"Baby one more time". What can you think of when you come across such title? Britney Spears? If you say that, you are not wrong. This article that I came across yesterday featured Britney Spears as their star and talked about her comeback after the fiasco at 2007 MTV VMA Awards and a couple of broken relationships. It summarised her life and her going-to-release album, "Circus".
Here, we witness the success of foreign media, which allows us to have access to foreign products. The case of Spears is definitely one excellent example to show how much we consume foreign products as events like when she got married, how she silenced all critics during her recent sweep at the 2008 MTV VMA Awards are brough to us immediately after an event occurred.
This article and Britney Spears demonstrated the Globalisation of Mass media where media companies attempt to acquire a larger share of the profits available in the international market. Although this article is not a product of the foreign media but the fact that Jive records (the company that Britney Spears belongs to) paved the way for Spears to be known in the Asia market shows the attempt to 'invade' overseas market as they deem their market as saturated. It is obvious that their market is saturated with other pop stars within the region like Christina Aguilera, Pink and Jessica Simpson risng to fame at the same time as Spears. I'm not too sure whether if it is considered as an attempt to acquire a larger share of the profits but since they have made Britney Spears known to various parts of Asia, I assume it is considered too?
If you do not agree with me regarding the point mentioned above, maybe you will agree with this? This article which is a local publication mostly feature the latest trend in town and stuff that will entertain youngsters. However, I came to notice that most of the entertainment section of this publication actually consists of foreign products especially foreign artists and their work. This would then illustrate that because the market of Asia is rather small and our resources are limited, we rely on foreign countries to provide entertainment.
Have you wonder why interregional trade within Asia is limited? Most of us are aware that the Asia market is rather small as our technology is limited. We are not equipped with the advance and high-technology that foreign countries especially the U.S. own. In addition, the different cultures in Asia also play a part in the media globalisation of mass media because the diversity of our cultures have turned us away from other products in fear that we do not understand and appreciate the culture of countries. On top of that, Asia has quite a few undeveloped countries whose economics are not capable of purchasing media products which thus makes the interregional trade increase.
Given all these reasons, it is not surprising that Singapore need to purchase lots of foreign products like from Taiwan, Hong Kong and the European countries. I'm not too sure if we purchase media products from India but I think the answer is 'yes' as recently in a newspaper, I saw this article which states a group of Indians gathering at one place to meet their idol, a Bollywood star, Shah Rukh Khan. Therefore,since Singapore is small and with limited technology, we are not able to produce alot of different products to suit the locals which then results in the media turning to overseas market to purchase productions that might appeal to us. For example, Mediacorp purchased alot of Korean shows which are suitable for families, Taiwan shows (in dialect) to suit our older population and European products like Harry Porter to suit the young in Singapore.
This leads me to think, since Singapore is a multi racial country, our production ideas would most probably come from the brains of the different race in Singapore, so, why is it that it does not appeal to foreign counties? We see Britney Spears hitting into the Singapore market but i doubt the Europeans know who is Stefanie Sun. That is to say, we see foreign products in our country but we do not see our products in foreign countries. We buy drama series from Taiwan such as the recent Taiwan hit "You are my destiny" but we do not see our drama series like the recent channel 8 show on volleyball being screen in Taiwan. Probably, this situation occurs because the foreign market is too saturated to take in any more production?
Nevertheless, the point here is that we consume alot of foreign products and they are very successful. Maybe after all, we have to admit that local productions are not as appealing as the foreign productions? This can be seen as we see how the upcoming "High School Musical 3" hit local whereas our own productions like "Money No Enough 2" stays within Asia or maybe just Malaysia whose lifestyle are similar to ours.
What I can hope now is probably to pray that one day, the foreign media will have a space for our productions or that one particular local production will interest the foreigners such that they open their market to us to make the trade a two way process.
6 comments:
Well, I guess it is the culture of Americanization across the world.
Notice how USA's presidential elections are watched by millions of viewers across the world, more than any other country?
And because Singapore is indeed small with a limited pool of talent (I disagree that technology is limited in Singapore), it is not easy to produce homegrown artistes.
Why is this is especially so? According to Gidden's theory of structuration, there is a pre-existing social structure shapes individual's behavior, to which individual's behavior, in turn, re-enacts and 'realize' the social structure. Singapore's culture is much entrenched in education (good grades, good grades, good grades) that sometimes we don't develop individual talents.
I agree with ee chin too that this could be due to the culture of Americanisation across the world.
However , I disagree with the fact that S'pore is a country which imports foreign products or rather favors foreign entertainment. Notice how local singer Hossan Leong is much loved by many and local comedy 'under one roof' and ' phua chu kang' is remembered by many people, young and old in singapore. If one were to look at the factors in which causes locals to turn from local products to foreign products, I would say that Americanisation is not the main cause of this situation. There are other factors like cliche plots , unawareness of the theatre , lousy productions etc. These can all be seen when we compare our local artistes to those in Bollywood and the less popular TVB artistes in Hong Kong. People desire novelties , excitment ,something different and unique. Our local artistes are not providing us these which thus explains why more heart wrenching korean shows are coming in , more meaningful foreign flims are appearing on arts central and more exciting and unique bollywood movies are appearing on vashantham.
Furthermore, to touch on the topic of us prefering foreign products to local . I would say the desire for us to savour or enjoy a foreign good is luxury . It at the same time shows our status in society as seen in the case of caviar and ikan bilis . belgium chocolates and chocolates made in malaysia or singapore. Another reason as we all know is the quality of the good. If you were to taste a locally made chocolate and a belgian chocolate , u would realise that the quality of the latter is better. It is smoother and creamier.thus, these are reasons why foreign products are preferred.
Singapore is small with an increasing population of foreign talents. Note how our population has been increasing due to these people and not babies.However, I disagree that technology is limited. We are a world class research hub , we also have an electronic industry , a financial industry etc.that are world renowned.We may need to import some stuff from abroad but note that we export many things too.
We should also understand that in a business , profit maximisation is the pirority of the company . And for an individual , satisfaction is foremost in his mind. Thus , we therefore shouldn't expect locals to support local products for the sake of patriotism . Unless local products are able to meet our satisfaction, until then,they will not be well received by the population.
I do agree that the reason why our market are filled with foreign goods is because of globalisation. And because globalisation is to a large extent Americanisation, we are very in tune with American culture and its consumption of products. Only recently has globalisation been what it really is; the influence of other countries such as China and india in trade and Korea and Japan in entertainment coming into our societies.
However, the fact that we still look up and follow a lot of the culture of the Western world is because of colonisation. Our ancestors regarded the Western colonial masters as being superior, and perhaps that mentally is still carried by us, the later generations? We call Western people living in Singapore "expatriates" while the other people (mostly Asians) we call foreigners or even foreign workers!
But, there are other reasons why Western culture, especially in the field of entertainment is so widely-received in Asia. One of the reasons is the sophistication of their marketing strategies. Their strategies of capturing the widest range of consumers for profit-maximising purposes are indeed very successful. And once a society has bought into a specific practice, it is hard to change its perceptions and preferences. Thus, the effect of the people buying into Western culture is long-lasting and takes very long to alter.
Yeah, our own productions are not appealing. This is probably due to the fact we are a high context culture. Just take a look at money no enough 2. There are so many message that one has to have a similar culture in order to understand the humor and inner meaning of the movie. Thus, this would not appeal to Westerners as they have a generally low context culture and moreover, their culture are very much different from Singapore's.
To me globalization has two different meanings.It is the influence of cultural, economic, and political factors of countries on other countries. After reading some of The World is Flat I began to wonder if it was Americanization. The author talked about going to India and other European countries and seeing American companies like HP and Texas Instrument. A quote from the book says, ” We could be sitting here, somebody form New York, London, Boston, San Francisco, all live. And maybe the implementation is in Singapore, so the Singapore person could also be live here…that’s globalzation.” It is absolutely amazing how people from countries on the other side of the world can be communticating by video live in another country. If you put culture in as part of globalization, you could say that it happens all over the world. Almost every city in the United States has a Chinatown or a Little Italy. They have McDonald’s every where in other countries. In fact this summer I went to Ireland and ate at Burger King. It wasnt the same as the Burger King here but it was the same concept. I am very new to this globalization thing so I am not sure if I am anywhere close to be correct about any of this but as I think about it more and more I realize that it is surrounding us.
Britney is one of the pioneers to the pop scene of blondes, it is little wonder why she is so popular today.
Her management company expended a lot of resources to make her to have the star quality although she might not be a good singer, we still see her selling millions of albums and having number one songs on the radio charts.
Post a Comment