Limited Viewpoints

When I was six or seven me and my family travelled to Mexico.  At the time, I had no idea how lucky I was compared to my classmates to have the opportunity to experience another culture.  As opposed to going to the typical tourist attractions, my parents decided to take us to local businesses such as the markets and shops geared towards locals and not visitors.  One of these places we visited was the local Mall.  While we were there we felt it appropriate to try the local cuisine.  We settled on a pizza place and ordered a pizza named the Americano.  What could go wrong with that?  Soon we have a pizza to split between the six of us.  The Americano is a pizza with thousand island dressing in the place of sauce, covered in three meats.  These meats were vienna sausages, bologna and mystery meat.  Needless to say we were surprised.  Is this what people in Mexico really thought we ate?  This issue goes for both sides, we base our ideas of other cultures of media we see, which often portrays exaggerated cliches, a slippery slope for understanding other cultures.

With the rise of the media worldwide, a variety of cultures have been allowed to share parts of what makes them unique with a worldwide audience.  In America, one can rent a movie made in India, allowing us a unique though often somewhat unrealistic glance into another people groups culture.  The issue that we may be having in America, is the general lack of interest in other people's cultures.

First we can define the word media.  The definition of media according to Intercultural Communication  refers to the modes, means, or channels through which messages are communicated (Sorrells 2012).  Media has effected us on a global scale on both very positive and very negative ways.  When talking about media, it is also important to understand the difference between media and popular culture.  While these terms are often used interchangeably (I am guilty) they are in fact different concepts.  Popular culture is defined as systems and artifacts that the general populous or broad masses within a society share or about which most people have some understanding (Brummet 1994).  These terms can be interrelated, as the media often helps to expand the reach of popular culture both regionally and worldwide.

 I don't mean to overgeneralize and say that NOBODY born and bred in the USA is ignorant to other cultural experiences, but rather that the culture in general is not apt to encourage other countries media to impinge on the ever growing American dominance.  Americans run the risk of becoming increasingly ignorant to other countries and cultural values and norms.  When the majority of the exposure Americans get to other cultures is through limited media aspects, often movies or books, we begin to perceive other cultures by cliches portrayed in mass produced fantasized stories.

I believe that extreme ethnocentrism, or the belief that our culture is the best, mixed with lack of exposure will ultimately lead to the next generation being sorely out of touch with other peoples cultures.  Globalization may have allowed us the opportunity to be exposed to other cultures, beliefs, and ideals, but ignorance to the benefit that the exposure could provide may lead to some troubling difficulties in the future.

Other countries import media from the US into their countries, while in the US considerably less importing of media is done, while plenty of export is.  Often, when we do import other countries media, we may not even know that we are doing it.  For instance, the incredibly popular sitcom in the US named "The Office" was actually originated, with different actors of course, in the United Kingdom.  While no copyrights were infringed in the transfer, people in the US often times don't know that the idea for the show did not originate on American soil.  Also, by liking and reproducing the idea, but Americanizing it, it lost in sort of cultural exposure value it may have had to US citizens.