Sunday, November 2, 2008
Culture / Cultural Imperialism
Cultural Imperialism can be defined as the practice of promoting, distinguishing, separating, or artificially injecting the culture or language of one culture into another.
The most obvious culture that we can see that has imperialised other cultures, would most definitely be the western culture. This dates back to as far as the World Wars, as with colonialism, cultures and traditions of the Westerners are injected and infused into the various cultures.
Let's start with the fact that Singapore's actual native language was not English, and in fact, Malay. With this is mind, why then am I typing in English? Why is it you can comprehend what I'm typing? And, why do we converse in English and not Malay? It's all because, we were colonised by the British. :O (hahahaha) Well yes, and because of that, some of their culture has "rubbed" off on us, like our education system and government runs similarly to the UK system. As the Western culture is so prominent throughout the world, this Cultural Imperialism has had a positive impact on us. Why? Because, with it, we have grown and developed so much more.
And it hasn't stopped there. In today's day and age, our media is constantly bombarded with US programmes. If one were to watch local channels like CH5, one would notice that there are more US series being played, compared to local TV shows. Furthermore, there are high numbers of people who subscribe to cable TV, which is overloaded with even more US programmes. With channels like Disney, HBO, Discovery, Animal Planet, if one were to visit the US, one would probably be able to relate to all the shows being aired! Even if it is not aired on TV, it is widely and easily available to watch, for example, (my favourite ;) ) Gossip Girl. So with the Western culture so blatantly bombarding our local culture, one should not be surprised that we have adopted many of their practices.
One example of how the influx of the Western culture through movies or TV series has influenced us, would be in dance. Traditional Chinese, Malay, Indian dances are not as popular among youngsters as Hip Hop or Breakdancing is. This is because the youngsters, like myself, are more opened and exposed to the Western Culture, having grown up with mainly these movies and TV series. Or for the generations above, Mambo! Or Discotechque times, influenced largely by the movie Grease. ;)
So although we may have the impression that Cultural Imperialism erodes our own culture, one can see that we have embraced it and fused it with our own, retaining most of our own culture, while at the same time evolving with time. I personally find that Cultural Imperialism (on a moderate scale) is actually quite enriching for the various cultures, as one learns more about others, while at the same time, trying to infuse the two (or more) together, diversifying our cultures and making them more and more unique, or more and more wholesome.
What do you think? (:
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2:53 AM
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