Mass Comm Project: Students Perception of Western Television Programmes(Part Seven)

2.6       THE CONCEPT OF CULTURAL IMPERIALISM THROUGH THE BROADCAST MEDIA

The term imperialism occurs in different spheres of our human endeavours. The term Imperialism is associated with political, economical, social and cultural domination by a powerful nation over a less powerful nation. In this case, they western countries (developed countries) appear to be dominating the third world countries that happen to have inadequate technological power to compete with these technologically advanced countries of the world.
A man’s pride lies in his confidence and his personality is greatly nurtured in his culture. Man is essentially the product of his culture; it beats and moulds a person into a particular shape. Culture makes one speak, dance, think and behave in a particular way. As soon as a child is born, nature assigns him the task of actualizing himself through culture; it is culture that makes one Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba, Kanuri, Tiv, Eggon etc. Nigerian youths are the most vulnerable victims of cultural imperialism. Most of them can no longer speak the Nigerian local languages. Our mode of dressing has been totally distorted by western civilization through foreign films and broadcast media content. Today

we seem not to cherish our cultural attire the way we cherish western wears. Our youths especially the females have prefer to go naked on the streets as against our culture, micro minis with handless tops has this to show as the result of  media content coming from the broadcast media. Most youths in Nigeria can no longer sing our local songs, eat Nigerian local food nor abide by the Nigerian cultural values. They prefer to speak Queens English. Even those who are born and bred in the city in the average Nigerian homes can neither speak Queens English nor their local dialect. They are masters in speaking “Pidgin English‟ which is an adulterated version of English language. They also prefer western attires like suit, jackets and trendy wears patterned after the values of western cultures. Even though some weather conditions warrant these wears, the habitual inclination to western lifestyles at the expense of the Nigerian traditional lifestyles amounts to cultural adoption by the Nigerian youths. These youths master hip hop songs as sung by western musicians. The young Nigerian ladies are exceptionally used to patronizing fast food owned mostly by international food vendors like UAC Foods. The obvious moral decline in Africa and in Nigeria in particular is indubitable. This moral decadence has permeated almost all the spheres of our culture. Moral consciousness has been equated with awkward and odd lifestyle. All as a result of Africa’s careless and failure to hold their culture with high esteem. Gone were the days where parents hide their faces in shame when the daughters are found to be non-virgin by their husbands during wed lock. Nigerian youths are increasingly adopting wholesale cultural values that are alien and not compatible with the Nigerian way of life. The Nigerian youth may not be totally responsible for lack of appreciation of our culture. Famous among vehicles of cultural imperialism are the mass media. Television, with its visual, audio and motion capacities ranks among the most influential medium of communication in recent times. Television programs are transmitted at the local level to the local audience, national level to the national audience who cut across different ethnic groups and religion, and global level to the international community or audience who are situated within different countries of different continents. Global television, which includes satellite transmission of programs from one country to many other countries, is the most vibrant instrument of cultural imperialism. Global television transmits programs with one or two of the following three characteristics namely: information, education and entertainment. New categories of programs include edutainment and infotainment. These are postmodern coinages that involve education, entertainment, and information qualities in a piece of media programs. Famous among the programs under these categories include news, drama, adverts, musicals and sports. On global television, these programs are transmitted mostly from western countries in Europe including Germany, England, Italy and United States of America, and also recently from Asian countries like Japan and China. The overall impact of foreign or global television program on Nigerian youths is a significant switch from local to foreign cultures and adoption of global life styles. The Cultural Imperialism Theory addresses western dominance of the media of developing countries. In 1973, Herb Schiller proposed the initial use of the term ‘cultural imperialism’ in a bid to effectively describe how multinational corporations, especially the media of developed countries dominate developing countries in his work on “Communication and Cultural Domination” (Spring 2000 Theory Workbook in Heman and Atsushi, 2008). The theory describes the nature of the media as such that promotes a one-way; top-down transmission system from a dominant country to a dominated country. According to Wilson in Wilson (2010 p.106), “cultural imperialism is the practice of promoting, distinguishing, separating, or artificially injecting the culture of one society into another…” It refers to either a “forced acculturation of a subject population” or the voluntary embrace of a foreign culture by individuals of their volition. Over the years, the concept of cultural imperialism has been revisited by various scholars. According to Fleming (2004), the dominance of the media by foreign culture can lead to a process of “cultural mix” – a blend of both local and foreign culture, resulting from consistent exposure to foreign culture. This could lead to the development of a homogenous society whereby the weaker culture conforms to the dominant cultural ideas that are likely to undermine indigenous culture.  Cultural imperialism has placed developing countries (such as Nigeria) in a position of risk as foreign (western) contents constitute cultural frames of reference to viewers who begin to nurse a degrading notion of their indigenous culture. There is also the issue of what Kinzt (2007) refer to as a deliberate design of local content to reflect “western formula models” through a hybridization of indigenous values and foreign values. Often times, there is a contradiction in the mix of these cultural values, which contradicts the indigenous culture of the viewers.

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