Back a few days ago, I was sitting with my mother and she was viewing a cooking show on an international station which was suggesting an idea of having a delicious way to cook a smoked chicken with a style of that station country. After a few days, my mother cooked the chicken in a same custom at one of the family events. The thing to be pondered here is that how the idea of cooking a chicken according to the cooking tradition of that particular country has been travelled through the media into my house. This is how media works in order to depict a culture of certain countries into other countries. Media in the past few decades has become a tool for many countries to epitomize their culture on different levels and has been very effective to imperialise their culture in different hosts around the world especially base countries, thus by making them vulnerable. Edward Said in his book ‘‘Culture and Imperialism’’ explained cultural imperialism in the 18th, 19th and 20th century, by analysing the function of empire through cultural objects. He explained that the business of an empire depends on the idea of an empire. Inside a society, all sorts of arrangements are made for it then, in turn, imperialism acquires a kind of coherence, a series of memories, and a presence within the culture of ruler and ruler alike. Culture is one of the soft and very effective tools in order to project the thoughts and brainwash the minds across different regions of the world without even letting the adversary know about the agenda. Media in this normalization have played a very vital role, especially with their entertainment industries, through print media advertisement, through social networking etc. This is how media normalize the culture in any country. Entertainment industry from the last few decades has been a tool of cultural imperialists in order to gain their interests. In obscure ways, the transmission of culture functions through different media outlets. For Example, Netflix, Amazon Prime etc. Hollywood definitely does not currently have a master plan to export the American way of life across the globe and displace local culture, as American music may not inherently be a progenitor of democratic government and economic cooperation. Instead, local cultures respond to the outside culture of the U.S. media and democracy in many distinct ways. Art has been another factor that paved a way for the cultural imperialists for their goals. Today social media is surrounded by meme culture, and memes are considered to be the source of ideas expressed in a very friendly manner. It is such an idea that even an idea is presented and people do not consider it offensive. For many people around Pakistan, it is a source of entertainment, but in reality, every meme has a certain meaning and idea and through this soft tool idea is projected indirectly into the minds of the people. Meme culture on today’s social media platforms has become a source of looking modern and convincing that you are going with the modern world trends.
Adnan Khan
Lahore
