The dominance of US media products is shown very clearly in today's world, when you turn on the television, radio, or check the newspapers for movie listings. Granted, there are local productions but do people watch more local films or those from the West? Do we listen to music produced by local artists or from foreigners?
Singapore is diverse in culture thanks to the multi-racial society we live in, but are our interests and lifestyle close to that of what our background is, or have we developed another way of living and thinking thanks to cultural imperialism?
The first McDonald's restaurant in Southeast Asia was opened here in Singapore in 1979, and the popularity of fast food restaurants in our country is evident. Jeans seems to be a staple choice of clothes for most Singaporeans, and I'm sure we'll all seen people who're dressed in Japanese fashion around town. Our speech is filled with slangs from the shows we watch, slangs which you do not hear our parents speak, and our values are different from that our parents knew when growing up.
I believe that the one-way flow of international messages has influenced us in some way, but I also see how Singapore still remains as a high-context culture like other Asian countries. We are a society is not forthright with our words, choosing to hide behind screens or to express ourselves through non-verbal cues at times. An explicit communication style is seen as rude, and we see this in the censorship of films with vulgarities, explicit images, and sensitive issues like homosexuality.
So how much do you think cultural imperialism has affected us, and do you think we have a distinct Singaporean culture?
6 comments:
honestly, i believe singapore still has long way to go in developing our own distinct culture our identity but perhaps that is where our beauty lies - in being a cultural 'rojak', we embrace other cultures with open arms and adopt certain traits that are relevant to our lifestyles. singlish, for example, is borne out of slangs and phrases of different dialects and social groups, and is embraced by all.
We're all so mixed up and in my opinion, singapore is a mixture of many cultures into one. We do not have a particular group of people like the so many countries all over the world. Yes there are the chinese, malays, indians and eurasians. But where do we/they really originate from?.
Culture imperialism has influenced me in so mnay ways and i dare say that it has made me into this very person. Good or bad is subjective among my social circle. From the jeans that i wear, hairdo and the way i speak portraits cultural imperialism whether i like it or not. I never thought of that before undergoing this module. i go as far as to say that im not "genuine" in the sense that i have been pixels of the media making me into a final picture on screem.
Yes sonia, we all know where "pixels" came from do we?. :)
Cultural Emperialism has affected me a lot. I talk English, I am only interested in Western Art, I listen to music mostly made from the West, I was really into the American elections than i was into the Singapore elections. However, there are some important morals and values (i'm Malay Muslim) that I still hold on to, which were passed on to me by my parents from my grandparents from their ancestors.
About Singapore's Culture - We can say that Singapore has a culture because most of us might share 1 thing in common (and all I can think of is that most of us live in HDB apartments). Maybe we can call it a "culture of living" that most of us share. There are the other things that culture is mostly referred to which is the arts, language and ethnic culture. For the ethnic culture - I feel that Singapore boasts one of the world's most unique ethnic cultures due to the different racial communities having their own traditional celebration and in turn take part of the celebrations of other races. Secondly, Singapore's language culture is pretty interesting (just like any other country) because we have our own "slang" or "accent" that make us who we are and make us identifiable in our neighbouring countries. Lastly, the arts culture in Singapore is booming. The growth of our arts scene is similar to that of cooking instant noodles. Yes, it is growing rather fast, but would you rather instant noodles cooked in 2 minutes or wait 30 minutes for a good plate of beef steak? It's happening so fast and we're bombarded with so many arts events that some will have to be missed due to the competition of time and money. Then again, if only we had more time.
this reminds me of this video on youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST3SiTamO7E - that discusses the identity of the singaporean music industry.
i personally like the opinion in this one because its not afraid to say that Singapore's musicians are very Western influenced today - as opposed to the highly original ones during its heyday.. when Ramly Sarip and Sweet Charity performed to throngs of thousands without having to make their name overseas first.
haha sujin thomas even said there 'Singaporeans can smell cheese from a mile away," ... so maybe were still safe yet.
*HI SONIA!*
Well, Cultural Imperialism. We all know US is the world superpower. I mean, its every step, every decision is either applauded to such an extent or criticised immensely. It's in extremes. And we all know the effect western influence has on the Asian continent. And referring back to what Slize said about us being so mixed. I agree, we are yet to find a true identity of ur own. Being diverse has a good and a bad side i feel. And to create an identity of our own might take a long time. 20 years, 50 years? Who knows. Till then this small red dot, will continue to be inlfuenced by the powers of the world. It's inevitable.
We see change happening everyday. A black president. Who would have dreamt of the possibilty 6 months back? But then we come to what our Pm said on the possibilty of having a PM in Spore of a race other than that of a chinese. Possible, but not so soon. Culture is defined by the society. Social norms will change in time to come. But time. Thats the key word.
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