Globalization Effect on the Culture - Essay Example

Globalization of Culture The ongoing changes associated with contemporary globalization are partly of structural nature technological changes, the information society, individualization and in part inflected by, American culture. Thus, to the extent that America shapes global conditions they are being shaped by conditions in which others cannot follow. There are polar views on globalization and its impact on social and cultural development of the world. In general, globalization is a contested term refers to accelerating processes of transformations and adoption of economic, cultural and political systems. Globalization is perceived to represent the advance of western (effectively American) 'culture' in a move towards a uniform global culture and polity. This shift toward uniformity and global decision-making results, increasingly, in the socio-economic and political marginalization of a large number of communities. However, this process can also give rise to greater cultural plurality and fusion, producing new identities at a local level (Beck 2000). This process of globalization has prompted wider fundamentalist activity on a number of fronts and fundamentalist reaction to globalization has been given a sense of urgency as its effects are interpreted against this framework. Jean-Francois Revel states that: '"Globalization simply means freedom of movement for goods and people" (cited What Is Globalization, Really 2005, B05). Fundamentalists oppose social pluralization that creates and privileges heterogeneity, culture fusion, moral plurality, and identity politics. This shift towards pluralization is interpreted as depriving many Americans of a political voice because political campaigns focus more and more on key interest groups and specific ethnic populations. Another definition of "globalization" states that "globalization involves expanding worldwide flows of material objects and symbols, and the proliferation of organizations and institutions of global reach that structure those flows" (Boli, Lechrer 2001). Fundamentalists are also critical of the cultural emptiness promoted by consumerism which values cheapness over workmanship. In contrast to these views, Thomas Friedman states that: globalization means "globalizing American culture and American cultural icons." Naomi Klein, a Canadian journalist and author of No Logo, argues that "Despite the embrace of 'polyethnic imagery', market-driven globalization doesn't want diversity; quite the opposite. Its enemies are national habits, local brands, and distinctive regional tastes" (cited Legrain 2003a, 62). The symbolic power of intellectuals over the standards of taste which are applied to the consumption of cultural goods becomes more difficult to protect and sustain when people can consume a mass culture which does not depend on intellectuals for its appreciation and its definitions of pleasure. "Globalization promotes the mutation of national identity resulting from the imposition of the conceptual grid of nationality on exchanges and interactions in the global arena" (Cubitt, 1998, 14). Although globalization has produced a 'complexification of flows' and networks, there remains an abundance of nodes, events, and situations which foreground national identity (Beck 2000). In a globalizing world, national identity continually reconstitutes itself, becomes re-embedded and territorializes spaces, cultural forms and practices. For instance, as national and local territories become increasingly permeable, so iconic representations are peddled across the world as markers of national identity. So, "the globalization of tastes in food, dress, and music also promoted a global identity model, that of the freely choosing, pleasure-seeking consumer" (Boli, Lechrer 2001). And just as there is an infinite range of possibilities for the creation of alternative networks of culture, so there is an ever-expanding range of resources through which to construct global identity. In contrast to these views, Legrain (2003b) sees globalization not only increases individual freedom, but also revitalizes cultures and cultural artifacts through foreign influences, technologies, and markets". Questioning the idea of authenticity shows just how difficult it is to define, and how it may derive from a particular set of cultural tastes and values, rather than from a considered analysis of culture itself. The main questions discussed in literature concern cultural influences and adoption of certain values, traditions and way of life by other nations. The aim of this paper is to examine and analyze the impact of American films and Hollywood industry on other nations. The further research will address a question: "Is Hollywood exporting American way of life" At the beginning of the 21st century, Hollywood remains an icon of film industry and film production. Hollywood is an area in which the roots and authenticity of particular styles are important issues, and are used to champion the superiority of certain genres over the artificial and superficial character of commercial and mainstream video. Yet the criteria of originality, roots, community and authenticity can be deployed as marketing strategies to appeal to particular segments of the audience while presumably most producers have to make a living. Hollywood depicts American life style and habits exporting it to other countries. Many critics speak about a great impact of Hollywood on mass culture and formation of global mass culture. Mass culture is thought to arise from the mass production and consumption of culture. Since it is the capitalist society most closely associated with these processes, it is relatively easy to identify America, and Hollywood, as the home of mass culture (William 1963). There are a variety of different publications and opinions concerning impact of Hollywood on global society and adoption of American life style by other nations, but all of critics agree that this influence exists and have a great impact on society consciousness and way of life. For instance, Jihong and Kraus (2002) explain that Hollywood has a great influence on Chinese values and tradition through popular films. As Americanization came to be associated with increased consumerism on the part of the young and the working class, America itself came to be an object of consumption. As Tomlinson (1999) notes, 'the American dream became an inextricable part of mass cultural fantasies" (34). In German film director Wim Wenders's words, "The Americans colonized our sub-conscious" America, as experienced in film and music, has itself become the object of consumption, a symbol of pleasure' (Tomlinson 1999, 76). With respect to the theme of Hollywood he remarks that 'the cinema forgets links between the male youth and outside.' This applied particularly to 'American films' which 'offered heroes and heroines who were less hidebound by class than their technically inferior British counterparts" (Hebdige 1988). For example, the male violence of films like Little Caesar (1930), Public Enemy (1931), Scarface (1932), allowed working-class people see themselves as heroes rather than gangsters. As such, "the adopted American accents, dress-styles and mannerisms, which many observers bemoaned as slavish emulation of a new trash culture, can be interpreted" as "a self-conscious identification with a more democratic discourse than anything British society had to offer them" (Hebdige, 1988, 66). Ideas about America being more populist and democratic fed into concerns about increasing working-class affluence and consumption which threatened the intellectual arbitration of taste and middle-class consumption as forms of symbolic and positional power. This is so because "American popular culture-Hollywood films, advertising images, packaging, clothes and music-offers a rich iconography, a set of symbols, objects and artifacts which can be assembled and re-assembled by different groups in a literally limitless number of combinations" (Williams 1963, 35). In this process, 'the meaning of each selection is transformed as individual objects-jeans, rock records, Tony Curtis hair styles, bobby socks, etc.-are taken out of their original historical and cultural contexts and juxtaposed against signs from other sources' (Hebdige 1988). According to Hebdige (1988), young working-class males-his version of the 'juke-box boys'-do not consume their imaginary America in a passive and unreflective manner. They construct it with the popular cultural materials available, rather than being constructed by them. It does not matter that their America is 'imaginary' because that is the point-it possesses its 'magic'. They consume styles in images, clothes and music in an active, meaningful and imaginative fashion, one which transforms the meanings of Americanization and converts them into distinct sub-cultural tastes. Hebdige (1988) suggests that 'these young, urban, working-class men have used the images, styles and vocabularies of American popular culture in their own distinctive and positive ways as a form of resistance, albeit not a radical one, to middle-class and upper-class culture, and as a spirited defense against their own subordination" (56). Moreover, this assimilation and transformation of a 'mythical America' has gone along with the adoption of European styles and fashions. For example, the 'mods', a young working-class subculture based in the central areas of large cities which emerged first in the early 1960s, borrowed as much from Italy (suits and scooters), as they did from black American popular culture (modern jazz and soul music). Another set of sources state that changing life styles and behavior patterns are caused by changing economic conditions and culture itself. They view Americanization and globalization as evils which destroy cultural identity. So much mass culture comes from America that if it is a threat then Americanization is a threat as well. For domestic critics of mass culture, Americanization threatens not just aesthetic standards and cultural values, but national culture as well (William 1963). The reason for this is that American popular culture is seen to embody all that is wrong with mass culture. Levine (2006) as a critic of mass society and mass culture sees America as an embodiment of both of these dangers. In general, there is no clear answer to the research question because globalization of culture involves a set of assumptions and factors independent from the film industry and Hollywood. On the one hand, Hollywood promotes American way of life, but on the other hand it cannot instill it in all countries around the world (Bayles 2005). These authors see the audience as a passive, vulnerable, exploitable and sentimental mass. It is resistant to intellectual challenge and stimulation but easy prey to consumerism and advertising and the dreams and fantasies they have to sell. It has little awareness of good taste, and is devoted to the repetitive formulas of mass culture. A number of criticisms can be made of this idea of the audience. For instance, Stacey (1994) explains "Given the extent to which female stars function in Hollywood cinema through their status as objects of visual pleasure, it is hardly surprising that iconic memory features so centrally in these accounts" (319). In general, mass society as involving global production and standardization, generating an almost irrepressible shift to a mass culture dominated by the mass media and Hollywood. This involved the soporific pleasures of a superficial culture, and the exploitation of a rootless and uneducated public, which consequently became indifferent to the standards of great art (Crossley 2001). Globalization and Hollywood industry as a part of global culture is thus the nub of the problem because American society has the most developed mass culture. Elite values and aesthetics are assumed to be valid and authoritative and therefore capable of assessing other types of culture, without any questions being raised about these assumptions and their ability to pass cultural judgments (Dant 1999). "Spectators construct themselves as heroines of their remembered narratives, which in turn deal with their own cinema heroines of that time" (Stacey 1994, 319). As a part of global culture, Hollywood's the power to decide upon the definitions of taste and style which circulate within societies which is important, rather than the remote possibility of finding universal and objective reasons for validating aesthetic judgments. The power to determine popular culture and the standards of cultural taste is not restricted to the economic and political power exercised by the mass culture industries, though they are obviously crucial for any adequate explanation of the overall process. Legrain (2003b) states: "If critics of globalization were less obsessed with "Coca-colonization," they might notice a rich feast of cultural mixing that belies fears about Americanized uniformity". It also includes, even if only as a secondary phenomenon, those intellectuals, or producers of ideas and ideologies, with the power to attempt to set down guidelines for cultural discrimination, and the position from which to try to decide what people should like and dislike. In spite of all these factors, "American popular culture is not merely fashionable . . . it's close to hegemonic" (Daly and Wice 11 cited Stenger 1997, 44). As Stenger (1997) has pointed out, the ideology of mass culture influences the evaluations audiences make of popular culture even if it gives them obvious pleasure. One way to claim objectivity for the critique of mass culture is to speak on behalf of the people, and praise the authenticity of their culture while condemning the artificiality of mass culture. Following Micklethwait and Wooldridge (2001) mass culture, unlike a genuine and authentic popular or folk culture, cannot arise from, nor be relevant to, the lives and experiences of people. The conclusions reached by mass culture theory are difficult to substantiate without knowledge of the social positions occupied by consumers of popular culture in the wider society. Critics (Webster 1988; Stacey 1994) also acknowledge that audiences may be more knowing, active and discriminating in their consumption of popular culture than has usually been conceded by popular culture theory. The need for producers to maximize audiences is a specific instance of cultural production and consumption, and not a guaranteed outcome in societies where mass consumption prevails. The mass audience may not even exist at the point of consumption because the evaluations and effects of popular culture will vary in line with the social character of consumers. Globalization ad Hollywood exposes us to a bewildering proliferation of influences and experiences. Of course, sociologists have always been alert to the ways in which modernization profoundly altered social life and way of life. Not only is the public world of work, the economy and bureaucracy sharply separate from the private world of family, leisure and friendship but both sectors are subject to increasing complexity with growing knowledge and proliferating choices. References 1. Beck, Ulrich (2000), What Is Globalization Cambridge: Polity Press 2. Black, G.D. (1998). The World According to Hollywood, 1918-1939. CLIO. 28 (1), 119. 3. Bayles, M. (2005). Outlook: Exporting American Popular Culture. Retireved 18 Feb 2007 from http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NTQ/is_2005_August_29/ai_n15333499 4. Boli, J., Lechrer, F.J. (2001). Globalization and World Culture. Retireved 18 Feb 2007 from http://www.sociology.emory.edu/jboli/isb408026.pdf 5. Cubitt, G. (1998) Imagining Nations, Manchester: Manchester University Press. 6. Crossley, N. (2001) The Social Body: Habit, Identity and Desire, London: Sage. 7. Dant, T. (1999) Material Culture in the Social World, Buckingham: Open University Press. 8. Jihong, W., Kraus, R. (2002). Hollywood and China as Adversaries and Allies. Pacific Affairs, 75 (3), 419. 9. Hebdige, D. (1988) Hiding in the Light, London, Routledge. 10. Legrain, Ph. (Summer 2003a). In Defense of Globalization: Why Cultural Exchange Is Still an Overwhelming Force for Good. The International Economy, 17 (3), p. 62. 11. Legrain, Ph. (2003b). Cultural Globalization Is Not Americanization. Retireved 18 Feb 2007 from http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i35/35b00701.htm 12. Levine, M. (2006). Is Pride Good PR A-List Hollywood Publicist Michael Levine Assesses the Public Relations Impact of Pride Festivals and Parades. The Advocate, 964. June 6, p. 43. 13. Micklethwait, J., Wooldridge, A. (September 2001). The Globalization Backlash. Foreign Policy, p. 16. 14. Stacey, J. (1994). Hollywood memories. Screen, 35 (4), 326. 15. Stenger, J. (1997). Consuming the Planet: Planet Hollywood, Stars, and the Global Consumer Culture. Velvet Light Trap, Vol. not cited, pp. 45-60. 16. Tomlinson, John (1999). Globalization and Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press. 17. Webster, D. (1988) Looka Yonder: The Imaginary America of Populist Culture, London, Routledge. 18. What Is Globalization, Really (2005). The Washington Times, June 5. 19. Williams, R. (1963). Culture and Society 1780-1950, Harmondsworth, Penguin. Read More