Hacker News Reader

Comment by habosa | Hacker News Reader

The MAGA people attacking Hollywood is such a big mistake. Yes I know the average celebrity doesn’t share their views, but that doesn’t change the fact that Hollywood projects American culture around the world in a way that the government could never do itself. Movies and music made here are so often cited as the reason why young people around the world idealize America and want to emulate us (buy our clothes, speak English, etc)

It’s the cultural equivalent of being the world’s reserve currency, it’s a massive free advantage in almost any situation. Stupid stupid stupid to threaten it.

View on HN

Growing up in the 70s and 80s in Germany, I've been brainwashed by US movies and sitcoms, 90% of the things I've watched was from the US - Magnum P.I, Simon & Simon, The Fall Guy, Kojak, A-Team, Golden Girls, Mary Taylor Moore, Lou Grant, MacGyver, Knight Rider, Night Court, Family Ties, Miami Vice, The Wonder Years, Facts of Life, Love Boat, and on and on and on.

I know the US better than many parts of Germany.

I know the US better than many parts of Germany

I read an article years ago from a lawyer (might have been a judge) complaining that, thanks to US TV and movies, people in Sweden know more about how the US justice system works than the Swedish system. Far too many people just fall back on their US TV knowledge of how they think courts work and that they keep having to explain to the people that, no that's not how things works in Sweden.

To be fair, Americans have the same problem. The US justice system does not perfectly mirror the Hollywood justice system and jurors are constantly reminded of this when they're called to serve on US juries.

It's hilarious to watch police body cam footage where an arrested person is screaming that they haven't been arrested properly because it didn't happen the way it happens in movies.

For some definitions of hilarious. It's arguably terrifying that people are so poorly informed by the people in power.

I like the ones who scream "I know my rights" when they absolutely do not know their rights.

What?! Next thing you'll tell me Dr House doesn't mirror the reality of working in healthcare.

They often got the "be an asshole to the patient" part down though.

We have very few shows about lawyers/law here because our system is simple (and boring?) enough that there isn't much to make anything interesting about.

IANAL but have taken some intro level course (that usually starts with don't think anything from American shows applies).

1: It's rooted in civil law so the written laws(and their precursor political discussions) are first considered, laws are thus fairly broadly written with specifications where needed. So precedents are mostly only used to disambiguate gray areas in terms of applicability or conflicts between laws. (but precedents rulings are in turn are meant to rely on the precursor political discussions before courts can take their own authority on any subject).

2: Intent is given significance, so 2 parties can enter into fairly "sloppily written" contracts that will be legally binding as long as the intent of the contract is clear, they're signed and doesn't violate any laws (there is law specifically targets obviously unfair contracts, but also other laws that regulate specific areas).

3: Criminal prosecution at the primary level is in front of 3 judges, one professional head judge with law degree that knows laws and 2 "laymen" to represent people in general (usually politically appointed to reflect the people via elections), no juries as the role those serve is handled by the laymen judges.

You didn't mention the most important difference: Nordic countries have "free evidence exhibition", meaning that anything and everything is allowed to be presented as evidence in the courts and the judges have total liberty in deciding on how to weigh evidence.

This means evidence such as hearsay or illegally obtained evidence is given the same consideration as real evidence. Resulting many times that the court can sentence an accused that everybody "knows" is guilty, and other times resulting in mind bogglingly insane verdicts.

Another big difference: No plea deals. Which is something very strange about the American justice system.

You're right, I mostly mostly pointed out civil rather than criminal law differences since that was what I've gotten studies on and concerned myself with due to having a contracting business.

As for the mind-boggling verdicts those seem to more often stem from the politically appointed judges from the media reporting.

The plea deals part is interesting since it's been more frequently bought up to become legal in relation to combating the rising organized crime (but the perverse incentive problem seems to have kept those discussions from going further so far).

I think the most reasonable way is to offer a punishment discount -after- a guilty verdict for those criminals who offer to give up the bigger fish. Having a deal before that just seems wrong, for criminal cases.

It's actually pretty boring in the US as well. As an attorney, it's always interesting to see US law school applications increase if a "sexy" legal drama becomes popular on TV. I feel bad for those applicants, because 99% of legal work is not as exciting as on TV, the lawyers don't dress as well as they do on TV, and they definitely do not look as attractive as the ones on TV. :-)

Not surprising.

One serious question is how much precedent research is grounded in possible reality? The "unexpeced-precedent-that-throws-off-the-opposition" and "old-or-savant-legal-expert-who-knows-them-all" tropes in media seems to hinge on them being important, and reading legal rulings on business cases (like those historic ones regarding Nintendo and Sega copy protections or EFF ones) does seem to put some weight on them?

As a juror I saw a Johnny Cochran-like attorney defend against a Marcia Clark-like prosecutor, in the early 21st century. The judge was nothing like Judge Ito though. There was a car chase, there were videos from the scenes, and DNA evidence was criticized unsuccessfully by an “expert.” Isn’t that what they have on LA Law?

Same with me. I know way too many things about the US justice system - like the difference between prisons and jails, totally irrelevant to my life.

There was a viral clip of someone in a Spanish court saying “objection!”, and the lawyer saying “that’s in the American systems, in the movies!”

I have heard of Canadians making the same mistake.

There was a claim at one point that, due to the popularity of American TV shows in Europe, during household emergencies kids were calling 911 instead of the local version (e.g. it's 999 in some European countries)

I'd expect 911 to redirect to one of the emergency services in most/all European countries, no?

112 works in the reverse way in the US as well (along with 999 which is the equivalent in many other countries such as the UK). There's not really any reason not to have many numbers just in case. Tourists shouldn't have to memorize, and recall, new numbers in an emergency.

Hello operator, gimme the number for nine one one!

https://amphetamem.es/meme?id=the-simpsons_02_07_335&timesta...

The only problem is that at least in Germany, there are two numbers, 110 for the police, and 112 for fire/ambulance.

https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/112

As siblings have commented, 112 and 911 are in the GSM standard. On landlines, only 112 will work in most EU countries (and even that is an EU achievement; e.g. in Switzerland 112 is inconsistent)

AFAIK in mobile networks yes (911 and 112 are specified as emergency numbers in the specs and redirected as needed), not necessarily on landlines.

No, only in a handful of countries, or on US airbases. 112 is your friend in all of Europe

112 should work in almost the whole world on a mobile phone, since it's part of the GSM standard.

This is probably the case now as my original post was referring to a situation about 20 years ago (should have clarified)

Depends on country but in Poland where I live calling 911 also reaches emergency dispatch even if „valid” number is 112.

Why?

Because if someone is obviously trying to contact the emergency services it's probably a good idea to connect them to the emergency services.

You're answering the wrong question. Why would 911 be "obviously trying to contact emergency services"?

Prevailing culture.

A kid these days in most urban parts would tend to say "911 I have an emergency" while roleplaying because we hear it so much in popular culture.

What else would someone who dials 911 be trying to achieve? And does the benefit outweigh the cost?

911 has enough mindshare that it'd be silly to use it for anything else. And if you're not going to use it for anything, a redirect seems like a very productive way to park it.

Because it's a number used for emergency services in many parts of the world, and not for ordering pizza, plane strikes or whatever.

Relatively speaking, it actually isn't that popular - check the map on https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emergency_telephone_...

That's what, 10% of world population? 112 has India going for it…

10% sounds incredibly significant. That's nearly a billion people.

Sure. And in a spherical cow world, assuming you want to make n emergency numbers work, you'd sort by population-using and take the first n.

…but even then 911 would only be an emergency phone number if n ≥ 3; first two places being taken by 112 and 110 (because China).

However, this completely ignores facts like people from China being far less likely to travel to e.g. the US… it's more of a "of the people who'd make emergency calls in XYZ, what numbers would they use" consideration…

…it's really not an easy question. GSM went with 112 and 911 and I guess that's as good as an answer this'll get.

Because US culture is exported around the world.

It did in New Zealand in the late 90s

110 (Police), 112 (Ambulance, Fire Department) in Germany.

Why are there two different numbers? When there is an emergency you want people to always do the right thing. Guessing the wrong number to call is not the right thing, and worse 2 numbers means there is great chance you didn't memorize either. This is well studied in human factors.

Besides, anytime the other two are involved the police need to respond too - when there is a fire or medical emergency whoever can get that first can often be very helpful even if they are mostly for a different job. As such this separation seems wrong.

"anytime the other two are involved the police need to respond too"

This is not the US, the police does not show up to a fire or an emergency, why would they? They show up to an accident, and when you need an ambulance they will bring one.

The will also not stop and interrogate you when you walk to the side of the road. People usually have no interaction with the police outside of speeding tickets.

"get that first can often be very helpful"

Germany is not full of police patrolling the streets. Gladly we are no longer a police state. Usually I don't see any police for days, often not for weeks. Again, this is not the US. The only time you'll probably see police is going to train stations, airports or big tourist spots (and sometimes at parties that are too loud). In large cities, like Berlin, you might hear a siren and see a police car from time to time, depending on where you are. In smaller <1M people cities, not so.

Germany also has a proper health system and invests in ambulances and health instead of militarizing the police. So I can see your point, but it is irrelevant here.

> the police does not show up to a fire or an emergency, why would they?

Because they're trained first-responders, who have medical first aid training, vehicles with lights and sirens to move quickly through traffic, knowledge of the local area to navigate around road closures or ambiguous location descriptions, etc.

There are many situations where multiple sub-specialties of first-responders (police, firefighters, EMT, etc) are useful. The police aren't just showing up to arrest or shoot people, in a functioning society they can and do provide valuable service in assisting injured people, controlling traffic around car accidents, etc.

A common joke with firefighters: the difference between a training exercise and a real fire scene is the lack of law enforcement getting in the way.

> Because they're trained first-responders, who have medical first aid training

In many parts of the US they are only trained to EMR level (if that) which isn't particularly useful. Most fire departments require everyone to be EMT and will often have a paramedic on board. Where I am, police are all EMR and will rarely be dispatched to a medical call (unless there's a threat of violence). They will be dispatched to vehicle accidents for traffic control.

Where I'm from the police all have a larger first aid kit than is the typical home and they also have AEDs. If there is any change a police officer can arrive before the ambulance or fire department then they will dispatch the police there because seconds might be counting.

Yes the ambulance and fire department is better trained for these things. However basic first aid (CPR) and an AED in the hands of someone with basic first aid training often beats the most trained professional who is arrives just a minute later. So dispatches will get whoever can get to the scene first there, as well as the right people.

Yes the police often are in the way in a fire real scene - but that is a lot better than all the bystanders watching the fire in the way instead. However it is hard to see how bad it could be, while easy to see how bad things are.

"There are many situations where multiple sub-specialties of first-responders"

I'm not getting the argument, you say a paramedic + doctor is worse than a paramedic + doctor + police when I have a heart attack?

> Besides, anytime the other two are involved the police need to respond too

Police responding to everything whether or not there is an indication that they are necessary, and even (especially) when the indications are that they would be counterproductive is a US quirk with very high costs, not some kind of universal rule.

Signs of a police state and a failed society.

> anytime the other two are involved the police need to respond too

No. When your partner has an urgent medical issue, you call the ambulance, not the police.

You want whoever is time closest to respond as well. While the ambulance is better, the police should have first aid training and a good sized first aid kit. When seconds are counting you are better off with someone partially trained who can get there fast over someone better trained who takes longer.

> You want whoever is time closest to respond as well.

If you require the police to respond to all medical emergencies, then you have to fund the police at a level which allows them to do that, often at the expense of funding the people who actually should be responding to a medical emergency.

Taking the attitude that the police must respond to all emergency calls even if the only indication of what capacities are needed are fire and/or ambulance services results in a distortion of local funding which makes emergency response worse (it also results in the police presence itself making the response to other things worse in cases where they were not needed, even considering the resources actually available at the time, without considering the effect of response policy on resource allocation -- police are not always neutral-to-beneficial.)

The fact that it is a common rule in the US does not make it right. The US is very bad, compared to other developed countries, at lots of things.

In a police state you already have the police funded higher than anyone else. So it does make sense to at least use them for something useful.

In non-police states, you spend your money on a working health system instead.

Yeah its completely stupid.

I've witnessed a lady falling down the stairs banging her head hard, blood everywhere. Called 112 in my country, a guy answered, and I calmly explained what happened, and I wanted someone coming there stat. "Nah" he says, he needs to ask me some questions first. One of the questions was: "is it serious?". This is no joke, I said "yeah, its fucking serious". "Okay" he says, "You should have called emergency services directly, but he'll do me one and connect me anyways(!)".

Then I had to repeat everything again and they've then reluctantly sent a team which by the way arrived in double the time it would take me to get there from their place.

Reminds me of those endless accountability sinks. Nobody gives a shit about anything as there is no accountability.

Sad to hear. Recently called 112 in Germany (small town) and <5 minutes later an ambulance arrived. It wasn't an emergency in the end, but they were happy and friendly and got back to their station.

Maybe Germany should have imposed 100% tariff on movies produced in foreign lands :D

I have a name: call it a "dubbing tax".

Tbh it always wondered me why baseball or american football are so popular in Germany. Looks like a cultural colonisation, but the country seems to be ok with it.

Isolationism is a key MAGA tenet. It's not accidental.

MAGA has several mutually exclusive tenets:

- Isolationism

- Increase US influence worldwide

- Exploit US influence worldwide

Each one will have a negative effect on the other two.

Authoritarianism is self-contradictory by design. Supreme leader is to be followed, not understood, so you have to refer to them in doubt.

MAGA is not a single entity. Different parts of it have different concerns. That is how politics works for better and worse.

Sure, but it seems there are references to incompatible goals within the Project 2025 document, which is meant to be a unified goal document.

For instance, one goal was that "The United States must regain its role as the 'Arsenal of Democracy'... the United States built its reputation as a reliable partner with a strong defense industrial base that could supply military articles and goods in a timely manner."

But as explained in the video below, "The last three months have seen the worst damage to that reputation since the post-WWII order came into force."

The video is worth watching: it does bring out a lot of what you're talking about (different parts w/ different concerns), and does actually make sense of a lot of what Trump is saying and doing wrt Ukraine and NATO. I do find it preferable that the administration has rational goals which are simply not compatible with each other, than that they're behaving completely randomly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDSz62i6F3Q

This is actually surprisingly a pro-union move by Trump.

If you aren't aware, they've shipped most IATSE jobs to Serbia since 2023.

They used to shoot most Disney and Netflix shows in LA and Atlanta. Now they're happening in Eastern Europe. They fly the cast out and film with crews that don't have labor laws or unions and that are an order of magnitude cheaper.

IATSE members have been forced to leave the industry, sell their homes, and move out of California. There are a few holdouts, but it's likely they'll have to exit the industry too.

Once that capacity goes, it'll never come back.

Studios are sitting vacant. CBRE is going to come in and turn them all into office parks and mixed use.

Yet the budgets keep going up and the "all movies make a loss" accounting continues. What are the chances the consumer will see any savings or the crew will see any raises?

IATSE = International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE)

None of them expected the "I" bit to be used? Ever?

In American labor unions, “international” generally means “US and Canada”.

It's the same as World Series in the US :)

The hope is the "A" plays a role there too though

You have to remember that the MAGA movement is a cult of personality with a bunch of weirdos ginning up stupid and naive people.

Thats it. The attack is the strategy. Burn some stuff down and move on.

> You have to remember that the MAGA movement is a cult of personality with a bunch of weirdos ginning up stupid and naive people.

I think it's more pernicious than that. The whole MAGA movement has a rather obvious accelerationist agenda, which leads to self-destructive policies like dismantling basic social safety nets and eliminating basic state institutions. Their policies don't make sense to anyone outside of their cult because we presume the goal is to build upon the state institutions and improve upon what's already there, whereas the MAGA crowd applauds destroying everything down to fundamental rights such as the right to a fair trial. They want to see te world burn hoping they'll be able to rebuild it to their liking. The only members of the MAGA that so far voiced regrets are those who faced the fact that they themselves were being left behind.

Yea, that's fatal mistake that the (D) side keeps making: They assume that both sides have good intentions and are trying to make the world better, and that we simply disagree about what "better" means, and about methods, priorities and principles.

MAGA reminds me of That One Guy we all knew in High School who just wanted to cause trouble, start fights, insult people, light fires in the bathroom, destroy things, and basically grief anyone who encountered him. There's no good intentions here--no aim to make things better for everyone. It was just ABCD with that guy: anger, belligerence, cruelty, and defiance. Fast forward to today, and we've got 70M+ of these guys voting.

We're all standing on top of a Jenga tower, and "that guy" thinks it would be fun to knock out blocks underneath us.

> MAGA reminds me of That One Guy we all knew in High School

I knew one of those guys. Obviously I thought he was dangerous but figured he was too crude to get far in life.

he's now a maga congressman from Texas

I actually think the intention of the tariff here is to bring jobs back to the American filming industry - not that I agree with this approach. Just an assessment of mine. But speaking of cultural influence, I think something interesting has been happening.

> that doesn’t change the fact that Hollywood projects American culture around the world in a way that the government could never do itself

I'll all for the "soft power" of the US, including cultural influence. Just wanted to point out that things have been changing slowly. More and more people started to be more credulous about Hollywood's values. Case in point, Blank Panther won Oscar, yet it was widely criticized in China and its box office in China was miserable. Below is the translation of a popular criticism of Black Panther:

Imagine you made a movie about China, kind of like Black Panther. In it, China is this isolated country with crazy-advanced technology, way ahead of the rest of the world. But instead of a modern government, it's run by tribal warlords—each one basically a dictator. To choose their top leader, they fight each other with knives and spears on top of the Forbidden City.

In your story, Chinese people still do foot binding like it’s totally normal. The elite chieftains live in ridiculous luxury inside the imperial palace. Their medicine is so advanced it’s basically magic—people come back from the dead—and they’ve got levitating trains that look like they’re from another planet.

But regular folks? They live in grass huts, spend their days feeding rhinos (or maybe pandas), and there are barely any roads in the whole country.

Then you take this movie to China and tell everyone it’s a tribute to Chinese culture? People would be so insulted, they might actually beat you up.

I was actually shocked by this tariff. It's a pro-union, pro-labor, classic progressive move.

If you haven't been following what's happening with film production, basically production has moved from LA, Atlanta, New York, etc. to cheap countries in Eastern Europe and Asia.

A vast majority of IATSE film crew productions have now vacated the US. It's decimated the local film crew workforce and forced many to leave the industry entirely.

I wrote more about it here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43893915

The film crew folks post a lot about it on Reddit, especially in the /r/film industry(city) subreddits:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FilmIndustryLA/comments/1k39cod/the...

You're assuming anything in this was planned, designed, premeditated.

It wasn't.

He's going to flip-flop on this 15 times in the next three months while studios (and other industries) go into hibernation waiting until something (or anything) stabilizes.

Pro-union right until the point where the studios go whining to him about exactly that.

Can you actually provide numbers? like how many of the movies that used or should have been shot in the US were off-shored abroad? A bit of a "cheap" research but deepseek did search the top 10 grossing movies of 2025; and all of them except one were shot in the US.

Look at 2024; mostly animated or shot out of the U.S. And if you look at the trends the number of jobs have been declining since 2019: https://www.zippia.com/key-grip-jobs/trends/

Imagine the costs of any blockbuster if it’s made in the US only

They used to do all principal photography for half of all Marvel films in Atlanta. The industry has almost completely pulled out in just the past three years.

We had a booming, absolutely thriving industry for nearly two decades. People moved from LA to be here. We built hundreds of studios and sound stages. Now they're sitting empty.

Everyone is going to Serbia now. IATSE folks are having to leave the industry entirely.

> Everyone is going to Serbia now.

Here's a quote for you:

--- start quote ---

“Labour unions contend that between 35 and 50 percent of feature films turned out by American producers are made abroad,” the New York Times reported on October 4 1959 as the volume of what were then called “runaway productions” began to soar.

--- end quote ---

Notice the year.

Hollywood has been running away from California for over 70 years. Your obsession with Serbia completely ignores that all of Europe is used for movie and TV productions, and Serbia is just the latest addition: https://issuu.com/thelatesteditionishereandfreetoview/docs/c...

Seems you were a-okay with people in California losing their jobs so you got them in Atlanta. You seem not okay with it moving from Atlanta to elsewhere.

And stop repeating the Serbia line in every comment. You've done it multiple times. What productions are in Serbia? How many out of how many?

Did you lose your job to one in Serbia and now it's sour grapes all along?

The Serbia angle is weird considering that so may movies were shot and are being shot in Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania...

In general, all of Europe is bursting at the seams with movie and TV productions, many of them American: https://issuu.com/thelatesteditionishereandfreetoview/docs/c...

The move was presumably done by americans themselves, no? It's a choice.

If american producers wanted to produce in america, they always could. They never had to move. It would just be more expensive. It will still be more expensive even after tariffs. Tariffs don't make labor cheaper. Cheaper choice will just not exist for americans.

you can see everyone willfully ignoring this here, which makes me nervous about actually solving this problem long term. I used to dream of screenwriting and that dream is almost certainly dead but I'd like to see others have a chance. It looks bleak now

Why would you be surprised? Are you expecting some sort of pro-labor movement in a startup focused tech forum?

Modern tech is all about disruption. You get paid way too much because you’re squeezing costs (ie labor) out of business operations.

There was an action movie that filmed car chases in my city about 15 years ago. A bunch of the crew was at a bar I hung out with and we were trading stories. There was a dude who was making alot of money to essentially wet down the streets from a fire hydrant. There’s reasons for that — hydrants require some training to safely operate.

But end of the day, the money guys at Netflix, Amazon or whatever would rather just pay some rando a few bucks and let insurance deal with the damage. Or build a fake street in Serbia.

Pro labor for whom?

my view of capitalism is that you can't remove the market. it will exist with or without you, so if you have some control you should incentivize the things that are better for everyone.

To me I think it's possible for Netflix and Amazon and whoever to exist and make a lot of money, but also not have nation-state level power. The latter is something we haven't decided we want yet, but I think we'll come around. If there were even just very small controls (that worked) on the size of a company, or how many industries it can go into, then things would look differently. But when we let so few companies consolidate so much power through money, the status quo is a pretty natural outcome. Imagine a world where there were regional amazon.com's, because we just decided at some point they got too big. Same for google. We'd have actual competition. Tech enables market consolidation in ways we didn't expect and we have to do some actual work to fix it.

I agree with you, and this happened in the past. The entire system is designed to prevent this, and this newfound love of isolationism is a way to cement it in.

Let’s be real, these giant tech companies are becoming big stagnant bureaucracies. They can’t adapt anymore and want to build a moat to let them lumber along for a few decades.

The core assumption of the policy makers and business people was the idea that the Chinese are a bunch of dumb peasants working for scraps and unable to produce. They seem to be holding their own with AI, cars, trains, aircraft, etc. They may have a credible competitor for the B737/A320 — that’s a pretty big leap.

I love this comment. Please do not delete it. I'm saving this.

I wholeheartedly agree with you.

Seems like other countries have cheaper workforce.

This tariff isn't an attack on Hollywood. This helps actors and staff in the Hollywood area.

its very likely to cause reciprocal tariffs though, and exports of Hollywood way out weigh the imports of foreign films

And it will very likely lead to issues with financing films. Many films these days are shot in multiple locations and use foreign financing, tax breaks and subsidies, sometimes accepting funds from multiple countries.

There are big issues with foreign cinema. We still have a lot of structural advantages in the US to producing films. Production has shifted to other countries because of significant tax incentives. These tax incentives are a way that other countries are frankly not playing fair.

The bottom line for me is that we shouldn't simply accept that films should all be filmed in Canada, Australia, the UK, or elsewhere. Hollywood has been the epicenter of creative jobs in this country for a century, and we should try to preserve it.

Not playing fair? Horse hockey. Every sovereign nation is entirely within their rights to adjust their taxing system for their own benefit. Belief in this juvenile concept of fairness is how we got the unholy mess we're sitting in right now.

US has tons of tax incentives for film, just at the state level. And Trump announced 100% tariffs across the board regardless of if a country has film subsidies.

> These tax incentives are a way that other countries are frankly not playing fair.

Honest question: what does "fair" mean in this context?

There already are tarrifs and bans against Hollywood in many countries.

No free country has a ban on Hollywood movies.

> There already are tarrifs and bans against Hollywood in many countries.

Name one.

Name 10.

I wasn’t sure there would be 10, but nearly all the big countries add extra taxes on Hollywood movies to fund their own competitors. It’s effectively a tariff.

There are around 192 countries. I expected "many countries" to be at least 10. Now it's "big countries"? Does Greenland have a tariff on Hollywood films? Does France ban Hollywood films?

> This tariff isn't an attack on Hollywood. This helps actors and staff in the Hollywood area.

Does it, though? I mean, the Trump administration is only making it more expensive for theaters to screen non-US movies. Are you going to even bother going to a cinema if the movie you wanted to see isn't made available? And how dominant are non-US productions in US cinemas?

It sounds like more tarrif bullshit,where the only output is lose-lose.

Most top movies last year [1] were shot outside of the US. Excluding animation movies, of course. I understand that the idea is “medium/long term” to move production to Hollywood area, but the short term impact can be massive.

[1] “Deadpool and Wolverine”, “Wicked” and “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” in London, “Dune part 2” in Budapest and Italy, “Godzilla x Kong” in Australia. Only “Twisters” was filmed in the US.

> Most top movies last year [1] were shot outside of the US.

The movies you listed as examples are Hollywood productions (aka Hollywod movies, aka American movies).

That's like saying an Apple iPhone is a US phone and hence shouldn't be tariffed. No, it's made in China. Not in the US. The movies aforementioned are not made in the US either.

> That's like saying an Apple iPhone is a US phone (...)

It is a US phone.

> No, it's made in China.

It doesn't make it any less of a US phone. If you go to Newegg, order a bunch of PC parts from CPU to case, and put them together in your room, how much of the PC was made in your neighborhood?

> The movies aforementioned are not made in the US either.

Ninsense. Do you think that gophers and local caterers are the ones producing and profiting from a movie production?

The distinction here isn't US vs non-US movies, it's where they're produced. A lot of Hollywood output is produced outside the US now to escape the unions, to benefit from cheaper non-US workers and to benefit from tax breaks. These are American movies funded and written by Americans, but the bulk of the production staff aren't from there.

From the first paragraph of the article:

Donald Trump on Sunday announced on his Truth Social platform a 100% tariff on all movies “produced in Foreign Lands”, saying the US film industry was dying a “very fast death” due to the incentives that other countries were offering to draw American film-makers.

That is correct. Other countries are gutting Hollywood because Hollywood has become a hard place to make things. To pick a random example, the TV show Silo by Apple TV is made in the UK, not America, and the lead actress is Swedish. It's set in the USA, based on a story by an American author and produced by Apple but it's not made there.

This move is bad news for the UK and other countries that have built up a successful film industry but don't have the capital depth to fund big budget films, even with access to the US market. Now they lose access to US funding and can't easily export their films to the US either, assuming it goes through.

I don't think they understand the damage all of this is doing to brand America.

Since the first Trump administration, young people in Western Europe have increasingly lost their idealization of the United States. I'm 43 and moved to the US ten years ago and I feel like I'm part of the last generation that still wanted to move here. Highly qualified people I know in Europe no longer even consider coming here.

I'm a similarly aged European who studied, worked, lived in the States for a decade and moved out for good ten years ago, abandoned my Green Card and never looked back. The world is a big beautiful place. Much bigger and more important and diverse than the US. More free nowadays too.

When American workers are forced to compete with slaves or vastly unsafe workplaces, something was going to break.

Everyone in this thread is reading surface level media summaries.

This is 1000% pro-union.

IATSE workers have been decimated by the move of productions to Serbia since 2023.

LA and Atlanta film productions have all but collapsed since the offshoring of production. Serbian crews work without unions for much cheaper than local IATSE members.

This is designed to save IATSE and domestic American production.

Is it pro union, or does it happen to just match union's interests today? I've not seen him mention unions explicitly, neither in search nor perplexity. He did mention Hollywood finance, but whether he ment helping the workers or helping some studio owner by that is not clear to me. With the current track record of what's dismantled, I'm not sure he cares about IATSE at all. His explanation of the reasons mentions lots of other things though.

Teamsters statement:

https://teamster.org/2025/05/teamsters-statement-on-presiden...

IATSE statement:

https://iatse.net/iatse-on-president-trump-movie-tariff-anno...

tl;dr - the Teamsters love this. IATSE likes it, but wants to make sure their Canadian membership isn't hurt.

I was asking about the other direction. Sure it's convenient for IATSE right now, but is Trump thinking about them at all or are they going to be thrown under the bus with the next change/decision?

The cynic in me wonders what will happen once the first billionaire whines to Trump how the unions make returning movies to the US so expensive.

Since when does the MAGA crowd give a hoot about unions?

The studios are dying. I go to the movies every week when there are movies. Other than Minecraft, the biggest crowd I’ve seen was the Star Wars re-release.

Since the Dems charged towards globalization. The former union workers are being devastated by it and think protectionism will help them. It possibly will help them, just not America as a whole.

Thats the general line of reasoning. Rs are walking a line with union courting since a chunk of their base is anti union, just as dems were walking a line with globalization.

This is my current understanding of the undercurrents.

Hollywood made a few anti-fascist, anti-Nazi exploitation movies last year with big name actors and directors. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and Freaky Tales are two that stand out. Hollywood is pro queer, pro minority and pro free speech. MAGA hates it all and would happily destroy it. It's not stupid, it's their vision for the country and they want to project that vision to the rest of the world. They don't want the world to think of the US as an inviting place where anyone can pursue the American dream, where the government fights for the rights of the downtrodden, politically oppressed and abused and acts like the global stabilizing hand exchanging trade for peace and prosperity. For the MAGA faithful, those days are over, the country is full and it's time to reestablish Anglo-Christian dominance. Their game plan is economic and political isolation, the erosion of democracy and the end of the global unity narrative.

Cutting off Hollywood from its funding sources is part of the plan. MAGA controlled states cancelled tax breaks and subsidies for film/tv production years ago, in some cases torpedoing billions in investment in new studios. This isn't a new strategy, this is the amplification of an existing strategy.

I completely agree-growing up, I admired the values I saw in American movies. It might sound amusing, but shaping young minds through film has been a key way the United States built its global influence. Hollywood movies have long served as powerful vehicles for transmitting American customs, ideals, and cultural values to audiences around the world

Maybe the mistake here is to assume that MAGA shares those traditionally “American” values.

But I presume that the major effect of this tariff will be to force large media conglomerates (aka news agencies) to think very carefully about how their news divisions cover Trump.

On TikTok there's a minor trend of exchange students being in awe of the typical US high school experience: yellow school buses, lockers, football games with cheerleaders, prom, etc.

It’s crazy how blunt and unapologetic American imperialists are about their tactics and selfish motives. Hello and good morning.

If we end up with less american culture spread around the world, would it be net positive for everyone else?

The frame that MAGA has embraced (its in the name itself) is that the policy of the last however long time has failed. I haven't seen the pitch for how having the reserve currency is helping them, and I doubt spreading Hollywood culture has helped them either. Hollywood culture superficially appears to hate them with a passion and wants to see them silenced or (depending on who these "MAGA people" are) arrested.

In other words, the first A in MAGA stands for MAGA, not America.

Yeap, as example, I enjoy Seinfeld and the office (US version) than many of the comedy series in my own country.

That brings a fascinating question. What cultures the USA emulated?

> Hollywood projects American culture

Isn't it the other way around? American culture was dictated by Hollywood, and the rest of the world mistook it for real American culture?

The MAGA crowd is happy to throw out the ability to project useful stuff globally if it makes hollywood stop projecting what they consider divisive stuff domestically and are willing to throw out the foreign aspect if need be.

They're not stupid (well they might be, but that's beside the point), they're just in such fundamental disagreement with you that it's possible to squint and assess the situation as "yup, they're stupid" (and frankly that's a lot more comforting of an assessment).

Film production has been moving steadily overseas chasing cheap labor. By forcing some of it back or forcing it to stay put it makes that industry and the people in it a little more dependent upon government, a little more dependent upon isolationist economic policy, a little more inclined to stay in the government's good graces (i.e. less likely to create stuff the .gov doesn't like), etc, etc, even if it kneecaps the ability of the overall industry to perform globally.

Edit: I shouldn't have to say this but none of the above should be construed as an endorsement of a) high tariffs or b) increased government control of media)

I get what you're saying, but still, it is all very stupid, especially the part where they want to censor ideas they don't like domestically...

I think thats exactly the point though. There is a perception that "left wing ideals" are represented in art and media and that this must end. This explains the executive order to defund NPR and PBS last week.

Right. Just like other "strong" regimes do and did: Entertainment is a key vehicle for injecting values into society and forming it. Way more subtle than schools and public speeches can do. Important to control it, if you want to keep your power long term.

But isn't this the "free market" at play?

Media with so-called "leftist" themes tend to do well commercially than "rightist" themes, so Hollywood just follows the money?

MAGA is not a free market fundamentalist movement. The old-school neoconservative Republicans are no longer in charge of the party.

Imagine ten years ago, someone predicting you would miss the neocons...

we actually had books by folks like Naomi Klein back in the 90s that indicated that the petroleum-based forces would subvert international cooperation for the sake of short-term profits. we were informed of the current navelgazing nationalist trend worldwide gaining popularity.

it's completely stupid and shortsighted to birth this monster, of course. we need MORE international cooperation not less to solve the vast environmental and social problems the world faces.

think about why people migrate and war is high on the list, and not addressing the root causes of human migration but merely each nation closing its doors to the world= bad dumb and wrong.

the people are to blame, of course. in one of the wealthiest nations on earth it's not hardship or suffering that drove the common man to vote for Trump, it's schadenfreude for strawmen they were programmed to hate.

Jodorowski's famous art film "holy mountain" shows our current trajectory since 40 plus years and depicts the brainwashing that allows one to dehumanize other human beings.

i am not sure if trump or vance is the antichrist, but they certainly head a religion dedicated to eradicating the values Jesus taught.

The MAGA movement doesn’t believe in the idea of a free market. Tariffs are a prime example of that. What they want is control and subservience.

MAGA are fascist. The heavy base of voter support is from religious zealots.

Snow White is evidence the money is not what they follow.

I would say it’s exactly what a risk-averse money-following committee would do. Regurgitate remakes of previously successful things to milk the cow until it’s powder dry.

Whether this is a successful strategy is debatable.

One film by isolation doesn't say much either way, as any given film is high-variance — look at the industry as a whole, and not just box office but total revenue.

I don't have stats for that either, so these things might well still support your claim, but that's what you have to look at.

Not sure why you're being downvoted because your points are accurate. Ultra nationalist propaganda wouldn't sell well internationally compared to e.g. Star Wars.

And the current administration does at least purport to follow free market principles. It's just all principles can go out the window for them because <insert word salad>, for whatever advances their own power.

Yes and no, most people will happily watch movies with gays in them and those without gays.

For decades gays were not allowed and their presence caused blowbacks. It was called free market, despite there being literal rules preventing their presence. Likewise, non whites or women in leading roles - they were not in them, because Hollywood was conservative business in this sense. It took a lot of advocacy for the change to happen.

Right wing hates them, most people just watch those movies and are not weirded out anymore about women having lead action role or whatever. And right wing hopes to revert it back.

Trump has proven time and time again that he didn't understand soft power.

I wish people would stop with the “Trump doesn’t understand $thing” stuff.

It doesn’t matter whether Trump understands $thing. Pretending that he’s acting in good faith to make things better, but is somehow failing because he doesn’t get X, Y, or Z falls right into the trap. He’s trying to destroy American “soft power”. It doesn’t interest him.

Neither does a good economy, schools, NATO, etc. All of these things are being destroyed or mangled on purpose.

When a ruler does something that seems illogical, it's most often times meant to consolidate internal power. That being said, I often find Trump's moves to be bizarre even in that light. At least try to look good, but he seems to be do everything to look bad. Even MAGA fans have a hard time coping:

"It's just temporary pain"

"We need to consume less"

"I don't understand tariffs"

OTOH, trump is not very clever, and IS rather infantile. its sufficient to allege that forces that seek to destabilize American power likely aided Trump financially and he is proving a good investment. the term is "useful idiot" IIRC

Only stupid if you believe Trump is trying to strengthen the US

You don't get it. The tariffs are intended to PROTECT Hollywood.

Local US film industry is dying because it's all offshored.

I live in a country that is leeching off the US film industry with subsidies. Our country benefits at the expense of American jobs.

You do understand this is a move to protect Hollywood, Right? It is for the very reasons you cited.

The modern popularist says exactly the opposite to what they mean. Again and again. They talk about freedom as they remove it, free speech as they suppress it, the arts as they defund it, manufacturing as they gut it etc. And all this while claiming a state of emergency and necessary for national security.

For security reasons, you are required to write down your passwords in the password journal at the entrance desk.

I’ve applied a heuristic in my life to not trust anyone who promotes “transparency”. It sounds counterintuitive but in my experience this is just a tool of attack allowing them insinuate a scheme or conspiracy is at play and then to twist the narrative to what they want. Don’t trust them, trust me I’m transparent.

By “protect” you mean “roll back to the 1950’s”, righ? Because Hollywood today was doing quite well and I don’t think I’ve heard a single industry source asking for this.

IMO the other shoe here is stronger content restrictions and more government control of what gets made. Easier to do that with US productions, hence the attempt to make everything distributed in the US a US production.

Who isn't asking for something to bring more production home? Studio execs? People in LA, ATL, etc want to work, and every year there is less and less jobs below the line in the US, even though there's more productions overall paid for by US companies. This sentiment you're talking about is at least not universal

I have hear actors complain about AI, I have heard various guilds striking over about dozens of causes ... moving abroad was not one of them.

Then you might be missing it as it’s a huge huge issue for below the line workers (actors are part of the package we’re shipping out to other countries)

>Because Hollywood today was doing quite well and I don’t think I’ve heard a single industry source asking for this.

Unless the new edict excludes farming out VFX. The VFX industry has been on its knees for years now, in a race to the bottom that has made r/vfx a pretty depressing place.

(Source: Spent the last few years working for a well-known VFX company)

In the domestic market maybe, but I think their point is that it will severely hurt Hollywood abroad.

Protect Hollywood from what? It's the top movie industry in the world, the only way to go from there is going down.

But do you understand it will harm Hollywood? This is the economic, country scale equivalent of saying "fuck your movies", do you think the answer will be "oh sorry, I'll keep buying yours" or "fuck your movies too"?

It will reduce the profit margins of Hollywood studios. Maybe reduce the bonuses of their CEO.

It'll help thousands of Americans that used to be employed by said studios but were fired not because they couldn't do the job but because the greed of studio execs made them move production outside of the US, playing financial arbitrage games against the interest of the US.

Trump is trying to reverse this by making movies outside of the US, especially by US companies, more expensive. The goal here is not some statement about Hollywood but to bring movie production jobs back to US. The extras, the people who build sets, people who make food for actors etc. And jobs bring tax revenue and grow GDP, which helps every american.

It’s categorically impossible that this could bring movie production jobs to the US. If a policy along these lines is implemented, both foreign and domestic consumers will launch a massive retaliatory boycott. (I will personally begin that boycott today unless Hollywood executives denounce the proposal.) The current dominance of American media offers absolutely no leverage, because it’s trivial and cost-free to go cold turkey on it.

This kills the movies.

You really think CEOs will choose to reduce their bonuses to help thousands of common Americans?

He actually cited it being a National Security threat

Everything is a national security threat, because it's an argument-terminating escape. As soon as you play the national security card, you don't have to explain yourself any further because obviously the real reasons can't be disclosed because of National Security (tm).

It protects the poor in Hollywood, not the rich.

>You do understand this is a move to protect Hollywood, Right?

Protect Hollywood from who, exactly? IIUC, an increasing number of "American" movies (i.e., those produced/financed by American studios) are being filmed outside the US.

This isn't a bunch of foreign film makers ganging up on poor, beleaguered film companies like Disney, Paramount and Neflix.

They, of course, are going to go out of business any minute now because those evil foreigners are taking away their movies. /s

No. Those very profitable studios are choosing to make movies outside the US to bolster those high profits by reducing labor, physical plant and safety expenditures.

As such, how is charging Hollywood studios 100% tariffs to import the movies those same studios paid to make "protecting" Hollywood?

Don't mistake the above for my support of Hollywood studios. They are the OG rapacious scumbags that the SV tech bros are trying (and sometimes succeeding) in emulating.

The difference is that decades ago all movies were about how good and just the US was and now everything Hollywood produces is movies that tell that the US is the devil and other generic progressive slop. Is that really the image the US wants to project to the world?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com