The process of development in western society from the 17th century onwards can be seen in terms of a progressive detachment from traditional forms of religion and an agrarian economy. The new social order coalesced around a mode of social life based on rationality, economic industrialism, urbanism and individualism, which went under the name of modernity (Giddens, 1991, 14). As a consequence of this transition, new forms of production, consumption, leisure and cultural solidarity emerged, marking the beginning of a new era no longer based only on locality and a communitarian ethic. In its place stood a society with an unprecedented capacity to uproot social relations from their immediate local contexts, overcoming the borders of nation-state economies while gradually creating more impersonal mass systems of communication and public transport. This process has resulted in an uneven development of wealth and social opportunities for some countries compared with others. Especially the competition between European and American economies has produced a certain dominance of western economies over social systems based on more traditional ways of using natural resources. As a consequence of this societal process, the dominant societies have created a system of economic and cultural dominance, or cultural imperialism (Tomlinson, 1991), always eager to expand its influence over new markets at the expense of native culture and local traditions in the countries of destination.
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Around the seventies and throughout the subsequent decade, a new term – globalisation - replaced the emphasis on the expansionist tendency of western societies with a spatial figure of social development (Brooker, 2003, 114). The focus here is on the flexibility and mobility of the economic process of restructuring and social readjustment that followed the oil crisis in the seventies. With this new notion, the original ideological meaning of exploitation has been dropped in favour of a description of a general tendency of capitalist economies to move their centres beyond nation-state borders, creating a model of development pursued also by countries other than western ones (Petras and Veltmeyer, 2001, 12). This developing trend in the contemporary world caused an increase in social mobility and entrepreneurial business, along with the opportunity to extend economic and social relationships to distant places. Some authors refer in this connection to the process of ‘flexible accumulation’ (Harvey, 1989, 147), as established forms of large-scale production are replaced by smaller units, scattered over large geographical distances and yet connected in the same economic cycle. This shift at the economic level gives rise to the description of a global system as abstract and distant from everyday life, almost as if it were invisible. Nevertheless, it still affects our daily existence as it becomes more problematic and fragmented (Craib, 1994, 95). In particular, this tendency of stretching social relationships along the axis of time and space has been seen as one of the most characteristic features of the globalising tendencies of modernity (Giddens, 1990, 63; 1991, 21; Massey, 1991, 233). Together with these social developments, moral doubts, new risks and insecurities increased as a result of the complex connectivity implicit in the conditions of the modern world (Beck et al., 1994; Elliott and Lemert, 2006). O48A! 7916! ;/46;/:71?/D! =/67/4216-7182D! 84! PA/41:-216-7182D! -4/! 879/4! 7/4A6! 584! 308.-016-7182D! 4/6<07123! 548A! .48->/4! 68:1-0! 74-26584A-71826D! -7! 127/42-7182-0! 0/?/06D! =17912! 79/!9167841:-0!:827/H7!85!A8>/4217@F!L2!5-:7D!79/!9167841:-0!-;;/-4-2:/!85!A8>/42!126717<71826D! 6<:9!-6!:-;17-016AD!12><6741-016AD!<4.-216A!-2>!A-66!A/>1-D!.<107!<;!79/!68:1-0!58<2>-71826! 584!79/!>/?/08;A/27!85!6<:9!127/4:822/:71826!-2>!50/H1.1017@D!A-Q123!;8661.0/!79/!.1479!85!79/! 308.-0!-2>!R2/7=84Q!68:1/7@S!BT-67/006D!'***D!"(*U"("EF!
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3.2.2 Globalisation and culture: reason for a legacy
Within the context of societal development described above, culture plays a major role as an intrinsic component of the whole process of complex connectivity, with related issues concerning the need for its change and/or protection. As has been argued, ‘the idea of “a culture” implicitly connects meaning construction with particularity and location’ (Tomlinson, 1999, 27- 28), especially when cultural practices are related to social integration and identity construction. From this point of view, culture is not just a consequence of globalisation, but can be considered one of its constitutive elements. In shifting attention from the complex connectivity of social institutions to the individual and collective actions integrated into these institutions, it is possible to see how the everyday actions of million of people in one part of the planet are linked with the lives of many others far away. This cultural connectivity illustrates the idea of the reflexivity of modern global life (Tomlison, 1999, 24; Beck et al., 1994) and introduces, at the same time, the local- global dialectic: the way in which local lifestyles become global in their consequences, influenced as they are by other lifestyles far removed from each other. For example, some scholars have accentuated how the first mass media in America were organised around the simple principles of a small batch at production level and a large scale at marketing and distribution level, to provide a high standard of quality in the final product and a flexibility of workers geared to market demand (Tunstall, 1977, 67). In this way, the work of a small group of people would be related to the activity of many more, all over the world, creating the first forms of global connectivity in a mass communication system. Moreover, this interconnected activity was constantly revised and updated, according to consumer needs, the demands of the particular business and the state of its technology (Giddens, 1990).
Sociologically speaking, this concept relates to the notion of reflexivity as a typical feature of a post-traditional society. According to this view, ‘social practices are constantly examined and reformed in the light of incoming information about those very practices’ (Giddens, 1990, 38), thus giving emphasis to the modern practice of constantly questioning and revising a process of social development, creating new forms of communication and solidarity, and changing the role and
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content of local cultures. Following this interpretative frame, some authors have emphasised the increasing interlacing and articulating of economic and symbolic processes in contemporary society, talking in this respect of ‘reflexive accumulation’ (Lash and Urry, 1994, 60). In this connection the accumulation of information about a certain economic practice leads to a re- thinking and a critique of its organisation and components, with a reciprocal influence of knowledge and economy. Cinema can be seen as a typical example of this merging of the economic (film as a business enterprise) and the cultural (film as communication, or as entertainment), with an increasing emphasis on marketing and finance rather than creative work alongside a constant search for new ideas and sources of inspiration rather than organisational skills (Tomlison, 1999, 117-118).Jameson’s attempt to identify the fundamental moments in the development of the capitalist world acknowledges that each stage marks a dialectical expansion over the previous one (Jameson, 1991, 35). A market economy is followed by a stage of imperialism, with a subsequent monopolistic system, and then a post-industrial or multinational one, within an increasing process of commodification and colonisation of the Unconscious resulting from the rise of the media industry and the advertising industry (ibid., 36). The parallel cultural embodiments of these stages in realism, modernism and postmodernism are successive theoretical steps that support Jameson’s theory of an ‘explosion’ of culture and its permeation of society, ‘to the point at which everything in our social life (…) can be said to have become “cultural” in some original and yet untheorized sense’ (Jameson, 1991, 48).
3.2.3 Mass culture and deterritorialisation
The reflexive modernisation of contemporary society includes a mobile rather than a static concept of culture. In other words, culture is based not just on social practices related to a local, stable environment, but also on the flows and connections between different localities and cultures. From this perspective, globalisation promotes deterritorialisation, which means that the relationship
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of a culture to a geographical and local territory becomes weaker, with progressive loss of the existential comforts and assurances of local communal experience (Tomlinson, 1999, 107). The normative aspect of culture as a social force that inscribes values and regulates behaviour in a community is gradually challenged by the increasing decentralisation, or displacement, of collective experience and the progressive emergence of an individual culture based on more personal lifestyle and consumer choice (Lull, 2006, 44). This does not mean the complete dissolution of a collectivity related to a particular cultural context and territory, but rather an ability to change, to deconstruct, its own tradition together with other cultural models and reconstruct them in different forms (Elliott and Lemert, 2006, 58). This social practice is based on the new possibilities offered by the global changes already described, along with the availability of new technologies and the subsequent possibility of sharing flows of information and common patterns of symbolic imagery.The final result of this social development is not a univocal one, as it presents ambiguities and contradictions. From one perspective the loss of a communitarian ethic may bring a sense of personal or social displacement (Bauman, 2000, 99), together with the recrudescence of some reactionary sense of place (Massey, 1994, 236). On the other hand, positive aspects can be seen in the expansion of the communicational space and the creation of international networks of information and symbolic practices that can subvert a traditional hierarchy of cultural values (Curran and Morley, 2006a, 2). This process of dislocation is not a one-way process, ‘but one characterized by the same dialectical push-and-pull as globalization itself. Where there is deterritorialization there is also reterritorialization’ (Tomlinson, 1999, 148). According to this view, the end of a shared territory does not necessarily mean the end of locality, but its transformation into a more complex cultural space (ibid. 149). The mediation of language and of a wide communication system extends our ability to establish social relations over space and time. This time-space compression is an opportunity to accept the different sources of which our identity is composed, while recognising the contingency and ambivalence of our experience in modern society. The contribution of cinema, and Hollywood in particular, in this respect, tends towards creating a new institution that alters the boundaries of public life and national identity (May, L.,
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2000, 257). Gangster films and film noir, in particular, gave visibility to immigrant groups, while initiating a public debate over control of public symbols and the hegemony of different social groups and classes over others. In other words, films have contributed to a reterritorialisation of social experience, albeit a conflictual one, providing a terrain for confrontation between different systems of representation.3.2.4 Americanisation and popular culture: the ‘transatlantic gaze’
Some of the global changes in western societies described above can be illustrated practically in the development of the mass-media system in Europe and the US during the first half of the 20th century. American media were, from the beginnings of their development, oriented to a market-based system, relying heavily on marketing and technology as instruments for the penetration and expansion of their business into new global markets (Tunstall, 1977, 72). European counterparts, on the other hand, developed in much closer proximity to political institutions, in some cases (e.g. cinema) establishing strong relationships with contemporary artistic movements and political parties (Forbes and Street, 2000, 38). As a consequence, the American model of development grew much faster than its European counterpart, due to the bigger national audience that could be relied on locally, and therefore the possibility of investing bigger sums of money in the business. Moreover, unlike in Europe, the US economy never halted production during the two world wars, and at the same time gained technical and artistic expertise from the large migrations of people with experience in European showbusiness between the two wars (Balio, 1985).
All these advantages gave the Americans the lead in the mass-market world of media and showbusiness, and particularly in one of the United States’ most popular export successes: Hollywood. While European films had a reputation for their distinctive visual style and artistic mastery, American movies had major popular appeal, thanks to their spectacular cinematic style and powerful star system a vehicle of promotion and diffusion of Hollywood products throughout the world (Turner, 1993, 100). The invasion of the European markets by American products in the
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first half of the 20th century was to cause concerns about the integrity of national identities, the collapse of traditional cultures and the future of local film industries. Nevertheless, competition between the two sides of the Atlantic created decades of confrontation between different systems of representation, with reciprocal influences and imitations that established the basis for a worldwide repository of popular imagery and artistic inspiration for generations to come. In this respect, some authors consider the construction of American culture in terms of an ‘Imaginary’ construct, or as the social process of (re)production of images whereby England (or Europe) creates a speculative image of itself (Hearn and Melechi, 1992, 215). Borrowing the term ‘Imaginary’ from Lacan’s psychoanalytic work on the ‘mirror stage’, Hearn and Melechi argue that, as with the development of the child, a society such as England sees an image of itself in American popular products, in which it finds both something familiar and something strange. But this process of initial identification leaves room for subsequent misrecognition, as this image is based on a different system of representation. In the same way that the equivalent stage in psychoanalysis marks the moment when the child realises his/her own subjectivity, this encounter between two cultures at a societal level develops the ‘transatlantic gaze’ - gaze being a concept elaborated in film studies to express the relationship between the spectator and the film (Fuery, 2000, 6). Thus, while for Lacan the mirror stage is the subject establishes a sense of self through visual identification with its image in the mirror (Elliott, 2001, 53), for mass media theorists the cultural space between America and Europe constitutes ‘a rich iconography, a set of symbols, objects and artefacts which can be assembled and re-assembled by different groups in a limitless number of combinations’ (Hebdige, 1988, 74).From this point of view, then, the process of globalisation described above has a double dimension: a psychological one alongside the economic and sociological. Both elements, in fact, are based on a process of self-reflexivity. As human beings need something outside and other (the mirror) to define the imaginary contours of the self, so a culture, a system of representation, needs a reflection of its own image in another culture to visualise similarities and differences, possibilities and limitations in its own development. In both cases, mirror and popular narratives are imaginary, as ideal imaginary projections are always intrinsically false, leading to misrecognition and