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This article examines empirically how American cultural hegemony operates through the medium of film-in this case, via the James Bond "007" movie series. It is evident that American values are diffused worldwide via the motion picture industry. The 007 series is a masterpiece that successfully adjusted to the Hollywood system where American capital and structure prevails. The films are controlled by U.S. funding and reflect American perspectives vividly. Between the lines in the scripts, filmgoers are urged to link the United States with positive-hence legitimate-values and accept American's dominant position. The authors of this study argue that the "007" movie series satisfies certain conditions to diffuse and reproduce American hegemony. Moreover, since the series reflects different aspects of the international environment, it is an appropriate case to speculate about hegemony in films.
Key words: cultural hegemony, U.S. hegemony, Social Network Analysis
American Hegemony and the "007" Movie Series
The operation of American hegemony is evident not only in the politico-economic and military realms, but also in the cultural sphere. Nye's discussion of "soft power," for example, reconfirms that maintaining American hegemony in the cultural realm is essential in general to U.S. leadership of international politics. However, cultural hegemony is not easily recognized. Culture is typically disseminated with relatively less resistance and opposition than other forms of hegemony. Compared to its importance, study on American hegemony in the cultural sector is rare. When we consider that interest regarding culture in international politics has existed for quite some time, the relative lack of empirical studies seems odd.
The purpose of this article is to analyze empirically how American hegemony operates in the cultural sphere. Specifically, this article examines how American cultural hegemony is maintained via the cultural medium of film, and in what way American values are disseminated through films. It is evident that American hegemony obviously operates worldwide via motion pictures. Especially in Asia, Hollywood blockbusters function even more critically in delineating American perspectives because Asian filmgoers use film as their socialization tool to better understand the United States. Thus the reliance of Asian audiences on American films is more significant.
Unfortunately, systematic research that recognizes and analyzes films as political is uncommon, the reason being that proper methodology to deal with film has not...