continued: "Where the Global Meets the Local: Media Studies and the Myth of Cultural Homogenization" by Larry Strelitz
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What Morley, Hannerz and others are pointing to is that the consumption of popular cultural forms (both global and local) takes place within particular social contexts and that the meaning of the particular media or cultural product, rather than residing in the form, emerges primarily at the point of consumption in that particular context. A graphic representation of this process was provided in an interview I conducted with Khulani, a male student at Rhodes University, who grew up in a strongly traditional Zulu family in Empangeni in Kwa-Zulu Natal:

I will say something about my culture. It is still very strong…we're still embedded in our culture. My culture is Zulu, my ethnic group is just Zulu so we value everything, even the type of marriage that we involve ourselves in, that is based in my culture. We still don't want to involve ourselves in English or American types of weddings. We use our cultural ways of doing things. Everything is traditional.

As Khulani explained, in traditional Zulu culture the mother liaises between the children and the father. This is indicative of the formal relationship that exists between fathers and their children.

If I'm maybe short of money, I have to go to my mother. If my mother has passed away, my father will have to get another wife to supplement. If I'm short of money, I can't go to my father because that would be so rude. So I have to go to my mother. My mother is a liaison officer…so there's that distant relationship between ourselves and our fathers. I think with our mothers we are so close because each and every time we share our problems. I can't go to my father with any problems. I can ask from him, but only through my mother. My mother will liaise on my behalf. We do not call our fathers by their names, or any elder person by their first names because that's being disrespectful. We also don't look at them in the eye as this is also seen as a sign of disrespect.

Even though the family was financially well-off, his father decided that because of the detrimental effects Western culture would have on traditional Zulu culture, they should not have a television set in the home. As Khulani explained, "he believes that television is so polluted with a lot of Western stuff that it can pollute our minds."

Given his father's feelings about television, Khulani's first sustained exposure to Western culture came after he had finished high school and moved to Johannesburg to seek employment. For just over six months he resided in the George Gouch men's hostel, and it was during this period that he had his first sustained exposure to television. He was particularly drawn to the American soap operas "Days of our Lives" and "The Bold and the Beautiful," which he would view with one of his friends in the hostel. He would watch every evening and then the following morning; in order to reinforce the understandings he had obtained from the initial viewing, he would watch the reruns.

I was very, very happy with that soap ["Days of our Lives"] because of the manner in which gender is being played there…there are no boundaries between them [males and females]. In our culture there are clear distinctions between a male and a female in terms of roles and the way they relate. In "Days" there was a problem between Kerry, Austin, and Sally. What I saw there was so amazing actually because in our culture a girl can't approach you and say what she feels about you. She can't even fight for you. What I saw there was so foreign because these two ladies were fighting for Austin. I liked that program because I learned that everyone has a right, if they feel strongly about something, to express it. When you're brought up you're led to believe that whatever you see on TV is bad for our minds. But there is some stuff that is very good, like that one. If you love this boy and you can't approach him, how can you let him know. I learned a lot, especially relationship-wise. If a guy can tell a woman that he loves her, she should be able to do the same. I like that thing because if we can go along those lines I think our nation will be very strong because you won't have people who will become victims of their own feelings. Women should be taught to be proactive, to be independent, to stand up for themselves…allowed room to think. Not like in a patriarchal society like where I come from…a woman there is just told to be passive and soft and beautiful. Whereas in this [Western] culture you can still be beautiful but you must also be strong and proactive.

Furthermore, according to Khulani, the relationships between fathers and their children, as portrayed in these American soap operas, also made a deep impression.

After watching these programs I realized that I should be allowed to speak to my father, he should be my friend rather than just my father…just to dismantle that wall of formality. I think that if we can adopt that it will be great because the manner in which we relate is not satisfactory at all. Maybe your mother passes away and then you don't have someone to liaise with your father. Also, if your father then takes some other woman who doesn't like you, how will she liaise…that's a problem.

Khulani believes that his exposure to these programs will enable him to choose the manner in which he wishes to interact with his future wife and children. He is no longer bound by tradition.

I think it's sort of prepared me for my own life that I wish to live in the future when I've got my own family. I can't change an old person like my father. So it affected me positively because when I've got my own family in the future, I will make sure that I practice those values that I find to be positive. In terms of relating to my own kids I will make sure that they are my friends, they are my brothers. I will make sure that my wife is my equal. No one person is a head of a family…we are all heads. So as soon as we kill those mentalities that will be better.

I put it to Khulani that there must have been other factors, for example relationships with work colleagues, besides the programs which resulted in his shifting perceptions with regard to gender and parental relationships. He denied this, pointing out that during this time he was unemployed and thus spent most of his spare time seeking work.

Even if we do not accept his claims to the primacy of television in shifting his understandings, the very least we can say is that these programs contributed to a shift in his understanding concerning of male/female relationships-he came to understand that males and females could relate in potentially different ways to those prescribed in his traditional culture.

Khulani's adoption of certain Western values, picked up in part from the American soap operas, does not entail a complete denial or obliteration of his Zulu identity. Rather he occupies a space in which traditional and Western values coexist.

I feel I'm a very, very strong Zulu man. I feel I know what is good for the Zulu nation. Our nation will be very progressive and strong should we address those imbalances like having a woman just sit and care for her kids only. I will address those imbalances by starting with my own family and will talk with other people from my own culture.

While, as noted already, the idea of Westernization (Western cultural influence generally led by the United States) lies at the heart of the cultural imperialism thesis, John Tomlinson points out that this culture does not constitute an indivisible package that is simply adopted by local cultures. Rather, some aspects of "Western" culture are adopted while others are found irrelevant and are resisted. This holds true for Khulani in that there are Western values that he rejects.

In terms of our culture, a girl is expected to enter into relationships when she is about 20. In the Western culture a girl can be exposed to a relationship as early as 15 or 16. That one we shouldn't adopt in our culture. Another thing we shouldn't adopt from the Western culture has to do with the way they treat elderly people. I wouldn't like my family to be sent into an old-age home. According to our culture we support our elders, we bury them when they're dead. In the Western culture everyone only cares for themselves.

Given their connotation in Western culture, I was fascinated when, matter-of-factly, Khulani discussed the educative value pornographic movies have played for his friends in rural Kwa-Zulu Natal.

Some of my friends back home, they like those blue movies. They like to explore new ways of making love and all that. That's something that is not there in our culture because a woman is expected to just lie back and a man must do his thing. But guys back home, they like to get the woman involved as well. A woman should be active in a love relationship. That relationship tends to be very, very successful. I think it's also very good if a woman can also watch blue movies because they should be active as much as we are. I don't think that thinking should be done by one person only. Everyone should be allowed to think, everyone should be allowed to express an opinion. There should be a difference between respect and fear. Some of our fathers say, my wife respects me, but she actually fears him. When everyone can communicate, whenever one is just free to say whatever, you'll be able to pick up whether a woman respects or fears her husband.

Furthermore, Khulani's description of the potentially "progressive" role played by "blue" movies in a strongly patriarchal culture also provides a graphic example of the need not to think of ideology as "built in" to media products themselves, but rather to look concretely at the ways in which these products are understood and used by the individuals who receive them, and how the localized use of these products are interwoven with forms of power. In fact a number of ethnographic studies have indicated that far from helping to buttress the status quo in patriarchal cultures, masculinist values can often be undermined by soap operas which portray strong women and emotionally open men as key characters. Thus recently one of my students admitted that he had been "dumped" by his lover because he was not "sensitive like the men in 'The Bold and the Beautiful'"! continued

Next page: "We need to consider the extremely uneven way global media penetrates local cultures"