Between Hollywood and the World: Globalization, Cultural Imperialism, and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language/International Feature

• In Event: (Re)visions of American Selves: U.S. Mass Culture and its Exclusions

Abstract

This paper traces the Oscars’ complicated relationship to international cinema and artists, with the awards’ structure subtly but distinctly placing American cinema atop the international hierarchy. In 2020, the film Parasite was selected as the first non-English language feature to win the Best Picture award at the 92nd Academy Awards. The film also received the newly-renamed Best International Feature Award, renamed from Best Foreign Language Feature to remove the idea of “foreignness” from the Oscars and to reiterate the idea, as the Academy noted, of “the art of film as a universal experience.” In accepting the award, director Bong Joon ho noted, “I applaud and support the new direction that this change symbolizes.” Notably, the update was just that: symbolic. Despite its rhetoric, the Academy retained the labyrinthine rules that have long made the category for international cinema one of the Oscars’ most controversial prizes. As of 2024, the Oscar eligibility guidelines still dictate that countries are limited to one film submission chosen by a committee, leaving the selections vulnerable to cronyism and political pressure; that a country’s submission must feature a certain percentage of the film’s key creative team as citizens; and that the (primarily, American) Academy retains, at its discretion, the ability to disqualify a film as not representative enough of the country that submitted it. Furthermore, the Academy requires that an eligible film must be mainly (if not solely) in a language other than English, eliminating English-language films from areas on which the language was historically imposed through British and American imperialism or simply the effects of globalization. Simultaneously, films from American-controlled territories like Puerto Rico or Guam are ineligible even if they are in another language, like Spanish. In short, the Oscar for “foreign” film has, since its inception, been plagued by arbitrary quirks and technicalities.

This paper examines the implications of the category in reiterating a sense of American cinema (and Hollywood) as the dominant global industry and cultural force. Bill Nichols (1994) has examined international film festivals as spaces by which films accrue layers of meaning, shifting how they are received as representatives of their national industries and cultures. The Oscars serve a similar role, annually providing a prominent showcase for the International Feature nominees and the filmmakers and industries who create them. However, assigning a film or a filmmaker to a single nation — as the Academy’s process explicitly mandates — often oversimplifies not just the nature of production, but of culture and nation itself. As Benedict Anderson (1983) theorizes, national identity is constructed and malleable, a complicated matrix of shared history, languages, and cultural touchpoints. However, the Academy continues to draw strict boundaries and barriers despite the rise of multinational streaming platforms and global co-productions. Using theories of cultural imperialism and globalization, I analyze how the Academy’s refusal to overhaul the International Feature category ultimately continues to perpetuate an outdated dialectic between American and “foreign” cinema, and one that situates Hollywood as the center of global film culture.

Author

• Elizabeth Walters, Boston University