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Chapter 7 Popular Culture and Intercultural Communication

Martin, Experiencing Intercultural Communication, 6e

Chapter 7

Popular Culture and Intercultural Communication

Study Objectives

After studying the material in this chapter, students should be able to accomplish the following

objectives.

1. Define popular culture.

2. Identify some types of popular culture.

3. Describe characteristics of popular culture.

4. Explain why it is important to understand popular culture in intercultural communication.

5. Discuss why people consume or resist specific cultural texts.

6. Understand how cultural texts influence cultural identities.

7. Discuss how cultural group portrayals in popular culture forms influence intercultural

communication.

8. Suggest effects of the global domination of U.S popular culture.

Key Terms

• Cultural identities

• Cultural imperialism

• Culture industries

• Cultural texts

• Electronic colonialism

• Folk culture

• Media imperialism

• Popular culture

• Reader profiles

Detailed Chapter Outline

• Culture is central to intercultural communication, but people often overlook some of the

meanings of culture in everyday life.

• One kind of culture that is often overlooked by intercultural communication scholars is

popular culture.

o But popular culture plays a very important role in how people understand the world,

Chapter 7 Popular Culture and Intercultural Communication

Martin, Experiencing Intercultural Communication, 6e

helping them reinforce their sense of who they are and confirming their worldviews.

I. Viewing Others through Popular Culture

• The complexity of popular culture is often overlooked in the society.

• People express concerns about the social effects of popular culture—for example, the effects

of television violence on children or the relationship between heterosexual pornography and

violence against women.

• Yet most people look down on the study of popular culture, as if there is nothing of

significance to learn there. This attitude can make it difficult to investigate and discuss

popular culture.

o Many U.S. film, music, and television stars, such as Beyoncé, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie,

Ryan Gosling, and Jennifer Lopez, are also popular outside the United States, creating

an uneven flow of cultural texts—cultural artifacts that convey norms, values, and

beliefs—between the United States and other nations.

o By contrast, U.S. Americans are rarely exposed to popular culture from outside the

United States.

• The dominance of American English and U.S. popular culture makes U.S. Americans more

dependent on an American-centric popular culture which can also lead to cultural

imperialism.

II. What Is “Popular Culture”?

• Sometimes it may seem obvious what constitutes popular culture and what does not.

o For example, people often consider soap operas, reality television shows, and romance

novels to be popular culture, while symphonies, operas, and the ballet are not.

o Popular culture often is seen as populist, in that it includes forms of contemporary

culture that are made popular by and for the people through their mass consumption of

these products.

• Popular culture can be said to have four significant characteristics: (1) It is produced by

culture industries, (2) it is different from folk culture, (3) it is everywhere, and (4) it fills a

social function.

• John Fiske, professor of communication arts, points out that popular culture is nearly always

produced by what are called culture industries within a capitalist system that sees the

products of popular culture as commodities to be sold for profit.

• Folk culture refers to the traditional rituals and traditions that maintain cultural group identity.

• Popular culture also is ubiquitous.

o Not only is it ubiquitous, but it also serves an important social function..

• The ways in which people negotiate their relationships to popular culture are complex. It is

Chapter 7 Popular Culture and Intercultural Communication

Martin, Experiencing Intercultural Communication, 6e

this complexity that makes understanding the role of popular culture in intercultural

communication so difficult.

o Clearly, people are not passive receivers of this deluge of popular culture.

o They are, in fact, quite active in their consumption of or resistance to popular culture.

III. U.S. Popular Culture and Power

• One of the dynamics of intercultural communication is power.

• If people largely view other cultural groups through the lens of popular culture, then one

needs to think about the power relations that are embedded in these popular culture dynamics.

A. Global Circulation of Images/Commodities

• Much of U.S. popular culture is circulated worldwide.

o Some media scholars have noted that the U.S. film industry earns far more money

outside the United States than from domestic box-office sales.

• Many other U.S. media are widely available outside the United States, including television

and newspapers.

B. Popular Culture from Other Cultures

• Although U.S. popular culture tends to dominate the world market, the power of popular

culture from outside the United States can also make important impacts in the world.

o For example, the James Bond books and movies have roots in Britain but have been

exported to the international market. The appropriation of the British character into

U.S. ideological and economic terrain complicates arguments about the dominance

of U.S. popular culture products.

o The popularity of Japanese animé or cartoons reflects another non-U.S. popular

culture phenomenon. The fascination with animé highlights the ability of non-U.S.

popular culture to become popular internationally.

C. Cultural Imperialism

• It is difficult to measure the impact of the U.S. and Western media and popular culture on

the rest of the world.

• The discussions about media imperialism (domination or control through the media),

electronic colonialism (domination or exploitation utilizing technological forms), and

cultural imperialism (domination through the spread of cultural products), which began

in the 1920s, continue today.

Chapter 7 Popular Culture and Intercultural Communication

Martin, Experiencing Intercultural Communication, 6e

o These are three of the terms that are often used to discuss the larger phenomenon of

one culture dominating another, typically through economic domination and the

infusion of cultural products that change the cultural values of the recipient culture.

▪ While media imperialism emphasizes this domination through media systems,

electronic colonialism draws attention to the technological means of

domination.

▪ The interrelationships among economics, nationalism, and culture make it

difficult to determine how significant cultural imperialism might be.

▪ In his survey of the cultural imperialism debates, scholar John Tomlinson

identified five different ways of thinking about cultural imperialism: (1) as

cultural domination, (2) as media imperialism, (3) as nationalist discourse, (4)

as a critique of global capitalism, and (5) as a critique of modernity.

• Popular culture plays an enormous role in relations among nations worldwide.

• It is through popular culture that people try to understand the dynamics of other cultures

and nations.

IV. Consuming and Resisting Popular Culture

• In order to maintain their identities, as well as to reshape them, people often turn to popular

culture.

o At times, they seek out cultural texts; at other times, they try to avoid certain texts.

A. Consuming Popular Culture

• Popular culture texts do not have to win over the majority of people to be “popular.”

• In fact, people often seek out or avoid specific forms of popular culture.

• Although there is unpredictability in the ways in which people navigate popular culture,

certain patterns are evident.

o Advertising departments of popular magazines even make their reader profiles

available to potential advertisers.

o These portrayals of readership demographics indicate what the magazine believes its

readership “looks” like.

• An important point is that popular culture serves important cultural functions that are

connected to peoples cultural identities—people’s view of themselves in relation to the

cultures they belong to.

• Readers actively negotiate their way through cultural texts such as magazines, consuming

those that fulfill important personal and social needs.

B. Resisting Popular Culture

Chapter 7 Popular Culture and Intercultural Communication

Martin, Experiencing Intercultural Communication, 6e

• At times, people actively seek out particular popular culture texts to consume. At other

times, they resist cultural texts.

• People often resist particular forms of popular culture by refusing to engage in them.

• People resist popular culture because of the impact that outside cultural influences might

have on a nation.

• People resist popular culture in many ways, and organizations have emerged to monitor

media images and coverage.

o For example, Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) monitors anti-

Asian images in the media and organizes resistance to them. Gay and Lesbian

Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) serves a similar function by focusing on gay

and lesbian media images.

• Resistance can happen on an individual level or a social level.

V. Representing Cultural Groups

• People often are introduced to other cultures through the lens of popular culture. And these

introductions can be quite intimate.

o For example, through movies, the audience sees and enters the private lives of people

they do not know, in ways they never could as tourists.

• Because some groups are not portrayed as often in popular culture, it is easier to stereotype

them.

o Conversely, some groups are portrayed so often in popular culture that it is difficult to

stereotype them.

A. Migrants’ Perceptions of Mainstream Culture

• Ethnographers and other scholars have crossed international and cultural boundaries to

examine the influence of popular culture.

• It can be observed that popular culture images are often influential in constructing

particular ways of understanding cultural groups other than one’s own.

• The use of popular culture to learn about another culture should not be surprising.

o Many teachers encourage their students to use popular culture not only to improve

their language skills but also to help them learn many of the nuances of another

culture.

B. Popular Culture and Stereotyping

• There are many familiar stereotypes of ethnic groups represented in the media.

Chapter 7 Popular Culture and Intercultural Communication

Martin, Experiencing Intercultural Communication, 6e

• Stereotypes are powerful ways that people organize their perception of the world and the

society they live in.

o They help guide people throughout everyday lives, but they can also constrain and

affect how others interact and see each other.

o Sensitivity to stereotyping is an important part of intercultural interaction and

conflict.

Discussion Questions

1. What do we know about places that we have never visited, and how do we know it?

2. Why do people select some popular culture forms over others?

3. How do the choices we make about which forms of popular culture to consume influence the

formation of our cultural identity?

4. What strategies can people use to resist popular culture?

5. What types of assumptions might Desperate Housewives or American Idol lead people

outside the country to make about Americans?

6. Give examples of popular culture and folk culture. What determines each category?

7. Give examples of electronic colonialism.

8. What is your favorite television show? What values does it embody/illustrate?

9. Pressing for gay rights and free speech might be considered a type of cultural imperialism.

What do you think?

10. How can fear of a particular cultural group be perpetuated through popular culture?

Classroom Exercises and Chapter Activities

1. Cultural Perceptions Exercise: This exercise is designed to encourage students to think about

the information they receive about other cultures from different forms of print media. Prior to

class, collect examples from the U.S. media portraying people from other cultures (for

example, the babushka as a representation of Polish people/women) and images of the United

States in foreign newspapers and magazines (most libraries have an international section).

You might ask students the following questions:

• Do they tend to accept images of other cultures in the U.S. media as true

representations?

• Do they want other people to accept images of the United States in foreign media as

representative of the whole country? Why?

• Why do the media choose to portray people the way they do?

• What effect do particular portrayals have on intercultural communication?

2. Defining “Popular” Exercise: The purpose of this class discussion is to explore the notion of

Chapter 7 Popular Culture and Intercultural Communication

“popular” with students. To do so, you might ask students the following questions:

• What is popular today in movies, magazines, and music?

• What makes a film, a video, or a magazine popular?

• Who decides what is and is not popular?

• Why do people differ in their perceptions of what is popular?

• How does popular culture influence us today?

3. Video Assignment: This project is designed to encourage students to explore how popular

culture provides us with information about other cultures. Instruct students to pick a video

that portrays a specific cultural group or interactions between two cultural groups. Have

students view the video and write a brief report on it. In the report, they could address the

following questions:

• What did you learn about the culture(s) portrayed in this video?

• How accurately do you think the directors portrayed the culture(s)? Why?

• Do you think people would perceive this cultural group in a negative or positive manner

after watching this video?

• If people saw this cultural group on this video and then met with a member of the

cultural group, how might watching the video affect their communication with the

person?

This assignment could be modified to have students watch one movie created in the United

States and another about the same culture created outside the United States. (These are

available at Blockbuster or through Netflix.com.) Ask the students to identify differences and

similarities in the films.

4. Exported Popular Culture Assignment: Have students identify examples of television

programs that are popular exports to other countries. Assign students to watch one of them

and write a critique addressing the following ideas:

• How are U.S. Americans portrayed in this show?

• Which cultural groups are portrayed?

• If this show were your first introduction to the culture of the people in the United States,

what would you think about them?

• How might the portrayal of U.S. Americans in this show influence intercultural

communication with the people who see the show but have no experience with U.S.

Americans?

5. Consuming Pop Culture Journal Assignment: This exercise will help students clarify their

relationship with popular culture and help them determine to what extent they are influenced

by popular culture. Ask the students to be detectives in their own homes by examining the

Chapter 7 Popular Culture and Intercultural Communication

labels on their clothes, their home decorations or specific collections (e.g., Mickey Mouse,

Winnie the Pooh, Barbie, or the recent retro trend that recycles things from the 1950s and

’60s), and the magazines and newspapers they buy. In their journal entry, students should

identify those items they believe are examples of pop culture. Then they should discuss the

level of influence these items hold for them, the values or ideals the artifact represents (these

may not be obvious), and whether they could resist any of these items.

6. Alternative to Consuming Pop Culture Journal Assignment: Have students bring to class at

least one item from their home that they consider to be representative of pop culture. In small

groups, ask students to share their item and answer the questions in an assignment.