DALLE NOSTRE MISSIONI
Francis de Sales, scj
With pairs of earrings hanging from their ears, a group of young people walked inside of the International Plaza, one of the biggest malls in Palembang, South Sumatra (Indonesia). In the beginning of June 1998 (dry season or summer), the young and healthy male teenagers found the mall a comfortable place to cool off in. Although the weather outside of the mall was hot and humid, they wore their Nike, Adidas, Reeboks, and Filas. They walked around easily. Some of them shaved their heads exactly as Michael Jordan or O’Neal (two famous American basketball players) had. Their jeans short (some of them were torn) reminded Indonesian youngsters of many American youth they had seen on television.
“We just do our best,” said one of the teenagers when I asked the group who were sitting on a bench right in the middle of the mall.
“I saw American movies which portray American youngsters wearing torn jeans. They looked freer. I liked it. I wanted to be like them. It is fun,” another youngster wearing torn jeans said.
“I saw Michel Jordan with Nike shoes on CNN. He flies in the air followed by the Nike logo ‘Just do it’. I think that it is good to have a pair of Nike shoes. I also like wearing a T-shirt with Michael Jordan on it,” said a youngster wearing Nike shoes and a jersey numbered 23 (Michael Jordan’s number).
In many big cities in Indonesia this hadn’t been seen before in the early 1980’s when the world was still separated by various ideologies and blocs. John Fiske would categorize this phenomena to the rise of popular culture which he describes as an expression of the subordinated class. Wearing torn jeans is an evasion or escape from the dominant class. But he also says that the lack of differentiation in jeans gives one the freedom to be oneself which points to a revealing paradox that the desire to be oneself leads one to wear the same garments as everyone else (Understanding Popular Culture, p. 2-3).
American youngsters who are wearing torn jeans seen on television by Indonesian youth may be a phenomena of struggle or rebellion against the dominant class as Fiske described in his book. American youth are then imitated by Indonesian youths who see torn jeans from a different perspective. They may be identifying themselves as a new generation who has to taste modern life. However, there is a similar meaning of wearing torn jeans.
Another example of how strong the influence of globalization is Reebok. Four years after the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of Cold War, Reebok, one of the fastest growing companies in United States history, decided that the time had come to make its mark in Russia. Reebok opened its first store in downtown Moscow in July 1993. A week after the grand opening, the store managers described sales as well above expectations. Ms. Magazine described Russians who suddenly had the ‘freedom’ to spend money on U.S. cultural icons like athletic footwear. The Reebok company then moved on to young people and children. It persuaded them to pressure their parents to spend money on stylish Western sneakers (Ms. Magazine, March/April 1995, p. 10). What struck me is that in today’s world, which is led by a new era and which is well known for its globalization, people from all over the world can share their needs.
The potency of Reebok or Nike, Camel or Marlboro, McDonald or Kentucky Fried Chicken, Coca Cola or Sprite, Levi-Strauss or Wrangler’s advertising imagery has made it easy to sell these products everywhere in this planet. These products use the global media that play a central economic role. The global media provide part of the global infrastructure for non-media firms. The global media provide the main vehicle for advertising, and at the same time facilitate corporate expansion into new nations, regions, and markets. As a result, we see how the products of everyday needs and the global media are working together to occupy or to colonize new consumers.
Sprite’s ‘Obey your thirst’ or Nike’s ‘Just do it’ and ‘The life of American youth’ are likely the main themes for a new generation’s everyday life. They need to taste the fresh air of modernism. They need to feel like Jordan flying in the air smoothly with a pair of Nikes and then smile when he lands on the floor. Jordan’s reality is millions of youngsters’ dreams throughout the world. What advertising has done to millions of people in the world today is to strike them and confirm that the products they use have a better quality and, therefore, can support their everyday needs.
The pressure of the American global media on other media in the world has brought a great meaning to the progress of different media in the world in accepting commercials and advertisements. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that once banned advertising and relied its support on an annual license fee paid by listeners, finally accepted commercials to be broadcast along with its news programs.
In broadcasting advertisements throughout the world, the giant media also inserted their capitalistic ideologies, for they are a powerful way to sell the products of their advertisers. It pushes other countries to open free markets where corporations can compete with each other. The widespread acceptance and internationalization of global corporate ideology rests on the enormous economic and political power of its sponsors.
In the political arena, the corporate interests also dominate electoral campaigns with their ability to fund candidates. The essence of giant media and corporations in one country also need stability in order to protect their businesses. The commercial media can play a central role in the political system. They become ‘new missionaries’ to promote the virtues of commercialism in which capitalistic systems can work properly. Yet, as Bagdikian cites in his book The Media Monopoly, the media owners fall on a few people with their conglomeration systems. They have bought and are still trying to buy the media in the world to seize the markets for their products. In this sense, the media conglomerate system, on one hand, is useful for the media to push democratic points of view in political systems in repressive countries. In Indonesia, where the authoritarian theory of the media worked perfectly, the essence of the conglomerate media was to protect the national media from the suspension of their licenses by the government. In the past when General Suharto still reigned Indonesia, KOMPAS, an Indonesian national newspaper, for instance, owns many metropolitan newspapers and magazines that could publish some oppositional articles about President Suharto’s government. These articles could not be published by KOMPAS itself. The metropolitan newspapers or magazines had more freedom to publish banned articles because of the limitation in their audience.
However, on the other hand, the conglomerate system brings about a strict control system of the giant media for the sake of making more profits. The media control poses a threat to the public sphere for several reasons. First, they rest on ownership control and, therefore, will tend to represent a narrow class interest. Because of increasing economies of scale and scope and other benefits of large size, media ownership tends to be more concentrated over time, aligning the media more closely with larger corporate interests. Second, privately owned media depend on advertising revenues and must, therefore, compete for their advertiser’s attention and serve their advertisers’ interest. In this sense, the conglomerate system tends to compromise advertisers in order to make more profit. As a matter of fact, what people hope from them in the political arena is that the global media with its conglomerate system can push the leaders of many repressive countries to a democratic system which cannot work well. Their political interest is to push more free market systems in order to gain more profit and insert their capitalistic system because when the society is more capitalistic, the purchasing power of the people is higher than in other social systems. In doing so, they push for a more stabilized situation in countries no matter what the political system is like in those countries. For them, the most important aspect is the government’s guarantee of the presence of their corporation.
Media Globalization Effects
E.S. Herman and R.W. McChesney underlined some media global effects of today’s world system. First, the global media pressure and threaten state-controlled broadcasting systems that are sometimes complacent, stodgy, and performing poorly, and energized into extending and deepening their services. However, I will argue that this situation can only occur in most western countries where the political system is more democratic. It is hard to say that this situation is going to happen in countries with oppressive systems where the lives of many journalists are threatened. The role of the media in those countries, well known as third world or developing countries, is to serve the repressive and oppressive regimes. The role of the global media is very limited in creating a more democratic situation because they cannot push the governments to change their political systems. If the global media do so, this means that they will lose their markets.
The pressure of the global media on state-controlled broadcasting systems more likely happens in a more democratic society such as in the United States. They fail to pressure the changing systems in many dictatorial countries. Maybe, according to the popular culture as John Fiske suggests, the people can support the changing system in society in a progressive way. Therefore, the global media which also provide and heavily broadcast the popular culture have to realize and to learn from De Certeau’s military metaphor:
“Guerilla tactics are the art of the weak: they never challenge the powerful in open warfare, for that would be to invite defeat, but maintain their own opposition within and against the social order dominated by the powerful” (in Understanding Popular Culture, p. 19).
The problem is that can this strategy work successfully in countries where the leaders only focus their attention on gaining more profits?
The second is the positive effects of media globalization and commercialization and the rapid dissemination of the popular culture developed in the dominant commercial centers to the far corners of the earth. Its universal acceptance indicates that a widely felt need and demand is being met, and its global reach makes for a greater connectedness and linkage among peoples and emergence of some kinds of global culture. There is also more of a flow toward the cultural centers, and horizontal flows within regions as well that may open new vistas and enhance understanding of different cultures within dominant and subordinate states (Herman & McChesney, p. 9).
I totally agree with these points of view that globalization, which has been opened by the global media, helps people be closer to each other. There is a rare gap among nations, tribes, clans, races, religions, and cultures.
However, the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) debate in the 1970s has its truth. The Non-Aligned Nations criticized the global media was attacked for the ‘flagrant quantitative imbalance between North and South’ and the corresponding inequality in information resources. The domination of entertainment programming across the Third World was criticized as cultural imperialism that implied alien western values on audiences. The global media were seen as working primarily to serve TNCs and advertisers, thus reinforcing the inequalities of global economy.
The global media provide entertainment which is mostly a one-way form of communication. It is a one way expression of entertainment, not a cultural sharing experience. The programmers, who have their own ideologies, push them on the audiences. People from different backgrounds such as cultures, tribes, races, religions, and nations can only discuss the programs after they are broadcast. They cannot respond directly to express their opinions or impressions, like in popular theater, about the programs they are watching. People merely face a screen. They are pushed to agree with the programs that are broadcast through the global media.
The power of the global media through movies and other programs has brought on what Twitchel calls the thrashing of taste in America throughout the world. The American media giants are exporting this kind of trash to the corners of the earth which automatically push people to accept it as many American do. The global media are persuading people all over the earth to what Twitchel says,
“We live in a culture that still reacts to bad taste but refuses to admit it as such. If we want to remove Richard serra’s Titled Arc, a twelve-foot-high steel fin almost a block long, from in front of the Federal Building in Foley Square, we have to say it is a traffic hazard. Until quite recently, we thrived on condemning bad taste. Now, we don’t just say “Chacun son gout” and De gustibus non est disputandum,” we believe it” (Twitchel, p. 16).
In the context of violence in the media, Ellen A. Wartella says that violence is a predominant theme on television. She also says that on television, perpetrators go unpunished (The Context of Television Violence, p. 6). This kind of violence is also exported by the global media to the corners of the earth. Whether it has direct influence on people in other countries, we don’t know. But for certain, there is a connection between media violence and the real violence in the society.
The related positive effect of media globalization is its movement across borders some of the fundamental values of the West, such as individualism, skepticism of authority, and, to a degree, the rights of women and minorities. These points of view were what the media used to promote human rights, rights of women and minorities, the indigenous tribes’ rights and other social justice in the world. However, the global media today is biased. They don’t publish their materials according to people’s needs but they set their own agendas with their own ideological interests.
About women workers in many shoe factories, which are owned by western countries, in developing countries, Cynthia Enloe describes an injustice. She states,
“All the ‘New World Order’ really means to corporate giants light to accelerate long-standing industry practices. In the early 1980s, the field marshals commanding Reebok and Nike, which are both U.S. based, decided to manufacture most of their sneakers in South Korea and Taiwan, hiring local women. L.A. Gear, Adidas, Fila, and Asics quickly followed their lead. In short time, the coastal city of Pusan, South Korea, became the ‘sneaker capital of the world’. More to the point, South Korea’s military government had an interest in suppressing labor organizing, and it had a comfortable military alliance with the U.S. Korean women also seemed accepting of Confucian philosophy, which measured a woman’s morality by her willingness to work hard for her family’s well-being and to acquiesce to her father’s and husband’s dictates. With their patriotic duty, Korean women seemed the ideal labor force for export-oriented factories” (Ms. Magazine, p. 12).
People are hoping that the giant media or the global media may do something for many oppressed women in the world who are also considered minorities. But what can they do if they know that after broadcasting such a terrible situation, they may lose large amounts of money from their advertisers?
The widespread acceptance and internationalization of global corporate ideology rests on the enormous economic and political power of its sponsors. Herman and McChesney cite that the above situation gets worse when “funded pro-corporate think tanks, academics, and public relations agencies are significant propagators of the corporate ideology. Their influence is large and growing in the media system” (p. 37).
Enloe continues that without the special kind of workplace control (the global media should have done more to promote workplace control as a watchdog) that only an authoritarian government could offer, sneaker executives knew that it was time to move. She says,
“In Nike’s case, its famous advertising slogan - “Just Do It” - proved truer to its corporate philosophy that its women’s ‘empowerment’ ad campaign, designed to rally women’s athletic (and consumer) spirit. China’s government remains nominally Communist; Indonesia’s ruling generals are staunchly anti-Communist. But both are governed by authoritarian regimes who share the belief that women can be kept hard at work, low paid, and unorganized, they can serve as a magnet for foreign investors” (Ms. Magazine, p. 13).
In light of this, I have to say that the role of the media as watchdog has shifted to their business interests. The question is how people react to the role of the media that they consume on a daily basis.
This third positive effect of media globalization also mentions individualism as an aspect that is transported throughout the world. It is true that individualism has helped people have better lives. The presence of television, for instance, creates more individualistic people in society. People pay more attention to the screen. People understand more what they have to buy for their everyday needs. Television provides people’s needs through broadcasting advertisements. In doing so, the global media offer a large and varied market for giant corporations to sell their products.
E.S. Herman and R.W. McChesney make a very good comment on this point as follows:
“The commercial model has its own internal logic and, being privately owned and relying on advertisers support, tends to erode the public sphere and to create a ‘culture of entertainment’ that is incompatible with the democratic order. Media outputs are commodified and are designed to serve market ends, not citizenship needs” (p. 9).
Conclusion
This article tends to see globalization from a negative perspective. But while many people are praising the media globalization as ‘new missionaries’, I believe that there is another way to look at media globalization. I think that it is necessary to view media globalization from a different perspective which includes social justice, economic problems that many developing countries are facing today regarding the power of the global media, and the rights of women who have supported many giants corporations in maintaining their profits but do little for women’s rights. Because of this, we can question the social meaning and responsibility of the role of the global media toward people.
It is impossible to stop the expansion of global media. Globalization is already there and will be always there. Nobody can stop the expansion of the global media. So what we have to do now is to educate people to be more critical of what they are seeing on television.
It is interesting to see how people around the world draw their attention to what Neil Postmant’s statement:
“Today, we must look to the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, as a metaphor of our national character and aspiration, its symbol a thirty&emdash;foot-high cardboard picture of slot machine and a chorus girl. For Las Vegas is a city entirely devoted to the idea of entertainment. Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death” (p.3)
I think it is our duty to change people’s points of views from an entertainment orientation to be more critical of themselves. What I really worry about today is that the domination of the global media that bring their own ideologies will overpower local cultures. The reason is that, first, the local cultures tend not to be as aggressive as the global culture which is supported by the global media. The second is that local cultures will eventually lose their identities because they cannot compete with the global culture. As a matter of fact, a variety of cultures in the world have contributed many good things to the essence of human beings. Should one culture take over the world culture?
References
Herman, E.S., & McChesney, R.W. (1997). The Global Media: the new missionaries of global capitalism. London: Cassel.
Fiske, John, (1989). Understanding Popular Culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman.
Twitchell, J.B. (1992). Carnival Culture: The Trashing of Taste in America. New York: Columbia University Press.
Enloe, Chintya (March/April, 1995). The Globetroting Sneaker. Ms. Magazine.
Postman, Neil (1986). Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Penguin Books.
Wartella, Ellen A. (1996). The Context of Television Violence in The Carrol C. Arnold Distinguished Lecture - Speech Communication Association Annual Convention 1996, November 23, 1996, San Diego, California. Allyn and Bacon.
Bagdikian, B.H. (1992). The Media Monopoly. Boston: Beacon Press.