Post Eleven: Americanize This!

Globalization is an ongoing and dynamic process in which different cultures, spheres, and parties share and influence one another through a pervasive and subtle manner. In other words, it is a way that different cultures of people connect with one another and where differences intermingle and are adapted to the other cultures respectively. It is a process that has great potential as it offers many opportunities for communication, goods, and people to intermingle and travel across boundaries.

Cultural imperialism, specifically associated to Westernization, is a prime example of globalization. It is essentially an imbalance of globalization in which instead of cultures equally dispersing their own respective ideas, thoughts, beliefs, one culture actually dominates the other one. One of the consequences of slanted imperialism is that all cultures eventually will homogenize themselves or become the same, losing its own uniqueness in the process. As media steadily and quickly flows between cultures, some critics fear that it will construct a “global village” in which the village will become Americanized in the negative sense (consumerism, materialistic, individualistic). Others believe that the global village will stay open to other cultures as different cultures share different messages. Cultural imperialism tends to have a negative connotation because it is essentially an imbalance between two groups. It does not consider the “diversity of transnational [or] national media” nor does it consider the “context of production or reception”. It sweeps over the different parties without much individual attention and without this necessary attention, it can overwhelm rather than help connecting the vast and varied groups of people.

An example from the media that illustrates this process is the exchange between American and Japanese media. There seems to be a recent fad or rise of Japanese-related culture that has permeated the American culture. Anime is definitely an example of it; there are many young teenagers who have embraced the Japanese cartoon craze by willingly consuming related products such as manga (comic books), toys, and even dressing up as their favorite characters in comic-cons. MTV had adapted its own version of a popular Japanese game-show Silent Library and so did ABC with I Survived a Japanese Game Show.

However, other aspects of the culture have not exactly been embraced but rather mocked or at least questioned. In this specific example of a Japanese commercial, there is a young girl dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood. She enters the scene and proceeds to dance and sing with a group of wildlife creatures. She then reacts when she sees a particularly well-endowed creature. Many comments on the video include how crazy the Japanese are and how their commercials do not make any sense. To some extent, their comments are reasonable. But they come from an egocentric perspective. We, Americans, are not used to these seemingly outrageous, nonsensical, and random commercials. No commercial resembling this Japanese one would ever be allowed to air on our televisions. When we see such an unfamiliar and perhaps absurd way of selling a product, we tend to take it out of context and find reasons to devalue it. In this, we consider our way the dominant way or the best way, disregarding the Japanese culture as a valid way of doing certain things.