The film industry - a collection of templates for the "right" life

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

A distinctive feature of modern conditions is the presence of a completely new, previously absent environment - cyber environment, virtual reality. Specialists in conducting information and psychological operations in various countries have learned to use this environment for a full-scale impact on the masses.

Ultimately, their activities led to the emergence of a new format for conducting algorithmic war, or, as it is also called, a silent war. The scale and possibilities of conducting operations in this war threaten not only the economies and political systems of individual states, but also lead to the loss of control as a whole.

In a quiet war, one can conditionally distinguish two sides - the national and the transnational. The first includes states, that is, systems that are tied to a certain territory, to the second - corporations - not tied to a territory, fighting for the resources located on it. The essence of algorithmic wars boils down to the fact that transnational corporations (TNCs) saturate the information space of the occupied countries with certain content, affect the masses and individual users. This is done by introducing mental viruses that program human behavior.

As a result, there is a loss of control at the state level. And as a result - riots, sabotage at strategically important facilities, quiet coups d'etat, redistribution of property.

At the moment, in Russia, this threat is poorly recognized by the population and power structures, so they are largely hostages of the prevailing circumstances, and any actions of individual leaders, in fact, work in the interests of the enemy.

Despite individual successes, on the whole, our country is losing significantly in the field of information operations. The most striking failures are discrediting Russia after the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, elected companies in Europe, deliberately reducing the importance of the BRICS countries, sanctions lists against Russian citizens and companies, accusing Russia of poisoning former GRU Colonel Sergei Skripal in the UK. The uniqueness of information and psychological operations lies in the fact that they are openly carried out in the information space. For example, the story with Skripal exactly coincides with the plot of the British TV series "Strike Back", which was released in the fall of 2017 and prepared the audience.

The film industry has gone from being a tool to a field of fierce fighting. Every movie, every bit of information is comparable to a weapon, the sale of which generates income for its owners. The profit of the film industry is comparable in value to the largest sectors of production activity. Thus, the total income of Hollywood from the sale of manufactured products exported outside the United States is comparable in volume to the income received by the countries - the largest oil exporters.

In China alone, American films grossed about $ 1.5 billion in 2011, and forecast for 2017 - $ 8.3 billion. However, cinema itself is the tip of the iceberg, and a much larger gesheft brings the delayed effect of the impact of cinema on the population. For example, tobacco advertising in movies is paid for, and then it brings huge profits, which Hollywood screenwriter Joe Esterhaz does not hesitate to talk about. The tobacco company alone spends about $ 3 million a year on movie advertising.

In this context, we are not talking about a single film, but about the industry as a whole. We can say that a modern person with his lifestyle, habits, preferences, thinking is "born" in the psychophysical laboratories of Hollywood. The main goal of Hollywood cinema is the unification of cultures, bringing everyone under one template. This is done through the formation of a positive image of the United States and a negative image of other countries, the imposition of behavioral and sexual perversions, open propaganda of individualism and anti-social lifestyle, falsification of history.

The seizure of the information space and the imposition of Western values are taking place in stages. Massive stuffing of Hollywood films, then, control of the network of cinemas and distribution, imposition of formats, then the creation of a kind of "national cinema" on their tracing paper.

In Russia, the first two stages have already been passed. Film distributors are represented by six branches of Western film distributors. The cinema network is controlled by ten operators. The audience of cinema in Russia is 55 million people, which is twice as much as five years ago. By the end of 2018, it is planned to open 800 more cinemas in various cities of Russia. According to the company "Nevafilm Reseach", as of February 2017, 4407 halls were operating in Russia.

As for "Russian cinema", the most famous films of recent years are Alexander Zvyagintsev's "Leviathan" and Fyodor Bondarchuk's "Stalingrad". They are clearly known not because of the audience's sincere love for films and gratitude to the creators, but thanks to the marketing policy of Western professionals. Films entered Russia through the West, "outside - inside". "Stalingrad" is the first film released in Russia in the IMAX format, which could not fail to attract a young audience. As a result, the largest group in the audience of the film is young people from 16 to 25 years old (43%). Pr-companies skillfully weeded out the older generation, which is still capable of critical thinking, and worked for the young.

Even more dangerous are “Russian films”, which are positively perceived by the Russian audience in view of their “Soviet packaging”: “Time of the First”, “Upward Movement”, “Salute 7” (the Chinese version of the title is “Space Rescue”), etc. In fact, in a destructive manner, they demonstrate the Soviet era, form the viewer of the USSR as a soulless machine. An individual hero is singled out who, in spite of everything, struggles with the system and wins, and is driven by nothing more than fear, pain, and personal tragedy. But this has nothing to do with the values of the Soviet Union.

What films does China buy? In Russia - these sensational, as it were, "Russian" paintings, which were promoted to Russia from the West. In Europe, for example, the movie Young Karl Marx, directed by Raoul Peck. The reviews from critics are disappointing.

In 2014, 1015 multiplexes were opened in China, which means 5397 new screens. There were more than 45,000 of them in China in 2017. Western corporations are taking over the film production and distribution markets, and hence their influence on the masses. The Chinese market is controlled by local online media distributors Sohu, Youku, v.qq, iQiyi. In 2014, these internet giants sold $ 3 billion worth of ads. A market of this size is of great interest to American film and television producers. In 2014, China spent $ 100 million on the purchase of Western content, primarily from the United States and Great Britain. And nobody bothers, for example, that the audience of the second season of the series "House of Cards" amounted to 24.5 million people, mostly from Beijing and, judging by their IP addresses, mostly civil servants.

On April 28, 2018, the construction of the Dongfangingdu Film and TV Industry Base was completed in Lingshan Bay in the Qingdao West Coast New Economic Zone. According to the deputy head of the Lingshan Gulf Film and Television Bureau, Yuan Meilin, the American science fiction film Pacific Rim 2 was filmed here. But what does this actually mean?

In addition to providing conditions for filming for Hollywood companies, China is also investing in the American film industry, which, according to our calculations, should have become obsolete. Major investors are Alibaba Group, China's Hunan TV. The latter has already invested $ 375 million in the production of films for the American media company Lionsgate. American filmmakers are very happy with both the money and access to a huge market for viewers.

We would even assume that this is the deliberate work of the Chinese business to undermine China's internal information field and support a geopolitical adversary, but we assume that the situation is even worse - Chinese businessmen, guided by their greed for profit, simply do not assess the consequences of their actions.

Chinese cinema has achieved some success in the global film business thanks to its policy of cooperation with Hollywood. However, according to the head of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television Zhang Pei-Ming, success in the world market is becoming a serious obstacle to the promotion of national films in their homeland. Most of the films that are shown in Chinese cinemas are either filmed abroad or are the result of international cooperation: the volume of Chinese films at the box office is negligible.

Moreover, Chinese audiences are losing interest in historical and propaganda films. Young Chinese audiences prefer genre films such as melodrama and comedy. The series "Lost in Thailand" is positioned to be one of the most successful projects in the Chinese industry. The criterion for success is the gross rental fee. Indeed, the low-budget comedy worth $ 4 million grossed $ 192 million in the Chinese box office, and has bypassed the large-scale patriotic film Remembering 1942 about the heroic resistance of the Chinese people to the Japanese invaders, which grossed only $ 35 million. Could it be that in China, the criterion for judging cinema was the box office, and not public importance?

Another interesting example is the huge success in China for the Korean TV series My Love from a Distant Star. The total number of views of the series on the Chinese VOD site iQiyi exceeded 14.5 billion in this series, he immediately entered the top three. Thousands of Chinese fans have come to greet the movie star.

Who is the subject of cinema management?

Transnational corporations enter the markets of our countries, winning the victory in an algorithmic silent war. The question naturally arises - officials and businessmen in our countries do not understand what is happening, or do they understand, but find excuses and work for the interests of TNCs?

Cinema as a tool can be a basic element in the state security system. However, in Russia it has been actively promoted recently that cinema should not be controlled by the state. In fact, the solution to the issue is hidden behind who is the subject of management and sets the criteria, what ideas the film promotes.

The total amount of state financial support for cinematography by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Cinema Fund in 2015 amounted to $ 6, 2 billion. The total turnover of Hollywood in 2011 was $ 464 billion.

It should be borne in mind that at the present time it is no longer enough to simply release a movie. You need to create interest in him. We (our states) should look at cinema not just from a different angle, but from a fundamentally different position, the position of a governing subject. Perceiving cinema as a part of culture, a national treasure, we must fight for it, create it anew. “Cinema is the greatest medium of mass agitation. The task is to take this matter into our own hands”- JV Stalin.

The function of cinema is much deeper than it might seem at first glance. Despite the fact that our great economist, comrade V. V. Leontiev was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics, few people in our country know that it was V. V. Leontyev who mathematically proved that strategic planning and development in general on state and at the regional level is possible only if the factors of the total labor potential are taken into account. It, in turn, is determined not so much by the presence of only people separately, factories, technologies, but also by the ability of people to use technologies, material and technological resources, and the ability of people to modernize technological chains, to maintain an overall integral technological process. In the film industry, the ability of people to use cinema technology should be seen as an important strategic challenge.

For this, it is necessary to form an acting and directing school aimed at creating domestic films for the domestic audience, and not focused on receiving another Western film award.

For the development of the domestic film industry, it is necessary to formulate the criteria for cinema. In a quiet war, it is necessary first of all to work with the population. The system should be built on the principle of organizing the people's army, in which each person will be able to defend his territory, the interests of his country. For this, first of all, it is necessary to pursue an active intellectual policy, through the formation of the information field, to form creative values and perception of the surrounding world. It is necessary to teach the population to be full-fledged creators of information content. Explanatory work with young people is especially significant from the point of view of security and prospects of state building. The main emphasis in the work should be on the mass delivery of images and the formation of concepts. Including with the help of the film industry.

That is why now, as never before, media projects are relevant, which, on the one hand, will make it possible to form value orientations and thereby overcome the transition period, and on the other hand, will allow the population to get involved in the creation of the information field on the other.

Elena Andreevna Struzhkova, expert of the Center for System Initiatives, candidate of agricultural sciences Sci., Associate Professor (report at the V International Scientific Conference "China and Russia: State Development Strategies", May 28, 2018, St. Petersburg)