First of
all, cultural imperialism is the practice of promoting a more powerful culture
over a least known or desirable culture. It happens when an economically developed
countries try to spread their cultural and traditional activities to less
developed countries. The result is that less developed counties would eventually
adopt and adjust to the culture suggested to them. There are both advantages
and disadvantages to this, causing numerous benefits and negative impacts.
The Burger King which was found in
United States is now one of the most famous fast food restaurant competing
against McDonalds and other large companies. According to my research, Japanese
people are very passionate toward Burger King’s burgers. In specific, Japanese kids favors the most among other fast food. With a huge success from all-you-can-eat promotion in 2010,
Burger King is holding the same promotion in 2013 starting on November 15 until
December. The name of the promotion was called “BiKing” which derived from the
word “Viking” to describe buffets in Japan. Since Japanese people had hard time
pronouncing “v,” letter “b” was used to signify the B in burger king and at the
same time make it similar to the word “Viking.” In this promotion, consumers
had to order the large size set of Whopper, Whopper with cheese, or fresh
avocado which is around $2 more expensive than the regular sized whopper. When
one person finished the meal, the person had the opportunity to order more
burgers for free for 30 minutes. This event was a huge success both economically
and spreading America’s culture on fast food.
Another example of cultural imperialism
can be Disney. Disney is welcomed by children all over the world. The cartoons
are dominated by Disney and Disney has come up with diverse characters that
have successfully gained children’s attention. However, Disney contains a lot
of cultural symbols that are biased. Children unconsciously watch the
cartoons without knowing that they are unethical. For example, Disney portrays
Arabs as barbers or villain which might make children to think all the Arabs
are evil. On the other hand, Americans are described as the heroes. So, Disney
is giving wrong information to the children about other race and tells good things
about America.
As
I have mentioned, cultural imperialism can be both positive and negative. One
culture can greatly increase their products’ consumption level or spread their
culture. On the other hand, through cultural imperialism, people might attain
wrong and biased information which can limit people’s potential to think in a broader
perspective
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Your example with the Burger King shows great statistics that can support the idea that consumerism is promoted from cultural imperialism because of the huge profits. Do you think that this is a positive result of imperialism when you take the perspective of local restaurant owners in Japan?
ReplyDeleteHarry, this is a top post for sure. I hope you don't mind me sharing it in a tweet. You took on the more difficult concept of cultural imperialism and I think your Disney example is quite strong, although it is definitely debatable. The question I have for you is, do you think these companies INTENTIONALLY spread American culture? What I mean is, do you think Burger King and McDonalds are doing what they're doing because they want people to live more like Americans for some particular reason or do you think this is an unintended consequence of the strategies they enact to sell more of their products?
ReplyDelete