Beginning in the 1920s, audiences around the globe were seduced not only
by Hollywood films but also by lavish movie theaters that were owned and
operated by the major American film companies. These theaters aimed to
provide a quintessentially "American" experience. Outfitted with
American technology and accoutrements, they allowed local audiences to
watch American films in an American-owned cinema in a distinctly
American way.
In a history that stretches from Buenos Aires and Tokyo to Johannesburg
and Cairo, Ross Melnick considers these movie houses as cultural
embassies. He examines how the exhibition of Hollywood films became a
constant flow of political and consumerist messaging, selling American
ideas, products, and power, especially during fractious eras. Melnick
demonstrates that while Hollywood's marketing of luxury and consumption
often struck a chord with local audiences, it was also frequently
tone-deaf to new social, cultural, racial, and political movements. He
argues that the story of Hollywood's global cinemas is not a simple
narrative of cultural and industrial indoctrination and colonization.
Instead, it is one of negotiation, booms and busts, successes and
failures, adoptions and rejections, and a precursor to later conflicts
over the spread of American consumer culture. A truly global account,
Hollywood's Embassies shows how the entanglement of worldwide movie
theaters with American empire offers a new way of understanding film
history and the history of U.S. soft power.
