Transnational cultural penetration

Incidence

The Grand Prix industry is a multi-million dollar enterprise with finances which are truly transnational in origin. During its annual tour, it links together major metropolitan areas from the West and the East, northern and southern hemispheres, as well as the First World and Third. Wherever the Prix is physically located, the race is immediately beamed to millions of homes across the world. As a popular cultural event, it epitomizes postmodern experience in the relative ease with which it transcends the customary limits of time, space and local social organization.

Claim

The genre of global culture demands constant scrutiny since it poses a major threat to local cultural experience. The sense of attachment and belong to a particular place is considered under assaults from universal fashions, world-wide fast food outlets, soap operas, film series and mass music. For as these innovate in particular directions, they are all instantly transmitted across the global village where they have not just an homogenizing effect on local cultural diversity, but also a destructive one. The emphasis on instant entertainment and immediate gratification, inclines to eliminate from view the more serious issues generated by the experience of late capitalism. Such is the symbolic potency of mass consumerism that its economic and political implications are readily lost sight of.

Counter-claim

Children in developing countries are generally bicultural rather than monocultural. Many are bilingual. They grow up in their own culture as well as absorbing the dominant culture.