The Last Place 489
angela morgenstern writes "Buddhist Bhutan was the last place on earth to legalize television. Trading traditional practices for daytime soaps and WWF, many fear that western influence will trample the culture." A whole set of articles about the effect of American television on one of the most remote places on earth - it's official, there is no escape from American "culture".
"...all for about $5 a month." (Score:3, Interesting)
Is that the cost of a bag of red chillies in the United States ? How much buying power is $5 in Bhutan ? So these people get to watch adverts for cars/food/luxuries that they will not be able to purchase.
Never has something so influential as television (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Travelling around the US you see that such companies have had, what I believe, to be a very negative effect. Everywhere you go it all looks the same, tastes the same, hears the same (same music industry manufactured "pop"), etc. Local and regional flavour is lost. This is great if you like Taco Bell, only drinking Coke and listening to Britney. But there is a lot more to life than that!
Why is it popular in other countries? Well, 2 reasons:
1) The *good* thing about the US - **freedom**. You live a very privelidged life compared to many people of the world. Many people of the world see the US and freedom as being very related things. So when they are given a bit of freedom they have previously lacked, they gravitate towards such things. Think as a teenager and how you behaved once given freedom from parents.
2) This is a not so good thing about the US - **money**. Consider the situation in Bhutan as an example. At the moment there are local (very small) companies that make soft drinks - these won't be copies of Coke, etc., but will be genuine different soft drinks you've never experienced. As Bhutan opens itself up, Coca Cola will move in and either set up a new company to manufacture their drinks, or buy existing ones. People will buy their drinks first of all because of #1 above - it's new, it's cool, etc. Within a very short time, there will be no local soft drinks made. The reason for this will *not* be because Coke is better and people only want it. It will be because the Coca Cola company have the financial muscle to completely control the soft drinks industry of that country. This is not good.
#2 applies to things much more than soft drinks, TV, etc. When you're talking about 3rd world countries and things like agricultural seed supplies and strictly controlled genetically engineered crops, this can have a very bad effect. It's very realistic for companies akin to Monsanto to completely control who areas of agricultural production in these kinds of countries.
So if you believe "raionalism" is #2 above, and this is a good thing, you can surely extrapolate this to meaning there will eventually be only 1 of anything in the world - a single soft drink we all only buy, a single type of car, etc. I don't think this will be a nice place to live.
Left uncontrolled, #2 will eventually remove much of the choice and freedom in the world, thereby harming the greatest thing about the US, #1.
American Culture (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been reading some of the comments and all I have to say is this: don't short change yourself or your culture, be aware of the things that have real value and give these to the world.
Re:Spread of US "culture" (Score:2, Interesting)
I think a more interesting report will be "how the marketting men got on" in 5 years time. Can they really understand a culture so different ? Bhutan is classified as one of the poorest countries but there is very little real poverty. It is hard for us to relate to a country that does not need money, so we call them poor. We think of poverty as not having a TV, extreme poverty as not having food. So how do you classify poverty in a country where food is there on the trees all year round? Where people happily feed a stranger just because he is passing at meal time? Where people will work for no wages because those around them will look after them? I do agree that their culture will lose from TV but I think we have far more to learn from them. The children in Bhutan already wear t-shirts and trainers so this is not a big step but it is a step further away from the beauty of what they had.
Bhutanese Culture will cease to exist. (Score:3, Interesting)
When I was young, we were Alaskans. We had our own culture and music both the old (native alaskans) and the new Russians and Americans had forged a unique identity that was Alaskan. Then TV came. By the time I left High School you could see the changes.
My point is well illustrated by this story:
I graduated high school in 1992, the kids from our class did the Christmas dance theme on some cute "Stairway to Heaven" or other schmaltzy thing. The kids that were class of 1994 did "Christmas in da 'Hood". The '94 kids had gang violence in their classrooms. Kids bringing guns to school (with the intent of shooting other kids and not to show off their new hunting rifle), weapons, and grafiti became problems.
The ironic thing was that the younger classes were smaller ours was the largest graduating class.
I remember all the Rappers and the oppressed gansta' types sulking about the remote and wild wilderness of one of the remotest places on earth. Some people run away to the untouched beauty of Alaska to escape inner-city grime. How ironic that an aspiring young rap-star would be cursed with living in a place where there was hardly any crime and the government paid you to live there.
If religion is the opiate of the masses, then television is the crystal-meth of the glue huffing, crack-smoking, I-got-the-munchies masses.
Bhorgtan (Score:2, Interesting)
Article Here [cnn.com]
Supermarkets and Swatchs (Score:1, Interesting)
a)You get *authentic* Swiss chocolates in *all* countries.
b) Swatch watches are actually cheaper in Singapore.
c) It becomes depressing after a while, but supermarkets in *all* countries feature the same ice-cream brands (Nestle, Walls etc).
d) In Singapore (and to a large extent India as well), most of the costlier houses feature Swiss architecture. No, don't look at me, I really can't figure it out. Houses in Bukit Timah Road (in Singapore), Colaba in Bombay (India) and in Zurich seem exactly the same; the same sloping roofs, the same tiles and the same cars (Suzuki Altos, Toyotas, Pegueots).
e) Thanks to Ikea (apparently), beanbags are now a constant feature in middle-class houses all over.
f) Most Indian movies are shot in Switzerland.
g) Singapore's largest theater features Hindi movies only.
Now, what was that again about American softpower...?
Re:American Culture Not That Bad (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, I've seen that on Ricky Lake and Jenny Jones.
"Oh no, you're not normal! We have to change/brainwash you so you can fit in with the rest!"
Television is like Alcohol (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A sudden revelation (Score:3, Interesting)
In which society is propaganda most important, in a dictatorship or a democracy?
For more on this subject, read Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky's [zmag.org] Manufacturing Consent, which explains how the seven media filters make sure nothing nasty (like, for instance, the truth) reaches the public. It's a quite heavy book to read, but very interesting.
Also, for brilliant US political satire comics, something I discovered yesterday: This Modern World [thismodernworld.com], by Tom Tomorrow. (I don't think the penguin is related to Linux though.)
Re:American Culture Not That Bad (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, right past the "tolerant" americans holding their picket signs, their list from the Nuremberg Files, and their tote bag full of weapons which has "choose life" printed on the outside.
if i want to have a gay marraige, I can go to vermont or new mexico.
We're so "tolerant" that 4% of our state governments allow gay marriage. And then there's always the issue of dealing with our "tolerant" neo-nazis, Aaron McKinneys, and "tolerant" churches and conservative groups?
if i want to claim glaucoma and smoke a fat tasty spliff, I go to Cali (id rather fly to amsterdam, but whatev).
I'll agree a lot of people are tolerant to light drug use, but my problem with it is that as long as it's widespread and illegal, it makes a lot of people arrestable for something the majority of the public accepts.
Funny that you dont realize how much of a role intolerance plays in the two international issues you addressed. If im living in Israel and Im Palestinian, you bet your ass I'll be seeing some intolerance. If im a Catholic living in the wrong Neghborhood in Belfast, you bet your ass I'll be seeing some intolerance. But if I'm any of these living in any neighborhood in the U.S. I'll bet your ass that no one will give a flying fuck.
You're mostly correct as far as extent, but your colorfully metaphored assertion that there is complete racial apathy here in the USA is a little bit inaccurate. For example, what about a black family living in an all-white community in a southern state, or a young married couple moving into a community of mostly retirees? While in most cases, we've reached the point where physical violence is rare between these groups, there is certianly at least a small degree of intolerance.
Re:"...all for about $5 a month." (Score:1, Interesting)
Progress is dependant on the time scale used. If the scope of progress were in 1998, many would say that Enron and Worldcom were great examples of progress. Expand the time scale a bit and someapparent progresses resolve to dead-end scenerios.
Large scale corruption is a dead-end scenerio. It's toasted China over and over again, and is eating away at us too. Lots of other dead ends. These days it seems people are emulating survival instincts of roaches or rats as methods of progress. Not a very pretty picture for humanity if such methodologies turn out to be the most succesful. But that's a whole 'nother can of worms, where we get into how anarchy is for the rich and zero tolerence is for the poor.
Mod me "Off Topic" if you will, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's face it, what passes for culture in, say, Northern Europe is the art produced to the taste of a small elite that maintained its position through violence and threats of violence.
In much of the rest of the world, what passes for culture involves things like clitorectomy, honor killing of women, huge rates of infant mortality, etc.
What's America got by comparison? Well, an empowered middle class that gets to do pretty much what it wants. Hence we have backyard barbeques, tailgate parties, Budweiser, The Simpsons, large bellies, and early cholesterol death.
And guess what? We like it like that!
Now, don't get me wrong, there is room in the fringes for the next Mozart. In fact, bring it on! If we like it, we'll make you a multi-millionaire.
You see, that's the beauty of American culture: it's a total democracy of taste, and the mob gets to vote with its pocket book.
Now, I know that the elites in other parts of the world just totally gnash their teeth at this. That's what elites do when confronted with deomcracy.
Well, get used to it.
Some people are crazy (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't Ghettoize the Bhutanese (Score:2, Interesting)
What's so great about local culture that it must be preserved At All Costs?
What if these locals want to watch American television? Who are you to tell them that they are obligated to go meditate on snow or sing Bhutanese chants instead? Are the Bhutanese somehow obligated to maintain their current culture forever? What's it to you? And what happened to the idea of American culture being enriched by the contributions from abroad? Does it only work for us?
I'm not trying to annoy here, this is a serious question. If so-called cultural imperialism is done by request of the imperialized, what's the damage?
Re:Americans who travel abroad (Score:3, Interesting)
She's from Thailand (Bangkok), and they get their share of American tourists. Her stereotypical idea of an American, based on her experiences, is that of a loud-mouthed, demanding person that's always smacking gum and throwing money around. Once she moved here to the US she saw things alot differently.
The problem with foreign perception of Americans is that about the only Americans that travel and make it overseas are rich jackasses. They treat people like shit here and going overseas doesn't magically change that. So other countries get the worst upper-crust nimrods and the rest of us nice folks take the rap for them. I think if most foreigners that hate Americans actually come visit Texas or some other state for a year, they'll learn what Americans are really like.