Instead of the real thing: Six ways to talk about what Hollywood does to European films

Abstract

This essay reviews five different ways in which commentators have described what Hollywood does in remaking European films which audiences frequently regard as having a uniquely intimate connection with their European subjects: Hollywoodizing, Americanizing, Europeanizing, appropriating, and reframing them. After considering the relations among these terms, the problems raised by each of them, and their respective limitations, it proposes a sixth term, scripting, which it argues is less parochial, invidious, or value-laden than any of the others, and more likely to invite further productive dialogue on the subject of remakes that cross cultural borders.