Table Of ContentThe Hollywood Meme
EDL\JBURGH
University Press
,;
Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.
EDL\Jl3URGH
University Press
-
Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.
The Hollywood Meme
Transnational Adaptations in
World Cinema
Iain Robert Smith
Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.
Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university
presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in
our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences,
combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and
production values to produce academic works of lasting importance.
For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com
© Iain Robert Smith, 2017
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
The Tun – Holyrood Road
12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry
Edinburgh EH8 8PJ
Typeset in 11/13pt Ehrhardt MT Pro by
Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 7746 7 (hardback)
ISBN 978 0 7486 7747 4 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 0 7486 7748 1 (epub)
The right of Iain Robert Smith to be identified as author of
this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and
Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.
Contents
List of Figures vi
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
1 Tracing the Hollywood Meme: Towards a Comparative
Model of Transnational Adaptation 12
2 Hollywood and the Popular Cinema of Turkey 34
3 Hollywood and the Popular Cinema of the Philippines 75
4 Hollywood and the Popular Cinema of India 102
Conclusion: Reflections on the Hollywood Meme 143
Bibliography 150
Index 173
Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.
Figures
2.1 Spider-Man planning his smuggling operation in 3 Dev Adam 47
2.2 Captain America getting into costume in 3 Dev Adam 49
2.3 Recreating the Starship Enterprise in Turist Ömer Uzay
Yolunda 54
2.4 Ömer joking with Spock in Turist Ömer Uzay Yolunda 58
2.5 Gul defiling herself with a Jinn-headed knife in Şeytan 66
2.6 Imam using the Quran to exorcise Gul in Şeytan 66
2.7 A Star Wars X-Wing behind Murat in Dünyayı Kurtaran
Adam 69
2.8 Murat with his lightning bolt sword in Dünyayı Kurtaran
Adam 71
3.1 The camp Bond-style villain Kuntz in Dynamite Johnson 85
3.2 The Bionic Boy showing off his powers in Dynamite Johnson 86
3.3 The 2 ft 9 in leading actor Weng Weng in For Y’ur Height
Only 88
3.4 Recreating the Thunderball rocket pack in For Y’ur Height
Only 90
3.5 Bond and Batman teaming up together in James Batman 92
3.6 Recreating the 1960s Batman aesthetic in Alyas Batman en
Robin 93
3.7 Darna’s superhero costume in Darna: Ang Pagbabalik 98
3.8 Darna repelling bullets with her bracelets in Darna: Ang
Pagbabalik 99
4.1 Rohit praying to Krishna for help in Koi . . . Mil Gaya 119
4.2 The alien Jadoo designed to evoke Hindu gods in Koi . . .
Mil Gaya 120
4.3 Crowds watching the arrival of Subhash in Sarkar 126
4.4 The controversial Hindu guru Swami Virendra in Sarkar 128
4.5 Indulging in a decadent Western lifestyle in Heyy Babyy 131
4.6 The family come together for a traditional wedding in Heyy
Babyy 133
4.7 Sanjay discovering his tattooed body in Ghajini 137
4.8 Song sequence from parallel romantic sub-plot in Ghajini 138
Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.
Acknowledgements
I began the research for this book in 2006 so it would be impossible for me
to acknowledge all the countless people who have supported me along the
way – I can only do my best to pay tribute to some of the key people who
helped develop and refine the ideas contained herein.
This book started life as a PhD dissertation so I want to express my
deepest thanks to my supervisors Roberta Pearson and Paul Grainge for
their support and unfailing generosity throughout the whole process. My
work benefited hugely from the collegiate and supportive atmosphere at
the University of Nottingham so I also want to acknowledge the advice
from various past and current staff members including Liz Evans, Mark
Gallagher, Cathy Johnson, Gianluca Sergi, Jacob Smith, Julian Stringer
and Peter Urquhart. For keeping me relatively sane throughout the PhD,
I am thankful to my fellow graduate students at Nottingham including
Alessandro Catania, Rebecca Cobby, Michael James Collins, Natalie
Edwards, Lin Feng, Serena Formica, Fran Fuentes, Kiran Indraganti,
Nuno Jorges, John-Paul Kelly, Áine Mahon, Alper Mazman, Anthony
McKenna, Matthew Mead, Sinéad Moynihan, Donna Peberdy, Anthony
Smith, Alex Symons and Rachel Walls. Moreover, I want to express
a special thanks to my flatmates Jack Newsinger, SooJeong Ahn and
Nandana Bose for putting up with me over the four years. These were,
quite genuinely, some of the best years of my life.
Since completing the PhD, I have been teaching at the University of
Roehampton and over my time here I have benefited hugely from dis-
cussions with my film colleagues Stacey Abbott, Caroline Bainbridge,
William Brown, Michael Chanan, Chris Darke, Deborah Jermyn and
Michael Witt. Moreover, I have greatly benefited from the eclectic inter-
disciplinarity of the department of Media, Culture and Language which
allowed me to collaborate with numerous media scholars and translation
specialists – most significantly Andrea Esser and Miguel Bernal-Merino
with whom I set up the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
funded Media Across Borders research network – and their keen insights
have helped me to broaden out my understanding of processes of cultural
globalisation beyond the cinematic.
Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.
viii the hollywood meme
I am also grateful to the academics and researchers around the world
who I met at conferences or conversed with through email. This project
would not have been the same without many fruitful discussions with
scholars such as Savas Arslan, Irene Artegiani, Eylem Atakav, Colette
Balmain, Becky Bartlett, Stefano Baschiera, Melis Behlil, Tim Bergfelder,
Will Brooker, Jose Capino, Bertha Chin, David Church, Anna Reynolds
Cooper, Corey Creekmur, Rayna Denison, David Desser, David Scott
Diffrient, Kevin Donnelly, Kate Egan, Dimitris Eleftheriotis, Darren
Elliott-Smith, Elizabeth Ezra, Rosalind Galt, Ian Garwood, Gokay
Gelgec, Christine Geraghty, Ed Glaser, Katie Grant, Ahmet Gürata, Dan
Hassler-Forest, Daniel Herbert, Will Higbee, Mette Hjort, Matt Hills,
Eli Horwatt, Ian Hunter, Russ Hunter, Ekky Imanjaya, Dina Iordanova,
Mark Jancovich, Derek Johnston, Nessa Johnston, Bethan Jones, Steven
Jones, Shaun Kimber, Mikel Koven, Michael Lawrence, Andrew
Leavold, Kathleen Loock, Daniel Martin, David Martin-Jones, Ernest
Mathijs, Lucy Mazdon, Mark McKenna, Laura Mee, Xavier Mendik,
Renee Middlemost, Lothar Mikos, Stephen Morgan, Lori Morimoto,
Lúcia Nagib, Kartik Nair, Kathleen Newman, Gary Needham, Tasha
Oren, R. Barton Palmer, Ally Peirse, Emma Pett, Laurence Raw, Steve
Rawle, Rashna Wadia Richards, Miriam Ross, Melanie Selfe, Meheli
Sen, Deborah Shaw, Neelam Sidhar Wright, Gohar Siddiqui, Adrian
Smith, Clarissa Smith, Tim Snelson, Todd Stadtman, Sarah Taylor-
Harman, Sarah Thomas, Dolores Tierney, Pete Tombs, Constantine
Verevis, Johnny Walker, Yiman Wang, Rachel Mizsei Ward, Tom
Watson, Chelsea Wessels and Andy Willis. I am particularly grateful to
Austin Fisher with whom I set up the Transnational Cinemas scholarly
interest group at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) and
who is always ready for a spirited discussion of cinematic transnationalism.
A project of this scale would be impossible without institutional support
so I am therefore grateful to the University of Nottingham and the Arts
and Humanities Research Council for providing the funding that allowed
me to pursue this research, and I am also grateful to the University of
Roehampton for providing me with a sabbatical which allowed me to
revise and rework the thesis into the book you have before you. Special
thanks go to everyone at Edinburgh University Press, and especially to
Gillian Leslie and Richard Strachan for their encouragement and patience
from the initial proposal to the final proofread. It would not be the book it
is today without your support.
Portions of this book have been previously published as articles
and book chapters. The sub-section of Chapter 2 in which I discuss
Turist Ömer Uzay Yolunda appeared in a different form as ‘Beam Me
Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.
acknowledgements ix
Up, Ömer: Transnational Media Flow and the Cultural Politics of the
Turkish Star Trek Remake’ in Velvet Light Trap 61 (2008). Another sub-
section of Chapter 2, this time on Şeytan, was published as ‘The Exorcist
in Istanbul: Processes of Transcultural Appropriation within Turkish
Popular Cinema’ in Portal: Journal of Multidisciplinary International
Studies 5: 1 (2008). Finally, the sub-section of Chapter 4 on Ghajini was
published as ‘Memento in Mumbai: ‘A Few More Songs and a Lot More
Ass-kicking’’ in the book Storytelling in the Media Convergence Age, edited
by Roberta Pearson and Anthony N. Smith. I would like to thank the
editors and anonymous reviewers from these publications for their invalu-
able comments on my work.
On a more melancholy note, the writing of this book was bracketed by
two periods of hospitalisation that resulted from my chronic health condi-
tion Crohn’s disease. Nothing I have done here would have been possible
without the unfailing care and support I received at the Hospital Geral de
Santo António in Porto, the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, and
Charing Cross Hospital in Hammersmith, London. The medical teams
at these hospitals supported me through some of the toughest hours of
my life and I am incredibly grateful to all of them and to the European
healthcare system that supports them.
My parents, Edward and Ailsa, and my younger brother Duncan, have
supported my passion for cinema since an early age. Indeed, I can prob-
ably trace the initial germ of this book to my mum’s decision to allow me
to stay up and watch Godzilla films well after I should have gone to bed.
It left more of an impression than I think either of us was aware of at the
time.
Finally, I would like to thank my wife Cai whom I love with all my
heart. We met in the year that I started researching this topic and we were
married by the time I finished it. This book is dedicated to you.
Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.
EDL\Jl3URGH
University Press
-
Not for distribution or resale. For personal use only.
