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Transnational Cinema And Its Impact On The World

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In the globalization era, people all over the world have the ability to constitute the images of other countries although they have never physically been to those places. Appadurai (1990, p.296) has extended Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined community, suggesting the notion of ‘imagined worlds’ that are established by the intersecting five aspects of global cultural flows: ethnoscapes, technoscapes, finanscapes, mediascapes, and ideoscapes. That is to say, the dynamic transnational movements of people, technology, capital, images, and ideas have been creating and shaping imaginary illustrations of the world in each individual’s mind. Additionally, because of the rapid development of information technology, the information is …show more content…

The film is directed by American director Sofia Coppola, produced by American production company Focus Features in associate with Japanese production company Tohokushinsha Film, and distributed worldwide by Focus Features (US), Pathé (France), Momentum Pictures (UK) and Constantin Film (Germany) (IMDb, 2017). In addition, the film is currently available to be consumed and watched through various forms of digital media such as DVD, iTunes, and on-demand videos online (Focus Features, 2017). Lost in Translation can thus be viewed as a mediascape that has the power to reach audiences throughout the world. Furthermore, the model of mediascape not only refers to the media created and communicated across borders but also deals with ‘the images of the world created by these media’ that subtly blur the distinction between reality and fiction (Appadurai, 1990, p.299). In other words, mediascapes can be viewed as media texts and images that have the ability to depict and construct the world to transnational audiences in particular ways from specific perspectives of certain media producers. Therefore, in addition to its transnational industrial background, Lost in Translation (2003) can be considered as a mediascape that applies its scenes, characters and plots to create an imagined Japan through the American gaze. That is to say, the film invites audiences to view Japan from an American

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