Global media: entertainment, culture, and typicality

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Global media entertainment, culture, and
typicality

• October 18, 2006

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Key themes of our new unit

• Global reach of media (esp. TV)
• Media as transmitters of culture
• Media texts as (perceived) evidence of what
  (other) cultures are like
• Entertainment television as educational

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Some anthropological understandings of culture

• A continuum
• ranges from an individuals unique, patterned
  ways of behaving, feeling, and reacting, to
  certain universal norms that are rooted in common
  biological needs of humankind

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Another take on culture

• Reality construal
• The systematic way of construing reality that a
  people acquires as a consequence of living in a
  group

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Another take

• All of the learned/acquired components of our
  lives
• The complex whole which includes knowledge,
  belief, art, morals, customs, values, patterns of
  behavior, and many other capabilities and habits
  acquired by individuals as members of their
  societies

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And another

• Collective programming
• The collective programming of the mind that
  distinguishes the members of one group or
  category of people from another

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The push and pull of global culture

• 10/16 reading (James Lull)
• Push
• Those aspects of a culture that are given to
  (pushed on) us
• Language, religion, values, rituals, foods
• Pull
• Those aspects that as individuals we select for
  ourselves (UG)

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The pros and cons of push

• Our cultural norms provide us with safety,
  security, stability, predictability
• Make the world understandable
• But they also can be rigid, limiting, suffocating
• And can be used as pretexts for racial, ethnic,
  sexual (etc.) discrimination

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The pros of pull

• Individualism, autonomy, freedom, and mobility
• The ways we determine who we are as individuals
• Even as we live in and are products of our culture

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The cons of pull

• Lull indicts US-style individualism especially
• See page 50
• Hyper-commercialization
• Phenomenal selfishness

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Where do the media come into this?

• See page 51
• Explosion in mass media (and other technologies)
  leads to ever greater individualism
• And arrested development perpetual parallel
  play even as adults

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Push and pull considered together

• Media technologies allow us to be connected in
  ways we werent before
• Sense of belonging and community havent
  disappeared
• Theyve changed shape
• Tension between autistic individualism and
  reactionary collectivism

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Back to culture
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What about TV, specifically?

• Cooper-Chens argument
• Within a nations culture, aside from its food,
  the content of its TV programming is one of the
  most accessibleand pervasiveaspects
• Its readily available to visitors
• It is almost inescapable

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TVs powers more generally

• The centerpiece of our entertainment lives
  (Merrill Brown, quoted in Cooper-Chens chapter
  The World of Television)
• What does this mean?

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Flipping this around

• Not only does TV provide the world with more of
  our entertainment than any other source
• But also, TVs content is more entertainment than
  it is anything else
• More than information
• More than politics
• More than news

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What is entertainment?

• From the Latin word tenere to hold or to keep
• It holds our attention
• What is entertainment in the age of popular (or
  mass) culture?
• Experience that can be sold toand enjoyed
  bylarge and heterogeneous groups of people

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What does entertainment give us?

• Amusement
• Distraction or relaxation of its audience
• Mood management
• Cheers people upespecially comedy
• Even satisfies cognitive needs
• Why are game shows and reality shows popular?
• Tension release and social integration as well as
  relaxation and cheer

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Whats particularly new about entertainment TV?

• Over past 2-3 decades, entertainment TV is a
  multi-national phenomenon
• Entertainment TV is imported and exported
• But mostly sent from US to other countries around
  the world

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When US (entertainment) TV gets transmitted
globally . . .

• What else is transmitted?
• Our cultural values
• Individualismmore on this in a moment
• Future orientation
• Low power distance
• Materialism

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This does NOT (necessarily) mean

• That other cultures become more like ours!
• But people in other nations are certainly exposed
  to our cultural values

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What media effects are associated with
entertainment TV?

• Effects of violent content
• Violent content can contribute to aggressive
  behavior in viewers
• Some key media/violence theories
• Cultivation
• Social learning (a/k/a social cognition)
• Desensitization

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What does imported/exported entertainment TV
communicate?

• Specifically, what do we learn (or infer) about
  another culture when we watch its entertainment
  television?

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Lets watch some UK TV

• And then some analogous US TV

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From the UK show (Changing Rooms)

• What can you say about
• The English peoples
• Personalities (individually, as a culture)
• Interests
• Culture
• Nation (national identity)

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From the US show (Trading Places)

• What can you say about
• The American peoples
• Personalities (individually, as a culture)
• Interests
• Culture
• Nation (national identity)

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Can we, in fact, make determinations about
typical Britons from a British TV show?

• Why or why not?
• And if we can, why dont we make such typicality
  judgments about US shows?

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Perceived typicality

• 10/16 reading by Hall, Anten, Cakim
• Residents of Turkey, Mexico, and US were asked to
  describe the extent to which they saw media
  representations as typical of the societies in
  which they were produced

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Theoretical basis

• Media dependency theory
• Claim audiences that lack direct experience with
  a particular subject are forced to rely on the
  media
• for understanding, knowledge, impressions of the
  subject
• and do so to a greater extent than audiences that
  have direct experience
• Many earlier studies looked at perceptions of
  racial others

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TV shows viewed in Hall et al. study

• The Cosby Show, Friends, The Simpsons
• ER, Beverly Hills 90210, The X-Files, NYPD Blue

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Questions researchers explored

• Consider the characteristics you see in these TV
  showshow typical or frequent do you believe
  these characteristics are of the real-world
  counterparts?
• What criteria do you use to make your typicality
  judgments?
• What specific behaviors, personality types,
  actions, etc. stand out for you as most typical?

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Key findings

• People whod spent little/no time in US watching
  Cosby or Friends or ER or 90210 (in their home
  countries) assumed they showed typical American
• Ways of life
• Personality types
• Styles of family interaction
• Intensity of jobs (and orientation to work)
• Wealth
• Education levels
• Beauty
• Problems (or lack thereof!)

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In other words

• TV shaped Mexican and Turkish respondents
  expectations of what life in America would be
  like
• But when these respondents (all exchange students
  at US universities) actually spent time in US,
  they were less likely to describe media content
  as typical of US life

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What did the US respondents say?

• Saw Friends as atypical (and unrealistic)
• Could see than any given US TV show was about its
  specific characters
• Not intended to be about typical Americans
  overall
• Recognize exaggerationscan see through the
  show and separate its claims from real life
• Did not generalize from 90210 to US society as a
  whole

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What might this suggest about OUR takes on non-US
media texts?

• Do we see a British TV show as representing
• typical Britons
• typical British lifestyles
• typical British attitudes