rage" music, filled with profanity and hate, has become a cash cow for the mainstream music industry.
    The world’s largest music company, Universal Music Group, is putting the might of its international marketing machine behind artists like Eminem, Dr. Dre and Limp Bizkit—all known for their bleak anthems of violence and hatred, often aimed at women, gays and lesbians. This kind of violence reached mainstream status in 2001, when the U.S. Grammy awards nominated Eminem for four awards. He won three, and his 2002 CD, The Eminem Show made US $3.63 million in its first month of sales.
    Rap music, too, has been co-opted by the major corporations. The Recording Industry Association of America says that rap/hip-hop, which sprang out of the East Coast music scene 25 years ago, replaced pop music in 2001 as the third most popular music genre. Gansta Rap artists are now being accused of destroying the soul of original rap and hip hop movements with their violent lyrics and lifestyles.
Video Games and Violence
    Though there are many challenging non-violent computer and video games, in the last few years video games have become almost synonymous with violence. Their trademark movie-like realism, combined with enormous marketing budgets, bas made this entertainment industry the second most-profitable in the world.
    In September 2002, the ultra-violent Grand Theft Auto 3 was the second most popular game in the world. The game was initially banned in Australia for its graphic violence and sexual content, but it nevertheless grossed US $ 300 million by the end of 2002.
    The success of GTA3 (and its successor GTA: Vice City) is upping the ante for violence in the next generation of video games. The cost of developing new games is so high that producers need to know that a game is going to be a hit before bankrolling it.
Marketing Violence to Young People
    No one knows better than the communications industries that children and young people re- present a huge market, due to both their own spending power and their influence on family spending decisions. In September 2000, a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report revealed what many suspected: U.S. media corporations were routinely ignoring their own rating restrictions and actively marketing violent entertainment to children and teens. In fact, the study showed that 80 per cent of R-rated movies, 70 per cent of restricted video games, and 100 per cent of music with "explicit content" warning labels were being marketed to kids under 17.
    The report revealed a number of standard (though illicit) practices for marketing adult media products to kids. These included advertising in publications for adolescents, such as YM, Teen and Marvel comics; screening trailers for restricted movies on TV at times when kids are likely to be watching; and recruiting teens and children(sometimes as young as nine) to evaluate story concepts, commercials, trailers and rough cuts—even for R-rated movies. The study also revealed that the film and videogame industries often target children as young as four with toy tie-ins for adult-rated movies and games.
    Follow-up reports from the FTC indicate that the film and gaming industries have improved their practices somewhat. However, ads for R-rated movies continue to appear on television shows popular with kids (TV is considered the most important medium for drawing an audience to a film), and the video game industry still advertises games rated M (Mature) in magazines with young readers. The music industry has done little to clean up its act. All five major record labels continue to advertise albums with explicit or violent content on television programs and in magazines that have substantial followings of kids under the age of seventeen.
选项 A、Y
B、N
C、NG
答案 A
解析 本题定位信息是profits 和 music sector，从而锁定文章第一段。该段前两句谈到了电影市场的收入，第三句开头用But一词进行转折，指出even these profits are dwarfed by music，其中的dwarfed是“使矮小，使相形见绌”的意思。由此可知，电影的收入比音乐市场的收入小很多。题干表述与文章事实相符，因此答案为Y。
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