Page 190 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

174 Transnationality, Globalization, and Postcoloniality

to a different subjectivity, but also offered a different way of telling stories
in cinema.
Transnational cultural studies is also concerned with the way media

form and content flow across national borders and between national cul-
tures. In reaction to the experience of colonization, many national cultures
have been for some time nationalistic in their cultural policies; they have,
like Senegal, tried to maintain a high level of indigenous content in media
programming, especially television. This was done by regulating the media
and limiting foreign content and foreign private company access to the
indigenous cultural market. But with globalization has come an increased
penetration of such national enclaves by new media such as satellite televi-
sion that bring with it content that is distinctly “ modern ” and that is quite
different from the local national culture or cultural experience. As a result,
the culture of “ modernity ” (which is largely American in origin and
emphasizes American values and concerns, from the liberal ideal of indi-
vidual personhood to the popular cultural focus on entertainment as
opposed to education) has spread around the world wherever economic
development attracts and permits media such as satellite television to exist.
Many people around the globe, as a result, share, despite national, regional,
and provincial cultural differences, the same sense of what a “ modern ”
lifestyle is or what appropriately “ modern ” fashions in clothing are. Lady
Gaga plays in New York and Lugansk. Television shows about dating and
marriage are almost universal, as are reality shows modeled on the British
and American originals. A common world experience, juxtaposed to local
cultural differences, has emerged. The “ look ” of cities in China is increas-
ingly the same as that of cities in the West, as entire old cities are razed to
make way for buildings considered to be more modern. To young people
especially, local historic cultures can appear quaint and even touristic when
judged against the new, more modern version of culture that can be seen
and heard on international television or radio. Kyoto is a cultural center
in Japan where one can see scads of temples, icons of traditional Japanese
culture. But you see few young people wandering amongst the temples;
they can be found in Tokyo instead, sporting all the latest in modern dress
that they have refashioned according to their own creative instincts and
listening to modern pop music.
In the past, the influence of one culture on another, especially if it was

based on a difference in levels of economic development, was characterized
as cultural imperialism or cultural colonization. But increasingly, cultural
scholars emphasize the more positive dimension of transnational cultural