A Study Of The Influence Of Hollywood Movies On College Students: A Survey In A University

With the fast development of economics and high technology, an unprecedented advance has been made into the mass media. Consequently, the process of globalization is growing at a high speed, which influences not only the fields of economy and politics, but also the culture and the ideology of human beings. As is known to all that the more economically powerful you are, the more culturally influential you are; there is no doubt that, the U.S.A. - one of the most powerful country in the world-makes full use of its economic power to spread its culture and ideology. Studies on popular culture, one form of culture, have until recently been treated as more or less unworthy of serious scholarly attention. However, popular culture is, to some extent, more powerful to influence people's behavior and value system. Hollywood's movies, representatives of American popular culture, lay big impact on Chinese youth, especially college students. This thesis is aimed at exploiting the motives of college students'watching the films and how they are influenced. Therefore, the following questions are going to be investigated: what are the motives to watch Hollywood movies among Chinese college students? In what way(s) are the students affected by American popular culture? What should we do to promote the students'media literacy? And what implications will be given to our future English culture teaching?On the basis of the theory of the hegemony of popular culture, from the perspective of media literacy, the author makes a survey of the influence of Hollywood movies on Chinese college students in the thesis so as to arouse people's cultural awareness, to help them hold up the correct view of critical cultural awareness, to adapt to the process of globalization efficiently. Meanwhile, some suggestions concerning developing personal strategies of media literacy and ESL teaching will be discussed and provided.