Recombinant culture is when cultural productions such as television shows are rehashed in a series of sequels. [1] The term was introduced by Todd Gitlin in 1983 to describe how in American television networks would create and promote sequels and spin-off over original shows, with "hits" being very rare and "a blatant imitation stands a good chance of getting bigger numbers than a show that stands on its own". [1] The phenomenon has been attributed to advertising-supported media. [1] Examples include the Superman series. [2] Positive examples of recombinant culture have included sampling in music. [3]
Cultural imperialism comprises the cultural dimensions of imperialism. The word "imperialism" describes practices in which a country engages culture to create and maintain unequal social and economic relationships among social groups. Cultural imperialism often uses wealth, media power and violence to implement the system of cultural hegemony that legitimizes imperialism.
Ethnocentrism in social science and anthropology—as well as in colloquial English discourse—means to apply one's own culture or ethnicity as a frame of reference to judge other cultures, practices, behaviors, beliefs, and people, instead of using the standards of the particular culture involved. Since this judgment is often negative, some people also use the term to refer to the belief that one's culture is superior to, or more correct or normal than, all others—especially regarding the distinctions that define each ethnicity's cultural identity, such as language, behavior, customs, and religion. In common usage, it can also simply mean any culturally biased judgment. For example, ethnocentrism can be seen in the common portrayals of the Global South and the Global North.
Imperialism is the practice, theory or attitude of maintaining or extending power over foreign nations, particularly through expansionism, employing both hard power and soft power. Imperialism focuses on establishing or maintaining hegemony and a more or less formal empire. While related to the concepts of colonialism, imperialism is a distinct concept that can apply to other forms of expansion and many forms of government.
A remake is a film, television series, video game, song or similar form of entertainment that is based upon and retells the story of an earlier production in the same medium—e.g., a "new version of an existing film". A remake tells the same story as the original but uses a different set of casts, and may use actors from the original, alter the theme, or change the flow and setting of the story. A similar but not synonymous term is reimagining, which indicates a greater discrepancy between, for example, a movie and the movie it is based on.
Media imperialism is an area in the international political economy of communications research tradition that focuses on how "all Empires, in territorial or nonterritorial forms, rely upon communications technologies and mass media industries to expand and shore up their economic, geopolitical, and cultural influence." In the main, most media imperialism research examines how the unequal relations of economic, military and cultural power between an imperialist country and those on the receiving end of its influence tend to be expressed and perpetuated by mass media and cultural industries.
Linguistic imperialism or language imperialism is occasionally defined as "the transfer of a dominant language to other people". This language "transfer" comes about because of imperialism. The transfer is considered to be a sign of power; traditionally military power but also, in the modern world, economic power. Aspects of the dominant culture are usually transferred along with the language. In spatial terms, indigenous languages are employed in the function of official (state) languages in Eurasia, while only non-indigenous imperial (European) languages in the "Rest of the World". In the modern world, linguistic imperialism may also be considered in the context of international development, affecting the standard by which organizations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank evaluate the trustworthiness and value of structural adjustment loans by virtue of views that are commonly foregrounded in English-language discourse and not neutral.
Herbert Irving Schiller was an American media critic, sociologist, author, and scholar. He earned his PhD in 1960 from New York University.
Commodification in a capitalist system is the action and process of transforming goods, services, ideas, nature, personal information, people or animals into commodities. A commodity at its most basic, according to Arjun Appadurai, are goods, services, materials intended for exchange or has economic value.
James Chapman is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Leicester. He has written several books on the history of British popular culture, including work on cinema, television and comics.
Alterity is a philosophical and anthropological term meaning "otherness", that is, the "other of two". It is also increasingly being used in media to express something other than "sameness", or something outside of tradition or convention.
A media franchise, also known as a multimedia franchise, is a collection of related media in which several derivative works have been produced from an original creative work of fiction, such as a film, a work of literature, a television program or a video game. Bob Iger, chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, defined the word franchise as "something that creates value across multiple businesses and across multiple territories over a long period of time".
A spin-off or spinoff is any narrative work derived from an already existing work that focuses on different aspects from the original work.
Representations is an interdisciplinary journal in the humanities published quarterly by the University of California Press. The journal was established in 1983 and is the founding publication of the New Historicism movement of the 1980s. It covers topics including literary, historical, and cultural studies. The founding editorial board was chaired by Stephen Greenblatt and Svetlana Alpers. Representations frequently publishes thematic special issues, for example, the 2007 issue on the legacies of American Orientalism, the 2006 issue on cross-cultural mimesis, and the 2005 issue on political and intellectual redress.
Americanization or Americanisation is the influence of American culture and business on other countries outside the United States, including their media, cuisine, business practices, popular culture, technology or political techniques. Some observers have described Americanization as synonymous with progress and innovation.
Popular culture is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a society at a given point in time. Popular culture also encompasses the activities and feelings produced as a result of interaction with these dominant objects. The primary driving forces behind popular culture, especially when speaking of Western popular cultures, are the media, mass appeal, marketing and capitalism; and it is produced by what philosopher Theodor Adorno refers to as the "culture industry".
Culture is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups. Culture is often originated from or attributed to a specific region or location.
The study of global communication is an interdisciplinary field focusing on global communication, or the ways that people connect, share, relate and mobilize across geographic, political, economic, social and cultural divides. Global communication implies a transfer of knowledge and ideas from centers of power to peripheries and the imposition of a new intercultural hegemony by means of the "soft power" of global news and entertainment.
Cultural globalization refers to the transmission of ideas, meanings and values around the world in such a way as to extend and intensify social relations. This process is marked by the common consumption of cultures that have been diffused by the Internet, popular culture media, and international travel. This has added to processes of commodity exchange and colonization which have a longer history of carrying cultural meaning around the globe. The circulation of cultures enables individuals to partake in extended social relations that cross national and regional borders. The creation and expansion of such social relations is not merely observed on a material level. Cultural globalization involves the formation of shared norms and knowledge with which people associate their individual and collective cultural identities. It brings increasing interconnectedness among different populations and cultures. The idea of cultural globalization emerged in the late 1980s, but was diffused widely by Western academics throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. For some researchers, the idea of cultural globalization is reaction to the claims made by critics of cultural imperialism in the 1970s and 1980s.
Mediated cross-border communication is a scholarly field in communication studies and refers to any mediated form of communication in the course of which nation state or cultural borders are crossed or even get transgressed and undermined.
Cultural homogenization is an aspect of cultural globalization, listed as one of its main characteristics, and refers to the reduction in cultural diversity through the popularization and diffusion of a wide array of cultural symbols—not only physical objects but customs, ideas and values. David E. O'Connor defines it as "the process by which local cultures are transformed or absorbed by a dominant outside culture". Cultural homogenization has been called "perhaps the most widely discussed hallmark of global culture". In theory, homogenization could work in the breakdown of cultural barriers and the global adoption of a single culture.