The United States of America and the Rest of the World:

A Theoretical Look Into Cultural Imperialism

"And so there grew up, alongside political and economic imperialism,

that more insidious form of control- cultural imperialism.

It conquered not just the bodies, but the souls of its victims."

-Paul Harrison

Inside the Third World

CULTURAL IMPERIALISM

What is cultural imperialism?

Since the close of the Cold War, intellectuals and scholars everywhere in Western Europe, the United States, and other parts of the world are discussing the question of the influence of the United States on post war developments in Europe and other parts of the world. It seems that the big question is not a matter of problems of American hegemony in the military or the economy as an influence on socio-political and cultural development.

The emerging global culture seems to become more and more dominated by the United States. This dominance is what is referred to as cultural imperialism. It seems that at the present time, the cultural influence of the United States is at least as strong as the United States' military influence. The dominant language spoken throughout the world is English, the United States president is more likely to be publicized than presidents of other countries, and there is no denying that films and television shows from the United States dominate world markets.

It seems now that culture is becoming nothing more than another economic product, to be produced by the country with the highest advantage. However, culture is also central to national identity and politics. Industrialized countries have responded in various ways to the cultural dominance of the United States. Canada, for example, has allowed United States cultural influence to become somewhat pervasive, to the resentment of some of their natives. France and other European states have been much more wary of United States influence. Japan, on the other hand, began incorporating whole segments of United States culture after World War II, from baseball to hamburgers, yet the country has still remained 'Japanese.'

When and where did cultural imperialism originate?

Although not becoming a major issue until the 1940s, cultural imperialism has been an issue almost since the beginning of time. Many scholars believe that it started with the first powerful world empires.

Roy Shuker, in his book Understanding Popular Music, argued his theory about the development of cultural imperialism:

[c]ultural imperialism developed as a concept analogous to the historical, political, and economic subjugation of the Third World by the colonizing powers in the nineteenth century, with consequent deleterious effects for the societies of the colonized. This gave rise to global relations of dominance, subordination and dependency between the affluence and power of the advanced capitalist nations, most notably the United States and Western Europe, and the relatively powerless underdeveloped countries. This economic and political imperialism was seen to have a cultural aspect: namely the ways in which the transmission of certain products, fashions, and styles from the dominant nations to the dependent markets leads to the creation of particular patterns of demand and consumption which are underpinned by and endorse the cultural values, ideals and practices of their dominant origin. In this manner the local cultures of the developing nations become dominated and in varying degrees invaded, displaced and challenged by foreign, often Western cultures (Shuker).

Ali Mohammadi, another well-known cultural studies scholar, is famous for his case study of the former Shah of Iran's use of media, particularly television, to 'modernize' Iran throughout the late 1950s to the late 1970s and is an excellent example of cultural imperialism in practice and local resistance to this process.

What causes cultural imperialism or cultural homogenization to be such a major issue today?

Mitchell Stephens, a chairman of the department of journalism at New York University, has suggested that the process of homogenization, or cultural mixing, did not start with Coca-Cola or Charlie Chaplin in the United States, but began when the Europeans were colonizing the Americas, Africa, Australia, and parts of Asia.

Stephens suggests three reasons why homogenization has grown more energetic in our century:

First of all, the means now exist that can allow cultures to be trampled from existence. In the years after World War I, eyes and ears all over the world with access to such technologies could turn from their local entertainment and feast themselves on Hollywood movies and American music. Innovations such as stereos, television, electric guitars, satellites, computers, walkmans, VCRs, CDs, and DVDs have brought more and more people under the spell of American media.

Secondly, the trade barriers have loosened and easier travel and instant communication have allowed American products to enter foreign countries. In 1900, Coke was first distributed and sold overseas. When Baker, in his report on the "global teenager" for the magazine Whole Earth Review, asked 169 teenagers in 12 countries on five continents to identify the Coca-Cola logo, only six of those 169 teenagers could not (Stephens).

Examples of Cultural Imperialism: Uniting Against "Cultural Pollution"

When the average American thinks about Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald, it may very well conjure up images of family, children, the "American Way." In some countries, however, these beloved American symbols are seen as a major threat - almost equivalent to how typhoid or leprosy would be welcomed into a country. With the fading of Western colonial empires, nationalists in the newly independent countries often become outraged over the staying power of colonial cultures.

Cultural imperialism seems to be one of the biggest issues that exact such a worldwide response from the world's elite, regardless of their political position. Leftists are disgusted by the strength and attraction of a base, capitalistic culture - one that emphasizes money, lust, and power - conservatives simultaneously lament the democratization of their "civilization."

In France, there is much pride in the French culture, and the emergence of American popular culture has been very unwelcome and shunned. In 1988, the fear of encroaching Americana was on the mind of France's Minster of Culture, Jack Lang. After the Socialist Party's election, Lang called "for a real crusade against...this financial and intellectual imperialism that no longer grabs territory...but grabs consciousness, ways of thinking, ways of living."

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was an announcement of a European Disneyland being built near Paris. According to one news report, the French Communist Party joined "unreconstructed Gaullists in deploring the encroachment of an 'alien civilization' on a site so close to the 'city of enlightenment'" (Rauth).

Despite the fact that the French middle class are major consumers of American food, music, fashion, and movies, French intellectuals have attacked American pop culture. A popular French magazine, Le Nouvel Observateur featured a cover with Mickey Mouse high above the Eiffel Tower. The headline read: "Is this Mouse Dangerous?" In the article that followed, one writer likened Disneyland to a "degenerate utopia." One of the leading French newspapers, Le Matin, warned that the European Disneyland will "deform generations of French children." One writer went so far as to say that Euro-Disney would lead France to becoming "the 51^st state after Hawaii" (Rauth).

France is not the only country to have shunned American culture. Although criticisms of America's influence are usually limited to the cultural sphere, a large portion of the opposition stems from economic risks that American firms pose to local inefficient enterprises. This further explains left-right coalition. Workers represented by the left, and owner. Managers represented by the right fear the American domination of their home market. An example of this are the unions who have been particularly fierce in their fight against the first McDonald's in Mexico. This Mexico City McDonald's was accused of "threatening national values" mostly because it wanted to use part-time nonunion workers. Protesters painted "Death to the Voracious Bosses" on the walls of the restaurant. The "terrible crime" of the bosses was paying non-union workers more per hour than the non-union's standard contract paid in a full day. Meanwhile, McDonald's continued to have high sales in Mexico (Rauth).

CULTURE & THE MEANING THEREIN

Definition of Culture

The question "What is culture?" is important in considering the globalization debate. The answer is extremely complex - even Webster's Dictionary offers many choices: "civilizing tradition, folklore, instruction, law, custom, knowledge, arts, sciences, education, mores." The true meaning may lie in a combination of all of these - mixing the physical, intellectual, mental, and creative aspects of a society. The interaction of these parts creates a whole known as "culture" (Iordanova).

When argued from an empirical basis, the facts and figures of American popular culture around the world make the case for cultural imperialism seem undeniable. Cultural products now make up the second largest United States' export behind aircraft. In 1992, the United States purchased only $288 million in cultural products from the nations of the European Community (EC) combined, while the EC nations bought $3.7 billion in United States cultural products, including films and television - more than ten times the United States' import expenditures. Of the Top 100 Films in 1993, 88 were American. Shows such as Beverly Hills 90210, Santa Barbara, Rescue 911, and Dynasty ranked among the top television shows in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Russia. Teens in foreign countries watch American sports and listen to the latest Top 40 favorites from American musical artists such as REM or Aerosmith (Rockwell).

ROLE OF MEDIA IN CULTURAL IMPERIALISM

Who Is Being Globalized?

The question of who is being globalized (or de-globalized), to what extent, and by whom is important in examining the impact of globalization. Although many argue that America dominates, the media reflects a more complex and international scheme. Despite a concentration of media ownership in the past decade, the nationalities among this ownership group have remained rather mixed: Time Warner (USA), Bertelsmann AG (Germany), Sony (Japan), Berlusconi (Italy), and Murdoch (Australian-American).

Imbalances of Media and Information Flows - the Core and Periphery Theory

Scholars such as Hamelink have theorized that despite the advent of our current information society, information itself and its technology have remained in the hands of the economically elite. This is most commonly expressed in terms of the core and periphery theory. This theory maintains that imbalances of media product and information flow exist between "core" (rich, industrialized nations) and "periphery" nations (poorer, developing, rural countries). In this model, information and technology are controlled by the core nations, and the flow is seen as uni-directional from the core to the periphery with little chance for peripheral nations to participate in the process (Hamelink).

Hamelink bases his model on statistics gathered from UNESCO in 1989. A few of them are as follows: (1) the peripheral countries of the world own only 4% of the world's computer hardware; (2) 75% of the world's telephones (700 million) can be found in the nine richest countries, while the poorest own less than 10%; (3) in 39 peripheral countries, there were no newspapers and in 30 others there was only 1 - there were more than 1600 daily papers in 1995 in the United States alone; (4) Europe produced an average of 12,000 news books per year, while Africa produced under 350 - Europe averages 1,400 libraries per country to 18 in Africa; (5) La Plante (1994) notes that by the end of 1992, Eastern Europe had installed just 15.65 telephone lines per 100 people compared to more than 45 lines per 100 in Western Europe.

Straubhaar (1991) is a researcher who goes against this way of thinking by examining regional transnationals that have developed in Latin America. Many of his findings could easily be assimilated to developments in Eastern and Central Europe, which would in turn, disprove the core and periphery model.

Straubhaar criticized assumptions that new technology would strengthen the imbalances of media/information flows around the globe. While new technology has opened doors for the influx of American cultural products, it has also increased the national production as well as the development of specific types of genres taken from American models and re-created into Latin American genres. For example, the Latin American telenovela, based on American soap operas, has now acquired immense popularity throughout much of Latin America and even into the United States.

Assumptions of Cultural Imperialism

There are many arguments against cultural imperialism. Many theorists say that the cultural imperialism theory makes assumptions that may not be valid for all, if any, parts of the world.

The first assumption is that in adopting such a dominant image of the media, an environment of co-dependency is created which casts the audiences as victims of an all-powerful media system and its messages. While this may be evident in terms of information flows on an information theory quantitative estimate, the reality is that as media technology and economies become more intertwined, this seemingly one-way flow reverses into a two-way flow that sells abroad influences that Americans see at home.

In support of this argument, Michael Soloman, president of International Television for Warner Brothers in The New York Times (2 June 1991) stated:

"Our numbers are very important to this company. If we have a TV movie based on some very American theme, some social issue or what we call 'disease of the week,' we try not to produce it. Soft pictures, cute romantic comedies are very hard to sell outside the United States. But if you have a suspense drama, an action-adventure-type drama, that sells abroad. That's the type of program we want. It's got to have that universal theme."

Secondly, cultural imperialism also makes a definite assumption of the media's role in and its influence on society. What emerges is a view of the media and technology which is highly deterministic and also does not value the role and importance of the cultural aspects of societies (Iordanova).

Finally, the process of culture is much more complex than the cultural imperialism theory gives it credit for. McQuail (1994) cites three elements that must be addressed when answering the question of whether or not media can affect social change. The first is technology and the form and content of media; secondly, changes in societal structure and institutions; and finally, the distribution of a population's opinions, beliefs, and attitudes.

Mass Society Theory

Mass Society Theory is a model that follows the cultural imperialism theory. Although it is an somewhat ancient theory, it is one of the only models that closely resembles the images of society and its ability to be influenced according to cultural imperialism: centralized media, one-way transmissions, identity is media-dependent with the media viewed as manipulative and controlling. Finally, as witnessed by the end of Communism, even a centralized, powerful media combined with military force were not enough to stop the changing of a society (Iordanova).

CONCLUSION

Cultural Influence vs. Cultural Imperialism

All of the points that cultural imperialism implies, such as the views of media power, its role in society, and view of the audience need to be made. However, it is quite possible that the theory may contribute to a negative world view that seems in and of itself potentially damaging.

It seems to me that at times, the cultural imperialism theory is sending mixed messages. It defends the non-dominant cultures and then further underestimates their innate power and cohesion. To "protect native cultures" may imply that culture is not strong or resilient enough to withstand influence and change on its own. As stated earlier, Japan is an excellent example of this point. Although it is a big supporter of American cultural products, the country itself has remained very 'Japanese.'

On the other hand, it seems that many 'foreign cultures' are making their way into American culture. For example, take a look at Yoga. Originating in Asia hundreds of years ago, it has now made its way to America. One can hardly go to the video store or department store without finding instructional Yoga videos.

Possibility of a Global Culture?

Marshall McLuhan (1967) stated that we live in a Global Village, a simultaneous happening where time and space has vanished. The electronic media involves everyone simultaneously. He states that the electronic media are beginning to put us back in touch with the tribal emotions which print had divorced us from. Not only is there a new multisensory view of the world, but now people from around the world can communicate as if they lived in the same village.

Smith (1990) makes several arguments against the possibility of a global culture. First of all, unlike imperialist movements of the past, the idea of a global culture operates beyond its place of origin through both time and space - it maintains no true ties to its place of origin. Secondly, a global culture does not maintain a tie to a common past, and therefore, is memoryless, unlike national culture. Finally, Smith states that a global culture is "essentially calculated and artificial" with its creation firmly routed in technology and the transnational systems of telecommunications through which it is disbursed. Detached and neutral, it relies on technology more than humanity for its very existence.

One must ask what creates or maintains a culture. Smith outlines three essential ingredients for the cultural mixture: 1) a sense of continuity between succeeding generations, 2) shared memories of specific events and persons that were turning points of collective history and 3) a sense of common destiny. Through these components, a sense of "identity" is created among a population that shares "common experiences and one or more cultural characteristics such as language, customs or religion." Smith defines ethnohistory as myths, values, memories, and symbols that play a large role in the shaping of this sense of identity and generate a cohesiveness and foundation that the "global culture" cannot (Smith 1990).

Although the arguments for and against the cultural imperialism theory are all valid points, it seems that regardless of our own personal culture, race, and gender, all civilizations need to come to a better understanding about the complex and diversified world in which we are all living. Although this may sound idealistic, if civilizations can make a commitment to humanity and to be aware of others who might be different, this will ultimately provide the most understanding between the human beings living on an increasingly more intimate planet.Sources

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