National Audience Tastes in Hollywood Film Genres

Abstract

Studies of transnational media flow and reception discuss audiences as cultural-linguistic groups that make idiosyncratic content choices, but say little to distinguish or explain their collective tastes. The literature on (inter)cultural consumption suggests that cultural preferences are more similar among societies that share a cultural or linguistic affinity than those that do not. Examining national acceptance of, and taste in, Hollywood films within a global sample of countries, this study quantifies the dissimilarities in genre preferences between the United States and importing countries based on 2002-2007 box-office sales. The analysis shows that genre taste dissimilarities are related positively to cultural distance between countries, and negatively to the English proficiency of the importing country. Furthermore, the economic attributes of the importer have no effect on taste dissimilarity. The analysis also shows that the genre tastes of individual countries have converged toward those of American audiences during these years.