Globalization

While I found Bamyeh’s article, “Postnationalism” interesting, of the two readings for this week Halle’s article, “Apprehending Transnationalism” more intriguing. The arguments and examples in Halle’s article were just more detailed and interesting to me than those in Bamyeh’s. Halle goes into detail about how the world is losing its different cultures, how “the hand-carved gods of ritual practices” have gone from a part of a countries culture to “shower curtain motifs for ‘African’ or ‘South Sea’ style bathrooms” (14-15). Halle spoke of globalization in a way that no other article or book we have read has really touched on, he focused a lot on the arts. Transnationalism (globalization) began mainly after the spread of the Internet, and through the Internet cultures borders are becoming more and more hazy. He spent a good amount of time writing on “the consumer [being] lured by clever advertising” and go see the movie, read the book, or buy the item without knowing its actual quality (17). This is something that interests me because everyone says to read the twilight series, but in the same sentence they mention that the writing is terrible. Why would I buy the book if I know the writing is bad? Because of advertising. Also, in Entourage, the team is able to convince people to buy a movie solely based on the trailer. I find the power of advertising to be astonishing.

One of the most interesting sentences in the article was about how the world is now “colonized.” Halle’s example was that there is “no need...anymore to justify the opening of another McDonald’s in Beijing as an act of civilization” (13). Another aspect of Halle’s article that I thought was positive was how he took into account what types of films were being compared. He mentions a writing of Kerry Seagrave that had major bias because it compared “American popular film to French art film,” instead of comparing Hollywood movies to French popular films (16). I thought it made Halle’s statements more viable that he took the initiative to compare correctly.

Do you agree with Halle’s statements in this article? Is the world growing continually more and more similar? Or do you believe that there will be some sort of cultural revival? I would also like to know if you have seen films from other countries, such as Amèlie, or if you stick with American made films.