The “reader-as-producer” perspective expresses little concern regarding globalization, despite the fact that most intercultural communication and dialogue filters – simultaneously pasteurizing cultural activity and bolstering capitalist media hegemony
The very present question facing commercial media is how to deliver audiences to advertisers. Past practices have relied on direct export of the Western product (e.g., Hollywood and network offerings dubbed into the language of the “foreign” audiences with the little regard for cultural variations). Consequently, after decades of intervention, cultural imperialism, and the “comparable advantage” of Western media, a homogenous middle-class culture has grown up internationally around pop music, fast food, action movies, animated features, and other Mcdonaldized, Dysneyfied, Hollywood fare. However, global corporate media lead in many ways – subsidiaries through direct investment, joint ventures, the purchase of local corporations, and even the promotion of alternative cultures. More importantly than the particular form, at issue for globalization of cultural hegemony is the social use of media.
The most recent adjustment by the hegemonic leaders of global corporate media has been the export of the “model”. Game show formats, soap opera genre, reality television, and other models are now sold by corporate owners to national and regional media operators, who culturally “dress -up” the Western media guest. ABC’s “Who Wants To Be Millionaire” has some two dozen variations around the world.
Globo has perfected the U.S. soap opera for export; and commercial radio advertising/music formats dominate in Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere.
Above all, media hegemony indicates leadership and dominance, not control and domination. Indeed, the power of media hegemony is in its participatory effectiveness – second-tier capitalist media owners, protected and bolstered by their own nation-state politicos, advance the policies and practices of capitalist globalization through culturally familiar representations. Whatever the specific variant or hybridization, the dominance of the hegemonic model and values are apparent: atomized, individualized, and consumerist entertainment rules.
While, cultural imperialism has not ended (too many examples of forced takeovers and media monopoly belie as much), leading global media have found hegemonic persuasion more cost-efficient and politically effective. Throughout the world, deregulating reform of the media has accompanied the parallel political reform of the governments, reflecting the intimate connections between civil society and state. Of course, liberalization of media does not guarantee an open, democratic society; Guatemala, El Salvador, and Qatar have private media but few civil liberties. In fact, many governments continue to mete out punishment and repression, but they do so with more legitimacy when they have the cover of two-candidate elections and privatized media. In most cases, private media defend the newly reformed states if not the particular governing party. In all cases, privatized media legalized by the newly reformed states promote cultural forms (entertainment, escapism) and practices (individualism, consumerism) that advance and reinforce market relations at the expense of public interests.
Occasionally, resistance by sections of the working class and other politically disenfranchised groups – or conflicts between factions of the capitalist class – spill over into public discourse and media coverage, opening the door to some limited working class and indigenous participation, as in Mexico following Chiapas, or in Ecuador, the Philippines, and Indonesia over the last several years. Yet, no matter how deep the social crisis, private media seldom balk from staunch support of their national capitalist class (Fox, 1988) - with the possible brief exception of Joaquin Chamorro’s La Prensa in Nicaragua during the 1970s. Corporate media may vary in size, stature, temperament, and format, but never in allegiance to their class. This allegiance to a class perspective is apparent in corporate media’s global culture, a culture that has several identifiably remarkable characteristics:
- Ownership of the production and distribution of the global culture continues to narrow, despite the modest rise of regional Aspirants and resistance of some governments, as in China and France.
- Entertainment formats predominate. From Ghana to Brazil to Singapore and the West, broadcasting, music, and movies are entertainment.
- Consumerism rules. Marked by individualism, immediate gratification, and unfettered acquisitiveness, consumerism is expressed in hierarchical fictional and nonfictional narratives in privatized mass communication.
- Cultural variations draw from rich and diverse traditions, as in Brazilian telenovelas and rap, Nigerian juju videos, and Islamic and green pop in Turkey. Yet, when controlled and represented by corporate media, most advance and none challenge the basic individualist, consumerist tenets of the capitalist market.
- The global culture of corporatist media features two complimentary yet distinct representations: homogeneity and hybridity.
Homogeneity reflects the intercultural dominance of the Western model; hybridity reflects the creative contributions and resistances to intercultural exchanges by the cultural artists and audiences…Likewise, the international success of MTV, network game shows, pop music, and other homogeneous cultural products indicate the subordinate, yet aspiring, classes around the world find pleasure, comfort, and assurance in a Westernized homogeneity of consumption.
In response to the globalization of homogeneity, audiences and artists in various locales have creatively appropriated the commodified cultural products to fit local cultural or political needs. “Globalized” cultural practices often represent local interests and meanings, subverting global media messages with more politically conscious interpretations and uses (Kraidy, 1999; Robertson 1992) but just as frequently as power remains intact except for the local particulars. If the model is still a store, not a community hall, it provides no real alternative to the supermarket chain. At any rate, corporate media have adjusted quickly, realizing that hybrid alterations of Western products are largely non-threatening, potentially very profitable, and politically calculable as evidence of corporate media’s cultural diversity and sensitivity. In addition to the locally generated hybrid culture, TNMCs now produce their own commodified hybrids gleaned from cultures around the world. Homogeneous or hybrid, the question of power remains.
Here, cultural studies remind us that the consumption of media commodities is a social practice, open to interpretations and use beyond the intent of the producer. The cultural meaning and consequence of any text have much to do with the social and political context of reception as they do with the sender-receiver dynamic. In Managua, Nicaragua, Brazilian soap operas are viewed by entire neigbourhoods at the homes of those few with televisions, permitting much more democratic communication and meaning construction than that done by the single viewer passively atomized in a North living room. Still, as Mattelart and Mattelart (1992) reply, interpretations by readers and viewers are neither autonomous nor necessarily superior to the meanings proposed by writers and producers. Without access to mass communication resources, audiences everywhere are handicapped if their constructions of meanings are creative reactions, to the productions of others, primarily the corporate few.
What is progressive about cordoning off human subjects as active receivers who are relegated to meaning-construction of others? Why not have a society and a media that allows subjects to be subjects by producing their own texts? The “reader-as-producer” perspective expresses little concern regarding globalization, despite the fact that most intercultural communication and dialogue filters – simultaneously pasteurizing cultural activity and bolstering capitalist media hegemony.
Media hegemony thrives because (in very practical terms) it not only affordably presents the most popular versions of Western culture – the representative epitome of success- it also appears to be the best promoter of indigenous culture and cultural diversity. Perhaps the music in world and the human condition in general benefit from the global distribution of corporate finds of independent, indigenous, or hybrid mixes. However, in hegemonic terms, any music, movie, art, or political discourse or social commentary that passes through corporate media filters must meet the hegemonic prerequisites of entertainment and profit, thereby weakening undermining its political edge, class independence, and counter-hegemonic potential.
Media and cultural hegemony speak for and lead the working class and other diverse subordinate groups because mass culture provides favourable and rewarding representations and images.
From “Roseanne” and “Drew Caey” in the United States, to “Betty La Fea” in Brazil, and the popular radio show “Our New Home” on Afghan radio, life is good! We all can laugh, work, play, and shop in our own little worlds without regard, concern, or (hopefully) even awareness of any unpleasant outside. Individually consumed mass pleasure makes for a solid consumerist hegemony, and the central tenant of capitalist media hegemony worldwide is to promote an interclass culture of pleasure based on continuous consumption. In image and narrative, this interclass culture is strictly American middle class in outlook: professional, managerial, or entrepreneur and aspiring to move closer to corporate center.
To the extent that the global media sets agenda and popularize models of entertainment, mass culture closes public discourse. To the extent that cultural practices resist commercialization, either by hybrid appropriations or by independent communication, they open public discourse to the possibility of truly new world order. Cultural variations are not the issue, as corporate media will happily emphasize the cross-cultural character of the elite or moderate intercultural contributions that might jilt the U.S. middle-class palette into hybrid cross-overs (e.g.; African music via Paul Simon, de-Latinizing Ricky Martin for a mass audience). More importantly, advertising and entertainment “undermines people’s will to understand” their own social conditions and individual potential, as hegemonic middle-class lifestyles are emulated and even internalized (Mattelart and Mattelart, 1992, p 153). Furthermore, a media focus on daily life undercuts access to history and the future, while a focus on individual consumption and desire denies access to collective, democratic, social possibilities for humanities.
The problem with the culture industry is not only in the stories they tell of hyper individualism (Artz, 200), but also in how they occupy the collective consciousness with celebrity, trivia, and self-aggrandizement. Pleasure is marketed as goal, but it is always just beyond our reach, requiring another consumer purchase, then another. Of course, pleasure is not the same as happiness, satisfaction, or fulfillment .
But the globalization of corporate media hegemony based on advertising thrives on individual desire, legitimizing mass consumption, mass production and privatization – obstructing humanity’s fulfillment as a by-product. Hybrid variation that do not challenge atomized pleasure, mass hedonism, or the commercial model may surely represent subordinate classes and cultures, but they do so as unwitting servants for capitalist cultural hegemony. For instance, by independently producing his own hybrid blend of Ghanian “highlife” music with American pop and reggae, Kojo Antwi may have revived his country’s classic “highlife” sound, but he cannot stem the multinational “flooding of Sub-Saharan Africa with flimsy pop”, especially if pop impresario Quincy Jones takes over Antwi’s productions and softens them for the world music market. In other words, the economic goals of global corporate media ultimately conflict with the social and cultural needs of communities, nations and working classes worldwide. As the local media become commercialized, they are subjected to the laws of market more than the needs of the community. Privatized media subvert the local even if local, because they emulate the commercial global media and model its values.
Global capitalism will not willingly advance either democratic international institutions or democratic cultural exchanges. To paraphrase the abolitionist Frederick Douglas, capitalist globalization concedes nothing without demand. As noted already, lack is created, planned, and organized by a social production obeisant to corporate goals. Likewise, media and cultural adhering to privatization and commercialization are created, planned, and organized for similar corporate goals.
Global capitalism, in other words, creates a consumer market and cultivates a consumer ideology, but an increase in the quantity of goods does not systematically improve the well-being of people. TNCs, however, measure value in terms of sale s of audiences to advertisers and sales of goods to audiences. Not surprisingly, advertising appears as the legitimate forbearer of democratic freedom – free flow of information and free consumer choice indicate and define the ultimate free society. One would better break with the advertising/development model and measure the social use of the media in terms of the quality of human life.
(This is an extract from: Artz, Lee and Kamalipour, Yahya (2003) The Globalization of Corporate Media Hegemony. State University of New York Press. Contributed by Adnan Farooq).
Bibliography
Artz, L (2000) Animating hierarchy: Disney and the globalization of capital ism. In M. Budd (ed.) Rethinking Disney
Fox, E (1988) Media and politics in Latin America. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage
Kraidy, M (1999) The global, the local, the hybrid: A native ethnography of globalization. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 16, 456-476
Mattelart, A and Mattelart, M (1992) Rethinking media theory: signposts and new directions. J A Cohen, Trans. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
Robertson, R (1992) Globalization: social theory and global culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Zachary, GP (2001) Loving the highlife. In These Times, pp 30-32. April 16
