What’s Behind the Globalism of the Media?

Chao Gan

Department of Drama: Theatre, Film and Television

University of Bristol

In today’s society, ‘globalization’ is a very fashionable word. It means that we have regarded it a grand ideal and a recognized model, and its brilliance will light the goodliness of everything. In other words, this is the Zeitgeist (or our time spirit), which is deemed as a ‘positive and sensible’ power. The game rule initially established by the minority is becoming the virtual captain of the global brain game.

Undoubtedly, using the term ‘globalization’ to describe the spread of the media represents an important phase, if not a valuable phase, during the media development. That’s because we are undeniably living in the age of electronic communication, which begins with the invention of the telegraph system in the 1840s. Soon to follow was the invention of the telephone (1880s), the radio and motion picture (1920s), the television (1950s) and the Internet (1990s). These inventions came into the world with human’s certain situations. The naissance of the inventions changed the old situations of human being with the new ones and therefore changed people’s behaviors and practices. McLuhan argued that there were at least three times in history that have changed the fundamental state of human’s existence. First of all, historically, in pre-industrial oral cultures, the individual located him or herself in the centre of a spherical space; afterwards, while in print-based cultures, the individual’s experience was seen as being more at the edge of visual space, looking in. The following is the present revolution, which has occurred as electronic communication has come to replace print (McLuhan: 14). Floating in the boundless ocean, the boat bearing the weight of human being was pushed to the different places by the different tides in the different ages. Different positions indicate different identities, and different relations. This is perhaps the most essential and core rule of the developing process.

In the age of telegraph and telephone, these two great inventions connect people from difference spaces with a convenient network of information communication. In nature, there is no much difference between them and the aboriginal methods of communications. What makes them distinct is that the communication relations between one people and another people (or communication between the individuals) are based on faster, more direct, and accurate technical methods. The emergence of radio and television greatly changed this situation. The audience (the receivers), that is, the people at one end of the telephone line, still exist in the individual form, but the other side, that is, the side transmitting voices, becomes the symbol of society, the sign of will to power. Therefore the relations are not between the individuals any more. Instead, it becomes the relations between the individual and the society. In the age of Internet, it seems that all the visible obstacles are cleared off by technical network and people return to the most unadorned utopian dream of establishing a relation between the individual and the world. Our dream, translated from the digital world ‘0’ and ‘1’, is to maximize the created world and to minimize us into the digit ‘0’ or ‘1’. In this respect, the concept of globalization the media promoting refers to an interactive process. On the one hand, we feel that we are entering the big human family; on the other hand, the big human family does try to make us feel we are really entering.

The analysis of the relation is the prelude to McLuhan’s views of the three historical phases. In oral culture, people were always the agitators of themselves, the executants of their conducts and the undertakers of the results. In other words, human being is at the centre of the world. In the print-based culture, the social relations began to shake tempestuously, which led to a high degree of complication. The meaning of being was suffering unprecedented suspicion. People started to make use of their sense and intellect to re-evaluate their positions. In order to do this, they had to quit the network which made them feel lost and to think of it at the edge of the space. The revolution of electronic communication obliges people to return to the sorry plight of instant communication. People who wish to live on in the society must accept the revolution. At this moment, people have to enter this network again. What makes them feel comfortable is that they have a reason to believe they are walking into a living space in the name of the global network. That means every behavior and every judgment from them are branded as ‘the global’ and will possibly become the source of the promising globalization of a certain trend or trace. In theory, it is the most exciting thing during the modern development of human civilization. Deliberate exaggeration of the energy of the individual and of the word ‘globalization’ make the media, for example, television and Internet, the nucleus of various development and changes.

It is evident that the globalism of the media brings tremendous impact and influence to human society. Based on this four step-up tiers can be seen. Firstly, the cultural changes. Here I take modern China as an example. After China adopted the reform and opening policy in the late 1970s, western pop music stars like Michael Jackson entered Chinese market and instantly turned out to be an important cause of cultural shock. It heavily shook the base of ‘red culture’ (endowed by the Soviet Union) in China. The second tier is of value. In the 1950s and the 1960s, the Soviet films like ‘Lenin in the October’ appropriately reflected the political demands from the authority and became the banner of value judgment. However, a large number of western films and television programmes were shown on the screen in the 1980s and the 1990s (In the 1950s all these were described as ‘poisonous grass of the bourgeois’). They deeply changed the value judgment of Chinese people and led to a more open, concrete, mercantile road. Precisely speaking, it was the media rather than the firearm accelerated the changes of value judgment in China. Even the free atmosphere shown in an ordinary sitcom Growing Pains caused enormous echoes from the Chinese audiences. The third is of attitude. Due to the changes of value judgment, naturally, people’s understanding of the world and life also changes. Growing Pains told the stories happening among family members and encouraged people to treat each other more frankly and more sincerely. It argued for fair dialogues and free atmosphere among people. For Chinese families which had a long history of feudal traditions, all these open ideas revealed extraordinarily new points. Parents and young people began to discuss how to be a father, or how to be a son. This leads to the fourth tier, that is, the change of behaviors. Parents tried to give up dull, close and strict education methods and patriarchy style. They communicated with their sons and daughters voluntarily; while sons and daughters realized the existence of generation gap and wished their parents could be the same as those shown in the television drama. In fact, the transplant of culture cannot be illustrated merely by separating it into several phases because it is a slinkingly changing process. But all the facts tell us that ever since the birth of media broadcasting, any cultural resistance is meaningless.

The globalization of the media normally begins with the distribution of the programmes like Growing Pains in the ‘local villages’. But the question is, what is globalized ultimately? Programmes? Actors? Or something else? Above all, globalization does not mean that the process is initiated from every corner of the world and eventually merges into one format. We can imagine that if we throw stones in every area of a quiet pool at the same time, the ripples will counteract with each other, thus the ripples of one corner can never reach the opposite side. Globalization is not the same. It is always initiated by a certain pole. So globalization is actually the globalization of this pole. If we drop a stone to the centre of the pool, the ripples will expand to every corner and thus affect the whole pool. Normally, the initiator of globalization is the most powerful pole. Therefore, globalization is the process of concentration of power and distribution of power. For instance, we often see Hollywood films in a poor country but seldom see films from poor countries to be shown on the screen of America. Even among the developed countries, the imbalance will also cause transfers of the power. For example, most people who have a pc use the Microsoft office system. When you input ‘Globalisation’ when using MS Word, your computer will remind you the spelling is wrong and the correct one should be ‘globalization’. At this moment we begin to understand how the globalization of a word (you can use American English, but not British English) is realized through a powerful system.

But, I do not think the distribution of power is the essence of the globalism of the media. Globalization is the globalization of the law. When we Chinese talk about their country, they will firstly say that China is a country with a 5000-year history. Secondly, China experienced 3000 years’ feudal society, whereas one of the features of feudal society is renzhi (people administration system). Thirdly, now China is walking in the modern time, since people know how to fazhi (law administration system) and the world requires us to do so. The point of this part is that fazhi replacing renzhi is the symbol of walking up to modernization and of joining the world. Law perhaps is one of the biggest and most notorious artificialities during the development of human society. Without any doubt, law always represents the will of the strongest side, which becomes the essential game rule of the globalism of the media. Provided the United States is the most powerful pole in the world, in some sense, globalization is Americanization, consequently, the globalization of American law and will.

Therefore, it is easy to understand the meanings of the voices from our media when facing the world. When Slobodan Milosevic was condemned for the ‘medieval savagery’ by the Hague, the reporters of newspapers, BBC News spared no effort to consider how to change this fancy crime into a remarkable headline. They denounced with ‘justice’ the crimes ABCD of Milosevic, or carried out investigation of his crimes, though in most cases drawing a blank. On the other hand, when a professor from Cape Town said that he could not understand why the Hague did not think that the NATO’s bombing Yugoslavia might also be called the ‘medieval savagery’, he was interrupted crustily by the host. The law world is always such a simple world, since in front of law, the identities of every people are incomparably simple: the lawful or the unlawful. If Milosevic and the NATO were both murderers, the institution of the globalization of law – the Hague– –devotedly listed the NATO as the lawful murderer, which meant it was permitted to kill people by law; while Milosevic, on the contrary, was defined as someone who had no right to kill others. The pictures on the television did nothing but show us a crude and cruel fact. This is like to watch a boxing game. When two people who actually have no hatred towards each other fight on the squared circle, when they are bloody all over, or fall to the ground and cannot rise any more, the boiling audiences will cheer and cry. Why? This is human’s situation. Law allows us to kill on the squared circle, and law will certainly allow someone to kill people in battlefield, in life, and on court. When the States distributes its meanings and ideology to the world, it distributes its laws, and this fact is concealed by foods, television programmes, films, music, freedom, human rights and American dreams. All these flood our breath and thinking, and make it really difficult to distinguish the true look. The most dazzling myth is that we have a dream of globalization and a leader of globalization, which prevent us from being Don Quijote who always ran his head against a wall. They also keep us from being K who had never found the entrance to the castle. Since we know, the mistake K made was that he thought he was someone dissociated from the law. And we know that’s impossible. To be brief, K thought he was an independent individual, and thus he lost the chance of hearing the voices from the law world. In today, no matter Don Quijote or K is destined to fail. What really makes the law world feel horrent is Raskolnikov (crime and punishment) who said ‘great men like Napoleon smash laws’. This sentence sounds very powerful today but meaningless because it does not fit into the time spirit. Ever since 911, people in the world are divided into two groups (by the ‘global’ law): terrorists or non-terrorists. We are not human any more.

The globalism of the media characterizes another feature of the law world, that is, the persecution to individualism. We are living in a world that based on common knowledge and common identities. How to recognize the status of ‘self’ is a sensitive problem. Mikhail Bakhtin argued that the process of self-awareness is ‘the socialization of oneself and one’s behavior’ (Bakhtin: 76). Let’s replace ‘socialization’ with ‘globalization’ if we really think we are in the age of globalization. ‘In becoming aware of myself, I attempt to look at myself through the eyes of another people’. Why? That’s because ‘I’ exist as a particle of the whole instead of a significative individual. My individual existence is insignificant. In such a world, people’s creativity and dignity are unprecedentedly suppressed. Imagination, colours and individualism are unwelcome, since to this world, they are all embodiment of the conspirators. In the media world, this rule is applied very widely. After the invention of the camera, almost everyone knows the life under the camera is an extended life, a sort of life calling off the individual identity. Therefore, life becomes a kind of performance, an imitation of the orders of the law world.

The media never care about the individual existence. Contrarily, they only think of the mass, the collectivity. In order to achieve this goal, they cater for the lowest denominators (as a German word ‘Kistch’).

The so-called ‘global village’ is actually a colonial village. As for a geographic notion, the cultures of the powerful countries devour those of the local villages; as for the status of existence, the individuals are banished by the mass. Although the persecutions are established upon courtesy, decency, money and smiles, the conflicts beneath the surface are extremely severe. Despite the invisibility, they are profound enough to make everyone scared. Talbott said, ‘a global village that leaves no place for native or alternative cultures seems uncomfortably like the old colonialism in a new guise’ (Talbott: 28). I think he is right.

Today when we talk about globalism of the media we would perhaps mention that this also refers to a process of ‘global information share’. Everybody shows great zeal for the term ‘information’, but what on earth is information in a global law world? Young guys like to talk about ‘solitude’ because our media are saying that ‘we are solitary’ all days and all nights. When the word ‘solitude’ is in vogue, its original idea is obliterated. It becomes a piece of empty information, an imitation of the time spirit, a stupid self-worship. When Franz Kafka wrote, he rarely used the word ‘solitude’, but we read the ‘solitudes’ from his heart. Everyone today talks about ‘solitude’, but perhaps most of them do not know what is ‘solitude’. Therefore, a rich word becomes the victim of socialization, ultimately, the rootless information. The purpose of information in the age of globalization is to tell people what to do but not why to do so. However, we cannot forget the fact that human life can be sustained only within the sea of meaning, not a network of information. If we are reluctant to be the slaves of a technical life, we should consider how to fight with the culture dictator. The globalization of information is a lie that destroys real civilizations and personal creativity. It encourages people to receive, to accept rather than think. In this game, information is distorted. Jimmy Carter, former president of the United State, once through television, audience saw him taking exercise with other runners and guards in the morning. Suddenly his face turned pale and a heart attack stopped him from continuing this show and sent him to doctors. Essentially, it was planned to show a figure of Carter, president of the most powerful country in the world – which should be, according to the public understanding – energetic, strong-willed and vigorous. This kind of information, after a long time practice, has formed a certain thinking format. The format was called decoding password of information, then, the meaning of the information. The camera solidifies this kind of thinking so that every few people will doubt whether the translation of the information is correct or not. Carter was a dancer in front of the camera; he just did what he should do. Of course, the first half of his performance was accurate and affecting, and succeeded in transferring the information to the audiences. Although something unexpected happened later, it strengthened the information instead. While the true meaning of the information (that is, why Carter took exercise in front of the people all over the world) was obliterated. So, subconsciously, we accept the training of the time spirit, and finally merge this decoding process of information into the understanding of the time spirit. When they show us the information, the media never tell us the true meanings of it. The globalism of the media leads us to such a void space. Although we feel confused when we raise our heads because we do not know where we are going, we feel the road is so clear and logical when we lower our heads because we find we are walking on the orbit of the globalization of the time spirit.

The fixed decoding format of the information is a shortcut for the success of commercialization during the process of globalization. Commercialization seeks for the biggest profits by any kind of means. In order to achieve this objective, it requires a united market instead of personal ideas which disintegrate the world. When the Chinese and Russian wear blue jeans, I do not think it is a political victory, nor a cultural victory. It is a commercial victory indeed. The globalized media are spreading a theory of production and consumption. What they care is the sell of the commodity rather than the outcome of consumption. Commercial logic is also the materialization of the law world. It demands the orders because only in a well-ordered world, and only when people understand the decoding format of information can they obey the law of production and consumption, and therefore make themselves a market for the commercialization. A peasant in Mozambique might not know what a satellite dish will bring to his life, but he will accept that firstly if it is free of charge. See, this is a trap of commercialization, and this is a seedtime for globalization of the media. To sum up, the globalism of the media is nothing to do with real culture, value and meaning, traditional significance of community, democratic values and nothing to do with any deep emotions of human kind. It suggests a colonial globalization of law, of technique, of commercial power, and of the time spirit.

Bibliography

1. Michael Antecol, Understanding McLuhan: Television and the Creation of the Global Village (University of Missouri, 1997).

2. Raymond Gozzi, Will the Media Create a Global Village? (Alabama Press, 1996).

3. Herbert M. McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1967).

4. G. Pascal Zachary, The Real Global Village (Technology Review, 1999).

5. Richard Holeton, Composing Cyberspace (Boston, 1998).

6. Stephen L. Talbott, The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst (O’Reilly & Associates, 1995).

7. Mikhail Mikha?lovich Bakhtin, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language,　translated by Ladislav Matejka and I.R. Titunik, (New York　London　Seminar Press,　1973).