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Week 8-9 Global Visual Culture

Cartwright and Goldfarb: Cultural Contagion

• Disney's films in Latin America spanned education, public heath, and education.
• Disney was selected as a cultural emissary as part of the good neighbor policy (intended to combat the influence of fascism and communism).
• Nelson Rockefeller selected Disney as cultural emissary. Rockefeller was an executive of Chase Manhatten Bank, involved in Latin American health initiatives, and a board member of the New York Museum of Modern Art.

Cartwright and Sturken, "Global Flow of Visual Culture"

Transnational Circulation of Images

• Shift from how images circulate and are interpreted within a culture to how they are negotiated across cultural contexts
• Role of images in the transition from imperial/colonial era to postcolonial context
  • Coca Cola web sites:
    • US
    • France
    • Japan
    • Southeast Asia (Amatil)
    • Turkey http://www.coca-cola.com.tr/
    • Go Local
  • The Body Shop
  • Nike
  • Disney International
  • Nestle
  • Pokemon
    • Emirates scholars issue Pokemon fatwa
    • Pokemon mania or cultural invasion!
    • Now Malaysia may ban Pokemon

Globalization

• Increasing importance of cultural flows in international power relations
• Rise of multinational corporations and a global economy
• Wiring the world
• The collapse of geographic distance

Convergence

• Merger of previously discrete media industries and technologies
• Intertextuality facilitates the breakdown of national boundaries
• John Osh's "They rule"

Synergy

• Programming, production, and distribution by single corporate entities on a global scale
• Tension between globally shared visual cultures and rise of local hybrids.

Television (and Film) flow: from local to global

• Marketing of TV overseas sells more than programming–it sells ways of looking, and ways of life.
• TV is tied to national cultures
  • Telenovelas and TV Globo
  • Samoan TV project

The Critique of Cultural Imperialism

• Ariel Dorfman, Reading Donald Duck (DD in the Netherlands)
• Armand and Michelle Mattelart
• Herb Schiller
• Voice of America, Radio/TV Marti
• Fear of English Language Dominance on the Internet
• English language hegemony

Alternative, Indigenous and Exilic Media

• Local media and cultural forms respond to uniques desires and needs of geographic and demographic communities
• Diasporic media
  • multilingual
  • imports media and programming
  • exports
  • Hybrid
• Inuit Broadcasting System
  • some info
  • SAY
  • Inuit Broadcasting Systems
• Deep Dish TV
• Downtown Community Television
• Paper Tiger TV
• Telemundo and Univision
• TV Globo (Brazil)
• Mona Hatoum's "Measures of Distance" 1988

Characterizing globalism:

• Interconnectivity–fluidity of national boundaries (with regard to information)
• Expanded trade
• Opportunity
• Migration and exile (economic, political, forced and voluntary)
• Hybridization of cultures
• Homogenization of culture (assimilation and displacement of traditional social values)
• Fragmentation
• Reinterpretation/transformation
• Uneven development (technological and cultural)
• Multidirectional and unidirectional flows of culture
• Displacement of national and local cultures/economies
• How cultural objects and forms are imbued with new meanings as they travel
• How imported cultural forms transform local cultures.
• Corporate mergers
• Translation and establishment of hierarchy of languages
• Role of visual culture in bridging lingisitic and cultural differences

 

Art in an international context

• To what extent do global artists, video makers, and writers consciously or unconsciously build translatability into their art forms?
• How are culturally specific elements/qualities judged in the contemporary artworld and art market?
  • Claiming Art | Reclaiming Space at South African Art Exhibit (the Smithsonian)
  • William Kentridge
  • Jean-Michel Basquiat
  • Xu Bing
  • Mona Hatoum
  • Cildo Meireles
  • Tunga
  • Lygia Clark,
  • Harry Gamboa
  • Boarder Arts Collective
  • Helio Oiticica
• Monica Amor Whose world? A note on the paradoxes of global aesthetics. (Liminalities: Discussions on the Global and the Local)