Video: Aynne Kokas on Hollywood's relationship with China

 

China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 ignited a race to capture new global media audiences. Hollywood moguls began courting Chinese investors to create entertainment on an international scale—from behemoth theme parks to blockbuster films. Hollywood Made in China examines these new collaborations, where the distinctions between Hollywood’s “dream factory” and the PRC’s “Chinese dream” of global influence become increasingly blurred. With insightful policy analysis, ethnographic research, and interviews with CEOs, directors, and film workers in Beijing, Shanghai, and Los Angeles, Aynne Kokas offers an unflinching look at China’s new role in the global media industries. A window into the partnerships with Chinese corporations that now shape Hollywood, this book will captivate anyone who consumes commercial media in the twenty-first century. 

 

 

Aynne Kokas is an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. Kokas’ research broadly examines Sino-US media and technology relations. Her book, Hollywood Made in China (University of California Press, 2017) argues that Chinese investment and regulations have fundamentally altered the landscape of the US commercial media industry, most prominently in the case of major conglomerates that rely on leveraging global commercial brands. Her next project Networked Chinawood examines the cybersecurity and policy implications of digital media in the Sino-US relationship. Kokas has been a visiting fellow at the Shanghai Institute of International Studies and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She is a non-resident scholar at Rice University’s Baker Institute of Public Policy and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Her writing and commentary appears regularly in popular media outlets including the BBC, The Los Angeles Times, NPR’s Marketplace, Variety, The Washington Post, and Wired. She is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and began her career in Chinese media as a student in the Directing Department at the Beijing Film Academy.