Iranian Cinema and Globalization

Shahab Esfandiary

• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781841506920
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

PART I

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Chapter 1

Making Sense of Globalization

Introduction

Advocates of what has come to be known as ‘globalization theory’ and their opponents both agree on the point that globalization was the buzzword, if not the Zeitgeist, of the 1990s (Rosenberg 2005; Tomlinson 2003). There is of course an extensive literature on this debate with contributions from scholars of various disciplines such as economics, politics, international relations, geography, sociology, communications, media studies and cultural studies. Even within each of these disciplines globalization has been explored and theorized from various philosophical, ideological and political perspectives. Clearly the unparalleled and frequent appearance of this term in academic discourses in the 1990s – a decade that some have named ‘the decade of globalization’ – has not come to a terminal decline. Tomlinson (2003: 11–15) has interestingly suggested two ‘real events’ that can be identified as signposts of this decade: the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989; and the attacks on the World Trade Center in September 2001. The rich symbolism of these two events, which provided platforms for delivering political and cultural messages and expressing identities, is for Tomlinson indicative of an inherent ‘dimension’ of globalization: that it involves ‘the proliferation of cultural identities’. The popular media coverage of issues related to globalization has probably been more extensive than is usually received by other academic concepts. Even ‘Postmodernism’ – the buzzword of the 1980s – falls far behind in this regard. In the case of globalization, Tomlinson argues, ‘the empirical reality’ and the events that were driving the process demanded a conceptual response, while the debates over postmodern theory were more rooted in ‘epistemological and ontological meta-propositions’ (2003: 11).

The different disciplines and standpoints from which globalization has been theorized make it extremely difficult to grasp a consensual understanding of the term. Any attempt to generalize a definition of globalization runs the risk of ideological prejudices and political evaluations about its social and economic consequences, which influence how the overall process (or project) is depicted. The complex, contradictory, multifaceted and multidimensional nature of globalization has even prevented theorists on the same side of the ideological and political spectrum from reaching a full agreement on the issue. As Held et al. have demonstrated none of the great traditions of social inquiry – liberal, conservative and Marxist – has an agreed perspective on globalization (Held et al. 1999: 4).

Another cause of confusion is that in studying globalization it is difficult to entirely separate its economic, political and cultural dimensions and to focus merely on one aspect in isolation from the others. Not only do these dimensions penetrate and impact upon each other all the time, but their boundaries have also become less recognizable due to the growing ‘disjunctures’ between these different spheres (Appadurai 1996). Therefore even when the main task is to concentrate on the cultural aspects of globalization, as in the present book, the economic and political spheres, at least to some degree, will have to be taken into account. Moreover, an interdisciplinary approach, which would have the advantage of acknowledging a variety of methods and perspectives in the study of such a complex phenomenon as globalization, would seem to be more useful in meeting the aims of this book. The main intention, however, as mentioned previously, would be to explore the cultural aspects or dimensions of globalization that are more directly relevant to the central concern of this book: the changes in the structure, function and output of national cinema in the context of globalization.

In the present chapter, I shall review the work of theorists who have introduced key models for understanding the cultural aspects of globalization. The concepts of the global field (Roland Robertson), global flows (Arjun Appadurai) and global transformations (David Held et al.) are my main points of reference. Robertson and Appadurai are among the pioneers of globalization theory and their work not only provides us with useful insights into the origins of scholarly work on globalization and its later evolution, but also demonstrates the impact they have had on generations of globalization theorists. Held and McGrew, who are perhaps the most prolific academics in the field, have, with their colleagues, produced one of the most comprehensive and multidimensional accounts of globalization, which has proved to be an essential text for any investigation of the subject.

In addition to these three reference points, the works of a number of other significant contributors to globalization theory such as Anthony Giddens, Stuart Hall, John Tomlinson, Fredric Jameson, Arif Dirlik and Noël Carroll have also been included in the discussion. Some common aspects of these theories as well as areas of dispute and disagreement are highlighted. The aim of this review, as indicated in the title, is to make sense of globalization in general terms, and to extract a set of potentially useful conceptual tools and methods so as to examine the impact of globalization on national cinemas. The relevant findings will be summarized as a ‘theoretical framework’ in the concluding section of this chapter.

The global field

Roland Robertson is widely considered to be a pioneer among the key social theorists who have contributed to the theory of globalization. His publications that directly deal with concepts such as ‘globality’ and ‘globalization’ were first published in the 1980s.¹ While firmly positioning himself within the discipline of sociology and frequently referring to the work of classic social scientists such as Emile Durkheim, Max Webber and Georg Simmel, Robertson also attempts to distance himself – to a certain degree – from the typical ‘scientific’ and ‘positivist’ perspectives of classic sociology in order to allow more space for what he calls the ‘subjective’ and ‘cultural’ aspects of human life. His most influential and widely cited book Globalization; Social Theory and Global Culture was first published in 1992. Robertson explains that his main motive for investigating the concept of globalization was the increasing concern with cultural and religious identity in the contemporary world. His intention was to determine whether this new ‘search for the fundamentals’ should be regarded as an inherent aspect of globalization or a form of resistance to it. This point of departure, in particular, and the question of identity in general are also directly relevant to the main topic of the present book concerning the impact of globalization on national cinemas. The construction and representation of identity in national cinema productions and the way globalization influences the latter processes will be a key matter of investigation in the following chapters.

Globalization: ‘out there’ or ‘inside the head’?

In Robertson’s view the study of globalization ‘under the umbrella of cultural studies’ has paid little attention to ‘global complexity’ and ‘structural contingency’. He stresses the necessity for any viable theory of the contemporary world to provide a ‘systematic comprehension of the structuration of world order’ (1992: 55). Yet he insists that such an approach must recognize and separate the factors that have facilitated the shift towards ‘a single world’ – such as capitalism, imperialism and new media systems – from what he calls ‘the general and global agency-structure theme’ (1992: 55). For Robertson, globalization is not just a process that is happening ‘out there’ but also involves people having increasingly converging conceptions of the world. On the one hand there is the compression of the world, mainly through new means of transport and communication, into a ‘single space’; and on the other an ‘intensified consciousnesses’ of the world as a whole (1992: 8). The latter aspect that Robertson names ‘globality’ – others have called it the ‘inside-the-head aspect of globalization’ – is considered to be his main contribution to the theory of globalization (Beynon and Dunkerley 2000). What the present study can learn from such an approach to globalization is that a mere focus on recent developments in the economic and institutional aspects of national cinemas, or the new cultural policies employed in response to globalization, would not allow for the study of its ‘inside-the-head’ impact. The latter would require an in-depth analysis of relevant films and need also to take account of the critical discourses and audiences’ response to them.

In Robertson’s theory, universalism and particularism are not seen as totally separate and opposing tendencies. Rather, the two are considered as being ‘tied together as part of a globewide nexus’. For Roberson, ‘contemporary globalization in its most general sense [is] a form of institutionalization of [a] two-fold process involving the universalization of particularism and the particularization of universalism’ (1992: 102). The latter he explains, provides the idea of the universal with ‘global-human concreteness’, while the former diffuses the idea that there is no limit to particularity and uniqueness. The international (almost universal) dispersal and appeal of the idea of nationalism (itself a version of particularism) is the main example that Robertson uses to flesh out his argument. Another area, we can suggest, where Robertson’s articulation of the universal–particular nexus can be applied is the history of cinema. The technology of film production swiftly travelled around the globe and found universal appeal in many different countries. Yet this universalism was followed by a particularism: the establishment of diverse national film industries, which began producing films that would appeal to local tastes and represent particular cultural characteristics.

The ‘global field’ and processes of relativization

Following Louis Dumont’s anthropological model for a community (Dumont 1979), Robertson introduces a theoretical model for understanding globalization in its contemporary phase. His model of the ‘global field’ is based on four major reference points: national societies, individuals (selves), relationships between national societies (or the world system of societies) and humankind (Robertson 1992: 25–29). Stressing that this model is ‘based upon both epistemic and empirical observations’, Robertson further expands on his scheme by arguing that between the above reference points there are a number of ‘relativization’ processes going on, namely relativization of societies, social identities and citizenship. Such processes, he adds, increase the challenges to the stability of perspectives on, and participation in, the overall globalization process. There is therefore for him an ‘inexorable’ trend toward the ‘unicity of the world’ (1992: 26). While admitting that his scheme involves a ‘totalizing tendency’, he suggests that this model is flexible in the sense that each of the four main components of the global field enjoys a degree of autonomy. This implies that his model recognizes the possibility of different ‘responses’ to globalization by different national societies and individuals who may challenge and even change the overall shape of globalization. Referring, for example, to the history of Islam and its ‘general globalizing thrust’, he emphasizes that ‘had that potential form of globalization succeeded, we would now almost certainly comprehend contemporary “globality” differently’ (1992: 28).

For Robertson, the 1960s youth movement in numerous parts of the world was a clear example of ‘globality’, that is, a global consciousness of the world as a whole. In his view even anti-global gestures are encapsulated within the discourse of globality and ‘resistance’ is part and parcel of the interactions involved in the global field that shape the processes of globalization. He contends that ‘the expectation of identity declaration’ is a built-in-feature of the globalization processes, and thus even ‘fundamentalism’ is an aspect or creation of globalization, rather than a mode of resistance or opposition to it. He goes even further to insist that there is no need to worry about this, since ‘fundamentalism, within limits, makes globalization work’; in other words ‘it is the particular which makes the universal work’ (1992: 180).² Although at the time of Robertson’s writing the anti-globalization movement was not yet in full swing and events of 11^th September 2001 and 7^th July 2005 had not taken place, the significant impact that such movements and events have had in challenging the dominant – and largely utopian – discourse of globalization seems to verify Robertson’s observation that globalization is an open-ended process.³ The relevance of the latter approach to the present book relates to the possibility of national cinemas becoming alternative sites of cultural production, which challenge and resist dominant modes of cinematic production in the age of global ‘free trade’. In other words, the question would be whether there is any evidence of national cinemas and individual film-makers making a difference.

Globalization and the representation of cultural identity

It has already been mentioned that the issue of identity has been a key matter of concern for Robertson and that he considers the increasing concern with identity as a result of the intersection of different forms of life through the globalization processes. For him globalization involves the institutional construction of the individual; it encourages individualism and identity and increases the establishment of minority movements and other forms of identification. All in all, ‘globalization in itself and of itself involves the expectation of identity clarifications’ (1992: 27).

From a different perspective, Stuart Hall (1991) also arrives at a similar conclusion with regard to the relation of globalization and identity. He argues that like capitalism, globalization advances on contradictory terrain. Rather than creating a homogeneous global culture based on ‘Englishness’ or ‘Americanness’, global mass culture recognizes and absorbs differences: ‘it does not attempt to obliterate them; it operates through them’ (Hall 1991: 28). Hall refutes the idea that globalization is ‘a non-contradictory, uncontested space in which everything is fully within the keeping of the institutions, so that they perfectly know where it is going’ and stresses that global capital always needs to negotiate in order to maintain its global position (1991: 32–3). Through the process of negotiation, he adds, global capital has to ‘incorporate and partly reflect the differences it [is] trying to overcome. It [has] to try get hold of, and neutralize, to some degree, the difference’ (ibid.). Yet the latter process, by enabling ‘the margins’ to come to representation, has paradoxically resulted in what Hall terms ‘the most profound cultural revolution’:

Paradoxically in our world, marginality has become a powerful space […]. The emergence of new subjects, new genders, new ethnicities, new regions, new communities, hitherto excluded from major forms of cultural representation, unable to locate themselves except as de-centered or subaltern, have acquired through struggle, sometimes in very marginalized ways, the means to speak for themselves for the first time. [They] can only come into representation by, as it were, recovering their own hidden histories. They have to try to retell the story from the bottom up, instead of from the top down.

(Hall 1991: 34–5)

Tomlinson echoes this view in an article where, referring to the events in the Balkans after the collapse of the former Yugoslavia and also the 9/11 attacks, he stresses that ‘far from destroying it, globalization has been perhaps the most significant force in creating and proliferating cultural identity’ (Tomlinson 2003: 16). Bearing in mind the topic of the present book, the main question that arises from the debate is whether globalization has also intensified the concern with national cinema – as a major site of identity construction and cultural expression – and how the ‘expectation of identity declaration’ is dealt with in national film productions.

David Morley and Kevin Robins have also explored the relation of globalization and identity and examined the ways that globalization – and particularly the new global media – influences local cultures and identities (Morley and Robins 1995). They argue that by constructing new electronic landscapes, global media in effect weaken old cultural boundaries. The authors identify a shift in the principles that governed the regulation of broadcasting ‘from regulation in the public interest to a new regulatory regime – sometimes erroneously described as “deregulation” – driven by economic and entrepreneurial imperatives’ (Morley and Robins 1995: 10–11). The political and social concerns of ‘the public service era’ with democracy, national culture and identity, they argue, have come to be regarded as factors restraining the development of new media markets. In ‘the new media order’, therefore, the principal objective is to dismantle such barriers to trade (1995: 11).

For Morley and Robbins, in this respect, globalization is not merely a threat to non-western cultures and nations, but a threat to Europe itself:

Europe and its members are no longer […] at the centre of the world, no longer the source of universal values […].Whereas once [Europe’s] project was about universalism, now it is about recovering a sense of European particularism […] it is about ‘the Europeanization, not of the rest of the world, but […] of Europe itself’.

(1995: 20)

The latter observation is clearly in line with Robertson’s notion of ‘universalization of particularism’ discussed above, as well as his anticipation of the impact of globalization in intensifying the search for and the expression of identities. Morley and Robbins recognize a growing interest in the ‘embeddedness of life histories in the boundaries of place’ as well as a desire for the ‘continuities of identity and community through local memory and heritage’, and argue that the particular relation of place and culture is something unparalleled, which we may never be able to transcend (1995: 116). Whilst maintaining that we should not ‘devalue the perceived and felt vitality of local cultures and identities’, the authors stress that the significance of the latter ‘can only be understood in the context of a broader and encompassing process’ (1995: 117).

Globalization and modernity

One significant aspect of Robertson’s theory of globalization is that it does not consider globalization simply as a ‘consequence of modernity’. He dedicates a whole chapter of his book to a fierce critique of The Consequences of Modernity (Giddens 1990). He criticizes Giddens for failing to register the already available literature on globalization theory and accuses him of fighting a straw man. Giddens considers modernity as a ‘western project’ but insists that globalization is more than a diffusion of western institutions across the world in which other cultures are crushed (Giddens 1990: 175). Robertson questions the very use of the term ‘other cultures’ here, since he deems that in Giddens’ theory, not only is no ‘other’ recognized but the significance of ‘culture’ is also completely neglected. Overlooking the importance of culture has also been considered a shortcoming in Giddens’ work by other scholars (Featherstone 1995: 145; Tomlinson 1999: 59). The universal–particular dialectic is for Robertson a basic feature of human life and has a history at least as old as that of the ‘world religions’. Contemporary globalization, he argues, is a form of institutionalization of the two-fold processes of universalization and particularization. While recognizing the significant and uniqu...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Table of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Theoretical Framework
• Part II: Iranian Cinema and Globalization
• Conclusion
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Back Page