continued: "Where the Global Meets the Local: Media Studies and the Myth of Cultural Homogenization" by Larry Strelitz
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What this formulation points to is that the social conditions of reception of the global media are as important a moment in our analysis as are the formal properties of the forms themselves--an insight at the center of the media ethnography tradition. Given this, textual analysis is often not very helpful in predicting what meanings viewers are taking from a text. Thus, in oft-quoted study of Dutch viewers of "Dallas," media theorist Ien Ang discovered that contrary to expectations, it was not the capitalist values of conspicuous consumption and rugged individualism--so obviously woven into these programs--that provided the points of identification and pleasure for the viewers. Rather, it was the "tragic structure of feeling" in these programs that attracted Dutch viewers--the realization that money and power does not insulate one from everyday tragedies and that even the super-rich have their problems.

As we saw with Khulani, the "progressive" meanings he derived from American soaps and the pornographic movies ("progressive" in that they challenged many of the patriarchal values he had grown up with) derived from the interplay between the context of reception and the formal properties of the text. It is for this reason that Morley argues that one of the problems with this "defensive" model of resistance to foreign cultural imperialism concerns the fact that the "foreign" should not necessarily be equated with cultural regression. It can be argued, he believes, that "foreign" materials often play a subversive (and potentially progressive) role, by undermining the certainties of established national or local cultural hierarchies. It is precisely because we cannot predict what meanings will be made at the point of television consumption, and because of the surprising ways that television texts are often made sense of (as we saw with Khulani), that Ang argues the need to drop the "utopian search for a definite, substantial guarantee of what constitutes 'progressive television.'" She elaborates: "'Progressive television' should not be situated in a fixed, formal opposition against dominant television, but has to be seen as a temporary and local politico-cultural effect, the dynamic and overdetermined result of a specific confrontation between television and viewers, often unpredictable and seemingly accidental."

Finally, the views expressed by Khulani, emerging as he is from a traditional patriarchal culture, resonate strongly with those of Soren Schou (1992) in his description of the impact of American popular culture on Danish society after World War II. He points out how American popular culture became a guide to the "mental transformation" as Denmark underwent the process of modernization during this period. He writes: "In Denmark, daily existence was changing for many as we left our agrarian past and approached a new status as an industrial nation. A new self-awareness was sought in order to come to terms with this changing world, new and more sophisticated ways of looking at life, new ways to communicate. The inspiration had to come from the most industrial nation in the world. American popular culture became a guide during this mental transformation…One could say that it was instrumental in bringing about the 'mental' modernization of Denmark."

Something else we need to consider is the extremely uneven way that global media forms penetrate local cultures. As the Latin American media theorist Armand Mattelart reminds us, "the idea of a monolithic, triumphant imperialism, wiping out all diversity and homogenizing all cultures is absurd…The idea that imperialism invades different sectors of a society in a uniform way must be abandoned. What must be substituted is the demand for an analysis that illuminates the particular milieu that favor [or hinder] this penetration." My experience with researching media consumption patterns among Rhodes University students bears out this insight.

Early last year I was informed of the existence of a television viewing room known among students as the "homeland." The "homeland" is attached to one of the male residences, and is used solely by local African male students from rural peasant or working class backgrounds. Every evening, with the regularity of the ritual it has become, 15 to 20 of these students--a mix of undergraduate and postgraduate and from a variety of study disciplines--gather to watch their favorite programs. The viewing sessions start at 18:30 when they gather to watch "Isidingo," a local black drama series. At 19:00 they break for supper in the residences, and return at 19:30 to view the African-language news. At 20:00 they watch another local black drama series, "Generations." On weekends they will often meet to watch local televised soccer matches. Not only do these students feel the need to isolate themselves from the rest of the student body in their viewing of television; equally significant is the fact that their program diet is restricted to local productions. They completely reject foreign television.

On interviewing the "homeland" students I was fascinated to find that for many of them their rejection of Western media in general, and television in particular, is a recent phenomenon coinciding with their entry into the social milieu of Rhodes University. Prior to that, for many of these students living in rural poverty, Western media were important conveyors of the attractions of modernity. As Marshall Berman writes in his discussion of the existential experience of modernity and which certainly seems to be reflected in the early media experiences of many of these students: "To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world…." Thus for one of my informants, who spent most of his out-of-school hours herding cattle and occasionally playing soccer, viewing television programs like "Dallas" and "Knightrider" led him to realize that his life could be other than what it was:

Having watched "Knightrider" and all that stuff….yes, there was this "Dallas," America was really a nice place to be. It was totally different from the place I was staying. So there was a need for me to advance to live in that particular place. The houses were nice, the people there were speaking nice English…although I didn't know what nice English was I could see that this was nice English. So those were some of the things that influenced me. These people are always having nice offices. These people, even though they are serious, at the same time they entertain themselves. So there is that balance as compared to us where we will have maybe one thing--go to school and then afterwards just kick that soccer ball, there was nothing else. So these people had a right way of doing things. To know those programs was just to know that people do different things…there are different things that are happening which are nice.

Coming to Rhodes University has proved to be a traumatic experience for many of the "homeland" students and this, my study argues, explains the shift in their television program preferences. They feel alienated from what they regard as the dominant white and middle class culture of the university. This is a culture, they believe, that has been adopted by many of the black middle class students. They refer to these students as "coconuts"--black on the outside but white on the inside.

As two of my interviewees noted with regard to the African middle class students on campus:

Andile: You meet someone here [at Rhodes] and you greet him in your own language, and he responds to you in English. These are things which make us say that these people are fake.

Luxolo: There are people from the urban areas we don't have any problems with. This again comes to the question of which people from the urban areas…if you look at them you'll find they're mainly from the middle class. They're the ones we have trouble with.

As already noted, the majority of the "homeland" students come from rural working class and peasant backgrounds, and as such have had educationally inferior schooling. For many of them Rhodes University has provided them with their first close contact with urban, middle class white, black, and Asian students, the majority of whom have had relatively superior schooling and are generally more sophisticated. Furthermore, they experience Rhodes University as an overwhelmingly white institution. Not only are the majority of students white, but in 2000, 89% of the academic staff where white, as were 68% of the senior administrative staff. Given their different educational and social experiences it is perhaps unsurprising that the majority of the "homeland" viewers felt estranged from the dominant institutional and student culture they experience at Rhodes University. As two of my informants noted:

Andile: Because of my background I experience it [Rhodes University] as a white institution. Because I've already gone to the bush [the initiation undertaken by many rural black boys which signifies their passage into adulthood], I don't involve myself with some of the activities there. If I did, I would be compromising my manhood. I can give an example of the students water-bombing each other during exams. I don't like that. So instead of changing me, it has reinforced my sense of being a black South African.

Luxolo: Drinking, acting stupid when you're drunk, doing stupid things like shouting and trying to tackle trees. Broadly speaking, this white culture, they feel you have to be flexible, just take everything. If they throw water at you, you mustn't have any problems with that--everything, you must take it. If there is a formal dinner you must be seen to drink that wine big time. [Laughs] If you don't drink that wine you're not "one of us." Even the attire--you have to wear these big shoes. You have to be seen going to that gym everyday. These are some of the things that are disadvantaging us. continued

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