"The land Mauritius: your invitation to discover our country ö our unspoiled island. You can thank the bountiful sugar cane harvest for contributing so much to the economy that we can avoid mass tourism." (from a Mauritian tourist brochure)

Western media represents the Third World and its peoples, by its comparison with non-European standards; often negative, patronising and derogatory images are presented to the world.

In brochures such as the one on Mauritius I am quoting from here, the country is sold both as a paradise island and its people as an example of 'multi-racial'/ethnic diversity. However, whilst difference is celebrated the subtext still remains: 'different but not equal'. It is not a difference which threatens the (Western) norm, but a difference to be voyeuristically gazed at. In other words, this exoticism is only acceptable if it is not too exotic, if it is not alienating and threatening to the West. Hence the brochures will often appeal to some form of Western normality, by remarking on those familiar points of reference.

It has been argued that the Western cultural forms of behaviour have become dominant and universal and therefore the desired norm to be apsired to. Being like the West is also elided with being modern. The vehicle by which such cultural messages are transmitted in modern day life is through the advertising marketing field. To make sure that your product sells, you need to advertise ö media fits into the world system of capitalism, it is the ideological supportive informational infrastructure of the modern world systems.

Multi-national media corporations act as agents for the promotion, protection and extension for the modern world system of which multi-national corporations are the main component. The media is seen as the vehicle for corporate marketing, manipulating audiences to deliver them as 'good consumers' of capitalist production.

The multi-national advertising agencies are viewed as being the biggest purveyors of international uniformity. Multi-national companies employ their multi-national advertising agencies to produce the global consumer. And the adverts, whilst encouraging the consumer to desire washing powder, corn flakes and coffee, simultaneously produce the ideology of Westernisation/Americanisation as modern and even post-modern.

In other words, as the Western world continues in its dominant position of controlling the products sold to the rest of the world, it also needs to produce the ideological basis for desiring its goods. It is said that the world is being made in the image of the West. Hence, the consumption of consumer goods goes hand in hand with the consumption of culture.

"While preserving their original cultures, they live work and play together achieving a unity in diversity which offers the rest of us an inspiring vision of tomorrow's cosmopolitan world." (from a Mauritian tourist brochure)

As we begin to explore the process of cultural imperialism, what becomes evident is that the power of the media is about the way in which Western values/cultures are being transmitted ö 'Media Imperialism'. The Media Imperialism thesis focuses on issues such as the dumping of cheap TV programmes in the Third World and the market dominance of Western news agencies such as CNN. It is assumed that the media is central and has an overwhelming importance in the process of cultural domination. Hence, it is argued that the media is at the centre of cultural processes and that issues of cultural domination are about media domination.

The criticism of this thesis is that we are not empty vessels waiting to unthinkingly absorb Western media messages. It seems to be more the case that cultures are not homogeneous and fixed, hence authentic indigenous cultures are not there to be corrupted or subverted by foreign influences. Rather, cultural hybridity is the normal state of affairs in the world and in this sense it is suggested that we are all exposed to the same media, bringing 'information' and experience to everywhere from everywhere. State funerals, wars or space flights become 'drama' that can be played out on the stage of almost anyone's living room. In this way the media creates new 'communities' across disparate groups which converge around this common experience.

Audiences are, in certain respects, active in their choice of consumption and interpretation of media texts with recognition of how that activity is framed and limited in its difference, modalities and varieties by the dynamics of cultural power. However, the criticism of this more optimistic analysis of Western media continues to be the need to take into consideration the power relationships involved in the portrayal of media's products and materials. The question of power and knowledge between the representer and represented needs to be addressed. Hence, the critique is that it is the Western media which arrogates to themselves the rights to represent all non-Western 'others'.

"The people are unique for their diversity; Indians, Creoles, Muslims, French Chinese ö and intoxicating range of mixture. Beautiful people with soft features, infectious smiles and disarming personalities..." (from a Mauritian tourist brochure)

Global Culture

That the media is a global phenomenon, with its origins in the West and its tentacles reaching out to the rest of the world, is not in dispute. The contention really concerns the extent of its influence and the damage of its effects.

"The contemporary media shape identity is not at the core of identity production. In a transitional world typified by the global circulation of image and sounds, goods and peoples, media spectatorship impacts complexity on national identity and communal belongings" (Shohal and Stam, 1994)

The Global media thesis has a flip side to it ö hence at the same moment in which the West is sold to the rest of the world as the exemplar of modernity, so the rest of the world is sold to the West as the authentic, the untouched the exotic (even backwards), the commodity that the West would like to appropriate.

"The official languages are English and French. French is used mainly in government and business literature. French is the spoken language in educated and cultural circles and is the language of the newspapers and magazines..." (quote from Mauritian tourist brochure)

In other words: rest assured you could feel at home.

Shirin Housee [fa193@wlv.ac.uk]