W7: Whose Reality Is it Anyway?

We started off with a bit of context of how we live at the moment. We (here in England) live in a Post Modern, Post Industrial society, with an 'Information Economy'. Advances in communication and technology have led to a shrinking of the world as we can now travel around it safely and in a matter of hours. Marshall McLuhan (1964) called this a 'Global Village' as we've experienced the collapsing and condensing of space and time.

The Global Village has it's benefits, for instance Cultural Fusion (where two cultures meet and new cultural forms are produced, e.g. Chinese art influences). A good example of this is the post second world war occupation of Japan by the Allied Powers - there was a censorship of media by the US and their own pop culture was transferred. Consequently Japanese graphic communication has been influenced by this initial contact with the West, taking traits from Hollywood and even Disney (e.g. design of characters with big eyes).

However, there's always a risk of Homogenity occuring (where everything becomes uniform). Called 'McDonaldization' by George Ritzer, it can mean that societies/ cultures take on the characteristics of the fast food industry, becoming efficient, standardised, predictable, controlled and with limited options.

Additionally Cultural Imperialism is a possibility (where one culture dominates another ideology (body of ideas or beliefs)). According to some, like Noam Chomsky (Hegemony of Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (2004)) contemporary America is guilty of this as it's brands stretch out over the world, e.g. Starbucks where you consume to have an identity. Another example is of the Nazi's cultural control through it's use of film propaganda, where feelings were won and then the audience was told how to think.

But how can we judge reality? There's currently a digital divide (gap between those with/ without access to technology). We see other parts of the world through the media, but is that all that's actually occurring? It's easy sometimes to confuse what we 'see' with what's 'happening'. The hegemony (dominant influence) risks confusing what we 'see' with 'reality'.

This relates back to the Culture Industry (Adorno) and the theory that it keeps consumers passive. We may be being presented a mediated (determining what's important) view of other cultures, people and 'reality'. According to Guy Debord (1931 -1994) (The Society of the Spectacle (1967)) every engagement is mediated on some level, from clothes, hair and health to food, we're given pre-determined opinions. While Jean Baudrillard ((1929 - 2007) a French Post-Structuralist theorist) argued that our 'real needs' have been eclipsed by 'false needs'. 'Symbolic value' (e.g.pink = feminine) is relational and arbitrary and we've entered the realm of 'hyper-real' (where simulacra (hyper real copies, e.g. perfect apples) have replaced reality and the object that they once referenced). Currently, the digital/ virtual worlds offer the lure of the hyper real as well.

In conclusion, our understanding of the world is often mediated/ interpreted and framed for us by other people and cultural bodies. The representations that we receive are selective, edited and sometimes new for specific consumers. While seemingly transnational cultural forms walk a fine line between cultural fusion and cultural imperialism.