Erich Schwartzel loves movies. He spent much of his childhood in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, watching every film he could get his hands on. He was the kid who followed the Academy Awards obsessively and made his family throw Oscar parties every year.
Now 35 and a Wall Street Journal entertainment reporter, Schwartzel hasn't lost any of his passion for popular culture. However, moving to Los Angeles and covering the business of Hollywood has made him start "thinking about these movies as products" that studios are packaging and selling to audiences. Covering Hollywood differently has become his bread and butter.
One of his earliest observations was the increasing presence of Chinese actors and financiers in mainstream entertainment. That led to years of research, world travel and interviews that have culminated in his new book, "Red Carpet: Hollywood, China and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy" (Penguin Press, $28).
The book chronicles how China's desire for global cultural domination and Hollywood's desperation for new markets have fostered tension between the Chinese and American entertainment ecosystems. That uneasy relationship has resulted in, among many other consequences, Chinese influence seeping into American movies in a way that's almost impossible to ignore once you're made aware of it.
"If the book succeeds, I want it to work as a pair of x-ray goggles on the popular culture we all consume and how that has been influenced by a foreign power because of global business interests," Schwartzel told the Post-Gazette. "This seems to be one of the venues that has become a bit of a proxy war between these two countries."
Schwartzel is a Latrobe High School graduate who spent the summer after graduation working in the snack shack at Arnold Palmer's Latrobe Country Club. Growing up in Western Pennsylvania gave Schwartzel perspective on "writing about things that can feel quite distant from those worlds," a lesson he kept in mind while trying to make a topic as big as China relatable.
His journalism career began in 2009 at the Post-Gazette as a technology and energy reporter. Schwartzel's main takeaway from covering energy in Western Pennsylvania was that every person along the way had an equally important voice in terms of telling the larger story. On "Red Carpet," he made a point to interview more than just executives and filmmakers in an effort to "end up with a richer, more nuanced story."
He began working for the Wall Street Journal in 2013 and quickly realized that China's growing entertainment industry was "the biggest possible story on my beat." Antagonism between the United States and China under former President Donald Trump left him feeling like it was a good time to explore this subject from a less geopolitical viewpoint.
"China remains this overwhelming and opaque topic for a lot of people, understandably," Schwartzel said. "I thought, if we can use Hollywood to make this seem more accessible than a traditional foreign policy book would, we can use it as a primer on China writ large."
Though many of Schwartzel's interview subjects were eager to talk, some in China were afraid their phones were being monitored. Schwartzel was struck by how much certain officials "want what Korea has right now" with big international hits like "Parasite" and "Squid Game," two projects the Chinese government would never allow its film industry to produce.
Research for "Red Carpet" involved Schwartzel traveling to China on multiple occasions and included a trip to Nairobi, Kenya, to see firsthand how China was spreading its culture across Africa right under America's nose. Going to China challenge his preconceived notions of what living there was actually like, and he was surprised by China's influence in Kenya.
"A lot of the cultural and political power that we as Americans have taken for granted is being replaced in many ways by Chinese efforts," he said. "It was something else to talk to people in Kenya and hear them say that they don't feel the need to look to America anymore — not only for entertainment, but for aspiration."
Schwartzel also gained a better understanding of how even the most frivolous-seeming movies can serve as prime examples of China's hold over Hollywood. He recalled watching 2014's "Transformers: Age of Extinction" and filling up a notebook with creative choices that would appeal to Chinese authorities and audiences. It was a stark reminder of how "these things don't happen in a vacuum," he said.
"Red Carpet" illustrates how movies can "show a certain version of the world to millions of people," Schwarzel said, and his book suggests Americans need to keep an eye on China's attempts to harness the power of entertainment to change hearts and minds on a global scale. He apologizes if the book changes the way readers watch Hollywood blockbusters.
"I feel like this book is going to ruin moviegoing for many people," he joked. "When you start to notice the China influence, it's everywhere."
