Videoage International January 2020

6 Book Review January 2020 V I D E O A G E Global South Crowns NewKings Of Content A uthor Fatima Bhutto begins her newest book by looking at a hero of Bollywood cinema, Shah Rukh Khan. “Today, Khan, though still little known in the West, is one of the icons of a vast cultural movement emerging from the Global South, including Turkish soap operas and Korean pop music,” Bhutto explains. “Truly global in its range and allure, it is the biggest challenge to America’s monopoly of soft power since the end of the Second World War.” In New Kings of the World: Dispatches from Bollywood, Dizi, and K-Pop (206 pgs., Columbia Global Reports, 2019, $15.99), Bhutto explores these issues and more. As Bhutto explains, the international success of American products was due in part “by massive migration to urban areas, the rise of themiddle class across the Global South, and increased connectivity.” Bhutto reminds the reader that at the height of the States’ military presence in 1968, over one million U.S. soldiers were stationed across 54 countries. That number has decreased to less than 200,000 today. “One might argue that as troop numbers decrease, so too does American cultural dominance,” she muses. The first half of the book follows the movement of Shah Rukh Khan across the Global South, providing an overview of Bollywood’s development and tracking the ardent fandom of the Indian actor. The second half of the book focuses on the growth in production and distribution of Turkey’s drama series, followed by a brief foray into Korea’s pop music industry. Bhutto starts with the state of the TV industry in Pakistan, describing how just when the coun- try’s content pipeline was underway, Turkey’s drama series made their entrance. “Turkish dra- mas sneaked into the market initially due to eco- nomics: They were cheaper to buy than original Pakistani programming.” She recalls watching the Urdu-dubbed telecast of the Turkish drama Ask-i Memnu ( Forbidden Love ), which originally aired on Kanal D. Regarding Turkey’s drama pro- ductions, Bhutto expressed that they “had done something nei- ther the Americans, the Indians, or our own shows did: They had achieved the perfect balance between secular modernity and middle-class conservatism.” Today, Bhutto reports, Tur- key’s worldwide distribution ef- forts are second only to the U.S. “At the 2012 MIPCOM, the com- mercial TV festival at Cannes, Turkish production companies did business with traditional- ly closed markets like China, Korea, and even NBCUniver- sal, which bought the rights to distribute Ask-i Memnu to La- tin America,” she writes. She chronicles the rise of Turkish drama series with the populari- ty of three series, Ask-i Memnu , Fatmagül’ün Suçu Ne? , and Ma- gnificent Century , the latter of which Bhutto suggests led the way. “Global Agency estimates that without its most recent buyers in Latin America, the show has been seen by over 500 million people worldwide,” she mentions. “Most recently, it be- came the first dizi [Turkish TV series] ever bought by Japan.” LP